12024-02-06T13:19:59-08:00Blogpost 110Humor, Parody & Satireplain2024-02-09T18:09:16-08:00In Bakhtin's *The Dialogic Imagination*, he explains parody as a form using the parodic sonnet in Don Quixote. He explains that a parodied sonnet in isolation, as to say that outside the novel, this piece would not be classified generically as a sonnet. It is only the object of representation, as the sonnet it is mimicking is the subject. By extension he is saying, it is not the form of the parody that matters, but its function. This leads to the first question when analyzing any parody; what is the function? In Aleksandr Gudkov's "I am Narrow", the function is the critique of message of it's subject, Shaman's "I am Russian".
As an American, the song alone doesn't strike me as anything too extreme, too patriotic, or too nationalistic. It wasn't until I saw the music video that I realized why there was a parody at all. It was the music video that is the subject of the Gudkov's parody. What does the music video say that the lyrics do not? We must first look at Shaman's background to understand it. Shaman is a current Russian pop singer that has risen to stardom in the light of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Many musicians, actors and artists have left the country due to being cancelled by the Kremlin for their outspoken disagreements of the war. Some, like Shaman, have been embraced by the Kremlin for their pro-Russian stance on the subject.
Knowing this, we can see Shaman's use of wheat fields in his music video, as he screams "I am Russian" is a statement about the Russo-Ukrainian war, in saying that Ukraine is Russian. Gudkov critics this is using the parody title "Я узкий", which sounds similar to "Я русский", but it also means thin or narrow, referring to Shaman's main statement in this video. Bakhtin explains parody as introducing laughter as the permanent corrective to a one side seriousness of the subject, which Gudkov has done using the theme 'to be thin'.
Bakhtin explains a second element in parody, that the mimesis must be recognized by the reader as related to the subject piece; in form, style, manner of seeing, and its manner of selecting from and evaluating the world. Because the parody is incomplete without the original work, it's subject must be easily recognized. Gudkov has done this exactly in his parody. From the opening of the music video, we see the Shaman parody takes place in the same field of wheat and with a similar looking 3D rendering of Shaman in the white top and black bottoms. The music playing is the same, anyone who has seen the original video knows the subject this parody comes from.