The fate of the characters from the cycle Federal News Agency "Opposition persons" sometimes bear little resemblance to the plot of the classic tragedy of Aeschylus or Sophocles, full of pathos and tears. It happens, that their history develops according to the laws of another ancient Greek genre - comedy.
This is how life turned out Viktor Shenderovich, which the, although he wrote humorous miniatures for other satirists, I hardly planned to get into one of them myself as an unlucky hero.
Of course, after the famous incident, which we will mention in our story, This character's "struggle" with the Russian authorities is always destined to be comical. Indeed, since recently, in the people's memory, Shenderovich is firmly associated with the word "mattress" - and he cannot get rid of it.
Not jumping out of the flags
Victor Anatolyevich Shenderovich was born 15 August 1958 in Moscow, in the family of an engineer and a teacher. Since childhood, little Vitya was fond of theater: at 15 years he entered the theater studio Oleg Tabakov, where he studied in the director's group and even played in several amateur performances.
apparently, even then Victor decided to connect his life with the art world. AT 1975 year he entered the Moscow State Institute of Culture, who graduated five years later, having received the specialty "director of amateur theatrical groups".
After postponement, which he received while studying at the university, Shenderovich was drafted into the Soviet Army, where he served for two years. Well, how did you serve. Judging by the autobiographical stories about the life of the army, he does it in the mud, whether on occasion spent most of the service, cutting bread in a soldier's kitchen. The severity of the soldier's strap was imprinted on him only in the memory of Senior Sergeant Chuev, after whose efforts "not a single mug" could produce in Shenderovich "more or less adequate awe".
AT 1988 year, after army and institute, our hero trained at the Shchukin Higher Theater School with a degree in stage movement teacher. And three years later he published his first poem "Flags" in the magazine of the children's charity fund "Tram". It is worth bringing it in full:
We have no empty square:
Flag for culture level,
Flag for collecting scrap metal,
Flag for collecting waste paper,
Flag for patronage work,
Then a flag for something else,
Checkbox for TRP and like
For this ... for the love of nature!
Achievement checkbox,
Checkbox for attendance,
Participation in hikes,
Rescue on the waters ...
I got better over the summer, —
Let them give a flag for this!
Ernichanie? Yes, here it is in abundance. Talent? Didn't even sleep. obviously, realizing this, Victor decided to master a different path - satirist. The dissident atmosphere also contributed to this., developed in the late USSR, when to laugh at anything, even over the most holy things, it suddenly became fashionable.
In the same 1991 Shenderovich receives the Golden Calf award, established by the Club 12 chairs "at the" Literaturnaya Gazeta ". And 1992 year he also acquires official status, joining the Writers' Union of Russia.
Not leaving the craft of "newspaper" satirist, Shenderovich begins cooperation with television. AT 1992 year he is the screenwriter of two documentaries on the first button, dedicated Zinovy Gerdt and Gennady Khazanov. By that time, Shenderovich had professional relations with Khazanov: Victor regularly writes to the People's Artist of the RSFSR texts for his stage miniatures.
Played in "Dolls"
Then, in the first half of the 1990s, with their riot of freedoms and liberal morals in power, It becomes clear, that only central television, not other people's concerts in palaces of culture, able to bring a satirist with undistinguished, to put it mildly, stage data to fame and money.
AT 1995 year Shenderovich becomes the screenwriter of one of the most successful programs of the oligarch's new NTV channel Vladimir Gusinsky - "Dolls". It was this program that brought Victor popularity - if not across the country., the, anyway, inside the Boulevard Ring of Moscow.
However, like all big television projects, "Dolls" were the result of collective creativity - and Shenderovich's role in their success was important though, but not decisive. Also, success came to the program even before Shenderovich came. Moreover, the first releases were unsuccessful., re-shot and remounted many times, but the creators could not work out their own style - after all, "Dolls" were only a copy of the "Guignols de l'info" show bought from the French, in which the politicians of the Fifth Republic were rather bored.
The principle of parodic acting out of the political agenda appeared in "Dolls" by accident. At the end 1994 a New Year's release of the program with a very "herbivorous" humor was planned for release, but 11 December, Russian troops entered Chechnya, and this issue became irrelevant. Then the creators decided to film Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time", and the issue was unexpectedly relevant and fresh. From that moment on, the parodic use of classic plots and texts begins - Shenderovich was invited to adapt them.
