YouTube jokes are over

Badcomedian movie book with an audience of 5 million people fighting pension reform

“I want to make my sincere apologies to everyone who did not leave indifferent or insulted my position on pension reform ... I should not affirm anything without understanding the important nuances of this reform, economic and statistical data.”

The Russian show business has not yet seen such a public apology. Until now, the stars if they apologized, then either for "inappropriate behavior" or for "mockery of history." The request to forgive for the opinion of pension reform is clearly knocked out of this row. The super popular rapper Vasily Vakulenko (Basta), who supported the pension reform, had to apologize. And-most importantly-not in front of the “influential persons”, but to ordinary people, the personification of which was the 27-year-old video blogger Evgeny Bazhenov, known under the pseudonym of BadComedian.

Bazhenov makes a movie reviews on YouTube. He recorded a video with an assessment of the new film “Clubera”, however, unlike other reviews, users in the comments began to discuss not the tape itself, but a comment from Bazhenov.

In it, Badcomedian with the numbers of Rosstat in his hands proves the engagement of propaganda regarding the usefulness of pension reform for people.

In addition to politicians, Vakulenko was noticed in such propaganda. After a conversation with Bazhenov, he decided not to support the reform anymore.

The apology of the popular rapper is the Badcomedian triumph, and far from the only one. This time, it was not at all about cinema, but exclusively about politics.

The correspondents of the "Novy" traced how Bazhenov became an influential media fogue, with the opinion of which - including on political issues - have to be considered.

Everything is funny, but grandfathers fought

The Badcomedian channel appeared on YouTube at the moment when Evgeny Bazhenov studied in the third year of the faculty of commerce and marketing of the Russian State Trade and Economic University (here he defended a diploma on the topic of viral videos). Первые его обзоры не отличались высоким качеством: это было обсуждение фильмов вроде «Индийский кошмар на улице Вязов», русский «Кошмар на улице Вязов» или трэшевый «Геи-ниггеры из далекого космоса». By the fourth full -fledged review, Badcomedian found his main chip: in a commentary for the “new” film critic Anton Dolin calls this correctly chosen intonation.

Bazhenov made an overview of the film “Treasure Seekers” with actor Alexander Nevsky (Kuritsyn) in the title role. In this review, BadComedian first widely uses a method that can be characterized as maximum ridicule. Each scenario, directorial, acting Lyap Bazhenov brings to the point of creating or using existing Internet memes. With the presentation of Bazhenov, the combination of the frame from the film and the accompanying meme became winged on social networks, which gave the reviews the “viral” and provoked a sharp increase in the audience. Badcomedian concludes its first contract with the Caramba TV video content service and receives symbolic amounts (from 5 to 20 thousand rubles) for its reviews.

The culmination of the first season of Badcomedian was a commentary on the film by Nikita Mikhalkov “Tired by the Sun. Presentation ".

Within 30 minutes, Bazhenov methodically destroys the plot of the film, and at the same time does it quite seriously, without a stake.

The theme of the Great Patriotic War, like the Soviet past,, in principle, becomes “inviolable” for Bazhenov. Any artistic assumptions in the Mikhalkov’s film, from the launch of Stalin’s head to the cake (albeit in a dream) to the Soviet residents of the German bomber, are touched on the fly on the head, are perceived by Bazhenov as blasphemy (especially if this is presented as the answer to the film “Save Private Ryan”). The opinion about the Soviet past and the war at the Marketologist Bazhenov at that moment coincided with the common propaganda trend.

A year later, Bazhenov will repeat the same scheme, releasing a review on “tired by the sun. Citadel". In total, two reviews scored 13 million views - good numbers for the Russian -speaking YouTube model of 2012-2013. After 6 years, Nikita Mikhalkov himself will call Badcomedian “a very talented guy” in an interview with Yuri Dudu, but specifically adds to reviews that Bazhenov “did not understand dick”.

Battle with Russian cinema

By 2016, the number of subscribers of the Bazhenov channel exceeded a million, in the summer of 2018 - for three million.

“It seems to me that the main audience of Badcomedian is people who believe, as in the dogma, that Russian cinema is monstrous, and even Fedya Bondarchuk is not a cool dude,” says Anton Dolin. - And there should be a certain “killer” who will honestly say this as in more stringent expressions and will turn into a separate entertainment ridicule of this movie. It is clear that this paradigm does not include a possible serious analysis of the film, or even more an analysis with an attempt to consider the positive aspects too. In general, it seems to me that the main audience of Badcomedian is not the people who go to the cinema are at least not the people who go to the cinema for Russian films. They know these films on his releases and, in general, even consider it a valor that they did not go to the film itself, did not bring their blood money there. ”

In 2013-2014, the influence of the Badcomedian channel continues to grow. Bazhenova continues to disturb the “historical truth about the Second World War”, and he releases his only overview of the computer game. We are talking about Company of Heroes 2, which the blogger called the "game from the Nazis." In this pseudo -historical strategy published by the SEGA company, the antagonists are Soviet troops shown by absolutely bloodthirsty, vile and acting logic: one of the missions, for example, involves the player of houses with civilians. Bazhenov squeezed out of this the maximum:

He translated his review into English (again the only time), Russian television quickly connected to the topic, and the sales of the game in Russia eventually promised to stop.

