Many other exhibits for this assignment will no doubt look at Russia through the lens of well-established organizations in the elite realms of politics, international affairs, cinema, and the arts. While examining these topics will certainly return nuanced, interesting perspectives on what Russia means in global context, they might leave untouched how Russia is seen by the average person. For this we have to turn to more “lowbrow” sources. Internet memes in particular are of interest.
Memes – defined here as viral internet images and videos, usually with recurring themes – are meant to be viewed in seconds, so they offer a very concise perspective on Russia unhindered by subtlety. Humor allows people to bring dark themes out into the open that they wouldn’t normally talk about in a conversation. Anonymous authorship and crowd adaptations, combined with sheer quantity of memes at hand, make it feel more representative of what a variety of people think. There isn’t one person responsible for making a certain meme, after all – they spring from the ether, being posted anonymously online and then going viral because they strike a certain chord in the psyche of the westernized young men who populate internet culture. So where better to study Russia as seen online than Reddit, an entertainment, social networking, and news site that styles itself as “the front page of the Internet?”
Russia in particular merits study on Reddit because Russia itself has become a meme. Sites across the web, from car sites to gossip blogs to Buzzfeed, are seizing strange pictures from the Russian Internet to paint a picture of Russia as a land of dashcam videos and dancing bears. Russian memes are unusually united in their portrayal of the nation – other countries’ National humor subreddits (humor boards) might have funny events that just so happen to occur in a certain country, or, as with China’s mistranslation and knock-off goods pictures, there might be memes specific to a certain country, but there are few other nations where the memes aspire to be representations of the country as a whole – titles of posts include “Just a regular day in Russia,” “Welcome to Russia,” “Reddit, I present to you Russia,” and the most ubiquitous, “Meanwhile in Russia.” These titles seem to imply that Russia operates as a parallel universe, where the rules of living are simply different – while pasty Westerners stare at their smart phones, the Russians are “drinking with bears, climbing big buildings, and swearing at flaming lumps of space-rock” (Rann). Reddit’s depictions of Russia mark a return to how the country has been historically viewed – as a place far apart from the Western tradition, where barbarity reigns – as seen through lawlessness, militarism, Russian technology and humourously inhuman infrastructure – and an environment exists that is marked by nonchalance in the face of insanity.
Russia historically has been seen as a place outside of the rationalist west – as a more mystical place where emotions and irrationalism reign – as a place seen by Eurasianist philosophers as “’anarchical’ by its very nature” (Savitskii 39) and by Marquis de Custine as a place populated by barbarians, marked by a “want of logical minds” (564). Even earlier, during the time of Ivan the Terrible, an English traveller commented that “to drinke drunke is an ordinary matter with them every day in the weeke. …. The whole countrie overfloweth with all sinne of that kinde. And no marveile, as having no lawe to restraine whoredomes, adulteries, and like uncleannesse of life” (Rann). During the Cold War, however, this narrative of unbridled spirituality and anarchy gave way to that of a heartless, logical, cold-blooded rival – that of a place where fun is forbidden because it’s bourgeois and distracts from building satellites and nuclear bombs. Jokes from this period were characterized by the Russian reversal – “In Soviet Russia, TV watches YOU!” – which put Russia as the opposite and rival of the West in every way. But as the Cold War ended, and as Russia embarked on a decade of lawlessness and decay, Russia ceased to be seen as the West’s enemy and more as its “slightly unhinged step-brother” (Rann). This change in perceptions, as seen by Russian internet memes, marks a return to the past when Russia was seen as a barbaric land of the Tatars.
Russia is seen on Reddit as a place where lawless absurdity reigns daily. Russia on Reddit, it seems, is a land populated by anthropomorphic bears – the national symbol is frequently photographed live being pet outside in parks, riding inside of city buses, staring out the window of a taxi cab, in a bar sharing drinks with drunk Russians, or, improbably, riding horses on a racetrack. To reiterate, these are actual pictures of actual bears – Russia’s national symbol has become something that lives amongst its wild populace. Another significant part of Russia as seen by the Internet – less common on Reddit, but viral elsewhere – are videos of Russian youth on top of impossibly high buildings. Anywhere a tall building is to be found, it seems, whether it be the Pyramids, the tallest building in China, or a random radio tower in Siberia, there will be a Russian atop it, never wearing any safety equipment, and frequently are literally dangling on its edge, or doing pull-ups while the ground lies hundreds of feet below. Perhaps the largest Russian meme is the dashcam video, which was originated as a legal protection from auto insurance fraud or corrupt policemen, but has now become ubiquitous in cataloging the insanity taking place on Russian roads – cars spin 360 degrees while going at highways speeds and survive intact, cars drive by with men on top of them, kicking the windshield, horrific accidents occur and the drivers survive, … or not. Entire Youtube collections exist to highlight the best of Russian dashcam videos.
