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culturalsociologyblog-blog · 7 years ago

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Pussy Riot: from blasphemy to prophesy and all the way back

By Alina Pavlova

What could be wrong with an innocent women’s prayer? A lot when it’s a punk prayer preformed by Pussy Riot, one of the most scandalous and cherished by the Western media for political activism punk rock bands. Upon a controversial re-election of Vladimir Putin in 2012, political freedom in Russia was deteriorating. The fellow country (wo)(men), who were let to enjoy some openness for a while (remember the band called t.A.T.u?), were yet again constricted by the hegemony of the corrupt power. Investing heavily in Orthodox Church (Maloverjan, 2011), the government emphasized traditionalist views and docility from its citizens.

Many citizens’ rights, including women’s rights, were sacrificed again, let alone the rights of the LGBT community. With such developments, one did not have to wait too long for Pussy Riot’s performance. On the 21st of February, 2012, the band, comprising of 5 punker ladies’, appeared in the main Russian church, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Covered in colorful balaclavas the artists started to jump around the altar and pray pretentiously, while the action was recorded for a consequent production of a video clip. In the video the inappropriateness of the action can be seen from the disapproval of the actions by the church’s clergy, who tried to disallow the deed. Yet, despite the church’s stuff’ effort, Pussy Riot succeeded in collecting the necessary material, producing a thematic song titled “Mother of God, Drive Putin Away”.

Following the distribution of the recorded performance, the band members were arrested by Russian state for “hooliganism driven by religious hatred” (Associated Press, 2012). And, while the Western press was shaken by the violation of human rights (Amnesty International, 2012), the band was loathed by the majority of Russian people (Romir, 2012). Consequently, this paradox of differences in perceptions lends to a question: Why Russians did not agree with Pussy Riot while the West did? To answer this question, I will try to decipher the Pussy Riot action from 3 different perspectives: the Russian audience, Putin’s government, and the West.

Pussy Riot Mythologies

To better understand what the punk prayer was about, the mythology perspective can prove useful. Grounded in De Saussure’s (1964) study of signs, or semiology, a myth is studied as idea-in-form, a second-order semiological system. Thus, while De Saussure’s linguistic theory holds a sound-image as a signifier, a concept as a signified and a word representing a sign, the myth, as explained by Barthes (1999), is a meta-language in which the linguistic sign becomes a signifier. Moreover, unlike De Saussure’s study of signs, which mainly concerns language, the meta-language of myth can take different forms expressed in, but not limited to, the language itself, music, photography, painting or performed acts such as Pussy Riot’s punk prayer.

This conceptual framework can be best explained in a graphical form. Take, for example, the title: “Mother of God, Drive Putin Away”. At a first sight, this sounds a little bit odd. How could Mother of God literally banish Putin?

To start from Saussure, the Mother of God can be depicted as something like this:

On the other hand, when we look at the same structure as an idea-in-form, the Mother of God as a sign becomes a form of signifier for a signified concept of Femininity, producing a signification by correlating the signifier and signified.

Likewise, Putin in this context will signify Power. Hence, the notion is clear – the Femininity is to banish Power. However, the second-level signifier is not as clear-cut and can imply a number of concepts. For some, Mother of God can also mean a concept of Devotion and Putin a concept Independence. Hence, unlike the arbitrary nature of De Saussure’s sign, the myth’s signification is not random. It operates in a certain time in history and is appropriated (Barthes, 1999, p.118) by a particular group which can interpret the signification as a natural relationship (Ibid, p.130). This, in turn, can explain the different perception of the Pussy Riot act by a different myth-consumer.

Punk Prayer Encoding

To analyze the perception, a good starting point would be in analyzing the preferred meaning Pussy Riot actually wanted to encode (Hall, 1980). According to Barthes (1999), the producer of the myth focuses on an empty signifier. Therefore, Pussy Riot have started with the concepts which important to them and for which the band stands (femininity, power abuse by government and church, lack of freedom (Pussy Riot, 2012)), and tried to find an appropriate signifier. As such, Mother of God was encoded to signify Femininity and Putin to signify Power (Hall, 1980). The act in itself, singing and dancing in the church, further signified the disobedience to dominant power with some cathartic distortion of a prayer to eradicate gender inequality and the corrupt government’s support of the corrupt church. Even the whole set up of a band, the punk rocker girls dressed as a rainbow, portrays an image of non-conformity to gender roles and supports the oppressed minorities (Hebdige, 1988). During encoding, the band relied on some basic assumptions about the audience (Hall, 1980). This is exactly what went wrong.

