Igor Mantsov. Outsider

Outsider
Igor Mantsov

Publication date: June 28, 2004

The radio broadcast a story that puzzled me. A concert by Paul McCartney took place on Palace Square in St. Petersburg. The next day, the director of the Hermitage, Boris Piotrovsky, broadcast his horror to journalists. It turns out that the sound was so good and destructive that the walls of the Winter Palace shook. In addition, light bulbs exploded, antique plates burst, alarms went off, and royalty, great shadows of yesteryear, were seen in the corridors and on the staircases. They were angry.

I spent three or four minutes figuring out my relationship to the plot. Who am I for? For McCartney? Yes, in general, no, I’m tired of it. Who and why invites a living corpse over and over again? Then for Piotrovsky, for the Winter Palace? Moreover, no. When the Manezh burned, they shouted that this was an irreparable loss. Then they whispered that they would continue to invest capital in this simple way. If this is the post-Soviet economy (and this is precisely what the post-Soviet economy is: destroyed to the ground, restored at exorbitant prices), then McCartney’s sabotage seems to have been planned by us, our own. Why weren’t Piotrovsky warned? A person worries about a bread-and-butter job and turns gray.

But maybe I sympathized with the funny people from the media who are used to keeping track of imaginable and inconceivable jokes ? Not at all, gray personalities devoid of imagination. They could have easily included me in the situation with wording like: “Would we have had a chance to plant a shabby visiting star if the historical façade of the Winter Palace had collapsed?!” Or: “How long will the guardians of the Russian imperial past stand in the way of the liberation counterculture?!” However, the funnymen have become obscenely correct. Their news from Palace Square is structurally no different from what was called “News from the Fields” twenty years ago.

In short, after carefully observing myself, I discovered signs of so-called alienation , a socio-psychological phenomenon that we heard so much about during the years of stagnation. Which we dreamed of trying for teeth. What is called “waiting for godot”, “zabriskie point”, “stranger” and, of course, “nausea” , misunderstood in youth. Reprinted: on coated paper and Asian dialect. “Yes, we are Scythians...” Exactly, alienated Scythians . An impossible psychological phenomenon, a unique achievement in the post-Soviet space!

So, I am presented with a plot, the individual ingredients of which until recently seemed worthy of attention. Well, the plot doesn’t take root in me! Where is this, "Petersburg"? Who is this, "McCartney"? In what country, in what world is this happening?! Finally, what is this strange device from which I was informed? "Receiver"? I experienced something similar as a child, leafing through Bradbury and Lem.

The radio message was probably aimed at those who embody some group identity. For a Beatles fan or for someone who holds sovereign-patriotic values ​​in his soul. Also for lovers of high classics, who can afford to wander for hours through the halls of the Hermitage and cluck their tongues in admiration. In one glossy magazine, where I was choosing a film show, I came across an interview with a student in her twenties. She is a regular at the night clubs "Rynda", Mix, "Gorky Beach" and at the same time a fan of the Pushkin Museum, rushing "...to see her beloved Van Gogh, Monet, Pizarro, Matisse, Gauguin and Chagall again."

The privatization of prestigious social niches and the collection of identities is in full swing! At that moment, when the declassed me, not of my own free will, closed myself in my individual little world, in my Tula solipsism, the notorious student increased her symbolic capital. So that’s why I became indifferent to rock and roll, fashionable electronics and oil painting: because they were publicly, publicly loved by yet another fashionable girl. I loved it, I appropriated it. As they say, it redistributed values. And no loans-for-shares auctions for you. This is what is called the post-industrial era: grown up!

I still chose the film show: Laws of Attraction directed by Peter Howitt. The distributors translated it as “The Laws of Attraction”, but in my opinion this option radically distorts the meaning of the picture. Need: "Laws of attraction." The film is rather average; I try not to talk about such things unless I really need to. But there is an essential circumstance that, if it does not save the picture, then excuses it.

Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore play divorce lawyers. Representing the interests of spouses who are angry with each other, they meet in the courtroom over and over again, pick fights, and fight. Despite their professional rivalry, the characters seem to be attracted to each other, and ultimately they are united in marriage. Actually, that's all.

