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THE SEMIOTICS OF ADVERTISING IN POST-SOCIALIST RUSSIA: CULTURALLY SIGNIFICANT MEANINGS IN TELEVISION COMMERCIALS DURING THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION AND GLOBALIZATION By Alexander Minbaev Submitted to Central European University History Department In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Supervisor: Professor Marsha Siefert CEU eTD Collection Second Reader: Professor György Endre Szönyi Budapest, Hungary 2013 Abstract This thesis aims to answer a research question of how television commercials appealed to Russian national identity using culturally significant meanings in post-socialist context. In order to do so the thesis examines television commercials adopting semiotic approach. Using of semiotics presupposes the analysis of advertisements as system of signs and as narratives. Commercials are analyzed within their historical context from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Thesis focuses on the culturally significant meanings deployed in the television advertising through folklore, nostalgia, stereotypes and history in order to appeal to Russian national identity. Commercials chosen for semiotic analysis are taken from different periods of post- socialist Russian history and are examined as case studies, each of which appealing to Russianness using specific techniques, thus comprising a unique style of Russian advertising. Depending on a particular time period within the development of Russian post-socialist advertising, different methods were applied to appeal to potential consumers through exploitations of shared beliefs and values, including national identity that forms the continuous field within the frame of post-socialist advertising. Using semiotic tools from the studies of signs, such as binary opposition, the thesis examines commercials both interpretatively and within their historical context. CEU eTD Collection i Acknowledgements I would like to extend my gratitude to all those people who helped me in doing and completing this thesis. I am grateful to my supervisor, Professor Marsha Siefert from the Department of History for her guidance and advices as well for her supportive attitude she bestowed upon me and my research. I am also very thankful to my second supervisor, Professor György Endre Szönyi from the Department of History for his insightful advices and enthusiasm for my research. Besides, I would also like to thank Professor Daniel Benno Jacques Monterescu from the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology for his interest in my thesis and for the discussions we had. Furthermore, I would like to thank Eszter Timar, my academic writing instructor for helping me with writing and improving the paper. In addition, I express my gratitude to the colleagues from the Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies in Sofia with special thanks to Professor Kristian Bankov for his constructive remarks on my topic. Finally, I am very grateful to all my friends, colleagues and mentors, with whom I discussed my research. CEU eTD Collection ii Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE. SEMIOTICS OF ADVERTISING. SIGNS, NARRATIVES AND HISTORY .................................................................................................................................................. 5 Advertisement as a system of signs ...................................................................................................................... 8 Narratives in advertising .................................................................................................................................... 11 Advertising in globalization and domestication ................................................................................................. 13 CHAPTER TWO. THE USE OF THE CULTURALLY SIGNIFICANT MEANINGS IN THE 1990S ADVERTISING. MMM AND RUSSKII PROEKT (THE RUSSIAN PROJECT) CASE STUDIES..............................................................................................................18 “We do have sex, we don’t have commercials”. Late Soviet and early post-Soviet advertising ........................ 18 1992-1994 MMM advertising campaign ............................................................................................................ 22 The Russian project of 1995-1997 ...................................................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER THREE. TELEVISION COMMERCIALS AND NATIONAL IDENTITY AFTER 1998 ...........................................................................................................................................33 “Russification” of Coca-Cola. 1998 “Drink the Legend” campaign .................................................................. 34 Culturally differentiated Russian beer brands. In a search of the national identity ......................................... 38 Nostalgic and folkloric elements in Russian beer commercials .............................................................................. 38 Beer commercials and Russian masculinity ............................................................................................................ 43 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................47 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................49 List of Internet sources ....................................................................................................................................... 52 List of films and commercials analyzed ............................................................................................................. 53 CEU eTD Collection iii List of illustrations Chapter One Figure 1.1 Snapshots from 2003 Three Bogatyrs and 2004 Tolstyak beer commercials Figure 1.2 Snapshots from 1984 Macintosh commercial Chapter Two Figure 2.1 Opening of the first McDonald‟s in Moscow at Bronnaya street, January 31, 1990 Figure 2.2 Snapshots from the the 1993 commercial of the Russkaya Amerika firm Figure 2.3 Snapshots from the first 1992 commercial of the 1992- 1994 MMM advertising campaign Figure 2.4 Snapshots from Afonya, Dzhentl’meny Udachi and Brilliantovaya Ruka Soviet comedies and MMM commercial Figure 2.5 Snapshots from the 1992 “I‟m not a freeloader, I‟m a partner” MMM commercial Figure 2.6 Characters of 1992-1994 MMM commercials: Marina Sergeyevna, Igor and Iulia, and Nikolai Fomich Figure 2.7 Snapshots from the 1995 “God Bless You” vignette of Russkii proekt Figure 2.8 Nona Mordyukova portraying “Mona Lisa of Russian Depression” Figure 2.9 Snapshots from the 1995 “This Is My Country” vignette of Russkii proekt Chapter Three Figure 3.1 Snapshots from the 1998 “Drink the Legend” campaign for Coca-Cola Figure 3.2 Snapshots from 2003 Three Bogatyrs commercial and 1938 film Alexander Nevsky Figure 3.3 Snapshots from the Baltika’s 2001“Friendship of People” commercial and 1936 film Circus Figure 3.4 Snapshots from Baltika’s 2005 “World Beer” campaign Figure 3.5 Snapshots from various Tolstyak commercials aired in the early 2000s Figure 3.6 Snapshots from the 2004 “Freedom to the true muzhik!” Tolstyak commercial CEU eTD Collection iv Introduction Advertisements are selling us something besides consumer goods; in providing us with a structure in which we, and those goods are interchangeable, they are selling us ourselves. Judith Williamson1 Television commercials appeared in Soviet Russia not long before the fall of the Soviet Union and became an integral part of mass culture in post-socialist Russia in the course of the 1990s. Paraphrasing Judith Williamson, advertising is aimed to sell life-styles, rather than products; however, the common denominator in the early 1990s advertising in Russia is the cri de coeur that in television “[they] don't show our life, our Soviet life (ne nashu, ne sovetskyu zhizn' pokazyvaiut)”2 Interestingly, the adjective “Soviet” is used interchangeably with the adjective “our” in the middle of the 1990s, several years after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The major aim of this thesis is to use semiotic analysis of television commercials taken from different time periods in the history of post-socialist Russia to analyze how “our life” was presented in advertising. Much has been written on semiotics of advertising starting from the 1970s - 1980s. Among the most notable authors are Roland Barthes3, Judith Williamson4, and and Gillian Dyer5. The post-socialist Russian context was also covered in advertising studies by such scholars as Birgit CEU eTD Collection 1 Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements. Ideology and Meaning in Advertising, (London: Marion Boyars, 1993(1978), 13. 2 Alexei Levinson, Zametki po sotsiologii i antropologii reklamy i literatury (Notes on sociology and anthropology of advertising and literature) in (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 22, 1997), 107. 3 Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967); – Mythologies( St. Albans: Paladin, 1973). 4 Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements. Ideology and Meaning in Advertising, (London: Marion Boyars, 1993(1978). 5 Gillian Dyer, Advertising as Communication, (London: Routledge, 1982). 1 Beumers6, Ellen Mickiewicz7, Elena Omelchenko8 and Alexei Levinson9. Moreover, national- specific appeals in Russian