IMAGES OF CONSUMER WORLDVIEW: HISTORY, THE EVERYDAY, HORIZONS

Abstract

Dear readers!
Editorial board of the scientific and practical online publication “Experience industries. Socio-Cultural Research Technologies” (EISCRT) presents the second edition in the current year 2024. The issue presents research into the characteristics of the consumer worldview, represented in various cultural and artistic practices. The authors identify the most striking consumer markers that clearly present the key meanings of the consumerist mentality. These trends determine a significant transformation of modern culture and make it possible to identify several current sociocultural trends, each of which in its own way reveals the multifaceted nature of postmodernity. This kind of research into the dominant consumer format of the experience industry today allows recording the main features of existing anthropological practices and determining the main directions for the transformation of their political and sociocultural management.
The “Reflections” section with the article by Chelyabinsk philosopher Sergei Borisov “Variability of worldview experience: bricolage vs “blue pill”” introduces the reader to generalizations about the principles of worldview organization, which the author correlates with bricolage as the essence of the cognitive process. He reasonably argues that bricolage allows a modern man to fully integrate into the changing world and find the most adequate ways to realize their desires and life goals.
An article by Arkhangelsk researchers Tatyana Lefman and Ekaterina Egorova opens the “Traditions” section and tells readers about methods for analyzing modern films, interpreted as a reflection of the dialogic nature of human consciousness. Modern film practices in the space of mass culture are largely built on the example of the “plot twist”, which provokes the viewer to form a set of game strategies that develop their consciousness. It should be noted that the original author’s generalizations were made based on many years of research of the student audience, identifying and characterizing the features of their perception of action-packed popular films.
Novgorod authors Andrey Nekita and Sergey Malenko open a series of articles devoted to the phenomenon of Cheburashka, actualized in the space of modern screen culture in connection with the film adaptation of the same name in early 2023. They are trying to understand the nature of the unprecedented commercial success of this film and argue that it was largely due to significant transformations of Russian society. This was largely due to the special military operation in Ukraine, which activated nostalgia for Soviet culture in modern Russian society with renewed vigor, which turned this image into an extremely popular ideological marker.
Sofya Rezvushkina from Chelyabinsk has been analyzing modern markers of popular and mass culture for many years. In our publication, she presents the intermediate results of her research. Based on the extensive visual material of modern mass culture, she quite rightly asserts that images of cats cease to perform an exclusively entertainment function, turning into full-fledged and self-sufficient ideological constructs that make it possible to reproduce individual behavior patterns in a consumer society from birth to death. In this way, an ideological “cat matrix” is created and transmitted, clearly, and comprehensively expressing the strategy of hedonistic mythologization of the sociocultural space. It totally includes the entire essence of the path of the modern Hero, which, according to our author, consists in a comprehensive consumer formula: “from trough to tray”.
Elena Semenova, director of the Non-Profit Partnership “Theatre-EX” from Moscow, analyzes the symbolism of the biker in modern screen culture. Based on the material of the “Night Wolves” subculture, the author asserts the growing influence on it of the Australian-North American series of post-apocalyptic films “Mad Max”, as well as the additional influence of elements of folklore, which leads to the emergence of a new image of a warrior hero and the creation of a special, so-called “wolf epic”. A comprehensive understanding of such biker cultural practices is naturally and reasonably carried out by the author, relying on several scientific theories.
The section “A Matter of Taste: Connoisseur’s Impressions” continues to acquaint readers with the principles of the mythopoetic reality of wine. Oleg Shevchenko and Anna Dorofeeva explore the features of the terroir of the Koz and Tukluk valleys this time, the myth of which was formed over centuries under the influence of the presence of the Hellenes, Genoese, and Ottoman Turks in Sudak. The authors claim that the winemaking tradition in the territory of the Sun Valley was never interrupted, which made it possible to preserve more than fifty indigenous grape varieties, which served as the basis for the creation of several unique historical and fairy-tale images inextricably linked with various brands of Crimean wines.
Tomsk researchers Anna Shavlokhova and Alexander Bragin, in the “Horizons” section, study the impact of technological advances on the mass consumer of information in today’s digital form. They argue that this determines the formation of the image of the future and the features of its presentation in social media. Scientists conclude that network images reproduce everyday life with corresponding value and semantic attitudes, which directly determines the formation of a certain emotional attitude towards the technological well-being of Russia in society.
The second issue ends with a review by Mairamgul Zhumabaeva from Rashtriya Raksha University (India) on Elena Hamdan’s book “Learning to understand Russian news”. An Indian colleague presents her expert opinion on a textbook addressed to foreigners mastering Russian language at a basic level. She especially emphasizes that the formation of linguistic competence based on modern media resources, which, in addition to analytical forms of language acquisition, involves the formation of a figurative and emotional attitude to the wealth of foreign, in this case, Russian speech, which, in the fair opinion of the author, constitutes the basis of effective intercultural communications. The editors of the online publication express special gratitude to the authors of the issue for interesting and controversial materials. Undoubtedly, they will find their reader and cause a surge of opinions, emotions and images that will serve to further study the space of culture, as a bright and diverse palette of modern experience industries.

For article citations:
Malenko, S. A. (2024). Images of the consumer worldview: history, the everyday, horizons. Experience industries. Socio-Cultural Research Technologies (EISCRT), 2 (7), 9–19. https://doi.org/10.34680/EISCRT-2024-2(7)-9-19