What is divorce proceedings, what is its background? Modern positive law corresponds to the myth of individualism, the cherished myth of the liberal state, which states that the individual has the right to unlimited freedom. He is characterized by an autonomous will, and he can only identify with himself: one voice is equivalent to another voice, that is, each of them is absolutely unique. It is understood that the individual is free to choose any spouse and is free to divorce. A lawyer like the heroes of Brosnan and Moore acts as a guarantor of unlimited individual freedom. In essence, it is the rhetoric of the divorce process that constitutes the individual ! If we think consistently, the divorce lawyer appears as a priest of the religion of individualism !

Now compare the two versions of the title: “Laws of Attraction” and “Laws of Attraction.” The first one emphasizes the strategy of arbitrary choice. The second actualizes a certain anonymous force that exceeds the individual will of the subject. So, Peter Howitt’s sarcasm is manifested in the fact that practicing priests, omnipotent magicians, designers of the individual become victims of an irresistible force that refutes their everyday priestly practice! What kind of power is this?

One Frenchman wittily noted that Cupid's arrows, as a rule , fly off close. In other words, in most cases, spouses come from the same background. This phenomenon is called socio-economic homogamy. Western-style positive law, which constructs the image of an autonomous individual, diligently conceals homogamy. But this was not always the case (not to say: it has never happened before!). Let's say Roman law before 445 BC. imposed a ban on marriages between patricians and plebeians, and until 18 BC. - for marriages between freemen and freedmen, and so on. So, it is homogamy that throws the heroes of the film into each other’s arms! Director Howitt chooses his actors accurately and works with them wisely. The advantage of the film is that the rapprochement of two lawyers is interpreted not in the emotionally charged categories of sympathy, love, choice, but in the categories of super-personal necessity and social inevitability.

Now to Russia. Our 90s passed to the accompaniment of liberal mantras, which slyly affirmed the autonomous individual as the measure of things. We have repeatedly heard that material and symbolic capital was redistributed in favor of the strongest, most intelligent, beautiful and dexterous subjects of the federation. Of course, this is a blatant lie . Capital was manipulated by certain social groups. It was the groups that nominated suitable individuals from their ranks and appointed them “strong, dexterous, skillful.”

The girl who, barely tearing herself away from her mother’s breast, fiercely fell in love not only with dance house and techno (which is still understandable), but also with Monet and Pizarro, is just fulfilling the order of her own group: take everything ! Literature and cinema, painting and ballet, black square and white piano, Pavarotti and Orbakaite, frames and canvases, poorly digested terms and well-fitting evening dresses. Load onto trains and jeeps, carry in your pockets and on your chest. You won’t live on “cabbage” alone, and now the group demands cultural baggage from its nominees. Along the way, choking from an unbearable burden, they drone on about some bright individuality like the incredible talent of Chubais or the iron will of Yeltsin. In fact, both talent and will are group ones. Some social groups approached a certain historical stage, the beginning of the 90s, prepared and fully armed. But other groups were mercilessly suppressed, trampled into the Central Russian loam. And for many years it was allowed to say abominations about these latter ones. They say, “cattle”, “from the plow”. Let him no further than the front hall, feed him in the kitchen, or better yet, don’t feed him at all.

Finally, what was supposed to happen happened. The dominant groups in the 90s themselves believed in the autonomy of the individual. They forgot who they were and where they came from, and slowly began to disperse. They hung Gauguin's original in the family dining room, and began to create in their private office. And then, instead of a neat collective physiognomy, instead of a group portrait, where everyone watched their neighbor, not allowing him to relax and lose his “decent appearance,” an individual mug appeared to the world.

In order to somehow save face and the Winter Palace, they will have to resume VOOPIK. In order to protect the dining room with Gauguin and the office with a fireplace from a possible aggressor, DOSAAF will be reinstated. In the depths of the All-Russian Choral Society, new Obodzinsky and Gradsky will inevitably appear, which will discourage inviting the retired McCartney. And when the whole country is covered with a network of healthy communities, she will exclaim: “Who are these strange, internally unkempt people living a life separate from me ?!”

Until this happens, I turn off the radio and watch only football and American movies on TV. I’m annoyed that weakling McCartney didn’t bring down a single column or crumble a single brick.