Oh, dostoyevskiness of a flowing cloud!
Oh, pushkinities of mellow noon!
Night looks like Tyutchev,
Filling boundless with supernal.
Velimir Khlebnikov, 1908-1909.
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Apparently, Fyodor Dostoyevsky became a symbol, an archetype of a Russian writer, along with Lev Tolstoy (‘Tolstoyevsky’). Simplified image of Dostoyevsky’s Russia (or Dostoyevskian Russia) became a part of popular culture both in the West and in Russia. Continue reading “#Dostoyevsky Is the Limit?!”
Foreword.
It should be noted here that by ‘Western popular culture’ I mean mainly klyukvified* films which I see as a height of evolution of stereotypical Russian narrative in the West. This post doesn’t deconstruct the Russian stereotypes in Western (American) films in detail. There are too many of these films and it will take not a post but a book for me to cover only some of them. My aim is also to reveal generalized characteristics of Russian men’ images in the Western cinema. I’ll devote a separate post to the view of Russian women in the West.
The image of Russia in contemporary Western world is to a big degree shaped by the popular culture and is articulated in films, books, songs/music videos, ads and caricatures. Since the Cold War era (and earlier) cultural propaganda in the form of mass culture products helped to fix the image of Russia and Russians in the ways shown below.
Continue reading “#Klyukvification: Representation of Russia(ns) in Western Popular Culture”