Russian Audiences get reminded of Stalin

By and large, the Russian audiences have not accepted the Pussy Riot’s church performance, decoding the message “in a globally contrary way” (Hall, 1980) to what Pussy Riot were encoding. Even the population which is opposed to Putinism felt that the act was the matter out of place (Douglas, 1990). As Barthes (1999) described, this perception is situational. Here, the disagreement mainly stems from the perspective of religion. Drawing from history, Russian population religiosity was heavily suppressed by the Communist regime (Prozorov, 2013). When Stalin was in power, the churches were destroyed and the church’ bells were used to produce war machinery. With the fall of Communism, the Orthodox Christianity, which was the main religion before the Red October, had a massive come back. Unlike the West, which became more agnostic, Russians were jumping on a spirituality train which they have missed a time ago. As such, the punk band performance in the church, where the clergy tries to protect the sacred, in most post-soviet citizens’ views can be equated to the humiliation of the church by Stalin and blasphemy. Quite the opposite to what Pussy Riot intended.

The Putin-mythm

Just like Pussy Riot, Russian government also acknowledged high significance of the Church for an average Russian. Consequently, in recent years, the institutions of government and church have been heavily affiliated. As such, the government took the church as a mechanism of “soft power” to control its people, the point which Pussy Riot also emphasized (Smyth & Soboleva, 2013). However, as we saw, an ordinary citizen did not connect the church with the corrupt power, but more with the freedom of choice. By supporting the church, Russian government symbolized this freedom (Sharafutdinova, 2014). And, as a matter of timing, this myth had frozen in people’s minds, “establishing eternal reference of a concept” (Barthes, 1999, p. 124). This played out in favor of the Russian government imprisoning Pussy Riots, creating yet another myth of cleansing of devil and protecting the people from the seizure of freedom to the questioned by Pussy Riot religious belief (Hall, 1980). In can be said that in Russian society the dominant-hegemonic position of the government propaganda was fed (Ibid).

Pussy Riot & the Hegemony of the West

Where the Pussy Riot act played as a prophesy, however, is in the West. Having a different history and being a center of scientific revolution, the fall of religion in the West has come voluntarily and hasn’t been so dramatic. Additionally, the overall Western stability and freedom of press allows the society to tackle such issues as gender and power much better than it is in Russia. As such, Russia is heavily observed by the Western press watchdog as a bad example. By sympathizing with the Russian population, the Western press aims at educating its own citizens about gender inequality and flags the domestic issues in political sphere (Weij, Berkers & Engelbert, 2015). Thus, as soon as Pussy Riot were interrogated in the court with possibility of imprisonment, this not only was reported as human rights violation instance, of which in the world is plenty[1], but also as a feminism and freedom of speech act. And, although without a direct link to the dictator the Western discourse could not form an explicit political advocacy (Ibid), the message still operated inside the dominant code and was correctly decoded (Hall, 1980), using Pussy Riot in Hebdige’s (1988) sense of “object as image”.

Mythical Evolution

In the concluding comments, I would like to add that the legitimacy of the protests lay within the society which will legitimize it. Whether Pussy Riot were speaking to Russian audiences, miscalculating their background, or were they targeting the attention of the West, we won’t know. Yet, when Russian press covered the court process and the custodial sentence, people were able to sympathies with Pussy Riot (Bernstein, 2013), creating some oppositional thoughts within the hegemonic legitimacy (Hall’s negotiation code). As such, we could witness the myth as meta-language evolve (De Saussure, 1964).

