And I kept thinking: why is Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Brownie Kuzya in Russian blogs? Really just a perfect hit.
It’s just that the original cartoon, which was released in the USSR based on a fairy tale by Tatyana Alexandrova, came out when our generation began to return from military service, and our children were too young to watch cartoons at all. Well, who could have thought that we would see the reincarnation of “Brownie” the next time, when we already have grandchildren.
The producer of the new version is Sarik Andreasyan (who is also the director and producer of the series “Chikatilo”). And then the public, without seeing the finished product, began to divide into two large communities - those who shout “Don’t touch the Soviet legacy!”, and those who are ready to watch the new “Musicians of Bremen”.
But it is precisely over the past two years that we have seen how the classic heroes of Russian-Soviet mythology come to life in a new way: Cheburashka, Emelya with his pike, Troubadour with his singing zoo... They were suddenly joined by rock mythology: Mike Naumenko (“Johnny” with Nikolai Fomenko), “The King and the Fool”, “Pesnyary”, naturally. And no one cares that Alexander Rowe filmed his Emelya 85 years ago.
We have new technologies, we have big screens at home, any fairy tale can now be shudderingly realistic and fantastic. What then are fairy tales for?
Suddenly, the circumstances of the creation of new content and its distribution required a new search for children's and not so children's heroes. It’s real - the Marvel and Darkhorse superheroes and the collective Captain America that roam all the screens of the world today are not just “a little inappropriate” for the majority of the Russian audience - they are directly annoying.
The “values” they were broadcasting suddenly showed their real essence, and everything was so abrupt. Goodbye, America, oh...
But while the renewed creative class is looking for new images and formulating meanings, the process of rethinking what has already happened is picking up speed. The wild box office success of “Cheburashka” will help you. But if you think that we only had “Kuzya the Little Brownie” with Troubadour, then you are limiting yourself and others.
One of the releases that passed unnoticed before the SVO was Klimov’s cartoon “Anthology of Russian Horror,” where all the short stories were based on Russian and Soviet classics: here you have Alexey Tolstoy, and Alexander Green, and Zhukovsky and Pushkin. Anyone who knows Russian literature will find many more new old heroes. We see how, for example, the Soviet science fiction writer Kir Bulychev (“The Obvious Incredible”) got involved.
I personally expect something new in this “Old Man Hottabych” trend: it would really be interesting to see the history of the integration of the Turkic sorcerer into modern Russian society. Or - it’s strange that everyone forgot - Yuri Tomin’s fairy tale “A Wizard Walked Through the City” was filmed as “The Secret of the Iron Door” in 1971, and then the story about omnipotence looked strange. But in 2024 it will already sound like a parable about over-consumerism, its temptation into which entire nations have fallen. And this path to nowhere sooner or later ends in world conflicts. Are there any brave ones?
But there are also creepy heroes of “The Tale of Lost Time” by Alexander Ptushko (1964) based on Schwartz, who for many years broke the psyche of the children of my generation - I still shudder. But this is not a reason to refuse: mythology is multifaceted. There is also Anidag/Gadina performed by Lydia Vertinskaya in “The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors” (1963). What is not patented evil is an archetype suitable for an entire franchise. And if those fairy tales and heroes looked in accordance with those film technologies and your children, and you yourself do not perceive the already outdated film language, then who or what can prevent you from using these ideas, plots and heroes? The main thing is not to spoil it. But an attempt, as we know, is not torture.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editors.