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CONSTRUCTING A MYTHOLOGICAL PRE-CHRISTIAN WRITING SYSTEM: NEOPAGAN REPRESENTATIONS OF SLAVIC RUNES IN RUSSIAN TV AND FILMS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 3 (21). P. 225-253

It has been suggested that the modern “screen culture” is a substitute for reality, that it distorts the world around us. Perhaps these fears are somewhat exaggerated, as distorted perceptions of reality can be created by other forms of culture. However, the strong influence of cinema and television on the minds of viewers is quite obvious, so it is important to study the role of this industry in the creation of various modern myths. This article examines the process of formation in the minds of Russian viewers of the Slavic runes myth, which are depicted in films and TV programs as an ancient form of pre-Christian Slavic writing. This article shows that science knows nothing about the Slavs writing, similar to the runic writing. This fact allows us to assert that the idea of the existence of Slavic runes is a modern myth. Its genesis is connected with the appearance of pseudo-scientific historical literature in post-Soviet Russia and its influence on the formation of the literary genre of Slavic fantasy. For the first time this myth, which is very popular among Russian neopagans, hit the screens in 2004, when a four-part film series The Legend of Kashchei was released. The film was the first screen incarnation of this genre of Slavic fantasy. The viewer can see signs very similar to Scandinavian runes in the Slavic deities’ palace. Since that time, runes have become a popular feature of Russian mystical films and serials. Even if the runes do not intertwine directly with the Slavs, they are included in the context of Russian historical and cultural heritage. So viewers get used to associate the image of runic inscriptions with the pagan beliefs of ancient Russia. An even larger contribution to the formation of such representations has been made by TV programs, in particular, those shown on the channel REN TV. The existence of a highly developed Slavic runic written language is discussed as a fact in a number of such programs and fonts, stylized like the Scandinavian runes, are often used in the visual design of some of them. All this is fully in line with the ideas of Russian neo-pagans which, by the way, we can see in all these movies. But if recently it was possible to think that the Slavic runes are part of the marginal subculture of pseudohistory adherents and that it is impossible to see them in respectable media, now the situation has changed. In 2018, in Orthodox Easter, Channel One showed a docudrama The Baptism of Rus’. The subtitles of this film are stylized as runic inscriptions. Thus, despite the Orthodox-oriented nature of the film, it repeats the popular among Russian neo-pagans myth about Slavic runes, fixing it in the mass consciousness. Unfortunately, these ideas are not so harmless, as they contribute to the restoration of Nazi fabrications about the mystical symbolism of runes and the reception of these views by the Russian historical consciousness.

Keywords: modern mythology, runic writing, pseudohistory, neopaganism, Nazism, Russian historical consciousness, Russian TV, Russian cinema, screen culture