Memorial content. How our “TV elite” honored the memory of Thatcher and Chernomyrdin
Counting the number of wreaths, expensive cars, analysis of the location of the grave, the status of those who came to grieve - all this can tell how long and how they will remember the deceased. In these details - and echoes stories, and signs of momentary conjuncture.
However, the greatest contribution to the posthumous reputation still makes television. It is here that the context and nature of the mention of a dead person are determined, and therefore a hierarchy of values is created.
The death of Margaret Thatcher, reflected by Russian television channels, did not allow the viewer to figure out what this significant historical figure was, however, gave food for thought about the people working on TV, their worldview and political preferences.
Many of our channels, and this is an indicative fact, even changed the broadcasting schedule on the day of the sad news for them about the death of the former British Prime Minister.
This means that the technically difficult action was preceded by volunteers, telephone conversations of the authorities. One can imagine how important the uncle and aunts fussed about when choosing memorial content. Teleklerki wool database, clarified ownership of copyright, evaluated the ideology of what the Russian audience should know about the late "Iron Lady".
In the archives of "Russia" there was a film, the degree of complementarity of which fully corresponded to the tradition of speaking at the funeral ceremony with sweetness and anxiety.
The only confusion was: he was shot by Nikolai Svanidze, as they say, with a lump in his throat long before Thatcher's death and did not contain any serious analytics, which is inherent in professional journalistic research.
Simply put, this film is frankly bad, and its author is ridiculous in his operetta role as a romantic youth who is in love with an elderly baroness. It was especially strange to watch the film of Nikolai Karlovich to those who understood that Thatcher personally participated in the destruction of their homeland. However, it was precisely this circumstance that certainly served as an impulse to Svanidze’s ardent feeling towards the lady of the heart.
On the First they showed an imported film about the “Iron Lady”, in which there were many barbs addressed to the Soviet Union. The film was made with love for the heroine, however, watching Thatcher in the newsreel, for her arrogant utterances and flirtatious grimaces, it was difficult to get rid of the thought that the Russian audience was being fooled. With other music, without an obsessive pathetic note, with other offscreen text (which reported, for example, on the destruction of the UK coal industry, the unique British car industry, which provides statistics on the victims of the war with Argentina), Thatcher’s history of the board would have caused the audience quite well-founded dislike
However, nothing like our TV about Thatcher, unfortunately, did not say. We are not talking about the fact that television should spit in a fashionable grave. Although TV is not a diplomatic department, and in a situation where an enemy dies, it can do without special ceremonies.
But for this, television workers must at least consider Thatcher as an enemy. But in this department, on the contrary, Margaret is an attractive symbol.
What symbol? What is so attracted to the liberal crowd of her image? In addition to the trendy anglomania, there is something deep, significant. What makes Ivan Urgant change the humorous tone to pathos (the first time in many years) and tell the tragic news in the final humorous program with a wet eye. By the way, it was precisely this mise-ensemble that turned out to be more powerful in propaganda than numerous lisoblyudskih films about Thatcher. The jester, the prankster, the scabbler, took off his mask at the tomb of the queen and wept, didn’t it, a strong move? ..
So what is Margaret? How did she captivate the minds of the Moscow intelligentsia public?
This audience has always been supportive of witches. The image of Bulgakov Margaret laid down on the soul of the Soviet educators, homegrown mystics with an unwashed head, but a pure aura. In the late eighties, this stratum, let's say in a fashionable manner, became the environment where the cult of the literary witch Margarita harmoniously complemented the cult of the geopolitical witch Margaret, as a result of the synthesis of which a completely physical, strange, angular image appeared - Galina Starovoitova, but, incidentally, the speech was not about her…
The libertarian views of our “elite” became the basis of the Russian cult of Thatcher.
Thoughts and hopes of admirers of St. Petersburg Alice Rosenbaum, almost our primordial libertarian who left the Soviet Union in the 20 of the last century, settled in America and took on the resounding pseudonym Ayn Rand, embodied in the image of the “iron lady”. It was this lady, with her hilarious in details philosophy of total individualism, that firmly conquered the minds of the free-thinking Russian public (from Latynina to Chichvarkin). Ain Rand’s beautifully published books come out in Russia in thousands of copies, her “philosophical concepts” are distributed by speakers of libertarianism with knowledge of marketing secrets - unobtrusively, with enthusiastic clatter of language, which is intended to emphasize the forbiddenness and sweetness of the fetus. For the writer and “philosopher” Ayn Rand, the main thing is the freedom of the individual in everything, without any ethical framework, but with the only prohibition - it is impermissible to violate the boundaries of foreign private property. Ayn Rand stands for the primacy of competition, the rejection of any form of paternalism, the exclusion from the life of an individual of the factor of the state, inevitably, in its opinion, encroaching on personal freedom.
The tragic kiss of the Russian elitarians of cold forehead of Margaret is also a libertarianism without a leg, a declaration of views, a demonstration of a system of values, the main thing in which is contempt for the Soviet, Russian state, but in no case, of course, not for the British or American, to guard these borders Russian elite to death ...
