Natalia Zlydneva

Television commercials as mythology-narratives of daily life in modern Russia

Abstract:

This study deals with the role that TV commercials play in westernizing and adopting post-perestroika Russian daily life to the standards of the post-industrial society. The material was obtained from commercials broadcast by the main Russian TV channels during the period from March to May 2003. The post-perestroika Russian TV commercials reflect a complexity of the transitional period and reveal a great ambiguity within the Russian contemporary mentality. As a result, the general semantics of commercials (globalization stereotypes) becomes intertwined with local tradition (archaic stereotypes) creating an area of highly contradictory sign process. TV commercials valorize an archaic discourse that manifests itself as a traditional incantation text. Intended for the consumer mentality and oriented primarily towards imperatives, modern incantations create a virtual projection, typical for magic formulas that are meant to bridge the sacred and profane worlds. This feature harbors a utopian way of thinking with its opposition of a faraway alien and a familiar native. The stress is put on the native as the positive pole of the world. The structure of many commercials shows their profound ties to myth: the improvement in a product’s quality is articulated as a motion from new to old, from dirty to clean, from fragmentary to whole. According to archaic beliefs, this is the way the world reestablishes its original sacred purity. Although Russian TV commercials are presented as agents of the free-market economy, they convey a paradoxical confrontation with Russian ‘wild’ capitalism and the western style of globalization in general. During the present ‘transitional period’, commercials articulate themselves as newcomers that have been adjusted to the local discourse.

The ‘post-perestroika’ Russian TV commercials play an important role in westernizing and adopting Russian daily life to the post-industrial free-economy society standards. The commercials reflect a contradictory mentality of Russians in the transitional period and reveal a paradoxical way of thinking as well as self-comprehension and self-representation in the contemporary Russian culture. These features root in the national mentality but come to the fore at the border zones of the new epoch. In this paper I will argue that, although it assimilates the new values, society reverts back to its national past and mythology.
The material used in this study was obtained from commercials broadcast by the main Russian TV channels (ORT, Russia, TVC and NTV) during the period from March to May 2003. The selected clips proved to be representative since they cover the main types of plots and screening modes. The advertised items cover the consumer society commercial field ranging from quite expensive items, such as foreign cars, to mass products like washing powder, tooth paste and fast food. By examining in which way the items are advertised we can make conclusions concerning the mentality both of the commercial makers and the audience which the commercials are addressed to. We base our observations mainly on commercials produced in Russia, but foreign clips are examined as well. The latter are of interest for us to the extent that they serve as a background for comparing two different ideological strategies (Russian and Western) and their socio-psychological outcomes.
The issue of commercial rhetoric has been widely discussed in humanities recently¹, so in this study we are going to concentrate only on some aspects of commercials, namely on mythology and archaic tradition on which commercial narrative is based. The standpoint from which we study this issue can be described in socio-anthropological and cultural semiotic terms. The mythological patterns that are clearly articulated in the way the clips are screened and the way they are supposed to be consumed leave no choice to researchers. They are presumed to be studied from the standpoint of mythological thinking which is defined by the specific connotations of their social context. The approach to the issue through myth - whether it deals with fairy tale plots or with a specific mindset which the clips reveal - seems to be the most appropriate one, since it takes into account the specifics of the border-zone period in contemporary Russian history, namely, the combination of a continuing deep-rooted traditional mentality and innovative social breakthroughs which call this tradition into question. I am going to examine TV commercials as a special sort of modern inclination text and to show in which way this issue relates to the national past and defines the controversy of the present.
Advertisement first appeared in post-perestroika Russia at the beginning of the nineties. At that time, this new feature reflected a new social and economic reality that brought to light new issues of the consumer society. The ads were a sort of newcomer in Russian culture and were viewed by mass opinion as an agent of values from abroad, primarily from the West. Indeed, the first commercials were directly imported or were developed in imitation of Western samples. In the beginning, the commercials told their fairy tales about imported items and the Western lifestyle not only to communicate with consumers but also to show themselves as a special and innovative artifact. In the course of time, commercials were dissolved in the national mass-culture and became a part of everyday life in Russia. Meanwhile the specific social tension about commercials having an overseas origin and being a sort of adopted child in society defined their specific perception. This is particularly clear from the controversial way the commercials represent foreigners in the society. In this study, I am going to demonstrate that the commercials feature and reflect current social processes and that the main battle between the new and the old in society manifests itself in TV commercials through the confrontation between the two-part contraposition own (native) versus alien (foreign).
