HUNGARY: Barbaric Culture

Jampec (pronounced yam-petz), the Budapest imitation of the U.S. zoot suiter, was under severe attack from Hungary’s Communist government. The government flayed the jampec as a sinister penetration of U.S. “barbaric culture” into Hungarian social life.

Managers of state-owned clothing shops displayed mannikins dressed in the jampec style, along with the warning that “everybody who imitates this American fashion madness belongs to the capitalist U.S. in spirit.” One shop window (see cut) showed a gorilla next to a jampec and a telegram from the Budapest zoo’s monkey house protesting against the insult of comparing a jampec to one of their kind.

Last week the Communist Party organ Szabad Nep called on the government to crack down on jampec-dressed youngsters. Cried Szabad Nep: “They portray the dismal picture of imitating the American gangster’s misanthropic spirit, moral decay and spiritual degeneration . . . Can we treat with indifference the fact that our youth are taught to dance sambas to the tune of the Hungarian czardas?”