Degradation of the theater or how "bestial culture" is imposed

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The entire cultural environment in Russia is at the mercy of a private market initiative. And in the market moneylenders rule. Therefore, the level of our culture quickly dropped to the level of usurers. And this is the level of primitive "intelligent animals" …

Last weeks the scandal with the Novosibirsk production "Tannhäuser"Wagner, in which Jesus was shown not only as a lover of Venus, but also as a participant in a film for adults, excited the minds of moral champions, churchmen, social activists and eventually led to a change in the head of the theater. And it seems not surprising that this conflict has entered the public field, but on the other hand, in theaters throughout the country there are enough "author's" interpretations, outright vulgarity and the age limit of 18+, including in government institutions, but to public scandals and this does not lead to resignations. The time of the classics is leaving, it becomes irrelevant in an era when theater is a commercial project, and shocking and scandal help in the battle for the audience. About why the theater is evolving "down" and not "up", about scandals for public money and why it is in fashion "Bestial culture", said in an interview with Nakanune. RU journalist, host of "Agitation and Propaganda" Konstantin Semin.

- The scandal with the Novosibirsk "Tannhäuser" drew attention to "non-standard author's readings" of the classics. The situation reached the point that the Ministry of Culture was forced to change the head of the theater so that he removed the scandalous performance from the repertoire. Why do such things provoke protests from part of the audience, while others are gaining popularity?

- It causes scandals, because people have not lost the remnants of reason and resists the degradation process. I am not completely immersed in the details of the scandal in Novosibirsk, but in general, I think the reason is that in an economic system focused on making a profit, it is impossible to expect that art will not be a part of this process and will not obey the same laws and rules. If we want to attract viewers, the audience to TV channels, appealing to the lowest instincts, if we want to attract people to concert halls, cinemas in the same way, if we focus exclusively on this - on money turnover, on financial returns from art, then there is nothing to be surprised that provocation, mockery of the classics, pornography and other vile things become the main ways to increase the economic attractiveness of any genre in art. I think this is the main reason.

– Of course, censorship is appropriate, explainable and logical … Because the entire environment as a whole is at the mercy of a private market initiative. I have great sympathy for Nikita Mikhalkov, but recently I visited a cinema that seems to be sponsored by the Union of Cinematographers - nine out of 10 random titles of foreign-made films, which are very often incomplete with our history, with our country. A separate sign - "Leviathan". This is a market, it dictates its own rules, and to expect that a state institution will simply, of its own accord, make it so that some special people will work in state theaters, state cultural associations who, in the conditions of a general booth, will preserve moral attitudes, moral values, naive.

- Firstly, any state theater fights for attendance and has to compete with private ones. And, if in a private theater they show a naked ass, then the state one needs to do something so that people go to his performances. Therefore, this is not so much about censorship, not so much about the application of state control in property management, but about in general. about changing the whole paradigm … The point is not even whether the state is present or not in culture, but in the economy as a whole. If the state lets everything go by itself, lets go of the reins - do not be surprised that such scandals occur, and the Nutcracker, for example, is "interpreted" through some homosexuals.

Any provocation, any scandal is beneficial. It is beneficial to call some pervert, an idiot on television, and if he offends our country, so much the better, this will cause even more discussion. From the point of view of the market, this is effective, and what is effective is not prohibited. As long as we have a rule that everything that is profitable is good, nothing else will happen. I want to say that we are fighting the effect, not the cause.

- Undoubtedly. Certainly. You can invite a live horse, plant it - the result would be the same. About 10 years ago, at the Stanislavsky Theater, I saw how "Heart of a Dog" was staged with the involvement of a real live dog. It was such an interesting dramatic move.

- This is not a European evil, immoral world trying to enslave us and impose something on us. We ourselves have opened our gates towards this world. What is happening in the economy is also happening on the stage. If you go outside, you will see a lot of signs on which either foreign words, or they somehow "mow" under foreign language. We still sell what resembles a foreign one. We have a huckster, fartsovschitskoe, Nepman consciousness arranged just like that. We are trying to sell something to fellow citizens from abroad. If we try to sell it in stores, then we shouldn't be surprised that the same hucksters and merchants run the culture … Recently, the head of the Board of Trustees was replaced at the Bolshoi Theater, it was Mikhail Shvydkoy … Well, let's wait from Shvydkoy for a sane statist line in managing the Bolshoi Theater. And those who run other, related branches of culture and art are the same farmers, those who won in the 90s. This consciousness is fartsy, it has not gone anywhere and rules us. Therefore, when you come to the Novosibirsk theater and see some kind of nonsense there, then you should know - this is precisely because the signs on your street in the center of Novosibirsk look like this. Why is our consciousness reformatted? Because we have reformatted the economy. Consciousness is a derivative of economics, not vice versa.

- In modern market conditions, the classics are irrelevant and no one needs them. Honesty is irrelevant, justice is irrelevant, all human good aspirations, all good that can be in a person is non-marketable, ineffective, and, therefore, must be scrapped. Only the grasping worldview of the Fartsy is effective, it is relevant.

Until it is changed system of economic relations, the value system will not change. Then it will be relevant, profitable and prestigious to pull a person up - and it is always difficult, to bring up the best qualities in him, to change a person for the better - it is always painful, a person always resists this. He is much it's easier and more convenient to be an animal, it is much easier to be a brute, and the current economic system allows him to be a brute, today's economic system is based on the energy of the brute, which certainly exists in society. Capitalism is the exploitation of base animal instincts, and without curbing these instincts, where can we expect the human from? He has nowhere to come from.

- This is exactly what the Soviet Union was different. There was a different economy, and the culture was based on different foundations. There a person was made better, life was built around a person who was changed, he was made better. And today he, firstly, is left to himself, and secondly, there is nothing wrong with the fact that a person will become worse. No need to be surprised that pedophiles appear, that someone walks around and shoots with a gun. This is normal for such a system. Our people have a very serious memory of the time when it was different. The people remember that it can be done differently, and that was quite recently. Therefore, the most demanded product on the market for kitsch art and TV propaganda is everything that is associated with the Soviet era. The most popular TV shows appeal to some Soviet tendencies. The most fashionable trend is Soviet films re-arranged. Everyone is trading this legacy, realizing that if we use market logic, then the most marketable commodity today is the lack of justice in our lifehumanity, which is absent in our life, is a striving for something high that is absent in our life. This is a gigantic request from people who realized how cruelly they were deceived in 1991, and what they were thrust into in return. But instead of that we are being snatched by surrogates, horrible pornographic adaptations of Soviet films that are shown by Channel One.

Surrogates, slander against the USSR are needed in order for new generations to grow up, who will represent that era according to the work of some next producer "Fifman", so that the very knowledge about the subject disappears, dissolves, and is uprooted. So that people, like the Indians after the arrival of the conquistadors, no longer remember - this land, these resources, these industrial enterprises, this culture once belonged to all of us, to the entire people, and not to a handful of a select few. The bottom line is that first being - then consciousness. I didn’t come up with this …

Kapitolina Koksheneva about Tannhäuser

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