"KrainaGrzybowTV (also known as Mushroomland (or Land of Mushrooms) TV, KGTV, or just Kraina Grzybów) is a Polish YouTube channel, which features a series of 1980’s themed videos revolving around a mysterious place called Mushroomland. The videos (so far) include: Smile Guide (Poradnik Uśmiechu) episodes 1, 2, 4, and 5, several Smile Guide OST videos, and one episode of Mushroom Melodies (Grzybowe Melodie). Six definite characters have been thus far established: Agatha (in Polish, Agatka), Maggie the Squirrel (Wiewiórka Małgosia), Caroline (Karolina), the Jeansman (Dżinsowy Człowiek), Hatszepsut,and Agatha’s unnamed mother.
"Smile Guide takes the appearance of an ’80’s or early ’90’s-era Eastern Bloc children’s educational program which, as the specific video progresses, descends into chaotic madness. Much of its style consists of footage made to look like it was shot on VHS, grammatically incomplete sentences, absurd humor, nostalgic-sounding music (mostly played on synthesizer and designed to evoke Polish television soundtracks from the 1980’s ), and, of course, disturbing imagery.
"The show is hosted by Agatha, a young girl always seen wearing a blue sweater with red flowers on it. She also wears paper eyes over her actual eyes (as do Caroline and the Jeansman). The premise of each episode is that Agatha is going to teach the viewer how to do something grammatically nonsensical (“how to effectively apple,” “how to make from paper”), but this pretense generally gets dropped about half-way through as the video descends into chaos. She is usually joined by Maggie, a talking cartoon squirrel, who acts as something of a co-host. The two generally seem to be friendly, although Episode 2 sees both of tem snapping angrily at each other at one point, perhaps to imply everything is not as it seems...." - Knowyourmeme
Surely the perpetrator of Kraina Grzybów and (subject of previous post) Magiczny Świat Ani are one and the same: Wiktor Stribog.
The music is good too.
Hello Simon, it's nice to see you write a blog post about Kraina Grzybów TV. I think it's a true hauntological masterpiece (at least some of the episodes) and it's a shame it is not widely discussed and analysed in this context. I'd like to clarify, however, that it is very doubtful that Magiczny Świat Ani is also a creation of Stribog. It was surely inspired by KGTV, but the style of the animation is not really that similar and the whole series is not as well thought out as Kraina Grzybów, I think - there are a lot of stunning visuals in it, though.
ReplyDeleteIt's also nice to see quite a lot of older Polish animation here. In case you haven't heard about it, you should check out the work of Hieronim Neumann (this one is one of my favourites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnyIHIvl0q4).
hi Jan
ReplyDeletelove the Polish animation! Your country and the Czechs were running things back then!
Ah that's interesting that it's not likely to be Stribog. I did another post on the Retromania blog that ties Kraina Grzybow in with hauntology - https://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2021/02/polska-hauntologia.html
cheers
SR