I remember, I’m flailing. Mikhail Edelstein – about the video “I am Russian” and “eclectic Russianness”
Vladimir Mashkov that none of the English-speaking or American actors can play well in Russian. President Putin can describe the deceased Daria Dugina as “a person with a real Russian heart – kind, loving, sympathetic and humane.” Parents complain that in the lessons of patriotism (known under the pseudonym “Conversations about the important”), schoolchildren are “suggested that Russians are acceptable nations.” the main hit of the end of summer – the beginning of autumn was the song “I am Russian”. In Vot Tak’s column, literary critic Mikhail Edelshtein discusses contemporary “eclectic Russianness.”
Ethnos and civil nation
“Dear Russians” of the 1990s has finally been archived. Nevertheless, the word “Russian” in the new socio-political lexicon seems to be intended to unite both the ethnos and the civil nation. the meaning of the revelations that represent any manifestations of the peoples of Russia are also considered Russian if they accept the Russian picture of the world and the coverage structure. At the same time, the idea of anthropological affiliation, the peculiarity of Russians, persistently sounds. “We are different and behave differently. We move in a different way, we have a different pressure, ”the same Mashkov formulates.
The manifesto of this “new Russianness” was the song Yaroslav Dronova aka Shaman “I am Russian” is a cross between a state anthem and a commercial. The video for the song appeared on YouTube at the end of July. In the first day it was discovered more than millions of users. Now the clip has 13 million views, 630 thousand likes and about 180 thousand comments at the beginning from “His songs hit like power from heaven, in the degree of our spiritual consciousness, causing the highest emotions in the soul” to “But why does he reveal it like that, poor fellow? Yes, you are Russian, Russian, calm down, we believe you.
Lack of content
Of course, songs about the national character were written at different levels and above all. Let us recall at least the legendary Totokutun Italiano vero. It is rather curious that there is no description of this very own character in Shaman’s hit. There are no specifics at all. The same Cutugno diligently lists the signs of Italy in the 1980s: spaghetti al dente, special coffee, an old fiat, tiffosi. And even xenophobia for a completely understandable and mass reason: they say, only American stars on advertising posters.
There is nothing like Dronov. There is no whole “message” in his song at all, when considering subtracting from it at least some intelligible content, which it flows away like water looks through fingers. “And just want to love and breathe”? But even Mashkova, as it were, does not declare the need for breathing as a particularly important feature of the Russian people. “I am Russian. My blood is from my father? If we refrain from jokes about the bastard complex, then is there anything left to remember the immortal line Sergei Ostrovoy “I was born in Russia, my mother gave birth to me” and parodies of her were found.
In fact, the lack of content is the most important content here. And a completely right pop figure Max Fadeev, who, wanting to praise the young talent, called the song a symbol of “today’s internal Russian activity.” Due to the fact that the bottom line in it (in the song; however, in the agenda, too) is only repeatedly repeated desperate cries of “I am Russian” and the explanation: “I am Russian. To spite the world.”
“Utterly overpriced out of spite”
Formulated frankly frankly, which is even embarrassing to analyze. That is, positive filling is zero. I boast of the very fact of occurrence and the fact that it is to spite everyone. The savagery of such a view of the world is obvious in itself, but it becomes even more obvious when you substitute any other word in place of the word “Russian”. “I’m narrow, I’ve reached out of spite,” Shaman parodies Alexander Gudkov. “I am a Chukchi, how lucky I am! I am a Chukchi, to spite the Eskimos!” – an unnamed user jokes offended on YouTube.
But God bless her with poetry, watch the clip. Here is a singer walking through a field of primordially Russian wheat in a white shirt a la russe made in an unfriendly country, “Russian folk dreadlocks on his head” – as a popular video blogger comments Grandfather Archimedes, on the chest is a large cross, which the singer kisses from time to time. How is the pseudonym Dronov combined with the cross – do not ask, that’s how it is combined.
With all that, this is a high-quality, professional and, as they say, well-thought-out product, which completely falls into its target audience. Only such a postmodern eclectic Russianness 2.0 can become fashionable and viral in this environment. Emotions are sold better than concepts, and the Shaman in dreadlocks is much better for exalted high school girls than a broad-bearded old man in bast shoes. And this is not to mention the song itself, made according to all the recipes of a Western hit, about the stage manner of the performer, his jumps with microphone stamina at the ready, etc. And at the end of the video, under “I am Russian,” African Americans dance first somewhere in the California hills, and then aliens in space. That is, it began with then a ton of pathos, and the register changes competently, the pathos is seasoned with irony.
But all this disguise cannot hide the main thing – that touchy-puffy infantilism that underlies Shaman’s song and practically all declarations of Russianness in recent months and weeks. Academician 30 years ago Alexander Panchenko, speaking on TV, he noted: Russia has always been ruined by puffy eras. “We are kind, loving, sympathetic, and in general – it’s better for all of you to spite you,” Dronov and Putin sing a duet. Ideas of listeners and voters on vocals.
Mikhail Edelstein for “Like this”