On Authenticity and Popular Culture

In the review the author analyses Ewa Mazierska’s book Polish Popular Music on Screen (2020), which investigates the mutually entangled histories of Polish politics, cinema, TV, and music. Although it focuses on the Polish context, the general and theoretical observations that emerge from Mazierska’s analysis relate also to the broader former socialist Europe. Departing from Mazierska’s work, the author tackles the question of “(in)authenticity” in relation to popular culture. The word “authenticity” often appears in the text to express the critics’ opinions of cultural products, but it is not clearly defined. The review of Mazierska’s research starts with a preliminary analysis of the concept, which enables a transversal discussion of the data presented in the text. Then the author draws some conclusions about the current state of research on Eastern European culture by highlighting the limits and the potentials of the field.