Let me first make some general premises about everyday mythology in modern society. I intend to concentrate on the comprehension of domestic appliances through myth.
Everyday conveniences, including domestic appliances, in the post-industrial society can be considered as a realm in which mythological thinking manifests itself quite evidently and in a specific way. Many domestic appliances convey archaic meanings that can be seen in their design and function. For instance, the appliances can be treated as a sort of primal elements represented in the form of essential organic features: the washing-machine is identified with water, the vacuum cleaner reveals wind, electricity may be interpreted as blood circulation. Through a commonplace identification with the human body (telephone=ears, computer=brains), some devises nearly enter the realm of the supernatural for the hand is no longer needed to operate them: electronic hands-free cell phone accessories and remote control units imply the spiritual superiority of its supernatural ‘corporeality’. The TV set can be considered to be a magic eye. Among features that intrude upon family life through the TV as a eye/window, commercials are of particular interest from the viewpoint of the archaic code they are based on. What is important about Russia in this respect is that the mythology links the present with traditional regional Slavic beliefs and that these beliefs reflect some crucial tendencies in the social mentality at the present time.
In recent years, Russian TV commercials do not demonstrate any striking specifics compared to European or American ones. At the same time, they demonstrate some specifics in their social functioning, for they are still quite a new feature of the Russian mass-media scene. The commercials operate with some traditional meanings that they transfer to a new ground in order to adjust themselves to the transitional social reality. A discussion of contemporary Russian commercials should take into account the cultural and social context (wild capitalism as a key element of contemporary social life), in which they appear. The conditions in which commercials exist and develop make their semantics and social message more transparent for the observer. Quite a new feature of Russian life, commercials can be discussed through their links with the city folklore, which combines texts from various media, i.e. verbal, visual and action ones. Besides some other folk genres, the Russian TV commercials valorize archaic discourse that manifests itself as a traditional incantation text. This relates to the above-mentioned correspondence between commercials and inclination formulas, which is of particular interest for the present essay.
First of all, commercials evoke traditional inclination practice in the way they function. This is typical not only for Russian but for all commercials, no matter what sort of tradition they elicit. According to Jean Baudrillard,² every advertisement is dual by its very nature: it is a discourse on a thing and the thing as such at the same time. As a discourse on a thing, commercials provide a message based on the principle of operational preference or imperative. The formal function of commercials as a discourse on consumer goods is defined by their purpose to promote a product on the market. At the same time, one can also see a deeply lying purpose, which consists in the necessity to establish a sort of social consensus by means of commercials, because, behind every product, there are certain social relations that underlie (are hidden) in a consumer’s mind. Here, commercials create a text which aims to counteract social entropy. The text protects society from the chaos of various goods and services offered on the market, the chaos of enormous consumer aspirations and needs, and the neurotic tension of virtual reality formed by things and products. All these purposes certainly apply to present-day Russian commercials and are defined by them.
To counteract the above-described entropy, commercials appeal to the individual in the name of a ritual collective, or, in other words, they appeal to the general in the name of the private and to the sacred in the name of the profane. The social prestige occurs as a sacred function because the entire strategy of the suggestion conveyed by commercials is based on the presumption of a collective body. This collective body is an institution providing an individual with the feeling of protection. A commercial as a discourse on things (goods) tries to rid the consumer of all shortage, no matter whether real or imaginary. Through this function, commercials come very close to the ancient practice of the so-called white magic. According to Baudrillard, “the modern magicians of consumption are smart enough to avoid disburdening a human being with such an explosive goal as his aspiration to be happy. They provide him with partial (incomplete) relaxation, which means that a consumer can partly compensate a shortage but not do away with it entirely.”³ As a kind of object, a commercial clip reestablishes some archaic meanings of the gift-exchange by means of manifesting itself as the only thing in the realm of consumption which is granted for free. Although this gift is imposed on the consumer, in contrast to the incantation which is always specially requested, the commercials’ strategy is very similar to the ultimate goal of an archaic ritual aiming to reinstall the integrity of the world.
