Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

International

Julie Cassiday’s “Russian Style: Performing, Gender, Power and Putinism” shortlisted for Prize

At the end of the Soviet era and the beginning of Russia’s emergence as a state, the Russian media, and later social media, became fascinatingly dynamic. It wasn’t just raw politics or revelations about the present and past; it was also about sexuality, both “traditional and untraditional.”

Gay parades, performers, and even a prime-time talk show on sex called “About That” became prominent. In the early 2000s, a new PR team presented President Putin in photos and videos riding horses topless, diving into the sea for treasures, and showcasing other displays of virility and power, seemingly to distinguish himself from the previous ailing and hard-drinking leader.

These images and videos were quickly mocked with memes and jokes, including a particularly famous one of Vladimir Putin as a gay clown and another of him wrapped in a condom like a shawl. This appeared to be the chaotic yet lively process of a country emerging from the dusty Soviet closet.

Julie A. Cassiday, the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian at Williams College, offers a more insightful perspective on the Putin era in her book, “Russia Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism.” She analyzes the remarkably diverse range of gender performances by Russia’s citizens, which she identifies as performances, to reveal their connection with the politics of the new regime. While it might have seemed that the emphasis on “traditional Orthodox Christian values” was a cornerstone of Putinism, Cassiday argues that the primary function of style in Putin’s Russia between 2000 and 2020 was to defer and deflect political substance.

The “Russian styles” Cassiday refers to are more complex than one might imagine. Drawing from an enormous range of sources—films, television shows, social media, drag shows, self-help books for women, memes, music, YouTube videos, the Eurovision Song Contest, and more—Cassiday defines and tracks how styles of performed gender replaced ideology under Putin. Native styles include poshlost (a mix of vulgarity, falsity, banality, and lack of spirituality), stiob (mockery, banter), and glamur (glitzy, showy, glossy faux glamour). Imported styles include charisma, which Putin and his PR handlers attempt to project, as well as camp and kitsch. These styles are not fixed; there is often “slippage,” as when Putin’s macho PR stunts slipped into camp or kitsch, partly driven by the ironic stiob of early protest movements. Protesters cleverly mocked Putin’s slogans, such as transforming the campaign phrase “Если не Путин, то кто?” (If not Putin, then who?) to “Если не Путин, то кот?” (If not Putin, then a cat?) by changing just two letters. In 2017, the most famous stiob, the gay Putin clown image, was banned.

Although Cassiday’s book is not an encyclopedia of Russian society, she illuminates aspects of Russian life that might have gone unnoticed even as they unfolded before us. She takes us back to the traumatic past of the Afghan war through films, into the diverse worlds of post-Soviet drag queens (travesti-artisty), from the mystical and spiritual Mamyshev-Monroe to the New Russian Grannies and Ukrainian Andriy Danylko’s iconic Verka Serduchka.

She explores the competitive Eurovision Song Contest and performers like tATu and Dima Bilan, who display homoeroticism while maintaining heteronormativity. Cassiday concludes with “post-Soviet postfeminism,” featuring “Putin’s Army”—a group of scantily clad young women performing standard porn film moves (like spraying whipping cream in their mouths or washing cars in bikinis) for their leader—a Russian version of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” prison beauty pageants, and a self-help craze called bitchology (стервология), which teaches women how to get anything they want. Throughout all this are performances of what she calls “cis-gender drag,” exemplified recently when Nastya Ivleva, stripped of makeup, hair unstyled, and dressed modestly, went on camera to apologize for her Naked Party.

Cassiday writes that the irony of Putin’s project is that the overabundance of Russian style “turned into its opposite—a stylistic vacuum—in the course of just twenty years… in the end, they exposed the masculine fragility and male hysteria lurking beneath the glossy surface of Putinism.” The protests against his “masculinity-driven politics” led to more protests, which in turn led to more crackdowns. Putin-the-romantic-lead transformed into Putin-the-bully, first in Russia and then globally. As Cassiday notes, “…the styles of gender and sexuality fostered by Putinism, which seemed all fun and games in the 2000s and took a turn for the worse in the 2010s, have always been dead serious.”

Written By

I am an experienced writer, analyst, and author. My exposure in English journalism spans more than 28 years. In the past, I have been working with daily The Muslim (Lahore Bureau), daily Business Recorder (Lahore/Islamabad Bureaus), Daily Times, Islamabad, daily The Nation (Lahore and Karachi). With daily The Nation, I have served as Resident Editor, Karachi. Since 2009, I have been working as a Freelance Writer/Editor for American organizations.

Health & Education

CSS Exams 2024 The Islamabad High Court recently held a hearing regarding a petition seeking to delay the upcoming CSS 2025 exams until the...

Health & Education

CSS 2025 Hundreds of students preparing for the Central Superior Services (CSS) 2025 examinations have taken to the streets in protest, demanding a postponement...

Latest Updates

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has finalized the ticket prices for the much-anticipated Tri-Nation Series featuring Pakistan, New Zealand, and South Africa. Ticket sales...

Entertainment

Ducky Bhai The long-standing rivalry between Pakistani YouTubers Sham Idrees and Ducky Bhai, which has been a focal point of drama in the local...