Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture (Culture and Society after Socialism) by Eliot Borenstein


Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture (Culture and Society after Socialism)
Title : Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture (Culture and Society after Socialism)
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0801474035
ISBN-10 : 9780801474033
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 288
Publication : First published November 1, 2007

Perestroika and the end of the Soviet Union transformed every aspect of life in Russia, and as hope began to give way to pessimism, popular culture came to reflect the anxiety and despair felt by more and more Russians. Free from censorship for the first time in Russia's history, the popular culture industry (publishing, film, and television) began to disseminate works that featured increasingly explicit images and descriptions of sex and violence. In Overkill , Eliot Borenstein explores this lurid and often-disturbing cultural landscape in close, imaginative readings of such works as You're Just a Slut, My Dear! ( Ty prosto shliukha, dorogaia! ), a novel about sexual slavery and illegal organ harvesting; the Nympho trilogy of books featuring a Chechen-fighting sex addict; and the Mad Dog and Antikiller series of books and films recounting, respectively, the exploits of the Russian Rambo and an assassin killing in the cause of justice. Borenstein argues that the popular cultural products consumed in the post-perestroika era were more than just diversions; they allowed Russians to indulge their despair over economic woes and everyday threats. At the same time, they built a notion of nationalism or heroism that could be maintained even under the most miserable of social conditions, when consumers felt most powerless. For Borenstein, the myriad depictions of deviance in pornographic and also detectiv fiction, with their patently excessive and appalling details of social and moral decay, represented the popular culture industry's response to the otherwise unimaginable scale of Russia's national collapse. "The full sense of collapse," he writes, "required a panoptic view that only the media and culture industry were eager to provide, amalgamating national collapse into one master narrative that would then be readily available to most individuals as a framework for understanding their own suffering and their own fears."

Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture (Culture and Society after Socialism) Reviews

  • Beau Samples

    Eliot Borenstein’s Overkill offers a look into Russian culture following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Just as the title suggests, from a Western viewpoint, Russian culture overkilled nearly all aspects of pop culture, pornography, fashion, music, art and literature. Borenstein shies away from making cliché statements and cites very specific arguments that add to the validity of his statement, especially regarding sexual desire, male masculinity and Western specter, the naked female form as a weapon in men’s hands and prostitution among many topics. Desire and passion that had so long been bottled up in the Soviet Union came screaming forth during the 1990s. Russians were facing an identity crisis and subcultures that formed in a binary cultural system became “to Soviet culture what Satanism is to Christianity” (p. 202). Chernukha, which in Russian means filth, darkness, pessimism and misery (p. 11), is placed as a backdrop in this book and describes the style of films that Russians relate to and are in which they are depicted. With the ushering in of the Putin regime nearly a decade and a half ago little has changed in regards to Chernukha, but there has been trends shifting to emphasis on order, domestic harmony and structure (p. 238).
    Overkill has numerous strengths that are posited throughout the book. Vivid descriptions are found within the pages, down to describing the price and popularity of a dildo modeled after Jeff Stryker’s erect penis as well as descriptions of violent entertainment and popular literary characters like police detective Nastia Kamenskaia. These descriptions add strength and validity to Borenstein’s argument that Russians have overkilled popular culture, especially in the 1990s, when it was not restricted following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book addresses the Russian problem of an identity crisis following the collapse of the USSR. Borenstein states: “Thanks to Soviet power (which Erofeyev himself admits was instituted by male Russians), the Russian man has lost the honor and freedom that are the hallmarks of true manhood” (48). Overcompensation has been a theme since the Soviet collapse due to the seven decades of emasculation Russian men faced. Borenstein’s book helps to explain Vladimir Putin’s obsession with showing himself doing “manly” things such as Judo, riding horseback shirtless and shooting guns. The book adequately addresses the subtitle “Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture” and the vulgarness of the Russian erotica business when Borenstein cited Ogonek, “which, before the late nineties, could normally be counted on to support any attempts at free expression, devoted a cover story in September 1995 to the dismal state of post-Soviet erotica, which had descended into vulgarity and violence (62).
    This book is important now because of current events occurring in Ukraine, as well as the masculinity crisis still occurring in Russia. The author addresses the heart of the issue; the Soviet State made the elite the only ones able to express themselves, thus emasculating the masses. The book mainly focuses on film and literature, and its argument would have been strengthened if it discussed music and dissident groups, such as Pussy Riot. A sense of inferiority and wonder about the West drives Russian’s obsession with sex and violence. Violence is what they are seeking in Ukraine, and what they sought during the Chechen Wars. This is the first book of this style that I have read and it is an aspect of the Russian identity I did not know a lot about. Borenstein dove straight to the heart of the issue; the Soviet system did not allow such propaganda, so once available en masse Russians where overwhelmed with options and took pornography and violence to new levels.