I was immediately intrigued by the Królowa teaser posted by Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski. Would there finally be some Polish-language content available on the US Netflix that’s not about true crime or some dystopian history story? A dziewucha could dream, and this latest Polish miniseries is giving her some hope for what’s to come now that the streaming giant has announced a new regional HQ in Warszawa.
The tale focuses on Sylwester, a retired tailor who spent the last 50 years of his life in Paris. He returns to Poland thanks to a letter sent to him by his granddaughter. The young woman shares that her mother (his daughter) is in need of a kidney transplant and asks whether he would consider seeing if he would be a viable donor. Sylwester, although he has never met his daughter because he emigrated from the country just before her birth, decides to reckon with his past and returns to Poland. As anyone could guess, his welcome is not necessarily warm, especially on the part of his daughter, and it is revealed that Dziadek (Grandpa) Sylwester has an “unusual” passion, at least by traditional Polish standards. In Paris, he performs on stage as the beloved drag queen Loretta. With this premise, a story of family and acceptance ensues.
Królowa is not groundbreaking by our US standards and there is a lot with the miniseries that seems to wrap up almost too neatly. You could probably already guess how this story ends, even if a bit unsure of the details in between. But for someone whose family comes from one of the most conservative PiS-supporting regions of Poland and has heard accounts of queer friends who have faced some sort of harassment or felt unsafe in Poland, it left me with some hope.
To make a very long and complex story short: Catholicism has been an important part of national identity in Poland, especially since Poles have tended to view the Catholic Church as a symbol of fighting for independence during the Communist regime that Poland fell under after WWII. In those days, the Catholic Church was a refuge, a supporter of a free, democratic Poland. Many older Poles to this day view Pope John Paul II as an instrumental factor of the country’s ability to topple the Soviet-backed regime in the 1980s. This is why the Church, and its morals and views, hold such esteem in the eyes of the older Polish generations that lived through the second half of the 20th century.
PiS, or Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice Party) was originally founded in 2001 as a center right, anti-establishment party, specifically opposed to former Communist political elites who were attempting to reinvent themselves after the fall of the USSR. Throughout the years, however; the party has transformed itself from a mainstream conservative party towards a full-on radical right party.
The Catholic Church in Poland is a significant influence on the ideological initiatives of PiS, and in turn, its support of the party legitimatizes PiS’ controversial party lines to tighten (or full out ban) both abortion rights and LGBT rights in Poland. Roe vs. Wade was overturned last week, not by US voters, but by a court- the same happened in Poland in 2020. PiS packed the constitutional tribunal and other courts with its appointees. And though there have been some small moments to celebrate and the community is still showing pride and solidarity, do remember, this is the same nation where its own president went so far to claim, “LGBT is not people, it’s an ideology which is worse than Communism.”
Sure, Królowa is not perfect, it’s just a story, but it’s a start. Time and time again, we learn that representation matters. If this is the direction that Polish stories from Netflix are going, it gives me some cautious optimism for Poland overall.
Ola Wysocki 