Constructing Post-Soviet Stardom

Revealing the centrality of star figures for daily communication and in mass media, star and Western celebrity studies have come to the fore in recent years, with particular emphasis on the formation of the ideology of consumerism and entertainment in everyday life. The question of how star and celebrity figures influence political ideology, especially concerning the neo-imperial upsurge of Russian culture since 2014, however, has not been contested. Despite the governing apparatus’s more than century-long tradition of spreading political ideology using Russo-Soviet cinema, none of these works have examined Russian celebrity figures’ central role as intellectual and ideological leaders in imperial and anti-imperial movements in the post-Soviet context to offer an independent, non-Hollywood-centric model of producing stardom and distributing political ideology. My dissertation endorses a narrative that addresses Russian film stars as an embodiment of political ideology by analyzing the work of artists and directors during the three post-Soviet decades. Through close examinations of aesthetics, performance personae, and types of film production, I argue that the Russian star system has developed culturally specific political identity models that connect artistic production to imperial or anti-imperial ideology and form the aesthetic and affective norms for (anti)-imperial imagined communities. I contend that the artistic, as well as political identities displayed by Russian actors and directors, have developed culturally specific, imperial as well as anti-imperial political opposition. Ultimately, my research shows that one of the post-Soviet celebrity figures, the director-star, created by film journal discourse, emerges as an agent culturally powerful enough to present an alternative model to the neo-imperial ruler