Context is King, Exemplified by a Very Dumb Pop Song

also about a poop suitcase of wars

Hello,

A well-known Chinese curse goes: “May you live in interesting times”. It is probably misattributed. The closest actual Chinese expression might be: “It’s better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period.” What can I say? The interesting times line is catchier.

Our times are also becoming more and more interesting and chaotic, but most of all, I would say that our times are recontextualizing times. Times that tear words, phrases, and ideas from their familiar context and plunge them into a new one, changing them forever. Because words, phrases, and ideas don’t matter. Even facts don’t matter sometimes. Only context is king.

When I was in high school, this band, Ruki Vverkh! ("Hands up!", as in "put your hands in the air like you just don't care"), was everywhere. It was omnipresent in our small community of Russian-speaking, dumb Israeli teenagers, as only a very basic Russian boy band can be. That means nobody really listened to it, but somehow everyone always heard it. It played on every disco and on every radio. They had vacuous lyrics and catchy, primitive tunes, scientifically generated to make post-pubescent teens move their awkward, sweaty bodies. This is their album cover (which tells you everything you ever wanted to know):

We hated and despised it, ridiculed and mocked it, but knew many lyrics by heart.
One of their songs went like this:

My baby, I miss you!
You're far away, and I don't get a letter from you!

What can I tell you, they’re no Shakespeare. They’re even no Justin Bieber. We, of course, changed the words to something a little more appropriate for a 15-year-old teenager:

My baby, I miss you!
You're far away, and I ejaculate into my fist!

(It rhymes in Russian. It was fun to sing-along at the discos.)

Years passed, teen heroes drowned in the Lethe, teen zeroes even more deeply so, and I happily forgot about this band and this song.

I was reminded a few months ago when Ruki Vverkh!, or rather their lead singer, Sergei Zhukov, participated in a pro-Kremlin concert. These events are quite common nowadays. There is a neologism for such a phenomenon in Russian. When an artist or another public figure publicly supports Kremlin, it is called “zetnulsya”. An English analogue might be “he zedded himself”.

So, Zhukov has zedded himself. Oh well, no big loss. Someone organized a concert, shoveled up a few long-past-their-expiration-date arthritic pop stars, gathered a bunch of underpaid government sector workers to make a little crowd, and then made a TV report showcasing the overreaching support of the war effort. All of this has basically one viewer in mind: the one who has a big red button and a suitcase full of his own poop.

(That’s not even a joke; go check it out!)

People who gather for these concerts are there either for a very small fee or out of fear of expulsion. In general, they don't care about geriatric pop stars. At this particular concert, according to the eyewitness, Zhukov was the only one who elicited some sort of reaction from an otherwise comatose crowd. He was one, maybe even two generations younger than the rest of the ghouls. Him people still remember. Some of them even were awkward and sweaty teenagers when he was at his peak. Naturally, he sang his most famous song:

My baby, I miss you!
You're far away, and I don't get a letter from you!

And suddenly I realized that, in our crazy age, this poor excuse of a verse from a day-fly pop song just turned into a war song. The war song. The Z-war song. It somehow changed without actually changing. Same words, same band, same primitive but catchy tune. Different reality. In this one—in ours!—Ruki Vverkh! sings war songs now.

And, I have to say, it fits like a goddamn glove. This war is not glorious. It does not deserve proper war songs. No "Glory, glory, Hallelujah".  No "My own Lili Marlene". Definitely no "Bella, chiao!" for you, assholes. This war deserves only "you're far away, and I ejaculate into my fist".

Then I remembered the name of the band. Oh, right. Ruki Vverkh! literally means “Hands up!” Everything clicked. All was right in this new world of ours.

Except for the things that were wrong.

Context is king, and meaning is its fiefdom. It doesn't matter what you named your Russian teen pop boy band. It only matters who you're singing for.

(“popa” in Russian means “butt”, so I insist, is very appropriate)

The next letter might be about “Game of Thrones”, unless I think of something else. Subscribe.

Best,

K.

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Let’s try this “comment-suggesting questions” thing:

1. Do you have an example of this type of recontextualization of something mundane and unimportant?

2. Is there an artist who zedded themselves or otherwise revealed their opinions, and that, in turn, changed your opinion of them? Is the artist separate from their art? And what if this art is shitty?

3. A funny third option.

4. How do you even poop into a suitcase? Must be tricky, right? I mean, the topology alone…