Although they correspond to universal patterns, Russian commercials reveal their direct ties with the social process of adapting to the new political and economic reality that is full of chaos and instability. In contemporary Russia, it is very important that the commercials follow some mythological models to transform chaos into cosmos, to bring order and rhythm into the disordered natural world. Using the ancient incantation scheme, the TV ads operate in the imperative mode as if carrying out a sort of conjuration: Buy! Choose! Compare! Call! Be sure!
In addition to imperatives, one can detect an infinitive construction as well. It signifies that the consumer’s wishes and opportunities are transferred into the virtual realm: to get into a new Mercedes, to drink Klinskoe (a famous Russian beer), to freshen one’s breath, etc). The virtual modality is defined by the distant location of the visual images in the commercials: a Russian TV viewer is shown the exotic scenery of American deserts, Rocky mountains, African jungles or ocean islands. The utopian projection which plays a dominant role in incantation schemes comes to the fore here. It aims to bridge the gap between the profane and sacred worlds. The intertwined imperative and infinitive semantics can be described by the contraposition close/distant, in which the second part (distant) is positively marked. In the troubled present-day Russian economic and social conditions, the distant appears in a marked position. For instance, a commercial advertising a new Ford Lexus car represents the issue in a rather positive way: an elegant man/lady is getting into a new car demonstrating him/her success story. At the same time the commercial brings to light the fact that the incomes of different social groups are distributed in an unequal way, which cannot go unnoticed by most people and in which way its is evidently comprehended. The correlation between close/distant and native/alien manifests itself in the inversion of utopian projection: commercials of juices called “My Garden”, “Self”, and “My Family,” the native (own). Thus the native is emphasized as a subject of a great value, while the alien is placed in a subordinate (and sometimes even negative) position.
The commercials establish a balance between the mode of ‘must’ constructions signifying the world of hypothetical prescription, on one hand, and the mode of infinitives signifying the world of opportunities, on the other. The syntax of TV commercials based on imperatives and infinitive constructions evokes incantation practice. The resemblance between a commercial and a cliche text of archaic culture can be explained by the fact that commercials belong to the mass-media area of production, which is impregnated by archaic schemes of thinking. The incantation syntax of commercials reveals in a reduplicate way a motif arrangement based on a principle of recurrence. It is also found in framed and symmetrical compositions as well as in a regular set of frames. To impress the viewer, the texts of commercials operate with some basic rhetoric figures such as metonymy, metaphor and parallelism widely used in folklore texts as well.
We are going to focus on a particular subject - namely, on the figure of parallelism from the viewpoint of mythology and tradition. It should be said that parallelism activates the meditative nature of TV commercials, and the main reason for these meditatively accepted messages lies in the conditions of TV perception: the commercial clips are usually slotted into regular advertisement breaks between highly watched TV programs, like movies, talk-shows etc. Thus the commercials are intended to be perceived in a passive way and through subconscious channels of mind. The perception is intensified by reiterating the same clip many times. The meditative nature of commercials makes them similar to texts of inclination and of ecstatic exorcism practice.
The semantics of inclination implied in the commercials manifests itself not only in some particular fragments of clips as a text but also through their general meaning as well. Magic implicated in a commercial is elicited by means of appropriate words hinting at the magical features of the advertised item. For example, one of commercials advertising cookies is accompanied with the words “Prince with a magic formula”. The semantics of magic is entailed in the food brand entitled “Maggi”, and this brand name is supported by the words of the song accompanying a Russian TV yogurt ad (Miracle of the yogurt): “… generously flowing magic”. The motif of the archaic past lies at the heart of metaphorical shifts in some clips. Thus the words ‘it’s time for serious business’ in a commercial of one private bank is pictured as the stone-works or building of an ancient temple, mausoleum etc. The viewer can see a hardworking bricklayer building a massive brick wall, some masons erecting an ancient-times stone temple etc. The images stand for a symbol of economic stability which resists for unsteadiness of the times. In this way the commercial has a intertwined signification: time=money overlaps with time=change. The sarcastic irony of the underlying theme is quite evident as long as the viewer cannot help taking into account the rate of inflation at the actual times. In this ad one can also observe a mason symbolism  which refers to a wide-spread low-classes anti-Semite idea that Jews have captured control over the whole financial capital in new Russia. In this way the traditional folk self-irony and the local prejudices get intertwined in a new social context.
