Dans le monde réellement renversé, le vrai est un moment du faux
(In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false)
-Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
Every so often comes an event so bizarre that it provides a lucid glimpse into the dark inner workings of everyday life, usually obscured by their very banality.
In art, the Russian formalist Shklovsky pronounced such a technique ostranenie, or ‘making strange’; Brecht called it Verfremdungseffekt – the ‘distancing effect’.
Of course, in modern Russia's looking glass world, truth is stranger than literary theory.
Thus it was that on August 29 , in front of a live audience on Russian state TV, a trashy talk show called The Phenomenon (Fenomen) laid bare the device.
The premise of the programme was simple enough. Alexander, a TV magician badly impersonating Hercule Poirot, accompanied by fugitive spoon-bending fraudster Geller, uses audience interaction to ‘compose’ a murder mystery, on live TV, that he had already written and placed in a safe.
He picks three members of the audience, each of whom contributes a word as he attempts to ‘psychically manipulate’ their replies so that they match his narrative. Each of the said words is written down on a blackboard by another audience member.
The magician calls on a young woman and asks her for her favourite kitchen utensil; she says, ‘knife’.
(Man on stage writes K-N-I-F-E on blackboard)
He then asks a football hooligan-looking man which place he’d most like to travel to; man replies, “Munich”.
(M-U-N-I-C-H)
Finally, he prompts a third member of the audience to name a celebrity who was not in the room. After some initial hesitation, the man cries, “Putin!”
What followed could have been an exquisite corpse composition written by Dario Fo, Brecht and Daniil Kharms:
The man on the stage hesitates. Nervous laughter buzzes through the hall. “Alexander, should I write it?” asks the man, shaking his quavering marker over the board.
“Write it: Pu-tin” replies the presenter.
P-U-T-I-N is obediently inscribed, thus completing the cryptic trilogy of
KNIFE
MUNICH
PUTIN
on the blackboard.
Immediately, the hitherto unseen presenter of the show, clearly agitated, jumps on stage to announce:
“Right, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to replace that name. I’ve been informed that it needs to be changed. Try again”. And exits.
From off stage, he continues:
“It's just not appropriate”
The magician begins to mumble something to the effect of, “I think that” when he is interrupted by the voice of the presenter : “I think that the management…”. Before he could finish, magician interjects: “I was thinking only of the first name! [to man at blackboard]: Why don't you write just the first name. Erase it, please”.
Blackboard man: Give me something to erase it with!
He looks around the board, in bewilderment, for an eraser.
He can't find one.
Magician: Just write below the name that's there.
B-M: Of that same person?
M: Yes.
Disembodied voice of presenter: Let's…uh, could you please erase the surname. Everyone here is getting nervous. Let's just erase it and start again.
He comes back on stage, even more briskly.
B-M: there's nothing to erase it with!
Presenter: Can we get the assistants to help erase this, please?
A girl enters, attempts to vigorously rub out the word “PUTIN”.
Presenter: [to audience] “You see, live broadcasts are never without unexpected moments!”
Girl can't get the name to go away.
Presenter: Just add it underneath, then! [storms off].
Magician: Can we write the first name?
Presenter [off stage]: Yes, of course, of course. Write just the name, not the surname.
[B-M is seen scrawling V-L-A-D-I-M-I-R underneath “Putin”.
Presenter: Excellent.
Magician: Now I can ask the audience to sit down. Knife, Munich…Vladimir. A strange set, but I think nothing extraordinary.
After this, audience correctly guesses the time of the ‘crime’ (6:30) to finish the narrative. Magician opens safe with manuscript to reveal that his original plot does indeed involve a stabbing committed by a Vladimir in Munich at 6:30. Uri Geller compliments Magician.
Fin.
I first read about this incident in an article by Oleg Kozyrev in Grani.ru, an independent newspaper.
In his Swiftian piece, Kozyrev focuses on the absurdist image of a girl frantically and ultimately unsuccessfully rubbing out Putin's name in front of a national audience.
Viewers “were expecting light entertainment”, he writes. “Instead, the prime minister's name had to be rubbed out in front of millions of their countrymen, who were doubtless thinking: what happened in Munich, anyway?
“And why are they rubbing Putin?
“That was the day I began to respect Uri Geller. Say what you will, but the whole country saw these people bend over. Just because of one name. From the mention of just one name, they bent like no aluminium spoon ever could.
“I don't believe that the state of the country has anything to do with it. It was just a Phenomenon”.
Of course, we know exactly what happened in Munich, exactly 73 years and 11 months before the show aired.
Moreover, despite the apparent consternation of Magician, Presenter and audience, Russia's current media climate makes the spontaneity of what transpired on stage inconceivable.
There is no way that the show would have remained on the air for even a second longer had the management really been nervous about its proceedings. No one at home would have batted an eyelid; after all, Russian TV brims with technical difficulties.
Which leads inevitably to ask: why did it occur?
Who had written the script, and who was its real intended audience?
Why did state television consider it necessary to show the words “Knife”, “Munich” and “Putin, Vladimir” together on a blackboard for minutes of airtime, the memory of which would be reinforced further by the manufactured commotion/controversy?
The possibilities are tantalising.
1. We have a strong visual of a young girl trying unsuccessfully to erase Vladimir Putin's name.
Was this a message to the young Medvedev? ie. “if you’re getting any ideas, drop them right now! You couldn't rub me out, even if you tried”.
2. We have a TV presenter publicly censoring his own show, saying that Putin's name is inappropriate and that ‘management’ are ‘getting nervous’, without any attempt to hide it.
Was this a staged show of force to the media, and the public, that the state emphatically reserves the right to control what is shown on TV?
Was it an FYI to journalists that Putin's name is now officially out of bounds?
3. We have an undeniable reference to Hitler's night of the long knives, the ruthless and surprise purge, on June 30th 1934, of the SA storm troopers led by Ernst Rohm.
Was it yet another signal to the West that Russia is prepared to attack Poland and the Czech Republic over the US missile defence shield?
Was it a threat to Nashi, the crypto-paramilitary youth organisation headed by Vasili Yakemenko? (That seems unlikely, as Nashi are already looking like a spent force, and Yakemenko harbours little ambition).
Was it another 'subtle’ piece of advice for Medvedev, whose personal proximity to Putin strongly parallels that of Rohm to Hitler, to remember his place?
Was it, like the Night of the Long Knives, an announcement of the return of extra-judicial killings at the highest level?
A premonition of a ruthless cabinet purge, or even Putin's return to the presidency?
Only Uri Geller knows for certain.
