Communicating Religious Content and the Reception of Meanings in Social Space: The Series Saviour Under the Birches

Abstract

The article contains an analysis of the content of the 12-part series entitled Saviour under the Birches. The main idea of the director, Leonid Eydlin, to show the audience the ordinary side of life, however related to faith and the search for the right decisions in difficult situations, was confronted with the comments of the viewers, posted under subsequent parts of the series on youtube.com, kinopoisk.ru, otzovik.com, and kino-teatr.ru. The source material is treated as a cultural text in the Lotman sense. Content analysis and the hermeneutic method, taking into account contexts, are the research methods. Analyses of the content of the series made it possible to show that Eidlin’s intention to show Orthodoxy as a religion culture, based on the realities of everyday life of an ordinary man, preoccupied with material problems but also searching for the meaning of the problems affecting him in the non-material world. The analysis of Internet users’ comments, in turn, showed that they identify their problems with those experienced by the characters in the series.