Besides the realm of magic, the archaic semantics of present-day Russian commercials manifests itself in mythological motifs of the main elements in their contrapositions: water versus fire or heat versus cold etc. For example, a commercial based on the imperative Add some fire! aims to advertise a beverage (=water), such as a national brand of beer or lemonade; it pictures a group of excited young men inciting each other to breathtaking jumps and some other acrobatic feats. The contraposition fire/water covers the realm of native/alien as well. We should also mention some traditional identifications in the context of the body code earth=body. On a semantic level there is a strong sense of equanimity between corporeality and earth fertility, typical for traditional Slavic culture. In this study we do not intend to discuss erotic connotations of some commercials in order not to deviate from the main topic. Meanwhile a number of characteristic topic in this field should be mentioned as long as they reveal some important features of the issue.
The mythology of earth can be detected in the prevalence of low parts of body motifs. A number of ads referring to fertile parts of human’s corporeality in Russian commercials is quite impressive. Among them there are baby pampers, lady’s pads, intimate hygiene detergents as well as wide spread in recent times ads of remedies for male sexual problems. The way in which the above mentioned goods are advertised demonstrates the predominance of masculine discourse in the nowadays Russian mentality. Thus, even toothpaste is pictured with sexuality in its connotation: on a screen one can see two attractive girls inside a mouth who are cleaning enormous teeth; in their conversation they hint on sexual semantics of their job using a pair of words girlfriends/pillow that forms a rhythm in Russian (podruzhka/podushka). The masculine discourse as such appears in commercials of beer: the clips are mainly based on screening a separate men’s society proclaiming some corresponding values: they are away from women, they are brave, strong and aggressive.
As for some other aspects of corporeal semantics, the motif of touch should be mentioned. A touch or body contact is one of the most ancient kinds of sensation, which is commonly used in contemporary Russian commercials. A touch, slip, softness and smoothness (applied to the skin or any other surface) originate from the child's emotional experience of the mother’s body. In the same way, the infantile nature of commercials implies the lack of distinction between an object and a wish, and the imperative ‘return to native’ occurs as a wish of a baby who does not differentiate between his mother and her donations. Thus the earth-mother occurs in the same way in TV commercials as in the archaic mind.
From the historical viewpoint the visual component of commercials derives from signboards or bygone barkers. In some deeper layers it goes back to hieratic compositions of ancient art, especially old Russian icons, in which a message was fully defined by an act of nomination by which the semiotic status of the initial name was raised. The verbal component is closely tied with the visual component, and, as it is based on nomination, it elicits a structure of fairy tale from which it originates.
On the narrative level one finds the motif of a magic mediator, which indicates a culture keeping the memory of the genre of the fairy tale alive. In most cases commercial clips contain a fairy tale plot as an element of their narration. The magic mediator plays the main role in a following logic deduction: if A, then -B, but with the help of C +B appears. Various objects can function as the mediator C: Dove soap, medical drugs, Fa deodorant, chewing gum, or Indesit washing machines (the commercials say: rely on them!). This transformation is developed in a framework of fundamental contrapositions with conventional evaluation semantics: heat transforms into cold (and vice versa), the old into the new, the participated (divided) into the whole, the soft into the hard. The realm of reality intertwines with the reality of aspirations: the majority of commercials on breath-freshening pastilles, chewing gum and deodorants are based on this scheme. An alternative to a magic mediator is articulated in a way that also refers the viewer to the world of supernatural. For instance, in the ad of “Impaza” (a sexual problems medicine), the latter is set against a sorceress and a voice behind the screen pronounces: “Now you don’t need to go to a foreteller”. In the contraposition the product and a magic force make level and in this way the both are equalized .
