The queer parable and the gender normativity of ‘traditional values’: Aleksei Chupov and Natal’ia Merkulova’s The Man Who Surprised Everyone (2018)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article examines how the ideology of ‘traditional values’ and related ‘special’ gender normativity are represented in contemporary Russophone cinema. By analysing the film-parable The Man Who Surprised Everyone (2018), directed by Aleksei Chupov and Natal’ia Merkulova, I first demonstrate how the directors work with the complexity of existing gender politics by visualising the performative functions of the body as gendered appearance through the parable framework. Second, I show how Russia’s official public discourse about sexuality – dominated by the rhetoric of ‘traditional values’ – is challenged through the film narrative and the main character, the gamekeeper Egor, who lives in a small Siberian village and decides to wear female clothes and makeup in order to defeat cancer. Made with financial support from the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Culture and in the context of intensified conservative politics of gender and sexuality, the film was largely not considered in Russian-language criticism and broader audiences as related to queerness. I argue that their avoidance of the film’s queerness is a part of the ‘traditional values’ discourse, in which the Other seems not to exist, but always emerges as its inherent element.