War in Ukraine: Zelensky, from the series “An enemy of the people” to servant of the nation

War in Ukraine Zelensky from the series An enemy of

An enemy of the people is a play that Henrik Ibsen wrote in 1882. It depicts two brothers who have always hated each other. One being mayor of a village where his brother is a doctor. The mayor does business by transforming the bled into a spa until his brother discovers that the facilities have contaminated the water and are poisoning the local population, and eventually the spas and the spa guests. This is a good opportunity for him to get revenge on his brother, who has succeeded in everything in life, while he remains this modest and atrabilaire village doctor, married to a no less modest teacher. He wants to alert the population and believes he can use the local newspaper to denounce the scandal and stop the work, which obviously does not want to hear about the mayor who will try to raise the population against the naive claims of his brother, this doctor great ecological utopias who is only jealous, a failure, in short, a whistleblower. Ibsen himself did not know whether to laugh or cry, he finally decided to call his work a drama.

It has been translated and performed very often in France, adapted to the cinema twice, once by George Schaefer with Steve McQueen in the role of the doctor, another time by Satyajit Ray, and if despite all that you have forgotten how it ends , and which of the two brothers finds himself the enemy of the people, I will not tell you. I leave you the possibility of discovering it thanks to the comic strip of Javi Rey (Dupuis editions).

servant of the people is a TV series, produced and broadcast by 1+1, the second TV channel in Ukraine. It tells the story of a little history teacher who, because of a pirate video made by one of his students and posted on YouTube, becomes President of the Republic. On the strength of his unexpected triumph, he decides to clean up, sweeping away corruption, washing away the most glaring injustices, throwing all the old administrative rubbish that hinders the freedom of citizens into the dustbin of history. To play the role of this hero, a handsome 37-year-old kid, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky becomes adored throughout the country

At 18, Volodymyr had participated in a game show, the KBH (Club of Young Gays and Intelligents) which consisted in opposing in a quiz students representing their university. His intelligence, his cheerfulness, his youth, his beauty, had made him such a star that he had given up his law studies to devote himself to the production of comic shows. Their success would allow him to establish his status as a national idol a little more, and make him the ideal actor to play the role of the history teacher in the series. servant of the people.

In the second season, the history teacher loses power. It is even more followed than season 1 and Volodymyr Zelensky literally adored in his country. So much so that the idea comes to him to let reality catch up with fiction by running for the presidential elections of 2019. The third season is broadcast in the middle of the electoral campaign, as if by chance, it tells how the war between the former Prime Minister and the president in office will promote the return of the history teacher.

As if the fans of the series dreamed of seeing it catch up with reality, they all voted for Volodymyr Zelensky, who thus became the President of the Republic of Ukraine. But reality never lets up, it always goes beyond fiction. She instructed Vladimir Putin to remind them. The 51 episodes of servant of the people will be visible on Arte in the fall. The “quatrastrophe” season is right now, on all the channels.


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