MOSCOW On a black background appear the words: “This is dedicated to all who have suffered for the truth.” Then the picture shows a man in a white outfit in a cell, his legs in shackles, a wooden cross in his hands.
This is how it starts Yaroslav Dronov or Shaman’s new music video Alive (Živoj).
– Cold sky and heart in pieces in your chest. You don’t believe in fear and you seek the truth against everything, Dronov sings at the beginning of the video.
Shaman is known as a Z-artist loyal to the Kremlin, after the letter symbol of the war against Ukraine.
Shaman’s star has risen when those in power have needed reliable pop stars to lift spirits at patriotic concerts. Fittingly, Dronov’s most famous song is Ja Russkij, or I’m Russian.
In the Christ-themed video for the new song Elossa, guards dressed in black hangman’s hoods lead Dronov through a raging crowd to judgment. A Jesus-like Shaman stands proudly among his tormentors.
– Fate has not discouraged you, you have returned home victorious (s pobedoj), Dronov sings in the video.
The video caused hilarity in the opposition-minded circles of social media. A blogger Aleksandr Stefanov namely caught attentionthat the song was released on January 18 – the opposition leader To Alexei Navalny on the third anniversary of his imprisonment.
In addition, Navalnyi returned from Berlin to Russia on January 17, 2021 on the plane of the Pobeda or Voitto airline.
Navalny is now in a prison camp in the Yamalo-Nenets region of Siberia.
Discussions about Navalnyi references in social media already spread so widely that Šaman himself had to deny the connection to Navalnyi.
– People’s imagination is limitless. Everyone sees what they want to see. As the president said: Bullshit that shouldn’t be dealt with. Just nonsense. They dug everything out of their noses and spread it on their Telegram channels, the artist announced.
– The song and video Elossa was released on the eve of Epiphany and is dedicated to all those who have suffered and are suffering for the truth: to the heroes of the thousand-year Russian history and to the heroes of our entire country, our country, which in this difficult time for all of us is marching relentlessly towards victory.
It seems that the pathos of the aesthetics of suffering has taken the songwriter and his background forces, and they have not come to think about what kind of conclusions can be drawn from the music video.
The music videos reminded me of the Third Reich
The shaman is actually known for his humor, so he is an easy target for mockery. And the Russkij song in the parody version comedian Alexander Gudkov sang Ja uzkij i.e. I am narrow.
Shaman’s aesthetics have raised even more serious questions.
In the music video, My aka Me Šaman sings in a tight black leather jacket, landing shoes, an arm band in the color of the Russian flag, and hair cut in a pattern similar to that of members of the Hitler Youth.
Even some nationalist commentators attributed the style to the Third Reich. The video shot at the Red Square was even published Adolf Hitler on his birthday.
The imagery that brings Nazis to mind is embarrassing when the Russian leadership says it is fighting Nazism in Ukraine. The references have continued: last summer, Šaman published a video illustrated with war imagery under the name Moj boj, or My Battle.
It is difficult to come up with new propaganda imagery
Shaman’s Nazi allusions—whether intentional or unintentional—reflect a broader problem that Vladimir Putin’s administration has in selling war to the public.
At the time, the Soviet Union created its own aesthetics, which Putin’s power apparatus has of course still used extensively in its propaganda.
Instead, coming up with a new imagery has proven to be difficult.
A good example is raising the letter Z of the Latin alphabet as a symbol of the war in Ukraine. It was originally about a marking on the sides of Russian military vehicles, possibly to identify one’s own from enemy vehicles. Z feels more random than thought out. Why does Russia have to resort to the Latin alphabet in the war it is waging in the name of the “Russian world”?
In the Soviet Union, communist ideology served as some sort of guideline for propaganda imagery. In the conditions of Putinism, the ideology has been more shapeless.
When Putin came to power, he presented himself as a hard-nosed technocrat rather than a man of ideas. His rule can be characterized as neoliberal authoritarianism.
So-called traditional values were only brought to the fore by Putin’s administration when they were needed in response to the protest wave of 2011-2012. Many ideas are borrowed from the US culture wars.
Thus, Russian propagandists have to largely improvise when creating the visual appearance of the Z era.
It leads to quotations, and the quotations are not always very wise in terms of the message itself, as the imagery in Šaman’s music videos shows.
Navalny commented
Opposition leader Aleksei Navalnyi himself seems to take a stand on the Shaman phenomenon.
Published on Navalny’s X account the post says that the Russian national anthem is played every morning at five o’clock in the penal colony, followed by Shaman’s I’m Russian.
In the message thread, Navalnyi recalls how he was accused of nationalism when he participated in Russian marches held by strongly nationalist organizations.
– Imagine in your mind: Yamalo-Nenetsk Autonomous District. Polar night. A. Navalnyi, who has been sentenced to 19 years in prison in the barracks of a special discipline penal colony, and who has been promoted by the Kremlin for years because his country participated in Russian marches, does gymnastics to the rhythm of the song “I am Russian”, which is played to him in an educational way, Navalnyi’s account describes.
– To be honest, to this day I’m not sure if I understand correctly what post-irony and meta-irony are. But if this isn’t it, then what is?