https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh9rU53ustbBqlFmlXxhfvg
Selection from the music TV show Drëma, which aired on TV-6 in 1997-98 before being shut down because of its provocative content. Hosted by Vladimir Epifantsev and Anfisa Chekhova. An early (quite experimental) example of pop culture in post-Soviet Russia.
Post-Soviet
1997-1998
Initially conceived as “the Russian MTV” and broadcasted for only five months between 1997 and 1998 (before being shut down, allegedly, because some of its comical sketches on religion were considered blasphemous) Vladimir Epifantsev’s Drëma ended up being an extreme version of its Western counterpart. Along with music videos and interviews to Western pop stars, the show combined striptease, staging of BDSM performances, references to Greek tragedy and classical philosophy, and parodies of TV commercials degenerating into scenes of absurd and grotesque violence. The show systematically violated Soviet and post-Soviet taboos and common places while capturing and embracing the chaotic essence of the 1990s. It appropriated the language of Western popular culture while inventing a specifically post-Soviet one. And like most of Epifantsev’s media performances, it represented an extreme and primarily physical way of challenging commonly accepted norms and beliefs. Drëma was planned to be part of the night’s broadcast of TV-6, one of Russia’s first private TV channels. Epifantsev was given carte blanche, except for the fact that the show was supposed to include an “erotic component.” Drëma was the epitome of low budget: a dark seedy-looking nightclub—the striptease bar Grinkholl-Klub Utopia—a bored group of teens sitting on an old couch as live audience, opening credits with fast-paced editing and dissonant images—gas masks, nuclear explosions, pupils close-ups—with equally dissonant music, screams, and moans. The typical repertoire involved more or less heavy flirting and petting between the two main hosts—Epifantsev and Anfisa Chekhova—with Chekhova acting highly provocative and Epifantsev smoking obsessively and grunting profusely. These were interspersed with semi-bored conversations about, and readings from, Baudelaire and Rimbaud and, needless to say, sex—as well as by striptease dances that were presented as one of the show’s main attractions. Monologues by Chekhova and the other hosts—Pavel Egorov, Iulia Stebunova, and the main writer, Oleg Shishkin—focused on apparently unrelated topics: the myth about the origins of the prophet’s Tyresia’s androgyny, Eastern philosophy and storytelling, and the story of a parent smacking his child with a console to avoid him being completely sucked into his video games. The show contained surreal sketches parodying Soviet tropes and post-Soviet realia (“The Paranoid Soldier,” “The Teacher,” “The Sadistic Policewoman”), fake commercials (i.e. commercials for “the usual stuff,” which always ended up being much better than the brand name), and fake misdubbed interviews to international stars (Einstürzende Neubauten, Elton John, Aphex Twin). The more or less explicit targets of Drëma’s cynical provocations included the absurdity of the post-Soviet experience, the violence and corruption of the Soviet bureaucratic system, and the newly discovered idiocy of mass consumerism—but also the ingenuity of older generations and the well-intended hypocrisy of a specifically late Soviet form of officially sanctioned political correctness—with its omnipresent calls for world peace, tolerance, and respect for the elderly—that many Soviet citizens perceived as fundamentally oppressive.
Epifantsev, Vladimir , Chekhova, Anfisa, and Shishkin, Oleg
former Soviet Union and Russia
YouTube/online videos? Selection. Also (?): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh9rU53ustbBqlFmlXxhfvg