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 Valiantsin AKUDOVICH
Belarusian Association of Journalists,
Belarusian Collegium
MEDIA AS A MYTHS FACTORY OR THE STUDY OF ONE AESTHETIC DEFEAT
In the earliest times, myth was the only information medium to present the whole world picture. Thousands years have passed since then, bringing about drastic changes in this scheme. The Information itself has now become a dominant myth of the modern times, with the mass media performing a function of the principle creator, codifier and a safeguard of diverse myths, both global and regional. This happened because the media — (not the traditional myth-making institutes like religion, culture and ideology) — appeared to be the most capable of integrating the insanely scattered work of the world into the paranoiac whole, or a myth, in the situation of the communication outburst. Therefore, I will dare say this morning that today’s main role of the media is not the production and sale of information, but, namely, the production of myths. And, if the so-formulated version indeed makes sense, we should take into account this fundamental role of the media when carrying out a concrete analysis of their operation. Naturally, this also relates to the overview of the media workings in the post-Communist Belarus. For, if we forget that all our media have been in this way or another involved in creating the single Big Myth, eclectically named “Belarus”, all our attempts to differentiate ideological distortions and the objective information will remain “the thing in itself” and will rather confuse the general media situation, than help clear it up. Furthermore, by playing down the media problems to simply political and legal aspects (even if they are extremely painful and topical for us), we unwisely overshadow the mission, with which our media were sacrally pregnant after the Belarusian literature (the progenitor of nation) had exhausted its myth-creating potential.
As we know very well, the process of shaping a full-fledged Belarusian myth is yet to be completed. By the way, unlike the Poles, the Balts or Russians, we do not have a very clear understanding of what it looked like, not to mention the foreigners, which come across us in either real or virtual spaces. The reason for that is obvious. In contrast to the Poles, the Balts or the Russians, who had gotten into the Communist empire with already shaped myths about themselves and who needed only to shake off the Communist peelings after the collapse of the empire, Belarusans, who had not had the previously obtained myth wear, faced the bare independence in 1991.
If we reflect on this very carefully, we will understand that that was a dreadful situation. One could compare it with the situation of a person, who has suddenly noticed that he did not have a shadow. He seemed to be just like anybody else, but without a shadow; therefore, he had no trust in his own life.
To make a story short, the newly independent country was in desperate need for a national myth. And, Belarusian media rushed to try different measures and fashion styles on it, although the nationally oriented dress was obviously the trendiest back then. Actually, however, the fashion for national dress passed shortly, just like the one for the Communist and liberal or any other wear for the national myth. And we got stuck in a situation, when during many years only two media groupings — the state-sponsored and opposition press — fought for their vision of the Belarusian myth on the basis of pure opposition to each other. It would be more correct to call the opposition press the non-state press, but in the situation of the today’s Belarus, not only the media, but also everything, not associated with the state, becomes opposition.
If we draw a scheme of those competing myths, which are trying today to portray the space of the one and the same geopolitical precedent, we will get a classical binary position: light-darkness, innocence-violence, wellbeing-poverty, etc… In other words, the myth-making of the state media completely focused on the positive images: heroic nation, economic achievements, political stability, excellent roads, brilliant sportsmen, high level of education, free health care, housing construction projects, festivals, songs…
The opposition media based their myth-making strategy on the negative images: dictatorship, totalitarianism, Kurapaty graves, economic collapse, betrayal of national interest, death squads, corruption, Soviet mentality and reality, kolkhoz, no prospects…and ad infinitum.
We completely avoid here the political ferment, which restored the both myths, namely: Belarus should be obliged exclusively to Alexander Lukashenka for the rise of the country, according to the state media; Belarus should be obliged to the same Alexander Lukashenka for its decay, according to the opposition media. The political problems do not mater much here. Not because they hardly exist. Rather, it is absolutely not essential for the national Myth on what political basement it arises, because any conceptual myth is neither the political nor even an ideological event. This event is informational and aesthetic.
I will underline: informational and aesthetic. The latter equally concerns both the biblical myth about the creation of the world and every modern myth, be it Chernobyl or Microsoft. But, if it is more or less clear with the informational component of the myth — information here should be significant, the aesthetic component of the myth is more difficult to formalize.
