Abstract
In 2016, images of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s face wearing make-up and superimposed on a gay pride flag were banned in Russia on the grounds of giving “the impression of a non-standard sexual orientation” of Putin. This intervention by the government into the image politics of Putin put Russian nationalism and sexuality into contestation with each other. In this paper, we map four “realms” or possible discourses of sexual citizenship and the Russian state. Through a semiological analysis of the “gay clown” meme, we unpack its contested meaning as a visual artifact of “queer globalization.” In light of the co-opting and criminalization of the meme and attempts by the Russian state to regulate the sexuality of its “first citizen,” we conclude that the “gay clown” meme demands a reassessment of how LGBT+ social movements use queer iconographies in virtual and public spaces.
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- 1.
Although the authors regret we could not secure permission to publish this photograph, we encourage readers to conduct a google image search for “Drag Putin a la Warhol” or “Putin as a gay clown” to view the image referenced throughout the paper.
- 2.
должно служить намеком на якобы нестандартную сексуальную ориентацию президента РФ; Retrieved from the Federal List of Extremist Materials [ФЕДЕРАЛЬНЫЙ СПИСОК ЭКСТРЕМИСТСКИХ МАТЕРИАЛОВ] Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation (2019).
- 3.
We use the term “gay clown” to refer to the image of Putin discussed throughout the paper. We trace the term in Western media discourse to Selk and Filipov (2017).
- 4.
The bill passed the Russian Duma on June 11, 2013. It amends the 2010 law, “On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development” by defining “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships” as a class of harmful content and expanding administrative penalties against offenders.
- 5.
Know Your Meme. (2017, August 27). Retrieved from: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gay-clown-putin. Knowyourmeme.com’s entry on the meme suggests that the image first appeared in 2013 on Tumblr, the social media and microblogging Web site; the image was called “Drag Putin a la Warhol.”
- 6.
Government of Russian Federation. Ministry of Justice. (2017, March 30). Federal list of extremist material (Item no. 4071). Moscow: Government of Russian Federation.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
See Werth’s (2006) discussion of Simmel and the centrality of the face.
- 9.
See the Tate Modern’s description of the Marilyn Diptych here: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/warhol-marilyn-diptych-t03093.
- 10.
Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism, elaborated in 1997s The Foundations of Geopolitics, seeks to restore Russia’s geopolitical position through the defeat of the United States and “Atlanticist” powers via a coordinated campaign of subversion and disinformation. Romanets (2017, p. 165) comments on the authenticity of the Dugin quote which appears in the foreword of his book, Homosexuality in the Service of the National Liberation Movement: “[n]o matter whether this foreword is a mystification posted on the Internet or an authentic text, it factors smoothly into the ideological substantiation of his imagined rivalry between Atlanticism and Eurasianism [sic].”
- 11.
Like Gorky, Dugin does not specify a subject in his logic of patriotic homosexuality—who will fight Dugin’s Great Patriotic War against European Sodomy?
- 12.
See also Russian Federal Law: N 135-FZ, 2013.
- 13.
In December 2013, Putin tapped Kiselyov to run Russia Today, Russia’s state-run international news agency. However, in July 2015, Kiselyov came out in support of civil unions in Russia, stating “the existence of the LGBT community is a fact … You could figure out how to make life easier for adults if they want to take on, and on paper, the obligation to take care of each other. Love works wonders. Who’s against that?” (Oliphant 2015). Given Kiselyov’s favor with Putin, his statements suggest the possibility of interplay between the heteronormative state of Realm III and an expansion of patriotic homosexuality a la Realm II. This serves to illustrate two points: that the interplay between realms is necessarily “messy” and that the “looseness” of the 2010 and 2013 laws is a “feature,” not a “bug,” within the state’s discursive regime.
- 14.
Colbert, S. (2017, April 8). The Late Show with Stephen Colbert [Television Broadcast]. New York, NY: CBS.
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Baker, J.E., Clancy, K.A., Clancy, B. (2020). Putin as Gay Icon? Memes as a Tactic in Russian LGBT+ Activism. In: Buyantueva, R., Shevtsova, M. (eds) LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_9
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