Lesbian love stories and online popular culture : The case of web series
Ratilainen, Saara (2022)
Ratilainen, Saara
Teoksen toimittaja(t)
Miazhevich, Galina
Routledge
2022
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202203302865
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202203302865
Kuvaus
Peer reviewed
Tiivistelmä
This chapter analyses Russian lesbian-themed web series Steklo (Glass) and Eto proiskhodit riadom s vami (It’s Happening Right Next to You) focusing on both their poetics (an analysis of the aesthetic and narrative means of the series) and politics (responses to the anti-gay law and links to LGBTQI+ activism). The chapter argues that the representations of distinctly lesbian identities and female same-sex love in a novel web series format contribute to ‘queering’ some of the central cultural categories and institutions deemed foundational to Russian traditional patriarchal society. They propose a ‘queer format’ in which non-conforming and non-normative female gender and sexual identities can become part of the mainstream TV aesthetic. Through the re-use of the mode of melodrama, the series are queering cultural notions of female love. Ultimately, the chapter uncovers a new queer middle ground in Russian media and culture: a grassroots-led digital space that exists in-between radical political art and state-aligned mainstream culture. The key to understanding this terrain is to pay attention to the creative ways of re-using cultural resources in symbolic production, and to the variety of contexts and communities the stories created in this way speak to.
Kokoelmat
- TUNICRIS-julkaisut [16983]