I realize clearly that our conference is not devoted to aesthetic issues, But, since I am going to say soon that the opposition media in Belarus has lost the fight for their vision of the national myth to the state-run media (which had lost their fight long before) not politically, ideologically or due to the permanent administrative and legal pressure by the authorities, but aesthetically, I cannot do without a few words about the aesthetic component itself.
Whatever newsy the event might be, it would become a myth only on condition of being fixed in attractive and sticking-to-the-memory forms. However, it is impossible to realize here that being aesthetic does not necessarily mean being beautiful. Kant formulated long ago the presence of the “aesthetics of the sinister”, which makes possible such myths as Apocalypses, Dracula or Khatyn and beside its informational component. Myth is maybe not the greatness of beauty, but the beauty of the greatness, although horrible and sinister, for sure. (On 9/11 last year, American media created one of such myths, when they collapsed WTC twin towers before our very eyes. This was a nightmare, yet what a beautiful nightmare. Since it was beautiful, it immediately became one of the brightest myths of the new millenium. By the way, I was not mistaken when I said: “Media…collapsed…” Because, although the terrorists attacked the towers, it was the media which created a “beautiful nightmare”. They created it deliberately, avoiding or hiding the nightmare of human debris, as consumers were indeed not interested in the truth of the life. They were interested in beautiful myths; the more horrible they were, the better.)
Getting back to the opposition between the state-run and opposition media in Belarus, one should state that the defeat of the latter was preconditioned, as they had been basing their vision of the national myth on something which cannot be perceived as aesthetic and thus cannot be a myth: rotten country, miserable society, cowed people, clumsy opposition, stupid leadership… It seems that the only success of the opposition media in the context of creating a Belarusian myth is the demonization of Lukashenka in the framework of the aesthetics of the ugly: Lukashenka is not the Dracula yet, but he is no longer “the ordinary president”, either. (Allusion to the documentary by Belarus film director Yury Khashchevatsky). Since the efforts by the state media (with the plus sign) and the opposition media (with the minus sign) matched, we eventually gained an exclusively efficient and effective result, owing to which the personal myth of Alexander Lukashenka alone has continued to represent Belarus both internationally and — what is more surprising — to Belarusans themselves.
In all other respects, the opposition media turned out to be completely disoriented. They were only able to display a sad skepticism towards at least some myth-making efforts by the state-run media: “Slavic Bazaar (music festival) is a profanation; Dazhynki (harvest festival) is a stupidity; the new railway terminal is gigantism, the National Library is a show-off, the Olympic champion is an easy win…
Perhaps, it is indeed an easy win; perhaps, critical analysts from the opposition media were irreproachable in terms of factual logical accuracy. Yet, it did not prevent them from getting estranged by information consumers. Could it be different? Who needs, who could be interested in that dismal Belarus, which the opposition press painted in gray colors day after day? And a mass reader, which had already longed in his collective subconsciousness for a beautiful and bright myth about himself and his country, had a point when he decided to escape from that uncomfortable paper foreign land to the more attractive information spaces.
I do not know whether the opposition media have finally begun to understand their conceptual mistake, but it seems that the key opposition publications (the ones which have not yet been closed down by the authorities) have started to search carefully, yet not refusing from criticism against the authorities, for themselves in the direction, which can be quite accurately described by the formula “From the opposition to the national press”. If we paraphrase this slogan to fit our context, it will sound as follows: “From a sum of the opposition between one another towards the national myth”.
Although the majority of non-state media is surely to continue supporting resistance to the current regime, while Lukashenka remains at power, I still want to believe that they will have enough wit not to project automatically this resistance against the country and the society which are burdened with this regime.
Finally, Belarusian media have not yet learned to realize that the fate of Belarus in the twenty first century depends not on politicians, economists or God, but on the media magnates and media employees. We live in a world where the real existence of a nation, a country or whoever is not ensured by a personal existence. It is ensured by the presence of its projection in the information space. Without this sustainable projection, nobody will ever believe in the authenticity of anything. Just like the man without his shadow does not believe himself.
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