An extension of the meme of lawless absurdity is an undercurrent of militarism present in many Russian memes. Guns, tanks, and hooligan soldiers seem to run freely in Russian society, calling to mind less a global military threat and evoking more a landscape where barbarism has made casual juxtapositions of the military amidst its citizens commonplace. Perhaps one of the most popular images on Russian reddit is one of a nuclear submarine within 100 meters of a crowded beach of sunbathers. Nobody is paying the submarine any attention – it’s implied that to them, having nuclear submarines in their midst is just a part of their reality. Tanks, too, are a part of this reality – jumping across highways, refilling at gas stations, being driven by Santa Claus. Boys bring machine guns to show and tell, grandmothers come into subways casually holding rifles, Russian mobsters get photographed on Google Street view.
Perhaps one of the most pronounced shifts in perceptions of Russia, as witnessed by Reddit, is that of the relationship between Russians and technology. Russia in the past was seen as a nation of technological prowess, where study of math and science was prioritized and where, at least initially, Russian accomplishments in space caught Americans so off-guard that it prompted an existential crisis. In the halls of Reddit, there is still emphasis on Russian ingenuity, but of a different kind – that of makeshift adaptations amidst poverty and rusting Soviet machinery. Russian innovation today is a cow strapped to a truck, or a car being filled to the brim with apples, or being held together by shrinkwrap, or a urinal being converted into a toilet with a traffic cone, or a woodburning stove, complete with a smokestack, being built into a Volvo to head it. These memes are interesting because they subvert a Soviet stereotype into a new reality – one where Russia is no longer feared superpower but a lawless alternate universe.
Crucial to these memes’ potency is the idea of nonchalance in the face of insanity. Russians within these memes never seem to express any surprise at the events happening – in one dashcam video a street car derails and comes crashing along a bridge, but the pedestrians walk along like they’ve seen these things for years. Likewise, none of the participants in any of the memes seem to have self-awareness of the ludicrousness of their actions – in their world, it is implied, feeding a bear cub at a park is the norm. This nonchalance is compounded by the language barriers between Western observers and the Russian internet from which the images are sourced. The images enter the Western net un-credited, devoid of context or comments from those who took them. They seem to spring from the ether, which only reinforces the idea that they come from a strange parallel universe. The façade of objectivity that a camera lends reinforces this notion. Unlike many other viral images, the Russian memes that enter the West have square emphasis on the image itself, and not on any textual humor that would require knowledge of Russian language or culture to understand. The nonchalance of those involved, combined with the veneer of objectivity that a camera lends situations, creates memes that are then presented to the Reddit world as “that’s just the way Russia is.”
The study of memes on Reddit implies that perceptions of Russia in the West are returning to their roots. Although Russia is still seen as very Soviet, it is because the Soviet Union now represents something backward rather than forward. During its heyday, the USSR represented a total aberration from how Russia was perceived – it became the chief enemy to the West, a strange sterile land of bread lines and atom bombs, and the butt of the Russian reversal joke was that everything in Russia was diametrically opposed to the West. But rather than now being opposed to the West, Russia is now just seen as totally apart from it – a strange land of humorous barbarity, where armed grandmothers and live bears alike congregate on the subways, and where Russian ingenuity has transformed from meaning that something is on the cutting edge of technology into something meaning ingenius, unsafe fixes to falling apart machinery. Perceptions of Russia today are basically where they were at the time of Ivan the Terrible, when the English traveler commented on the drunkenness and unlawfulness of Russian life.
Works Cited
de Custine, Astolphe. Letters from Russia. New York: New York Book Review Classics, 1843. Print.
Leshchinskaya, Natacia. "The fast, furious, and funny: Behind Russia's dash cam culture." Daily Dot. N.p., 05 Jun 2014. Web. 5 May 2014. <http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/russia-dash-cam-videos-livejournal/>.
Rann, Jamie. "Meanwhile, in Russia: Buzzfeed, Russia and the west." Calvert Journal. Calvert Journal, 18 Nov 2013. Web. 5 May 2014. <http://calvertjournal.com/comment/show/1776/buzzfeed-russia-virals>.
"/r/funny search results: Russia." Reddit. Reddit. Web. 5 May 2014. <http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/search?q=russia&sort=relevance&restrict_sr=on&t=all>.
"/r/WTF search results: Russia." Reddit. Reddit. Web. 5 May 2014. <http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/search?q=russia&sort=relevance&restrict_sr=on&t=all>.
Peter, Savitskii. Exodus to the East. Charles Schlacks Jr Pub, 1996. Print.
ITEMS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K-zDK4wrI4
This video, titled “Who let her behind the wheel?” is of note because it marks a synthesis of Russian jokes, by both insider and outsider perspectives. It’s a viral video that has gotten 12 million views on Youtube, starring a young woman who hits a dog while driving, exits to examine the dog, and then, while she’s not paying attention, the dog hops into the drivers’ seat and begins driving. It thus combines the humor of a Russian reversal with that of a dashcam video. What further complicates the story is that unlike most dashcam videos, its low-tech aesthetics are a sham – what begins looking like a homemade video by the end is revealed to be an ad by Subaru, a Japanese car company. Thus an outsider is