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- Title
Melodrama and War after Russia's Invasion of Ukraine.
- Authors
Daisuke Adachi
- Abstract
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the critical investigations on the polarizing opposition between Russia and Ukraine has revealed that the dichotomy prevents us from objectively understanding the current situation and the background of the war. In this article, I argue that the dichotomy is supported and reinforced by melodramatic imagination. The representation of traumatic experience in Ukraine follows the traditional manner of classical theater melodrama, focusing on visual images of suffering and redemption and aiming to invoke empathy in the wider international audience to enlist support against Russia's invasion. While Putin mirrors the logic of revenge, which has become an integral part of post-9/11 political melodramatic discourse, his lack of concern for the visibility of suffering is unusual for traditional melodrama. A comparative reading of Putin's political discourse with Balabanov's blockbuster series Brother and Brother 2 allows us to suggest that the thoroughly individualized moral universe of Putin's discourse does not require the representation of suffering accompanied by empathy to legitimize its right to violence and vengeance. Putin's political speeches grotesquely mark the extent to which melodrama's orientation toward subjectivism and emotion could reach.
- Subjects
MELODRAMA; RUSSIAN invasion of Ukraine, 2022-; DISCOURSE; SUBJECTIVITY; POLITICAL oratory
- Publication
Japanese Slavic & East European Studies, 2023, Issue 43, p13
- ISSN
0389-1186
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5823/jsees.43.0_13