SCREEN CULTURE IN THE MIRRORS OF VISUAL NOSTALGIA

Abstract

Dear readers!
The editorial board of the scientific and practical online journal “Experience industries. Socio-Cultural Research Technologies” (EISCRT) presents the third issue in the current 2024. The issue is devoted to the analysis of the nature of mass screen culture as a visual space for the functioning of nostalgic trends about the Soviet past in the context of the technology of modern experience industries.
The issue opens with a joint international study by Oleg Gabrielyan and Ibragim Suleimenov, stating the fact that screen culture must necessarily and continuously acquire a new quality and contribute to the formation of high art. Such an approach can be very productive when using the ideas of A. N. Scriabin about the influence of art on the formation of human consciousness. At the same time, the use of technical and electronic capabilities to solve this problem becomes one of the key means of transforming screen culture itself.
Vitaly Poznin represents the St. Petersburg art history school with his article devoted to the study of the features of segmentation of viewer audiences and the creation of niche TV channels on this basis aimed at satisfying the aesthetic and leisure needs of users. In addition, screen content is becoming increasingly superficial over time, primarily focusing on pseudo-science and sensationalism both in the selection of facts and in the very style of presentation of information materials.
The author from Veliky Novgorod Vasily Smirnov discusses the potential of mass culture in shaping the cultural needs of individuals. At the same time, modern culture inevitably turns into a coordinate economic institution transforming steadily into an industry and becoming an effective marketing tool. The author insists rightly on the expediency of using the theories of Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci to study the essence and assess the development prospects of modern cultural industries.
At the same time, it is mass culture that becomes the space in which a creative personality can overcome established socio-cultural and institutional boundaries. This topic is raised by our Kazan colleague Elena Yakovleva, who seeks to define the nature of a genius and their creativity as genuine existentials of human existence. Therefore, a work of art is a natural result of the creative activity of a genius and their imagination, which allows the creator to go beyond the boundaries of the generally accepted, thereby shocking and epatering ordinary people.
The “Tradition” section opens with a polemical article by St. Petersburg writer and philosopher Andrei Burovsky, who, in his characteristic ironic manner, reflects on the genre specificity of the women’s novel and its differences from traditional “male” literary texts. According to the author, the women’s novel is always constructed thanks to the images of the main characters, their persecutors and selfless assistants. At the same time, the male hero in such texts is always an ordinary, one might even say mediocre person, financially secure and possibly even married. That is precisely why the main heroine demonstratively turns this character into the object of her choice and love, thereby contributing to the development of this literary genre and its transformation into a fairly popular and profitable segment of the modern experience industry.
Nikolay Kedrov examines scenarios for the transformation of the artistic taste of the viewing audience at the end of Soviet society. He undertakes a comparative study of the film adaptations of famous literary works by Alexandre Dumas in France and the USSR to do this. It is significant that, according to the author, French film adaptations began with light, semi-comedic productions and ended with the deep immersion of viewers in the historical context. Whereas in the Soviet Union a special style of screen adaptations developed, entirely based on theatrical decorativeness. This was due to the desire of Soviet directors to bypass the ideological prohibitions that existed at that time. But, at the same time, the author states that modern Russian TV series have nevertheless moved away from the Soviet model of screen adaptations of classics and have become an integral part of the domestic cultural industry.
Andrey Nekita and Sergey Malenko publish their second article in the current issue, dedicated to a comprehensive study of the sensational Russian family comedy “Cheburashka”. They draw attention to the fact that the extraordinary audience and commercial success of this project was largely due to the mass borrowing of Hollywood media technologies in Russian cinematographic practice in recent years. This creative product, against the backdrop of growing nostalgia for the Soviet past, effectively introduces Western-oriented cultural and ideological values into domestic cultural practice. Therefore, the entire film “Cheburashka” becomes a single "Easter egg", continuously referring the mass viewer to already known and well-tested images of the most successful popular Western, Soviet and Russian media projects.
Saratov researcher Sofia Tikhonova also continues to develop fruitfully the theme of Soviet nostalgia. This time she examines it in the context of the mythology of the great construction projects of communism. According to the author, the destructive socio-political processes in the post-war USSR did not allow the potential of the mythological pathos of the great construction projects of communism to be fully revealed, and therefore, absolutely naturally, could not ultimately move into the discourse of historical memory.
Nostalgia for the Soviet era is also an object of consideration for our Luhansk author Oksana Serostanovaya, who studies it in the context of artistic images of the Luhansk region in the works of Mikhail Matusovsky, as well as in Soviet-era cinema. Post-war Luhansk is positioned in such works of art through symbols of rebirth, hard work, faith in the future, and honoring the exploits of heroes and workers. This is how the viewer creates emotional tension, maximally conveying the dynamics of continuously changing urban cultural landscapes.
In the already traditional for our publication section “A Matter of Taste: Impressions of a Connoisseur” Crimean authors Oleg Shevchenko and Anna Dorofeeva explore the mythopoetic potential of the Alma Valley wine lines. They establish that the historical and mythological component of this brand is closely related to the taste characteristics of the wine, the design of the label and the specific idea of a particular series of wines. As a result, the philosophy of Alma Valley wines is the result of bold experiments by Crimean winemakers of the Alma Valley.
The “Reviews” section presents a detailed analysis of the book by Saratov author Denis Artamonov “Media Memory in the Digital Age”. Andrey Nekita and Sergey Malenko draw attention to the extraordinary importance of research into strategies for the formation and transformation of memory in modern media environments. Media content about the past urgently requires the development of innovative research strategies for studying the principles of functioning of collective memory. This is especially important in the context of the widespread digitalization of social communication.
And finally, the third issue ends with a new section, “Event Review,” which presents a digest of cultural events, socially significant initiatives and projects implemented by regional branches of the all-Russian public movement “Russian Dream” in the first half of 2024.
The editors hope that the materials presented in this issue will find their interested readers and will become an excellent opportunity for the development of scientific discussions in the field of cultural industries.

For citation:
Malenko, S. A. (2024). Screen Culture in the Mirrors of Visual Nostalgia. Experience industries. Socio-Cultural Research Technologies (EISCRT), 3 (8), 9–20. https://doi.org/10.34680/EISCRT-2024-3(8)-9-20