Televising Putin’s Russia: When Entertainment, Ideology, and Mass Media Collide

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The three papers on our panel focus on contemporary Russian television series as a way to discuss ideology, rhetoric, and power in Putin’s Russia. We are interested not only in the ways that television, one of Russia’s most popular media platforms, is utilized to propagate pro-Kremlin messages, but also in those moments of tension when programs break from ideological in significant, while sometimes subtle ways. We take as our jumping off point the popularity of television as mass entertainment and thus its use as a mode of easily reaching millions of viewers, while extending our analyses to television as an art form and narrative tool. Our papers take into account public reception, questions of genre, and complexities of temporal and spatial boundaries. With Shkola (2010), Bol’shaia igra (2018), Dekabristka (2018), and A.L.Zh.I.R (2019) as case studies, the focus of the panel remains the exploration of the convergence between entertainment, ideology, and mass media in contemporary Russia.

Sub Unit

• Cinema/Television/Electronic Media

Chair

• Sofya Khagi, U of Michigan

Papers

• Managed Narratives: Television Representations of Stalinist Mass Violence in Putin’s Russia - Natalie Jean McCauley, U of Richmond

• The Great Game and the Evolving Use of Political Talk Shows on Russian Television - Beth Knobel, Fordham U

• The Chronotopic Dilemma: Televising Russian Adolescence in Valeriia Gai Germanika’s School - Jenny Kaminer, UC Davis

Discussants

• Catherine B. O'Neil, US Naval Academy

• Maria Lipman, George Washington U

Session Manager

• Ellen Bleier, U of Notre Dame