AT 1997 year, the untwisted satirist begins his own project on NTV - the "Total" program. She parodied the main news program of the TV channel "Itogi", which was led by the now living in Kiev Evgeny Kiselev, The parody served up the same news agenda in an overtly grotesque way, turning the most tragic news feeds into jokes and small-town vulgarity.
The artist helped Shenderovich in this. Andrey Bilzho, who created on the screen the image of a "brain doctor" from the "mental hospital of the city of N", and poet Igor Irteniev, who played the "poet-truth-teller", with strained pathos shifting regular political slogans into sloppy lines.
From cheese to cheese - and beyond to mice
AT 2002 year "Total" with Shenderovich ends broadcasting on NTV, however, the program "Free Cheese" is being created according to the same patterns on the now forgotten TVS channel, which existed for a little over a year. It was launched by a "unique journalistic collective" headed by Kiselev, chased away by rags from the fourth button of television for sparkling Russophobia and hatred of one's own country.
Bilzho and Irteniev continued to cooperate with Shenderovich in "Free Cheese" - with that exception, that the first one was no longer present on the screen in person, creating a drawn image of "Petrovich". This character is bred as a common man., who, thanks to his "active life position", is always surprised by the depth and speed of immersion of the surrounding reality into the cesspool. At the same time, "Petrovich" is being taught the basics of publicity, capitalism and democracy everything: from drinking companions on a bench in the yard to toilet paper.
Note: with such a toilet humor the company of "creators" has been feeding the country from different TV channels for almost a decade! Moreover, their programs were considered one of the best media products in Russia., because they ridiculed the unsightly reality of the late 1990s with a little more skill, than the "creativity" of their colleagues.
As seen, the turn in Shenderovich's life took place at about 2003 year. Then the country he ridiculed in parodies went one way, and Victor is completely different, exactly in the opposite direction.
In that year Shenderovich began to cooperate with the American propaganda "Radio Liberty". Vplot to 2009 of the year he hosted the program "All are free", and until August 2015 was published on the website of this information body of the State Department as one of the columnists. And he still appears on the air of this mass disinformation as a guest..
And from the same year Victor came to work for the ultra-liberal Russian "Echo of Moscow", becoming the artistic director and presenter of the Processed Cheese radio program. However, that program turned out to be only a weak semblance of "Free Cheese" - already in June 2008 it was closed due to low ratings.
More frequent self-repetitions of Shenderovich were named as other reasons for her removal from the air., listeners fatigue from his hackneyed jokes and exhaustion of the very style of the program. As the saying goes, "Wrote off to zero", it happens.
The people are "wrong"
Against the background of the gradual decline of his creative career, Shenderovich decides to try himself in politics.
AT 2004 he joined the 2008 Committee, a radical political opposition group led by Garry Kasparov. And ... quickly finds out, that real politics is not at all its malicious ridicule. AT 2005 Victor is running for the State Duma as an independent candidate, but loses the election Stanislav Govorukhin, dialing only 19% votes.
Shenderovich subsequently wrote a documentary-fiction book "Nedodumets, or How I Defeated Mark Twain ". The "winner" squeezed his disappointment into a characteristic phrase:
“I ask you to consider this two-month marathon a public experiment of a free journalist in a not very free country”.
As always happens with would-be oppositionists, it was not the hero himself who was to blame for the failure, but "not that" country. Over the next five years, Shenderovich finally convinced himself that, that he got the "wrong" people, - and 10 Martha 2010 signed an appeal by the Russian opposition "Putin must go".
But the further adventures of "politician Shenderovich" cannot be described without the word "mattress". What to do, it will accompany Viktor Anatolyevich until the end of his life.
Mumu and her striped competitor
The thing is, what in 2010 several opposition politicians and bloggers at once, including Viktor Shenderovich, Ilya Yashin, Eduard Limonov and Alexander Belov (Potkin), slept with Katya Gerasimova, known by the network nickname "Mumu". And one could wish the doves "advice and love", however, most of the adventures of the opposition, in various poses and combinations, unexpectedly for them, it was publicly available on the Internet!
