Wednesday, December 26, 2012

A Guide to Sharikov Culture


    Imagine, for a moment, that someone from another planet landed in the United States and wanted to understand what the country considered to be important.  However, this alien wanted to do this without ever speaking to anyone.  Where would this alien turn for such information?  The most basic answer is television.  Some of the most popular television shows in the US are about crime, so, obviously, crime is very important to this culture.   Then this alien changes the channel and begins to watch “Real Housewives of ….”   Watching this show would give the alien the impression that this culture idolizes shallow, materialistic, self-absorbed people. 

    This alien can also see educational shows about history or other topics, as well as, shows about religion or the arts.  However, on the major television networks this alien would be able to “feast” on a daily diet of crime shows and other shows which serve to numb the mind more than anything else. 

    Now, let us assume that this same alien decided to travel to the largest country in the world, Russia, and observe what this country considers important.  Once again, this alien decides to watch television in order to obtain such information.  What does this alien see?  A steady stream of television shows about criminals or people who drink too much.    This alien can also find religious programs or shows about history, but if he or she decided to limit his or her viewing to the major networks, they would be exposed to shows about criminals or people who drink too much.

    It is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that the same culture which produced Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910), Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), and Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), to name a few, also inspired television shows about criminals and drunks. 

    The fact is that these people were not the product of the culture.  These people were the product of traditional Russian culture, but what people are exposed to now to Soviet culture, which is something completely different.   Even Andrei Tarkovsky, who lived his entire life during the period of the Soviet Union, was not a product of Soviet culture because of the influence of his father, the famous Russian poet Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky (1907-1989).  

     After the October Revolution of 1917, V.I. Lenin (1870-1924) began slowly destroying traditional Russian culture, beginning with the destruction of countless Orthodox churches, and attempted to replace this culture with glorification of the state.  The year after Lenin died, Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) wrote a wonderful story about the rise of the “new Soviet man” which was entitled Heart of a Dog (Сердце Собаки).

     In this story, Professor Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky and his assistant, Bromenthal, can be understood to represent two different views from traditional Russian culture, while Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, a dog who is turned into a man by Professor Preobrazhensky represents the “new Soviet man”.  Professor Preobrazhensky and Bromenthal both have major problems with Sharikov’s behavior, but they choose to deal with these problems in two completely different ways.   

    Professor Preobrazhensky begins by taking pity on Sharikov and blames his bad behavior on the fact that Sharikov had received the testicles and pituitary gland of a drunken man in order that he might become a person.  However, Bromenthal wants to inject Sharikov with arsenic and destroy him.  Eventually, Sharikov is returned to his natural state and lives out the rest of his life as a dog.  It should not surprise anyone that this story was banned from the Soviet Union until 1987 since the premise of this story goes directly to the heart of the very society that Lenin and his followers were trying to create.

   When television was first created it had the enormous potential to be able to educate and inspire people.  However, it has never lived up to that potential.  There is no reason why people should have cable television service with over two hundred (200) channels available and these same people then complain that there is nothing to watch because the shows available are “garbage”. 

    Instead of uplifting cultural standards, television appeals to the lowest common denominator in order to insure that Sharikov is happy.  For many years a friend of mine has said, “In order to keep their people quiet, Rome gave them bread and circuses, while we give them drugs and television.”  There is a great deal of truth in this statement.  The ability to read is a rather late development in human history, but people read less now than in many generations. 

    While fewer people read than in previous generations, Russian television does offer more films based upon classic Russian novels than American commercial television does about classic American novels. It has been decades since any of the major networks presented a movie about “Tom Sawyer” or some other novel.  I love watching films about classic Russian novels, but is there something wrong with presenting a film about a story by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)?

     It would be very easy to say that what is presented on television is simply a form of
entertainment; however, it actually directly reflects cultural values.  If this is a form of
entertainment, then Americans and Russians must find crime and alcoholism to be very
entertaining.  When it comes to television, we continue to sleep with dogs and continue to
be very surprised that we wake up with fleas. After all of these years of appealing to
“Sharikov culture” in the United States and Russia, why are we still surprised? 

