“They’re heeeeerrrrreeeeee…”: Alien-(n)ation.

One of the most enduring and entertaining images of Hungarians during the second half of the 20th century is the idea of Hungarians as aliens or Martians. Much of this is tongue-in-cheek, is not intended to be pejorative, and has been exploited to good effect and with great enjoyment by Hungarians themselves – to the point of their likely having been behind its origination. There are multiple overlapping/competing descriptions of how all this started. Consensus suggests that it came out of the circles of