An important event in the context of the chosen theme was the film, which was released on the Russia 1 channel for the 75 anniversary of Viktor Chernomyrdin. Sergey Brilev called his work “Femdom” - famously and at the same time with a feeling of unlimited devotion.
The only drawback of the film is that it does not have a caption "for publicity". If the viewer immediately became aware of the author's intention - to make an extensive advertising video - there would be no questions. But Sergey Brilev, the presenter of the final program on “Russia 1”, who usually acts as an analyst, did not inform the viewer that this time he turned into advertising agents.
The author had to solve a seemingly impossible task, with which he (let's say, running ahead) brilliantly coped. It was necessary to present the political biography of his hero as a chain of glorious achievements. And not just some personal, chernomyrdin ones, but as many as the achievements of all Russia. This apology of the victories of the Black-and-White War required the use of unique technologies. It is clear from the film that not all interviewees easily agreed to discuss the figure of Chernomyrdin in a complimentary tone. Therefore, it should be so cut and nespandor ambiguous comment that he looked like praise. And it turned out!
Only an attentive viewer was able to notice that, for example, Igor Ivanov could not convincingly prove the value of Chernomyrdin’s contribution to the negotiation process between the Americans and Milosevic.
It even seemed that the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, on the contrary, criticized the actions of the special envoy, that somewhere in the archives of Brilev there is an uncut synchronous one that can be used in some future film with the conditional name “The Betrayal of Serb Brothers”.
Jumping from one flimsy hummock to another, from one glorious milestone to the next, Sergey Brilev did not manage to fall into the muddy slime of disappointments. Even telephone conversations with Basayev were presented as a victory of humanity over treachery. Behind the scenes there is everything that followed after this arrogant assignment of others' powers, all that “terrorist activity”, as a result of which hundreds of people died.
The victory of Russia was, it turns out, the activities of the CWS in the Gore – Chernomyrdin commission. In an interview, Al Gore recalled the jokes of a colleague, and the authors of the film confined themselves to this “little man” without mentioning which particular national interests of Russia were surrendered within the framework of this very commission. As if the media never wrote that only on the rejection of military-technical cooperation with Iran, Russia lost about 4 billion dollars, those more dollars in the mid-nineties.
And of course, Chernomyrdin did a good job, because he saved Chubais from the attacks of the reactionary deputies, did not let him be fired, which Chubais himself happily told about. And Yeltsin Chernomyrdin supported 93 in October, but it is not yet known how everything would turn out. And in Ukraine, he fulfilled the most important diplomatic mission, during which, however, the orange came to power.
It is rightly said that the Black Sea Fleet saved Gazprom, it is noted what it cost him, not mentioned, what it cost Gazprom, whether the hero of the film became a shareholder of the gas monopolist. Maybe he did not ... Well, they would say so!
In the film, the presentation of the collection of vintage cars of Victor Stepanovich takes place in the film. How much is the collection? But who cares about it? .. The main thing is that everything has been carefully restored, including the “gift” (as stated in the film) by the Orsk residents of the lorry, which used to stand on a pedestal, and even earlier it was driven by Chernomyrdin’s father. The story seemed to be unsaid, it’s somehow strange that for some reason the monument to the workhorse of the Great Patriotic War was removed from the pedestal. Well, I went to her, for example, Chernomyrdin's father, and now what? .. The camera grabbed mostly domestic cars, trying, apparently, to emphasize the collector’s patriotic aspirations, but there’s also Western, bourgeois, for example, Mercedes 540K . About this instance, evil tongues say that it was donated to Chernomyrdin by Boris Berezovsky, and bought for more than a million dollars at a foreign auction. There are a lot of rumors around this collection of rarities, some even claimed that it was part of the “Rolls-Royce” that disappeared from the Historical Museum, which Lenin traveled after the revolution, and formerly members of the royal family ... There is such a legend ... the descendants of Chernomyrdin, whether this is so, refute the slander, but journalist Brilev, of course, is not interested in such details. The main thing is the winning general line ...
Television funerals, television memorial events have long been turned into an endless, narrowly corporate event. The general list is not drawn up on television, but in the heavenly office, but the list of the chosen ones is occupied by TV.
That, according to which ranking the degree of pompousness of farewell is chosen, cannot but raise questions. I do not want to juggle the names of those who were deprived of attention. We only note that politicians, artists, and on that and in this world represent not only themselves, but also social groups. The liberals stand behind one person, the patriots behind the other, the primitives behind the third, the left behind the fourth. It is impossible not to take this circumstance into account when formulating a television broadcasting policy. Rather, it is possible, but such a situation will annoy the viewer and beyond ...
Although it was thought right now, maybe it’s good that television does not notice the death of patriots, patriots, disenfranchists, does not remember the jubilees of the communists, statesmen, but pompously buries liberals, anti-Sovietists, a breed of freedom-loving people, generation of compradors, fat cats ... Maybe there is some higher justice, an unexpected chance to watch the endless procession of despised and hated ones into another world. You look, you look - and already neither gloating, nor bitterness remains.
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