Russian Historical Cinema Deconstruction Practice on Social Media

Abstract

The article presents the findings of an analysis of the primary discursive modules emphasized by bloggers through the practice of deconstructing historical fiction cinema. The attitude of film producers towards the past, as well as the audience’s reaction to the value and meaning messages in it, are considered to be part of historical culture. In this context, historical cinema is regarded as both a semiotic code and an element of symbolic mass politics. The article categorizes feature films according to the objectivity of their representation of historical material, and it identifies the emergence of novel genres. The evolution of historical cinema in Russia during the 21st century has been delineated, and it has been determined that the medium has maintained the established trends while undergoing a transformation in its mode of presentation. The empirical basis of the study is a corpus of videos created by bloggers in social media for the years 2020–2025. This corpus is dedicated to the analysis of Russian historical films and TV series. The most obvious value and semantic points of confrontation between producers and consumers of historical cinema have been identified by means of critical discourse analysis (N. Fairclough). Recent research has indicated that bloggers who function as leaders and spokespeople for consumer opinion in reviews of Russian historical film productions highlight several trends. Firstly, there is a tendency for de-ideologization. Secondly, there is a retouching of the motives of the main characters’ actions to make them appropriate to the epoch. Thirdly, there is a tendency to follow trends in popular psychology. A conclusion of paramount importance is the observation concerning the existence of an ideological framework of confrontation ‘producer — audience’. This concerns, first of all, representations of the Soviet period of the country’s history, as well as parallels with contemporary reality. A potential shortcoming of the study is might be the failure to address the impact of filter bubbles and echo chamber effects on the practices of historical bloggers.