Russian TV commercials are also similar to traditional Slavic incantations in their narrative structure. One should point out first of all the motif of reciprocal movement. Presenting things in recurring movement, commercials compensate for symbolic damage and return things to their original and positively marked state. Going in circles in time and space, a shift forward from the old and damaged to the new (=young) and good or, vice versa, a shift back from the present to the old as an initially sacred purity are carried out. There are particularly many commercials based on the scheme of returning back. A hair dye is advertised through the image of restoring the initial hair color; some medical drugs are advertised on the base of returning to the initial chemical balance of the body (for instance, a calcium balance: care for those who used to care for you). A commercial of a pyramid-shaped package of milk is based on the same pattern: the picture takes the viewer back to the nostalgic memory of Soviet times when milk used to be packed in this way. The accompanying voice says: every new thing is a well forgotten old one. The motif of restoring an initial harmony that was broken in the past is defined by the transformation in the contraposition broken versus whole: the commercial of Moment Glue demonstrates a broken tea cup and the way it can be fixed instantly (in a moment). In the commercial of Dove Soap, one see a lady’s wrinkled skin followed by a picture of the smooth soft skin of the same lady, and this image signifies restored youth.
The same cyclic development defines the duality of clean/unclean. In present-day Russian commercials, it is formed by a set of plots in which the clean as the best corresponds to speedy and effective results, which reveals the values typical for the so-called hot culture, well-known to cultural anthropology.⁴ Meanwhile taking into account the very act of depuration as well as the objects being purified one can detect some archaic meanings of reinstalling the initial purity as ascending to origins, no matter whether it deals with advertising of pottery and fabric or of toothpaste which makes teeth clean, white and strong again.
Cleanness (=purity) is also extended to a quality of being organic (= back to nature, to the purity of the universe). In an advertisement of apple juice (the brand My Garden) one can find some biblical references (the apple as a sign of Paradise). In the same way, a positively marked inversion in commercials develops the ideology of national superiority according to which local Russian food is guaranteed to be of the higher quality in comparison to imported products. On the screen a viewer watches consumers of the product (apple juice “My garden”) at the idyll background picture of happy family life or grandchildren visiting their loving Granny. “It’s from my garden!” – announces the Granny proudly caring a basket full of fruit into the room, and the children accept his words with excitement. In indirect way the product occurs to be set against some imported items of that sort. The clip promotes the idea that a progression in the backward direction, i.e. from the alien back to the native (own) and from the new back to the old, may bring good results. Here, the commercial makers appeal to a mass audience, leaning on a broad segment of the population which longs for the stability of the Soviet past.
The inclination scheme can also be found in a figure of amplification typical for Russian commercials. One can see a lot of various augmentations (supplements) in commercials: hair adds to hair (the commercial of a volume shampoo), success adds to success (the new car of a prosperous businessman makes him even more prosperous), information adds to information. The latter is present in a reference-book advertised by one of the most popular mobile phone providers (“Beeline”): the more service phone numbers the provider offers to you the more happy and successful your life is. The supplements can be seen in quantity outcome as a percentage gain of tooth quality (a toothpaste commercial) or in the motto “small victories every day” developed by a commercial of Maggi soup. It is through the formula of inverted augmentation or decrease that some motifs of extermination of evil can be comprehended. They include clips on detergents, bactericide chemicals and pain-killing drugs. In these clips, the decrease is represented as a plurality which, after some actions, goes down to the zero level. It is worth noticing that cabala inclinations are arranged in the same way and that Slavic incantation formulas have a lot in common with it⁵. The evil is represented in commercials as a dispersed and multiplied substance, a mass of insects, bacteria, spermatozoa etc. It corresponds to some folk and mythological beliefs that a dispersed mass (of insects in particular) signifies the demonic world⁶. The image of demons or evil may not necessarily be marked in a negative way, yet its links to alcohol reveal the negative semantics lying at the root of Russian mentality. It can be illustrated by the clip in which bottles of beer in ranks aggressively encroach upon TV viewers like a hostile enemy army. The military allusions (in fact, anti-military ones) imply anti-totalitarian message: in this way the commercial both points out the changes in ideological orientation of the society and reveals the inclination formula.
The observations on archaic layers in commercials can also be applied to every other kind of advertisement. The specifics of commercials consists in their capacity to involve the viewer in a performance which ritual meanings are provided by the interactive nature of TV in general. A TV viewer’s eye is focused on the movement of a monotone impersonal action. Whatever it deals with - a pouring juice, a bottle lid jumping up and down or a fast car driving along a desert - all these images activate a meditative condition of mind and open the locks of the subconscious. While it can be said about commercials in general as far as the monotone visual action aims to hold on a viewer’s attention, in Russian clips this mode is used to such a full extend that it exceeds any genre reasons: extremely long plots and a chain of repeated actions typical for these commercials make their fairy-tale cumulative basis more transparent.