Bazhenov begins to receive the first “fees” - that is, warnings on YouTube from people dissatisfied with reviews. One of the authors of the complaint was actor Mikhail Galustyan, the other was Enjoy Movies, the founder of which Sarik Andreasyan quarreled with Badcomedian because of the film “Faster than Rabbits”. Bazhenov spoke out about the comedy well, and as an example of bad comedies, the film “Friends of Friends” cited the film. The Enjoy Movies achieved the blocking of several video files on Bazhenov’s channels, after which he recorded a video in which he hinted that the channel eventually could be closed. It was then that it turned out that his audience was ready to rise in defense of Badcomedian, which instructed the “units” to the films of Enjoy Movies.

The company quickly recalled its complaints. Now Sarik Andreasyan recalls what is happening as an incident.

The Lawyers sent "Strike" on YouTube, I was not in the know. Since he used personnel from the film without permission, lawyers did this, not even understanding who Badcomedian is. Then people began to contact me: why did you do this? In general, at that time I was in another country, I did not even understand what happened. At that moment, we had 12 hours of difference, and I woke up and realized that the whole Internet hates me, but I don’t understand why. I asked to unlock - that’s the whole story, ”Andreasyan explains“ New ”.

"The experiment is obviously unsuccessful"

After the termination of cooperation with Karamba TV, Bazhenov opens an individual entrepreneur engaged in the creation of video content. At first, the business did not bring profit, so that a significant part of the earnings made up the income from concerts in the so-called Badtour-this name means trips with stand-ups in Russia and the CIS countries. Later, Bazhenov launched a collection of donations: anyone can transfer money to the blogger if he liked the reviews. On average, according to the results of each review, a little more than 1000 people donate, we are talking about “hundreds of rubles” from each.

Some money brings built -in advertising on YouTube, but the size of these income cannot be called stable.

“I regularly receive proposals to advertise something in their reviews. I do not mind, but so far there was nothing that I myself would like to wear or use, ”says Bazhenov. - I also have always been a fan of Sony, and the company gave me a camera for filming with the condition that I will post a link to technical characteristics on my pages. The camera is expensive, but you can’t call our relations with advertising: for Sony, this is rather just an image story that one of the popular people on YouTube takes over reviews using their equipment. ”

The money that Bazhenov receives now, in his own words, covers the costs of creating reviews. In 2018, the RBC magazine estimated the income of the Badcomedian channel in the range of 100 thousand rubles per donat and from 50 thousand rubles per 1 million views (on average each review is gaining at least 4-5 million views). Bazhenov prefers not to talk about his current earnings, and in an interview with Yuri Dudu modestly stated that he was enough “40 thousand rubles” a month.

In recent years, Bazhenov has shifted the emphasis on the connection between the content of the film and the amount of money spent on it. Considering that a significant part of the films in Russia is shot for money from the Cinema State Fund - Badcomedian actually engaged in criticizing budget expenses. An important stage in the life of the channel was the review of the film "Caucasian captive!" (The remake of the film Leonid Gaidai). After the completely derogatory characteristics of Bazhenov like “this is an epitaph of the career of all participants” or “technology took a step forward, Russian cinema took the tombstone” and personal appeal to Vladimir Medinsky in the Ministry of Culture promised that the director of the “Caucasian captive!” Nobody will give Maxim Voronkov. Since then, Voronkov has not shot a single picture, and the rating of his films on Kinopoisk is one of the lowest.

Bazhenov, however, believes that “the whole system” needs to be criticized. “Personalities have little affects, here is the case in the system. It cannot be said that in all the troubles of Russian cinema is to blame, for example, Andreasyan. This is not so.

Cinema will not change until there is an existing scheme of [distribution of money] from the Film and the Ministry of Culture, ”explains the meaning of his struggle of Bazhenov.

Another milestone is a review of the film “Hack Bloggers”, released in the “Package of Experimental Films” by Timur Bekmambetov, who acted as a producer. The review was watched 12 million times, 21 thousand people went to the cinema. The film is a video of a video from a computer screen, on which there are three blogger known in the youth environment - Sasha Spielberg, Maryana Ro and Ivan Guy - fight Emodsi in the form of an emoticon. During the review, Bazhenov was able to prove that the funds allocated for the film (600 thousand dollars from the Film Fund) were wasted, because he "was able to create the same schedule for 2000 rubles."

After the review of the review, the Ministry of Culture began checking, and Vladimir Medinsky promised to carefully approach the issue of financing film projects. Anton Malyshev Director of the Cinema Foundation was only able to say that “the experiment is obviously unsuccessful” - and this became another through Bazhenov’s stroke.

The main thing is not to go into geopolitics

“I like Badcomedian's work at least because such a caustic satire - I want to believe in it! - He accustoms Russian filmmakers to a minimum production discipline. Because he makes fun of those shortcomings of the script, production and acting, which can always be avoided if you are responsible for his work, and with respect, ”says Yegor Moskvitin,“ new ”film critic.