Friday, December 14, 2012

The Virtue of Fairy Tales

   From the earliest fables and folk tales passed down through succeeding generations to today's cinematic versions of popular fairy tales, these stories have reflected the changing moral values in society and culture.

   Fables are narrations in which animals speak and act like human beings, intended to inculcate a useful truth or enforce a lesson. Folk tales and folklore refer to any tales circulated by word of mouth among the common folk. Popular fairy tales are fanciful stories or explanations of legendary deeds and creatures, today usually intended for children. What we think of as traditional fairy tales do not necessarily involve fairies but do involve fantasy and some form of wonder or special powers; forces of good and evil dueling over the fate of the hero or heroine. 1

   In the same way that every culture in the world has its own myths and legends, every culture also has its own fairy tales.  In the US, many fairy tales were originally borrowed from the writings of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and others and adapted for an American audience.   Reading or watching fairy tales can provide a person with a great deal of insight into a foreign culture. 

    For example, the fairy tales of Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) and stories about a very popular character known as “Ivan the Fool” are still extremely popular in many Russian speaking countries.  These are not simply children’s stories as they are in the US and many other Western countries.  There are many plays performed based upon Slavic fairy tales and the animated versions of these tales are often watched on television by both children and adults.

    Fairy tales exercise and cultivate the imagination. Now the imagination is a most powerful auxiliary in the development of the mind and will. In the next place fairy tales stimulate the idealizing tendency. Faith itself cannot abide unless supported by a vivid idealism. The value of the fairy tales is that they stimulate the imagination, reflect the unbroken communion of human life with the lived universal and incidentally, but all the more powerfully on that account, they quicken the moral sentiments. 2 

    The Tale of Tsar Saltan” written in 1831 by Alexander Pushkin is one such fairy tale.   The basic premise of the story is quite simple: The story is of three sisters, of whom the youngest is chosen by Tsar Saltan to be his wife, while he makes the other two his royal cook and royal weaver. They are jealous of course, and when the tsarina gives birth to a son, Prince Gvidon, they arrange to have her and her child ordered to be enclosed in a barrel and thrown into the sea. The sea itself takes pity on them, and they are cast upon the shore of a remote island, Buyan. The son, having quickly grown while in the barrel, goes hunting. However, he ends up saving an enchanted swan from a kite. The swan creates a city for Prince Gvidon to rule, but he is homesick, and the swan turns him into a mosquito. In this guise he visits Tsar Saltan's court, where he stings his aunt's eye and escapes.

    Back in his distant realm, the swan gives Gvidon a magical squirrel. However, he continues to pine for home, so the swan transforms him into a fly, and in the Tsar's court he stings the eye of his other aunt. In a third round he becomes a wasp (or bee) and stings the nose of his grandmother. In the end, he expresses a desire for a bride instead of his old home, at which time the swan is revealed to be a beautiful princess, whom he marries. He is visited by the Tsar, who is overjoyed to find his wife and newly-married son.4

     The tsarina’s sister is convinced that since she is not happy, no one should be happy.  There is a well known American idiom which states, “Misery loves company” (“Беда не приходит одна”) and one of the points made in this fairy tale is that this idiom transcends culture.  Human nature does not change based upon culture, but the way that these truths are conveyed vary depending upon the particular audience.

     It has been said that everything connected to the universe and nature can be found in the poetry of Alexander Pushkin.  For example, in his poem “The Fish and the Fisherman” the fisherman’s wife shows us that happiness cannot be found in having many things and disturbing the natural order.  In fact, there is sufficient evidence from nature that if we attempt to disrupt the natural order or acquire too many things from nature we end up having to deal with hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters. 

    In the fairy tale, The Tale of the Golden Cockerel,5 the golden rooster represents the forces of nature, just as the swan does in The Tale of Tsar Saltan and the magic fish in The Fish and the Fisherman. This theme can also been seen in Pushkin’s other fairy tales.

    Like myths and legends, fairy tales also convey the truth.  They are present in every culture and can help us to understand the world on a metaphorical, if not literal, level.  Just because an event did not happen in the exact same way that the story about the event describes it does not mean that either the event or the story is untrue.  In some cases it is important to look beyond the ‘facts’ of a story in order to see the greater message contained within. 

