Artistic features of Russian TV serials about the Great Patriotic War

Abstract

The essay represents the first effort to explore the artistic methods employed in the TV series about World War II (the Great Patriotic War) and analyzes four multi-episode TV shows released in 2004. In its own way, each of these series responded to the new public interest in the less known aspects of the war. Simultaneously, each of them established a dialogue with the previous cinematic and TV productions, comprising direct reminiscences to earlier films, objectivizing the audience expectations formed by earlier productions, or even arguing with them. This dialogic trend should be considered as part of the postmodernist framework of contemporary television: reminiscences of popular post-war films or literal or visual citations from these films become an integral part of contemporary cinema and television and also act as documentary-like reference points.
 In all reviewed cases, the authors emphasize adventure narratives well suited for TV presentation and rendered even more spectacular by modern visualization technologies. The producers are confronted with a contradiction between the chosen historical context and imaginary plotlines: it is quite difficult to put the series characters within the imaginary space, depriving them of the well-known facts, especially those propagated in earlier film and TV productions. Inevitably, each plot is aggressively influenced by the tragedy of the little man, in which the place of the enemy occupied in the Soviet tradition by the Gestapo and the Abwehr is replaced by the repressive Soviet state security services. Even a decade after its release, Shtrafbat (The Penal Battalion) plays a major role in the public and professional discussion on the ethics of war-related films and television series. Meanwhile, At a Nameless Height, a series which contains even more reminiscences to Soviet film and television productions, should be regarded as one of the earliest works in which the sense of authenticity was sacrificed to the imaginary expectations of the viewers expectations formed by the Soviet historical and cultural framing.