Bánk bán 2020 – vita a nemzeti kultúráról és az alkotói szabadságról
Bánk bán 2020 – Debate over National Culture and Artistic Freedom

Summary/Abstract: The play Bánk bán, written by József Katona, was put on stage at the National Theatre of Pécs by two young artists in the Fall of 2020. Three days after the premiere, a statement was released on the theatre’s Facebook page, in which the management called the audience’s attention to the facts that the creators of the piece were students of the Hungarian University of Theatre and Film Arts and that the performance contained “scenes not constituting part of the original work as well as profane language, including expletives at times”. The unusual announcement received over 1300 comments, by a stunning number of at least 500 users. The aim of my study was to analyze the debate generated by the statement in the context of the political process known as ‘culture wars’ as well as the Mediapolis theory. The arguments of the commenters defending and of the ones attacking the performance was inseparable of the situation created by the authoritarian change of administration at the University of Theatre and Film Arts, and even beyond this, from the state of the Hungarian public policy of the 2020’s and the judgement of the societal role of national (high) culture. The comments also highlighted the matter of artistic freedom on the one hand as aesthetic, on the other hand as a political issue. The discussion conducted in an online space was deeply interwoven by threads of resentfulness and hatred, by the opposition of us against you, as well as anti-Semitic remarks in various forms and with various levels of intensity.

• Details
• Contents