Sites of resistance, or sights of pleasure? Subversive queer aesthetics in Russian music videos of the 2010s

Abstract

On 30th June 2013, the Russian Parliament passed the so-called Anti-Gay Propaganda Law, which aimed to prohibit the spread of information of ‘non-traditional sexual orientation’ among minors, as well as prohibiting any ‘positive portrayals’ of nonheteronormative sexualities. The Law, designed to suppress sexual minorities and oppositional voices, represented an articulation of the neo-traditionalist conservatism that informs the Putin Regime’s state building ideology.

This thesis explores how queerness is used by music artists in Russia as a tool for political critique and subversion by analysing some of the most viewed and widely shared music videos released in the 2010s. Referring to musical, lyrical, and visual forms that evoke queer aesthetics (broadly understood to encompass (neo-)camp aesthetics, narratives that undermine heteronormative values, LGBTQ+ representation politics and so on), this thesis assesses how music artists are able to explore queerness even under an increasingly queerphobic and authoritarian regime. Simultaneously, the thesis emphasises the ambivalence of artists’ engagement with queer aesthetics, identities and politics. It demonstrates that queer elements in artists’ work unsettle the binary of subversion and complicity in countering and/or perpetuating queerphobic discourses in Russia today.

The project is the first of its kind in English-language Russian studies to centre music videos as its main primary source material. It is informed by intersectional feminist, queer, and film theories, and also takes inspiration from developments in scholarship concerning anthropology with music and media studies. In dealing with queer ambivalence, the thesis thus makes a significant contribution to debates on contemporary Russian pop culture and politics, bringing together queerness and anticolonialism into conversation in ways that rarely occur in Russian Studies. I aim to situate this project within the wider context of research into Russian gender and queer, media, and anthropological studies to complement wider discussions and analysis concerned with Russian popular culture in the Putin era.