Remediating Protest Blog

Blog Post 2

With his serious and scholarly tone, Sergei Kurekhin convinced, confused, and entertained many people who had tuned into the broadcast in which he made the firm declaration that "Lenin was a mushroom". The fast-paced nature of his commentary accompanied by rapid-fire evidence led to a confused reaction, with many not realizing that what Kurekhin had said was ironic. The topic itself was one of such taboo that viewers assumed it must be the truth: "But Lenin! How could one joke about Lenin? (Yurchak 309). This piece of the context of the current time meant that not everyone to recognize the "extreme irony of stiob" (309). 

Over-identification proved a particularly effective tactic in this scenario. Lenin had been such an off-limit topic in humor that the majority of the audience assumed Kurekhin must be presenting the facts in an honest and genuinely informative way. Media had been so tightly controlled prior to the lead up of this broadcast that the loosening of censorship allowed the piece to sneak under the radar. The choice of topic and medium in combination with Kurekhin's object of imitation, which was "the popular new genre of investigatory journalism", led the piece to be a success (313). And the realization that people had put blind faith in what appeared on the surface to be such a ridiculous claim set off a reckoning for many. But why does over-identification strike a chord with so many?

By explaining the legitimacy of each piece of his evidence, Kurekhin drew focus away from his own central claim. The evidence gave basis, although utterly untrue, to his claim of Lenin's true identity as a mushroom. All of this forced ideology chief for the Leningrad Regional Party Committee Galina Barinova to state that "This is untrue [...] Because a mammal cannot be a plant" (310). In necessitating a statement so fundamental as that which Barinova made, Kurekhin's strategy of evidence-focused argumentation was clearly effective. Hearing Barinova's statement seems overly explanatory, which just shows the difference experiencing Kurekhin's broadcast live vs. out of context makes. Stating something so fundamental in order to reassure a group of people after over-identification has been used illustrates just why over-identification was an effective, and needed, tactic.

Over-identification makes the audience question how they ever put their belief in the object of over-identification. By initially coming off as normal, scenarios in which over-identification is utilized trick the audience into viewing whatever is happening as normal. While coaxing the audience to listen, the scenarios heighten, expecting the audience to realize what is happening. It is naturally incredibly jarring to find out that one did not realize the utter ridiculous nature of the situation until after the fact. It exposes just how malleable our thoughts are and just how far we will stretch our definition of "normal" in order to fit the information we are being presented with. In this way, the technique of over-identification goes beyond what we saw with satire and parody. While parody points out the absurdity of a situation or text through mimicry of a form, over-identification points out the absurdity in the audience's behavior in response to a situation or text. Both employ mimicry as a key tactic. But over-identification reveals something deeper about the audience itself. The result is a much more frightening questioning of one's self, rather than simply the world around them. This is, of course, bound to have a bigger splash in the collective thinking.

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  1. Hi Octavia, I really liked your analysis of Lenin's Mushroom and how it became such a succesful perfomance. I thought it was really interesting to look at the way Sergey Kuryokhin used scientific evidence for Lenin being a mushroom and how it was so convincing because of his use of styob that people actually believed it. In a way, you can say that the scientists who went out an proofed Kuryokhin wrong unintentionally over-identified with his media stunt, which is kind of funny.
  2. I really enjoyed Octavia's blog post for our second section of class readings. I thought she did a wonderful job of connecting the tactics of over-identification to Kurekhin's "Lenin was a mushroom" broadcast. Indeed, the event is truly an example of how over-identification, through its extremity, forces audience members and/or participants to question the ideologies underlying an otherwise widely-held and unquestioned belief. It is clear that audience members would have felt deeply distrustful and disturbed after realizing how quick they were to believe that Lenin was a mushroom after the false nature of this narrative was made explicit by the Leningrad Regional Party Committee Galina Barinova. One addition that I would make to Octavia's otherwise fantastic post is to make more explicit what exactly Kurekhin's "Lenin was a mushroom" broadcast" was overidentifying with, namely the kinds of scientific language and lexicon that dominated the Soviet-era discussions of anything and everything related to academia. Indeed, Kurekhin used "rapid-fire evidence" and "evidence-focused argumentation" specifically to draw attention to the futility of this kind of discourse and suggest that the Soviet Union could be using this style of language to make claims equally as ridiculous as the one he aimed to make. It would be interesting to compare Kurekhin's work with another example from the Soviet academic milieu. I also wonder if there is additional room for Octavia to consider the potential role that skaz plays in Kurekhin's performance. As I understand it, Kurekhin is employing skaz in as far as he is drawing from the same register and adopting the same language as a character he aims to critique. Thank you for the thought-provoking post, Octavia!

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