Laughter and reasons

In Russia you have to laugh - this is the attitude TV gives us. Laugh mischievously, giggle dirty, laugh, laugh through tears and with sadness in your eyes. The world survived because it laughed, so we must survive.

All channels compete with each other to see who can out-laugh whom. Everyone has their own funny face reflected in a distorting mirror. Today, the good thing about humor on our TV is that you can experiment endlessly. If you want to say something about politics, but it’s as if you can’t, pretend to be a fool and shoot like hell. But be careful. This is the good old tradition of buffoonery in Russia. Zhvanetsky is still relevant today because he feels absolutely at ease in the post-Soviet era. However, he is a genius for all times, so he will always find how to hint so that some will understand.

For simpletons who were allowed to be themselves, “Full House” was made with “Distorting Mirror” - this is the height of their understanding. There are still a lot of them. But new ones are born that require a different kind of humor. Channel One, not wanting to be marginal, takes capable people from other organizations, brushes up their black, off-format humor, welcoming the same game between the lines. But NTV has already positioned itself in such a way that nothing but humorous trash will suit them. After all, they are not some good-natured “6 frames”, they have to be different. “The Pinochet Couple” is that same trashy humor that has its own generic characteristics. And you can be stylish, unexpected, very smart in it. Hard trash is an excellent brew for this.

But the new humorous programs - "Cartoon Personality" ("First") and "The Pinochet Couple" (NTV) - have essentially the same problems: the uneven quality of the written texts. Sometimes they can be quite funny and sarcastic, but mostly they are still quite simple-minded. Both programs still need to be brought to fruition. So far everything is quite ambiguous, but there is room for improvement.

The object of ridicule is important. Here is an oil painting: President Medvedev shown in a “box” with a message and the elite listening to him. What devoted, spiritual faces, you can't stand the saints. “You can’t achieve anything by planting alone” (applause), “but you have to plant” (stormy, prolonged applause). After such a fiery speech, the presenter of Vesti Nedeli, Evgeniy Revenko, begins to look in the dark room for a black cat, which is not there. He pretends that he has caught the deepest meaning of what was said, and his elite interlocutors unanimously pretend that insight has descended on them, that they finally understand where the country will go now. This is where our Saltykov-Shchedrins and Gogols would come in handy. But they won't pull it. Or rather, they won’t be allowed to pull it off.

Alexander MELMAN, “Moskovsky Komsomolets”