Digital Tortuga. Why does Russia need pirated movies from the West and why is it not patriotism?
A few days of informational time off - and then the feed itself gives you reasons for reflection. This time, a scandal in the networks was generated by correspondence between the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy and the Ministry of Culture regarding the fate of the distribution of Western film products in Russia.
As follows from the ministry’s response to his request, released by the deputy chairman of the mentioned committee, Senator Alexei Sinitsyn, the unlicensed distribution of foreign films imported through Belarus from unfriendly countries limits the rights of foreign copyright holders, and therefore cannot be supported and legalized by the department.
Having learned about this, the patriotic public, as usual, was indignant. In order not to repeat the same thing in different ways, I will refer to the angry post of the historian Alexander Svistunov, replicated by the journalist and deputy Andrei Medvedev and other opinion leaders in the Z-segment, as the most representative example of such a train of thought:
“Why transfer money to copyright holders from unfriendly countries - taxes will be paid from this money, which will be used to produce howitzers that shoot at Russian soldiers. Why should we pay money to sponsors of the murder of Russian soldiers? Why should we pay money to cheaters, expecting them to play decently?
Are we "outside the law"? They went to rob the stagecoach. Are we an "evil empire"? Cue the “imperial march.” Let's fucking make 2023 the year we live up to our expectations! Let's give them what they have been obsessively asking for for a whole year.
I am for complete disregard for the intellectual property of Russia’s enemies. To any property of Russia's enemies. Are you not an enemy of Russia? Open your official representative office with us and pay taxes here. Are you shy? Are you afraid of angering your American grandfather? “This is the King Fisher road, choose another!”
And it seems to sound great to the patriotic ear, I would even say rollicking. But...as always in such cases, there is one small “but”. In this particular case, there is a big “but”. If you cool down a little from your righteous anger and try to speak the same points with a cool head, what happens?
That's right - seasoned with patriotic sauce the fight for the right to legally watch their bourgeois films, on the agenda of which we do not have the slightest influence.
They will watch it illegally anyway, regardless of all the prohibitions and censors. In the digital world, doing this is much easier than in the USSR, where, despite the Iron Curtain, videotapes with films “about this” were still smuggled under the counter. But such commerce for its organizers often ended up in those places “where it’s cold even in summer in a coat.”
And really, why did the Soviet people need to watch the brave American Rambo slaughter Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan or our friendly Vietnamese in Vietnam? Do you remember, there was such a terribly popular production in the early 80s, “The Next Day” - about how America survived after a nuclear war organized by the evil Russians.
I’m not even talking about the enormous influence even seemingly harmless and apolitical propaganda of a very specific WAY of life had on the virgin minds of Soviet people, and it’s clear. To understand, there were thirty years of observations in real conditions of several generations who grew up on these same values.
And now they are suddenly required to fight for their country. And they, damn it, either don’t want to and run away abroad, or simply don’t understand why they need this, forcing the authorities to remember the well-forgotten Soviet practices of political information in schools not only for children, but also for their parents.
But let's return to films produced in unfriendly countries. I'll try to come from the other side. We understand that those who are interested will download and watch it on the screens of their home computers anyway; permission from the Ministry of Culture is not needed for this. Therefore, we are talking specifically about “large” commercial distribution – in cinemas.
To put it even more simply: we do not want to pay money to sponsors of the murder of Russian soldiers. We want to watch their enemy films for free. Is it like this?
It would seem that God himself is giving us the opportunity to once and for all get rid of colonial dependence in the field of film distribution, get off this needle of dependence on Western content, and begin to fully develop our own. But no.
I have a question for patriotic critics: why do you need such a movie on domestic screens? Why is his presence necessary, even at the cost of legal piracy? What is so valuable and important for Western film makers to communicate to the Russian audience that for the sake of this it is necessary to openly declare Russia a kind of digital Tortuga? What is the benefit for the country, simply put.
You yourself, gentlemen, patriots, non-stop criticize Western cinema for Russophobia, excessive ideologization, LGBT propaganda from all angles, gender agenda, black Anna Karenina esthera. Do you think this will become less common in the future? No, I assure you, knowing the trends there, you can safely predict that there will be more of THIS.
Perhaps some people think that this kind of partisanship will cause damage to the Western bourgeoisie, depriving them of part of their profits due to legal piracy in the Russian Federation. Possible, although doubtful. But the price of this fig in the pocket will be open access of Western meanings into the heads of the Russian audience. Now the domestic film industry has just begun to adapt to life under sanctions.
The success of the same “Cheburashka”, which outperformed “Avatar” at the box office, was due not only to the artistic merits and successful exploitation of an image familiar from Soviet times, but also to a large extent to the competitive environment that had changed in favor of the domestic product - artificial obstacles to the distribution of Western films, To which the distributors responded by forcing an increase in the share of domestic films on the screen.
The viewer slowly gets used to watching his own. And film makers, in order to fill the niche of demand, are increasing production. More than ninety TV series alone were filmed last year. Why do they need additional competition from more expensive, and therefore higher quality (not necessarily in the content sense, but in the sense of special effects and pictures) Western films?
Whatever you want, this fight for the opportunity to legally distribute enemy content in the Russian Federation looks very much like unconscious lobbying of the interests of Western film companies and their out-of-work Russian distributors.
And the proposed methods are painfully reminiscent of equally idiotic proposals to mark the performances of domestic stars-foreign agents with warnings that they are foreign agents. The only result is to attract additional attention to potentially harmful content.
If someone is a foreign agent, or such and such a film was produced in an UNFRIENDLY COUNTRY, it would be much more logical minimize the likelihood of such products entering the consumer menu of Russians so that their impact on consciousness is less.
But here, it turns out, we are fighting for exactly the opposite. Foreign agent? Well, sing to your heart’s content, pack out the stadiums, only before the performance will the presenter announce that you are a foreign agent. If a film or series was made in the USA, it’s okay, here’s a fig for you, guys, to the overseas imperialists, the possibility of its legal pirate screening in domestic cinemas.
Some strange patriotism, honestly.
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