The Making of an Anti-Bourgeois Hero

The clip in this artifact derives from the second episode of the rebooted talk show Vzgliad (1996-1999), which had originally started airing during perestroika. Here, we see iconic film actor Sergei Bordov Jr. (1971-2002) in an appearance that would jump-start his persona of “anti-bourgeois hero.” This image was cemented by Bodrov Jr.’s turns as Danila Bagrov in Aleksei Balabanov’s (1959-2013) blockbuster crime thrillers Brother (1997) and Brother 2 (2000), films associated with violent national resentment and revanchism.

Bodrov began co-hosting Vzgliad just after attaining notoriety with his role in The Prisoner of the Caucasus (1996), but a few months before the release of Brother, which catapulted him to stardom. In the season’s first episode, Vzgliad’s primary host, Aleksandr Liubimov (1962-), announced that Bodrov would usher in a new chapter in the show’s history. The first few episodes established the show’s new format, in which Liubimov presented while sitting at the desk of his traditional TV studio in the Ostankino tower, wearing a business suit, whereas Bodrov hosted a more “down-to-earth,” informal, and overall youthful portion of the show on location from a Moscow bar.

The show covered pressing and highly controversial issues of violence, identity, and social inequality. The first of three episodes hosted by Bodrov on his own covered issues like the Kotlyakovskoya Cemetery bombing, mass protests and violent repressions in Belarus, a national coal miners’ strike organized to protest several months of unpaid wages, and squatters resisting eviction from the Bulgakov House in the center of Moscow. As part of Vzgliad’s new format, Bodrov acted as the voice of an “unfiltered,” popular common sense—and resentment. As he cast aspersions on the “bourgeoisie” and the tackily wealthy “new Russians,” he seemed barely able to resist swearing at the injustices the show’s interviews and reportages uncovered. Liubimov, meanwhile, represented a different kind of common sense: middle-class, middle-aged, and bourgeois: “Couldn’t the squatters just sell their art and use the profits to pay rent?” “Doesn’t the businesswoman/ philanthropist from one of the stories deserve a spot in the iconostasis of a church whose renovation she funded?”

Bodrov’s performance of populism does not exhibit the chauvinism and xenophobia later associated with Danila, his character from the Brother franchise. Like Danila, however, Bodrov-the-TV-personality stands in for a new sincerity or striving for authenticity. The excerpt included here is preceded by interviews with a young Belarusian political activist who left the country to escape repressions and a former leader of the student democratic movement at Moscow State University—with comments from Liubimov and the musician Andrey Makarevich (1953-), who appears as a special guest. The conversation revolves around the ideas of “romanticism” and youth rebellion, and, toward the end, Bodrov remarks that there is something “touchingly old-fashioned” about them. Indeed, he continues, being “romantic” or “rebellious” is not fashionable among young people anymore; what is really “stylish” now is “to be a bourgeois.” The next segment unexpectedly shifts to a different kind of “romanticism” or authenticity: the story of a man who cut his finger off to convince his girlfriend to quit heroin. From there, the participants discuss, among other things, the idea of resisting other forms of addiction—including to then-emerging “computer networks.”