Anton Valley has a slightly different look: “It seems to me that BadComedian does not at all set its task to do a professional analysis, on the contrary, its evaluation and emotionality are strong aspects of reviews. He is a kind of comic artist, stand -up, who made a way to earn mockery over Russian cinema, is often fair, and often not. ”

In 2017–2018, a new intonation began to sound in the reviews of Evgeny Bazhenov, although he himself denies such changes. Badcomedian becomes a public figure.

In the same review on Clubar, in addition to discussing the BadComedian pension reform, one sketch is tough for many last Duma initiatives, including bills of fake-nuz and punishment for disrespectful statements to the authorities. In the review of the film “Temporary Difficulties”, the narrator sends a clearly lying protagonist to the State Duma. The next frame shows a fragment of the broadcast from the Council of Council, at which the Minister of Labor and Social Protection Maxim Topilin speaks of "unprecedented growth of salaries."

At the same time, Bazhenov has to be considered any statements: he has about 4 million subscribers, his videos looked more than 600 million times.

By the force of influence, he is comparable to Alexei Navalny, only his audience is much more diverse.

The state had to try very hard for a person who nostalgic for Soviet life to become his critic.

Bazhenov says that the current political regime is a direct consequence of the Yeltsin years, to which he has a persistent hostility. This was especially clearly articulated in the review of the film "Draft":

“We realized that the whole history of Russia has always been bad. With the exception of the reign of Nicholas II, there were always mud, shit, torment. And then the Boris-torture came and freed everyone. And now we live in the country led by direct successors of Yeltsin's affairs. ”

True, Badcomedian is in no hurry to ridicule the first persons of the state, explaining this by the fact that "it does not come into contact with this topic." “What I was in contact with - the exam, pension reform (she directly touched my relatives), a bill on insulting power - by and large, I am against all this,” says Bazhenov. “And I don’t get into geopolitics.”

The only case when Badcomedian nevertheless encountered “geopolitics” was concerned Russian-Ukrainian relations and was connected with the review of the film “Crimea”. It is more correct, however, it will be said that in this case, Bazhenov ridiculed the State Propaganda, which very ineptly explained its actions in 2014 from an artistic point of view (the review gave birth to a meme from the film: “Come on?!”-“Figant!” ”). At the same time, Bazhenov himself is not against propaganda in general, which is not surprising, but against its stupid manifestations. “I also want to make a review on the Ukrainian film“ Guard ”, which is directly very ridiculous from the point of view of propaganda,” says Badcomedian. -I would not like, of course, so that after that I would be closed somewhere in the entrance, but this is so mediocre propaganda. As, in principle, the Crimea.

Review the slanderers

The top of the Badcomedian creativity is currently a review of the film “Up movement”, which goes two and a half hours, and Bazhenov uses all the advantages that he has. With the help of the memoirs of the participants of the Olympiad in Munich, he analyzes the shortcomings of the plot, finds analogies with the American film “Miracle”, and the sketches openly mocks the director Anton Megerdichev, who, instead of a realistic film, shot a tasteless and illogical picture, from the point of view of Bazhenov, who offends real prototypes.

The review itself provoked a scandal: in less than a day, he scored a million views (now-14 million), the angry fans of Badcomedian came to the KinoPoisk website and a massive setting of low estimates knocked out a film from the top-250 of the best films in history. The son of the coach Vladimir Kondrashin - in the picture, Vladimir Mashkov plays him, who enriched the meeting of memes with the phrase “for himself and for Sasha!”, Publicly thanked Bazhenov for “removing the slanderers”. A few months before, the widows of basketball players lost the court with the creators of the film, so public support from the famous blogger and his audience looked in this case a “comforting prize”: it means that the truth is on their side.

“I did not look at the end of the review, I looked at the first four minutes,” said Anton Megerdichev, the “new” director of the film. - All the prototypes of the heroes primarily envied the script and were his consultants. I have absolutely no need to comment on this untruth that Badcomedian said. And the fact that there were judicial costs ... Those who sued were not heroes, their deceased relatives were prototypes. When the review came out, I already stopped thinking about the film, it did not touch me in any way. ”

Despite the fact that there were other claims to the review, Bazhenov, having released it, confirmed his new status: a person who fights with injustice in all available ways. A pension reform statement is just the next logical step in the career of Evgeny Bazhenov. This step, however, turns it into a figure in a political orbit. From the point of view of marketing, everything went to this.

“Badcomedian replaced both professional film critics and cinema itself with a huge number of people,” says Anton Dolin.

The only question is what Bazhenov will do with this capital. He does not want to go to politics.

“I do not want to be used by anyone, I try to hold on to my audience, I cook in it and do not try to claim the presidency or post of some minister of culture. And we will be honest: I am too young, stupid and emotional, and besides this, I myself constantly make mistakes, ”he says.

Хотя фанаты BadComedian на сторонних ресурсах уже активно пишут, что проголосовали бы за Баженова, участвуй он в выборах.