Lyrics of Punk Prayer

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away Рut Putin away, put Putin away

Black robe, golden epaulettes All parishioners crawl to bow The phantom of liberty is in heaven Gay-pride sent to Siberia in chains

The head of the KGB, their chief saint Leads protesters to prison under escort In order not to offend His Holiness Women must give birth and love

Crap, crap, the Lord's crap! Crap, crap, the Lord's crap!

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist Become a feminist, become a feminist

The Church's praise of rotten dictators The cross-bearer procession of black limousines A teacher-preacher will meet you at school Go to class - bring him money!

Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin Bitch, better believe in God instead The belt of the Virgin can't replace mass-meetings Mary, Mother of God, is with us in protest!

References

Barthes, R. (1999). Mythologies. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, pp. 109-130, 148-156. (‘Myth today’)

Bernstein, A. (2013). An inadvertent sacrifice: Body politics and sovereign power in the Pussy Riot affair. Critical Inquiry, 40(1), 220-241.

De Saussure, F. (1964). Course in general linguistics. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, pp. 6-17, 65-78.

Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. In: Hall, S., Hobson, D., Lowe, A., and Willis, P., Eds. Culture, media, language. London: Hutchinson, pp. 128-138.

Hebdige, D. (1988). Hiding in the light: On images and things. London: Routledge, pp. 77-115. (‘Object as image: The Italian scooter cycle’)

Romir (2012). Pussy Riot act in the church: Audience perceptions. Romir Research Holding. Retrieved from: http://romir.ru/studies/328_1334174400/

Pussy Riot (2012). Панк-Молебен "Богородица, Путина Прогони" В Храме Христа Спасителя. [Punk Prayer “Mother of God, Drive Putin Away” in Cathedral of Christ the Saviour]. Lifejournal. Retrieved from: http://pussy-riot.livejournal.com/12442.html

Prozorov, S. (2013). Pussy Riot and the politics of profanation: Parody, performativity, veridiction. Political Studies, 62(4), 766-783.

Sharafutdinova, G. (2014). The Pussy Riot affair and Putin's démarche from sovereign democracy to sovereign morality. Nationalities Papers, 42(4), 615-621.

Smyth, R., & Soboleva, I. (2014). Looking beyond the economy: Pussy Riot and the Kremlin's voting coalition. Post-Soviet Affairs, 30(4), 257-275.

Other references

(consulted but not included)

Amnesty International (2017). Pussy Riot. Retrieved from: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/issues/pussy-riot

Astrasheuskaya, N. (2012). Russia's Pussy Riot spurn chance to cash in on fame. Reuters UK. Retrieved from: http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-russia-pussyriot-brand/russias-pussy-riot-spurn-chance-to-cash-in-on-fame-idUKBRE8AL0GH20121122

Lally, K. & Englund, W. (2012). Putin wins election as Russian president; opponents claim widespread fraud. The Washington Post. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russians-voting--and-watching/2012/03/04/gIQA3j6CqR_story.html?utm_term=.0658cc40fc6c

Levada (2012). Акции Групп “Femen” И “Pussy Rioт” [Acts of “Femen” and “Pussy Riot” bands]. Centre of Analytics of Yuri Levada. Retrieved from: https://www.levada.ru/2012/03/22/aktsii-grupp-femen-i-pussy-riot/

Lynskey, D. (2012). Pussy Riot: activists, not pin-ups. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/dec/20/pussy-riot-activists-not-pin-ups

Maloveryan, Y. (2011). Несчитаные богатства Русской православной церкви. [The unaccountable wealth of Russian Orthodox Church]. BBC Russia. Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.com/russian/russia/2011/08/110820_russian_orthodox_budget

Reiter, S., Napalkova, A. & Golunov, I (2016). Расследование РБК: на что живет церковь. [Investigation of RBC: what does the church live on?] Retrieved from: http://www.rbc.ru/investigation/society/24/02/2016/56c84fd49a7947ecbff1473d

Vasilyev, V. & Grigoryev, A. (2014). Pussy Riot в США: причины популярности. [Pussy Riot in USA: reasons for popularity]. Golos Ameriki [Voice of America]. Retrieved from: https://www.golos-ameriki.ru/a/pussy-riot/1845909.html

[1] Take for example Indonesia female police officers “virginity test”

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