LEISURE IN THE SPACE OF THE EXPERIENCE INDUSTRY: FROM ELITICITY TO MASSIVENESS

Abstract

Dear readers!
The creative team of the journal “Experience industries. Socio-Cultural Research Technologies” (EISCRT) presents the first issue in the coming year 2024. The issue contains studies by domestic authors who, from an interdisciplinary perspective, examine the range of modern sociocultural practices and try to find current anthropological, consumerist, and socio-political trends in the experience industry, which are found everywhere in the media space.
The issue opens with an article by Belgorod researcher Sofia Batsanova, dedicated to the study of the beauty industries. The author justifiably argues that it is a woman’s concern for her appearance that today is one of her main social tasks. At the same time, the growing and literally vigilant control of women over their own bodies becomes the leading cause of the formation of alienation, which only worsens over time, acquiring increasingly militarized properties and demonstrative army features.
The problem of alienation finds a very interesting interpretation in the research of Daria Zhurkova, a candidate of cultural studies from Moscow. She examines the phenomenon of recycling Soviet pop songs using the example of the popular video game “Atomic Heart” today. The author emphasizes that the use of popular Soviet soundtracks makes it possible to create in the audience of players a sense of the multidimensionality of social reality, to give it a deliberately paradoxical character, and to update the sociocultural heritage of the Soviet era in a specific form for the generation of “buzzers”.
It is significant that modern media culture allows not only to preserve and increase cultural memory, but also has significant potential for programming the feelings and thoughts of the mass viewer. Relevant, deliberately ideologized ways of visualizing socio-political patterns, which the authors Andrei Nekita and Sergei Malenko explore in their article are the most productive in this sense. This material completes a large series of studies devoted to the analysis of the theme of war in the tradition of American horror films. According to scientists, it is precisely in this genre of cinema that war is presented in the entire spectrum of its social presentations: from everyday marital “wars” to sophisticated scenarios of militarization of human interaction with any of the possible elements of the surrounding or even extraterrestrial world. It is the horror film, according to the authors, that has turned into the most effective ideological tool, universally broadcasting scenarios of the undivided dominance of the American way of life over any other cultural traditions.
In addition to the headings that have already become familiar in our publication, we are opening a new direction of research in this issue, within the framework of which texts devoted to the analysis of the philosophy and sociology of sensations considered in the context of the diverse sociocultural experience of civilization will be presented. We called this section “A Matter of Taste: Connoisseur’s Impressions” and are pleased to present the reader with the first experience of immersion in the “taste reality” of the elite and centuries-old culture of wine. This noble initiative was made by Oleg Shevchenko and Anna Dorofeeva, representing the Crimean Federal University. The authors promise to make these issues permanent, and as part of their first material, they conduct an interdisciplinary analysis of the mythopoetics of wine, skillfully interweaving historical facts, terroir, poetry and myth.
The “Horizons” section opens with an article by a young researcher from Kazan, Alexandra Anisimova, dedicated to the study of new technologies for promoting cultural products in modern network services. In this case, the author came to the attention of the absolutely fresh Russian series “The King and the Clown”, which at one time was actively promoted by the Kinopoisk service. One cannot but agree with the author’s statement that the analysis of such network technologies within the experience industry reveals a steady tendency towards the merging of traditional journalism and PR technologies.
Reflecting on current sociocultural trends, young independent researchers from Veliky Novgorod Vadim Petrov and Daria Yakimchuk deliberately narrow the subject area of the experience industry and focus on considering sex tourism as a rather extraordinary, but massive phenomenon of the modern tourism industry. Using extensive empirical material as an example, the authors describe scenarios for the implementation of service industries in the field of extreme body practices and conclude that this type of world tourism has a long history and sacred roots. This is largely why in a few countries it has become an independent, legalized and quite profitable segment of the impressions industry.
The issue concludes with a work by Vsevolod Shipulin, devoted to the study of scenarios for self-presentation of young people on modern digital platforms. He reasonably argues that it is the media environment, due to its specific features, that turns out to be most commensurate with current youth scenarios of searching and finding their own identity. It is in the modern digital space that for the first time the possibility of forming both positive and destructive youth subcultures are being created, which previously, within the framework of the traditional system of social communication, practically did not find adequate ways of self-expression.
The creative team of the online publication expresses the hope that the research presented in the next issue will be interesting and useful for a wide readership and will awaken interest in studying the bright and diverse palette of modern experience industries.

For article citations:
Malenko, S. A. (2024). Leisure in the space of the experience industry: from eliticity to massiveness. Experience industries. Socio-Cultural Research Technologies (EISCRT), 1 (6), 9–17. https://doi.org/10.34680/EISCRT-2024-1(6)-9-17