Gays vs. Russia:
- Autor(en)
- Maria Katharina Wiedlack
- Abstrakt
This essay analyses the recent focus on Russian human rights violations in Anglophone media, scrutinising the ideological agenda of the visual politics which strategically foreground victimised bodies of Russian dissidents. Notwithstanding the importance of a critique on human rights violations, the article points to the unwanted but very real side effects the current mediatisations of violence have, from structural victimisation and the creation of gay martyrs' to the resignification of the West as progressive and gay' and Russia as backward and heterosexual. A close reading of popular press photographs of wounded Russian gay youth and the textual context - arguably representative for the Western media focus on the Eastern' violation of human rights between 2012 and 2014 - serves to illustrate how an image of Russian nation and Russian state politics is forged within Anglophone media discourses meant to reinforce the positive identity of the self-same by evoking pity, empathy and a responsible helpful attitude toward the endangered othered. The essay argues that Anglophone media's focus on the vulnerability of Russian LGBTIQ+ bodies, consciously or unconsciously, reduces the subjects to this vulnerability, confirming feelings of moral superiority within the enlightened audience. The study highlights the important role that Russia's vulnerable citizens play not only in the construction of values such as tolerance' and acceptance' and evaluations like progressive' and modern', but also in perceptions of the nation and its people and the reaffirmation of the dualistic divide between The East' and The West'.
- Organisation(en)
- Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
- Journal
- European Journal of English Studies
- Band
- 21
- Seiten
- 241-257
- Anzahl der Seiten
- 17
- ISSN
- 1382-5577
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2017.1369271
- Publikationsdatum
- 11-2017
- Peer-reviewed
- Ja
- ÖFOS 2012
- 504014 Gender Studies, 508009 Medienforschung, 602008 Anglistik, 605004 Kulturwissenschaft
- Schlagwörter
- ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
- Language and Linguistics, Literature and Literary Theory, Linguistics and Language
- Link zum Portal
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/f8749b1a-78df-47b4-bbe5-f63583194997