Brainwashing? Dedication? Multimedia?
February 27, 2008 seemed as a pretty boring day in the Russian online press since nothing new or exciting has been going on in the world. More countries have recognized Cosovo as an independent country; Serbians are threatening to start a war; Ukraine refused to pay the gas dept; Hillary Clinton lost an important ally; US Congress agreed that Russian government is guilty in Litvinenko’s murder case and is consequently a threat to Europe and America. Similar stuff is published in Russian internet every day, no breaking news today.
Nonetheless one link caught my attention. “Putin’s Secret” screamed the headline. Everything that has to do with my president is especially interesting these days for many Russians, since Putin serves his last weeks as a president of the country. The majority of people does not want him to leave, as little is known about his successor Dmitri Medvedev. The outcome of the elections that will take place on March 2 is pretty clear at this point, and Medvedev shortly will become the head of the country. Medvedev never was a prominent political figure and appeared on Russian political stage fairly recently, as Putin pronounced him the successor. For many people it became a surprise, however since Medvedev was the only candidate from the party Edinaya Rossia that has the majority in the parlament, people supported his candidature.
However the author of the article argues that the appointment of Medvedev was not a surprise. He analyzes a video Putin’s Secret shown by Russian internet video site Russia.ru
Unfortunately WordPress does not allow to embed videos from Russian sites however you can watch the video here.
The movie that was created by the prominent Russian director Aleksey Vishnya shows video fragments from parliament’s sessions of different times and individual footage of Putin. Graphically enhanced and well edited the video does not lack humor, which is aimed particularly at the younger audience. At the very end of the video there is a sentence in Russian: “Вперед МЕДВЕД”. Translated to English it says: Go Medved.
There is a very interesting play of words that is understandable only to young Russian viewers. Several years ago Russian online community on LiveJournal picked up and gave a whole new interpretation to John Lurie’s painting “Bear Surprise” and adopted a Russian version of it “Preved Medved”, which means “Hi Bear” in broken Russian. The phrase quickly spread through Russian internet nd gave birth to a new form of slang that is used in blogs and online conversations. Also the image of the bear became extremely popular. Below is the image of Medved shouting: “Hi!”
The video plays on the name of the bear Medved, which as I mentioned above means “bear” in broken Russian, and the last name of the future Russian president Dmitri Medvedev. Do you notice the root? Medved – Medvedev!
The author of the video jokingly claims that bear’s popularity was secretly cultivated in the minds of young Russians by Vladimir Putin in order to give more votes to Dmitri Mededev long before he was pronounced Putin’s successor.
The movie is professionally made and is very attractive to young Russians. Good use of multimedia and internet resources!
If you want to see the original John Lurie’s painting look for “Bear Surprise”in Google. However, the painting contains nudity and might offend some people so be careful!
