Ghosts in the machine

Abstract

• This article examines how Russian television's recent assimilation of western genres to its own cultural paradigms has influenced the development of a post-Soviet identity. Informed by W.J.T. Mitchell's theory of the importance of word—image thresholds, and by Iurii Lotman's conception of intercultural dialogue, it is based on light entertainment broadcasts recorded over the period 1999—2001 on the NTV channel. It argues that Russia's traditionally dominant literary culture provides a `translation code' for its reception of western televisual texts and shapes its conceptions of `western-ness' and `New Russian-ness'. The article shows how the globalized imagery of the quiz-show and the talk-show are transformed into generic hybrids reliant on the narrativity and distancing capacities of verbal discourse, whose related capacity for reconciling mutually antagonistic meanings enables Russian television to negotiate between Soviet, pre-Soviet and western identities. •