The visual effects on which commercials are based, such as exchanging fore- and background, foreshortening, a play with codes and media (combination cartoons and computer game stylistics with fiction film esthetics) - trace back to the Russian avant-garde poetics with its mediating interventions and elements of archaic culture. The imperative mode so typical for Russian commercials may associate with Khlebnikov's and Pasternak's poetry, where imperative constructions are highly used (Khlebnikov: O zasmeytes’, smehachi; Pasternak: Ne vvodi dushi v obman, / Oglushi, zaves’, zabey and Pomeshay mne, poprobuy. Pridi, pokusis’ potushit’ / Etot pristup pechali). The issue of genetic ties between 20th century Russian poetry and folklore inclination texts has been discussed in numerous studies. The poetic components of commercials in the light of magic texts have been explored much less. Nevertheless, this issue is of particular interest for considering contemporary Russian mentality in a period of transition.
Along with avant-garde poetics, commercials have another significant origin: uneducated or naive art. Located between the cliche texts of traditional culture and professional cinema, the commercials demonstrate their links to naive art poetics and a lower baroque heritage. The baroque poetics penetrate into the very core of the commercials as serial pictures resembling the bygone Russian 18th-century popular prints (‘lubok’). The baroque features manifest themselves in such visual stylistic features of commercials as reconciling and contraposition of orthogonal projections and perpendicular foreshortening, kinetic spatial breakthroughs, pleonasms and amplifications of compressed visual details, etc. Commercials all over the world are impregnated with the hedonism of the consumer society. The hedonistic prospect through the TV eye/window of Russian commercials is especially apparent, revealing a drastic discrepancy between the rich and poor parts of population. To some extent it corresponds to the typical baroque idea of memento mori in its inverted hedonistic form.
TV commercials can be considered to be a sort of art and a discourse on an object (good) in its pragmatic dimension. As an esthetic object, commercials develop their self-referential function, while, as a discourse on an consumer good, they take a lot from archaic rites. From the viewpoint of sociology, this combination as a special social message can be interpreted as society’s penchant to prosperity or, vice versa, as a sort of latent acknowledge of the imperfection of a participated (divided) world which has affected society with its blemish. In the commercials the Russian society is comprehended as alien to itself and detached from sacred purity, and for this reason appealing to the realm of the sacred.
Summing up, post-perestroika Russian TV commercials reflect a complexity of the transitional period and reveal a great ambiguity within the Russian contemporary mentality. As a result, the general semantics of commercials (globalization stereotypes) becomes intertwined with local tradition (archaic stereotypes) creating an area of highly contradictory sign process. TV commercials valorize an archaic discourse that manifests itself as a traditional incantation text. Intended for the consumer mentality and oriented primarily towards imperatives, modern incantations create a virtual projection, typical for magic formulas that are meant to bridge the sacred and profane worlds. This feature harbors a utopian way of thinking with its opposition of a faraway alien and a familiar native. The stress is put on the native as the positive pole of the world. The structure of many commercials shows their profound ties to myth: the improvement in a product’s quality is articulated as a motion from new to old, from dirty to clean, from fragmentary to whole. According to archaic beliefs, this is the way the world reestablishes its original sacred purity. In the contemporary Russian context, TV commercials bring the past and the future into the realm of the vaguely defined present. Although they are presented as agents of the free-market economy, commercials convey a paradoxical confrontation with Russian ‘wild’ capitalism and the western style of globalization in general. During the present transitional period, commercials articulate themselves as newcomers that have been  adjusted to the local discourse.
The research of this sort could be possible only based on the stuff of relatively early stage of TV commercial in Russia since it was time when the genre form was not ironed by professional skills and the local mentality could come to evidence. In recent years the TV clips have grown more and more alike to international commercials and to great extend they lost their specifics. Nevertheless there is a layer in the poetics of Russian TV ads that still keeps resisting to be unified and meet globalization standards. That is the layer of magic semantics. One of the main reasons for this steadiness may owes to a popular idea that Russia has its own destiny in historical process and should develop its specific road. Whatever ideological context the TV commercials could be regarded in the fact is that they stay highly relevant both to Russian cultural heritage as well as to the ‘post-perestroika’ disturbances.

Notes