If Perceptions Deceive, It’s Time to Change Them

When I read “Latinos Protest at ABC Stations” (Calendar, April 27), I was surprised to find in a free, democratic society like America the kind of ideas that were well-known in my native Poland under the communistic regime. Anyone who believes that political pressure on a network can bring a positive result for a particular group should look at all the films, paintings, books and TV programs that were created in the former socialistic states to put the working class “on the map” and include its “more positive portrayals.” Nobody wanted to see or read these pieces, least of all the working class!

Personally, I am very disappointed too: In the very rare cases when Poles appear on American television shows, they remind more of the baggy-pants, funny-haircut characters in Polish jokes than of such representatives of that minority as Karol Wojtyla, better known as Pope John Paul II. But as unhappy as I am about the situation, I am just as strongly convinced that there is only one way we can change the situation: from inside!

Minorities, in order to be more visible and in the way they want to be, have to mobilize their communities to give any possible assistance to those among them who want to be writers, directors, producers. I believe that an increased number of highly skilled and talented people will naturally, sooner or later, result in the increased number of films and shows featuring minorities.

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We cannot always blame others for being seen the way we are seen, either. A recent incident in my life taught me this common truth once more. I was looking for a hospital and sure that the modern, blue-tinted glass building I passed by on previous occasions was the hospital, I didn’t even bother to check the address.

Everything--a very simple but extremely well-done landscaping, lack of signs, besides “visitors parking,” an expensive interior design of the main lobby, frigid in its beauty and impersonal but with a quality that could be presented in any leading architectural magazine, and a reception-desk queen (an actress between jobs?)--corresponded with my picture of a hospital for the rich and famous that I saw on different American television shows and films in Europe. The only thing that disturbed this picture were brand-new cars in the main lobby.

Living for eight months in America, I got used to the very aggressive advertising methods in this country and to the fact that sponsors like to be visible. But a car exhibition in a hospital lobby?

Another person ahead of me at the reception desk gave me more time to think. I came to a conclusion that in my European way of thinking, I am less adaptable and mentally less mobile than Americans. In America anything is possible.

This car exhibition in the hospital lobby is an excellent idea to promote a product with a human face showing that the company is not only with the young and healthy but the sick and old too!

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Very happy and proud of myself that I was able to figure that out I approached the receptionist with a bright smile and said: “When you come in here you could think you are at a car dealer, but we are in hospital, aren’t we? Where is the lab?”

The prime-time beauty queen returned to me a polite smile and with not the slightest reaction suggesting something could be wrong with me said: “This is not a hospital, it is a car company.”

I stood there for a moment like a stone, having only one thing on my mind: If the receptionist wasn’t an actress but an aspiring TV writer, what would she write about Poles in her next script?

P.S. If you laugh at me I won’t boycott you, I promise.