An intellectual snobbery prevents many of us from appreciating the brightest product of the Ukrainian masscult at his true worth, - writes Olexiy Radinsky in the Correspondent magazine.
The recent Verka Serduchka's breakthrough to the Eurovision has provoked a subsequent storm of indignation among amateurs of the beautiful. In fact, it is difficult to imagine another reason which could so strongly consolidate the Ukrainian "cultural environment". Besides traditional statements about "an inferiority complex violently implanted to Ukrainians", they started to use methods from the civil disobedience arsenal: signature-gathering campaign, street protest actions and public burning of Verka Serduchka's scarecrow.
Certainly, the only effect of all these actions will be a further promotion of the superpopular character who during a decade has managed to divide Ukrainians into two camps. In fact, besides a horizontal (and in many respects artificial) East/West opposition, there exists in Ukraine another, much more concrete vertical opposition: grateful listeners of Serduchka and her irreconcilable haters. Does it not suffice to recognize Andriy Danylko (creator of the said character) as an artist of the national scale?
It is obvious that neither he nor his scenic image require protection and justification. Hit parades and ratings will put everything into place. Another thing is important: is it good or bad, but the Ukrainian masscult has not yet generated any character equal to Serduchka as to vital reliability and imperceptible credibility. Whatever one may do, typical railway conductor looks so. Moreover, this conductor is not offended at all with Danylko's creativity flowing from car loudspeakers. Then why it forces a highly spiritual public to writhe in hysterics?
The Danylko's secret is that he shows to public an obscene wrong side of the Ukrainian everyday life. It is diligently erased from consciousness, but comes back in the form of painful symptoms - like breathtaking show with transvestite implication which expands the most courageous ideas about kitsch as a way of artistic performance.
Serduchka is a personification of concealed collective fantasies: ordinary "woman with a heavy fate" in a wonderful way (remaining "such as she is") becomes a mega-star. This image has a phenomenal success also due to the fact that it undermines intolerable laws of stars factory according to which a woman who wishes to achieve something in her life is simply obliged to have beautiful legs, silky hair and smooth skin. It is known that the function of a star is to be an ideal sublime body, object of consumer imitation. It comes as no surprise that Ukrainian saleswomen and conductors prefer Serduchka to Ruslana, for instance. In a certain measure we may call this a restoration of social justice.
Certainly, Danylko's creative work is a serious blow to the Ukrainian narcissism, especially in the version that considers masscult as a harmful product of "anti-Ukrainian forces". It is high time to understand that the Ukrainian culture will be either a mass one, or none at all. Besides that, no performer (unless he/she is a President's adviser) is obliged to promote "the improvement of image of Ukraine" anywhere.
Danylko would deserve respect at least because he is the only artist in the country who was repeatedly blamed from the Verkhovna Rada tribune. It is very convenient for professional men of letters from the cohort of national poets-People's deputies to hide their enormous frauds with budgetary funds in support of the Ukrainian language behind their parliamentary speeches of Serduchka's stinking obscenities contributing to the Ukrainians' spirituality decline. We consider as a childish babble any accusation of Serduchka of vulgarization of Ukraine against the background of such poets' long-term activity in the area of an awful state conjuncture.
Generally speaking, everybody must refuse the snobbish attitude to a singing woman-conductor at least in order to remove one of contradictions dividing Ukraine. As is known, the best way to cure one's own symptom is to come to love it. We must love Serduchka, though it is rather difficult to do. It is a very special feeling – we love in such way defective children or the mutilated Motherland. It would be strange if after everything that Ukraine had to go through over the last decades, the world-wide honoured Ukrainian singer Nina Matvienko would be a symbol of Ukraine instead of Serduchka.
It is unpleasant, but natural: the Ukrainian culture of the first decades of its independence will leave in history a strange figure that has brought into the ruins of romantic Ukrainian culture a powerful jet of intentional kitsch. Under these conditions, just Serduchka has invented a rather stupid but currently the most successful formula of national unity: "Ukraine has not died yet if we are able to enjoy ourselves in such a manner!".
Of course, such state of affairs is unacceptable for many and many people. A mannish postsoviet woman expressing herself in a very vulgarized language certainly may not represent the whole Ukraine. But if someone wishes to correct such a situation, mere appeals to prohibit Serduchka's participation in the Eurovision or to denationalize her creator Danylko would not suffice. The only possible thing to do as a counterbalance is to create another masscult character that would correspond to another matrix of mass consciousness. For a full-value existence of culture, dozens of such characters are required. The main thing is that they should be not less recognized, convincing, and ably played than the Danylko's "creature". All the rest is a matter of trick.
