Two readers have written in to ask what I think about Madonna’s and Paul McCartney’s very public support of “Pussy Riot”, a group of women who are on trial for hooliganism (which consisted of performing an offensive “song” inside Russia’s most important cathedral).
All I can say is that this story reminds me of something that happened when I was 6 years old. This was in 1982, at the height of what was known as the Soviet Stagnation era. My father listened to the BBC and Radio Freedom every night. This was, of course, not allowed but he didn’t care.
“This is useless,” I once heard him tell my mother. “The Westerners will never understand us because they try to analyze what happens here in the terms that are familiar to them. They simply don’t have enough imagination to step outside that framework and realize that we are not them and things are very different here.”
“I knew that listening to that radio would not end well,” my mother said.
“All they talk about,” my father continued,” is how our human rights are violated because we are not allowed to travel overseas! I’m a scholar, I have a PhD and I can translate from 7 languages. Yet tomorrow I will have to suspend my research for 2 weeks and go sort rotting cabbage. Is anybody on BBC talking about this violation of my human rights? No, they aren’t. They just bellyache about foreign travel, like it’s something we even care about. Like it’s something we could ever afford.”
“I always knew these Westerners had no clue,” my mother responded.
The Cold War has long been over but many people still don’t have a clue. Less than a year ago, the elections to the Russian Parliament were egregiously falsified. Since then, many of the protesters have suffered from persecution, arrests, beatings, etc. The former Ukrainian prime-minister Yulia Timoshenko is tortured in her prison cell where she was put by the political faction financed directly by Putin. I could sit here until next year, listing the truly egregious violations of human rights in the FSU countries.
But nobody cares. All we read and hear about is a very successful PR campaign of 3 very talentless “performers” who will now milk the dense Westerners for money and fame for the next few decades.
Clarissa's Blog 
“Will there ever be an understanding?” Has there ever been? Now the world is more heavily populated than ever before and the nations seem to be increasingly diverse in their cultures and aspirations despite multiple interdependencies. “Ever” is a long time, but I don’t think the chances of understandings such as the article focuses on are high in the foreseeable future.
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Of course, if people were to read an intelligent blog like mine instead of the silly blogs of people who write about this without having any idea of what they are talking about, things wold be much better. 🙂
I can self-promote, too! 🙂
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However, those three performers were successful in embarrassing Vladimir Putin. And that is no small achievement. They were more successful than anyone else in Russia in this respect.
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I don’t think they embarrassed him in any way. Just the opposite, they made him stronger by giving him the right to say that all protesters are nothing but hooligans.
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Well, you know, people are beaten up in jail here every day and held in these torture cells, and so on, and have had trumped-up trials, but the only Louisiana prisoners with any visibility are the so called “Angola 3.” Some say that at least the publicity they get brings attention to the situation, and others that this actually obscures it.
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I’d much rather people wrote about prisoners in Louisiana than whined about these 3 Russian pseudo-artists and pseudo-protesters.
The Russian protest movement has fizzled out after losing interest in anything but Pussy Riot. This makes me wonder.
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I am always annoyed when I see people I consider to be my political allies oversimplifying political issues in other countries and cultures, and creating a newsreel circle-jerk by only getting their information on said issues from other people in North America who share their viewpoint. As much as the word “erasure” is overused, they are effectively doing just that to Russian-speakers who don’t fit their ideology by refusing to hail Pussy Riot as free speech warriors.
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Im curious, will they milk us before or after their potential 3yr prison term? 😉
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They are world-famous already. These are egregiously talentless people and it’s a huge thing for them to get this kind of fame at such a low price.
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I suppose this Russian post reflects what the majority in Russia thinks:
http://vlad-lavrov.livejournal.com/76252.html
You agree with the 1st part, but not with the 2nd, right?
1st – Я не слишком верующий человек, но для меня совершенно очевидна сакральность СОБЫТИЯ. Это даже не вопрос религии, а осознание БЕЗУСЛОВНОЙ НЕПРИКАСАЕМОЙ ИСТИНЫ, закрепленной кровью десятков тысяч ЛЮДЕЙ, умиравших за Отечество с именем Спасителя на устах
2nd –
Это специально спланированное мероприятие, рассчитанное на то, что бы разжечь гражданское противостояние в стране и катализировать известную реакцию Запада.
…
– Они марионетки?
– Разумеется. Вы же видите реакцию “цивилизованного мира” – это настоящая пиар-кампания.
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I’m glad someone is willing to state that Madonna and McCartney are not particularly talented.
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What exactly is Pussy Riots’ cause? Does anyone even know, or are they all “LOL protest in a church/girls/body parts name!”?
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Their previous performance consisted of a woman filming herself at a supermarket while stuffing a whole chicken into her vagina. The performance before that was the group getting naked and having sex at a Botanical Museum. On the basis of all this, I’m concluding that they just want to get rich and famous.
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Yeah, they seem to be getting support based on “feminism!” and “freedom of expression!” but if you ask me both movements should distance themselves from spectacles of this sort. They sound like a rehash of Karen Finlay’s shtick, which was performance art where she’d do things like smear her naked body with raw eggs and chocolate sauce. It had something to do with feminism, supposedly, but I could never understand how a white, middle-class woman pouring foodstuff on hers naked self in public helped the cause of feminism in any way. I think she raised some money for charity though.
A woman who is actually powerful and effective while also being an unusual performer who sometimes bared at least her breasts in performing was Diamanda Galas. But she had actual talent — I saw her in Miami years ago and was blown away. One part of her show she came out draped in a long skirt of some flowing stuff and with nothing on her top part but some glowing, reflective paint. Anyway, she is amazing. Her singing and music is very… different, passionate and powerful, a kind of gothic jazz though that doesn’t really describe it. Next to her these Pussy people look like little kids.
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” Next to her these Pussy people look like little kids.”
– Yes, talented they definitely are not.
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There is also a paucity of understanding of Zimbabwean politics and society on the part of Westerners. They view absolutely everything in narrow moralistic terms, often in binary terms. Also, they see no contradiction in doing a 180 degree about turn on their view of Mugabe. First he was the savior, now the bad guy. They still see whites as evil oppressors, even though there are no whites nowadays oppressing anyone in Zimbabwe. They don’t realize that irreverent humor has always been part of the Zimbabwean cultural matrix, so they cast those who engage in it as “mad” (if black) or “racist” (if white). They think white culture contaminates black culture which they see as pure and noble, with no problems or idiosyncrasies of its own. Like all moral dualists, they can suddenly switch perspectives from glorifying to condemning, but there are no shades of grey inbetween.
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On a somewhat unrelated note, and even if music automatically brings tears to your eyes, have you ever listened to Russian pop/rock/punk music? Do you have a take on it? If so, that could make an interesting post!
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I’ve been trying to reconnect with the Russian-speaking part of identity recently, so I listen to Russian rock radio stations on a regular basis. Russian popular music is quite a weird beast, so you are right, it would be a fun post. 🙂
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When I was a kid in the 1980s, it was portrayed that everyone in the Soviet Union wanted to defect, so the foreign travel news implied, “Look at how all these people are held prisoner.”
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