Abstract
Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian who in 2019 was elected president of Ukraine, provoked heated controversies about the country's Russophone pop culture, populism and democratic institutions. By using the figure of the Joker as an analytical metaphor, this paper seeks to unpack the intertwining discourses of Russia’s information warfare, the global rise of populism, and Ukrainian identity politics. Tracing Zelensky’s career as a successful entrepreneur in the Russophone entertainment business, a new approach inspired by Richard Florida’s notion of the creative ethos is developed in order to examine Zelensky’s election campaign. The core messages and storytelling techniques of this campaign will be analyzed using the example of the television series The Servant of the People (Sluga narodu) created by and starring Zelensky. Subsequently, the results of this analysis will be discussed in the context of populism and how it relates to Russophone pop culture.
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