Трансформация гендерной доминанты в российском телеконтенте 2000-х–2010-х гг. (на примере детективных сериалов)

Abstract

The article covers the gender issues of modern Russian television content on the example of a serial segment of Russian broadcast over the past 20 years. This aspect predetermines the relevance of the proposed research. The work focuses on the series that tend toward the most mass and popular forms of solving aesthetic problems—melodrama, comedy, and detective. The examples of the series, involved in the analysis, suggest that the gender dominance, characteristic of the previous stage of TV broadcasting development in Russia, has transformed significantly. This trend is indicated by the increasing importance of female characters in Russian detective series of the 2000s and 2010s. Notably, the process is instantiated by both quantitative and qualitative markers, including in terms of appeal to different historical periods which are reflected in the plots. At the same time, producers, including production teams of broadcasters, make active use of foreign experience, creating domestic versions of popular detective series filmed in other countries. Such circumstances of on-air content production can be explained by a combination of both objective (social, psychological) factors and subjective reasons (potential audience composition). Such aspects, taken together, generate complexes of plot and personified viewers’ expectations from watching the series. This situation forces the filmmakers and originators of new TV series to budge from traditional formats and creative techniques and take the factor of gender dominance into consideration. The latter, according to the author of the article, contributes to the transformation of the structure and content of the narrative of serial screen products that were standard for the previous stage of Russian TV broadcasting development. It can be stated that in modern television, the shares and roles of male and female characters in the plot constructions are “equalizing”. This, in turn, predetermines the thematic and genre variability of series, reflecting the orientation of Russian serial filmmakers on expanding the potential TV audience.