    Formed by the science of the twentieth century, fairy tales have been broken down into four basic schools: mythological, comparative (migration), the British "anthropological" structuralist school.  Analyzing stories of different ages and from different nations, scientists discovered their common plot schemes, "anthropologists" - one domestic, psychological basis of their origin, and the structuralists - a uniform structure in which there are constant and stable elements or functions.
  
   In spite the lack of a clear definition and classification, researchers still highlights a number of features in common: an epic-narrative framework and reliance on folk "genre memory" psychology in the interpretation of the characters.  Researchers point to the literary fairy tales of the twentieth century as having multifunctional ties with folk and world culture, flexibility in the orientation of the mythology, folk demonology, legends, and multi-genre, as well as conventional and metaphorical allegory.
   
   Nikolai Leskov (1831-1895), a well-known Russian author, once said, "My dear sirs, Russian people are at peace with their old fairy tales! Woe to the one who will not be in his or her old age."

                                                          End Notes

1)    Popular Fairy Tales Reflect Moral Values in Society and Culture http://news.vision.org/press-release/articles/popular-fairy-tales-reflect-moral-values-society-and-culture

2)    The Value of Fairy Taleshttp://www.oldandsold.com/articles14/mothers-guide-book-58.shtml



4)    “Russian Fairy Tales” http://www.russfolkart.com/folkTales.htm

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Be Careful What You Ask For

   Throughout the world many people are panicking as the date “December 21” approaches.  According to various “experts” the Mayan calendar predicted that a major cataclysm will take place on December 21, 2012 because it is on that date that the calendar enters a new cycle.
    For the past two thousand years Christians all over the world have been asking Our Lord Jesus to return. He promised us that He would return prior to His ascension into heaven and now that there is a possibility that He might actually be fulfilling His promise, how do we respond?  Are we happy that Our Lord Jesus will finally return and we might actually be able to meet Him face to face?  No, we panic and go to the store to buy candles, food, water, and other supplies.  Why?  Did we not believe that Jesus would fulfill His promise?  Do we believe that Jesus will be angry with us and we must hide from our angry “parent” so we do not get punished? 
    Christian monks and nuns all over the world have been praying “Maranatha” (Come, Lord Jesus); however, instead of looking forward to the possible fulfillment of this prayer, people are telling everyone that they meet that “the sky is falling” and acting more like Chicken Little than a person of faith.  If this is the end of the world, what good is buying candles, food, and extra water going to do?   This is not going to be similar to a bad rain storm where we will lose power for a few days.  All of this panicking is not going to help anything or anyone. 
     It would be one thing if all of this panicking was taking place among people who are unbelievers.  Those people who do not believe in God or have no understanding of Christianity.  However, most of the people who are panicking are those who claim to be Christians.  It is as times like this that faith should become a priority.  If we know exactly what is going to happen in the future, there is no need for faith.  However, many people seem to have faith when they are aware of what will happen, but if the future is unknown they panic. 
     In the year 1000, many people believed that the world would come to an end because it was one thousand years since Our Lord Jesus had ascended into heaven.  However, nothing happened.  The same was true in the year 2000.  The fact that the Mayan calendar predicts that a major event will take place on December 21, 2012 is no reason for panic.  Numerous dates have been given for the end of the world over the past two thousand years and none of them have come true.
     Several years ago there were people who were predicting that the world would come to an end when Haley’s Comet appeared again.  This comet was seen by people all over the world and nothing happened.  There is no reason for someone to base their faith upon the movement of the stars or planets.  If such was the guide for determining when Jesus would return He would have given us some indication of this.  However, Jesus told us that no one knows the day or date when this will happen.  
    There will be many people who will feel very foolish when they wake up on December 22 and everything is ok.  They will realize that they panicked for no reason.  Others will be very happy that everything did not come to an end.  Neither of these responses will have any connection to faith.  
     This should be a time for people to ask themselves, “What do I believe?”  Instead people run to the store to buy food, milk, batteries, and extra water.  The sad part is that most people will simply forget about December 21 by January 1, 2013 and life will go on as if nothing ever happened.  If we truly believe than what is the need for panic?  If we do not believe, then why do we call ourselves believers?