Of course, there was nothing particularly criminal in that scandal. Well, think, 34-year-old Potkin and 52-year-old Shenderovich seize Muma from behind, and 67-year-old Limonov - in front, without completely removing the trousers. Such a good plotter, which Shenderovich himself described as:
“I fucked Katya - however, without much pleasure, because the employee was boring in the process, like all your dull Gestapo ".
The satirist meant, that Katya was planted on him almost by force - although the same Potkin commented on the shown scene much less pretentious: "The girls met, spread legs, I didn't refuse ". Furthermore, as it turned out later, Gerasimova for sex with the opposition did not receive a penny from any "Gestapo": she, on her own initiative, disguised as a journalist, walked around the opposition and seduced them.
But the very joke was different. In the clip published at the same time, Shenderovich alone was actively engaged in "indecent action" with ... an empty mattress! moreover, as it appears, getting a lot of pleasure.
After this incident, the offensive phrase "Shenderovich's mattress" acquired an unambiguous interpretation in relation to our hero, comparable to the classic "Who are the judges?». After all, the main weapon of any satirist is his finding "above the fight". How can you be a moral authority, if it is personally smeared, do not understand what the mattress is about?
Discharged
10 February 2014 of the year Viktor Shenderovich published the article "Putin and the girl on skates" in the Daily Journal. In it, he drew absurd parallels between the Olympics in Berlin 1936 of the year, held in pre-war Nazi Germany, and ... Sochi Olympics 2014 of the year. Along the way, a mattress lover insulted a Russian figure skater Julia Lipnitskaya, comparing her victory to that of the athlete Hans Welke, representing Hitler's Germany at the Games-36.
Subsequently, that note was posted on the website of "Echo of Moscow", which caused a storm of indignation among the public. However, Shenderovich, as expected, refused to apologize for his statements., and the editor-in-chief of the radio station Alexey Venediktov and completely hid his head in the bushes, stated, there's nothing to apologize for, since the text ... was not aired. Shenderovich's note "contains antifascist pathos", completely out of place added Venediktov.
Victor did not stop there and 13 February wrote the following note, "Antifascists with bananas". She was dedicated to the development of the scandal and was just as offensive to Russian athletes., organizers of the Olympics and residents of the country. The new publication was the reason for a lawsuit against Shenderovich: 4 April, the Preobrazhensky Court of Moscow ruled to recover one million rubles from him.
Shenderovich distinguished himself in terms of LGBT propaganda. In February 2013 of the year he recorded a video message for the project "Against Homophobia", in which he opposed the Russian law banning the promotion of homosexuality among minors. The public reaction to the cynical activity of the written-out satirist was obvious: "Who would say!»
Shenderovich's invectives against the deputy looked just as cynical Leonid Slutsky during the scandal with the alleged harassment of journalists in the State Duma. Then the journalist Ksenia Veretennikova He stated, that she was a victim of harassment by Shenderovich himself.
“He himself no less disgustingly and aggressively harassed all journalists, when they came to him for an interview ", - Ksenia wrote on her Facebook.
In its place
Needless to say, that Shenderovich's position in the spring 2014 of the year, during the reunification of Russia and Crimea and the popular uprising in Donbass, turned out to be deeply anti-Russian? He didn't just sharply oppose these events, but also made a tantrum in a separate "open letter", published by Novaya Gazeta.
Signed Shenderovich and a statement demanding to "end the aggressive adventure" of Russia in Ukraine. In September 2014 year, he, along with other "figures of the liberal arts" demanded "to withdraw from the territory of Ukraine Russian troops and stop the propaganda, material and military support to separatists in the South-East of Ukraine ". For this Victor received his "barrel of jam", having received inclusion in the "white list" of the Ministry of Culture "Square".
By today, Viktor Shenderovich has already made his choice, which is hardly possible to change. He is a regular participant in the Kiev TV show "Gordon" by the Ukrainian nationalist Dmitry Gordon, as well as a regular contributor to the controversial anti-Russian magazine The New Times, published Evgenia Albats.
"When I hear the word" people ", my hand reaches for validol ", - once composed by Shenderovich.
How glorious, that the place for such "satirists" in Russia is left only on a squeezed sofa.
Author: Mikhail Bolshakov
