In Pixar’s first feature film Toy Story, Sid Phillips represents pure evil. Described by Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear as the neighborhood toy torturer, Sid explodes and decapitates random toys for entertainment. After Buzz finds himself trapped in Sid’s bedroom following a misunderstanding at Pizza Planet, Woody organizes an elaborate scheme to rescue Buzz from this unescapable dungeon. In Lise Birk Pedersen’s documentary Putin’s Kiss, journalist Oleg Kashin describes Nashi — the controversial political youth organization active in Russia from 2005 to 2012 — as another unescapable dungeon: “Nashi cripples young people’s morality. Many of those I know in these movements are already mentally crippled, and there is no way back for them” (Pedersen,
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Before even screening the film, viewers are confronted with a quote on the cover artwork from movie critic Leslie Felperin, who praises the film as, “A riveting story of contemporary Russia’s dark side.” Furthermore, the film itself highlights and attributes to Nashi and Vasily Yakemenko random acts of this dark side such as the savage beating of Oleg Kashin and public defection on the car of opposition leader Ilya Yashin — who is shown earlier in the film leading an anti-Putin protest. Oleg categorizes this “harassment of so-called enemies” as the “main purpose” of Nashi, and Ilya describes the essence of Nashism as “shitting in public” (Pedersen, 31:00 - 33:00). These vignettes portray the political intentions and motivations behind Nashi as immoral, evil, and exempt from the law — amid speculation surrounding Nashi’s involvement in journalist suppression, Putin met with Vasily as a political signal to protect him from investigation and …show more content…
In the same way that Serguei Oushakine’s “patriotism of despair” does not appear in the transition from socialism to capitalism in East Germany and that Bulgarian Muslims were influenced by the combination of Western and Eastern religious practices rather than allowing one to dominate the other, the political motivations and real-world experiences of Nashi were neither 100-percent good nor evil. Nonetheless, the addition of nuance does not discredit the good versus evil dichotomy as a tool to explore competing conceptions of Nashi. For while Petersen relies on the evil side of Nashi to support Oleg’s notion of the dangerous dungeon and Masha’s troublesome experience as a kommissar, Hemment provides greater context and a wider sample of experiences. At the same time, Hemment sometimes ignores troublesome implications of the Russian nationalism revival orchestrated by Nashi in the Putin-era civil society. With the good and evil organization dispersed, time will continue to dictate such
Before even screening the film, viewers are confronted with a quote on the cover artwork from movie critic Leslie Felperin, who praises the film as, “A riveting story of contemporary Russia’s dark side.” Furthermore, the film itself highlights and attributes to Nashi and Vasily Yakemenko random acts of this dark side such as the savage beating of Oleg Kashin and public defection on the car of opposition leader Ilya Yashin — who is shown earlier in the film leading an anti-Putin protest. Oleg categorizes this “harassment of so-called enemies” as the “main purpose” of Nashi, and Ilya describes the essence of Nashism as “shitting in public” (Pedersen, 31:00 - 33:00). These vignettes portray the political intentions and motivations behind Nashi as immoral, evil, and exempt from the law — amid speculation surrounding Nashi’s involvement in journalist suppression, Putin met with Vasily as a political signal to protect him from investigation and …show more content…
In the same way that Serguei Oushakine’s “patriotism of despair” does not appear in the transition from socialism to capitalism in East Germany and that Bulgarian Muslims were influenced by the combination of Western and Eastern religious practices rather than allowing one to dominate the other, the political motivations and real-world experiences of Nashi were neither 100-percent good nor evil. Nonetheless, the addition of nuance does not discredit the good versus evil dichotomy as a tool to explore competing conceptions of Nashi. For while Petersen relies on the evil side of Nashi to support Oleg’s notion of the dangerous dungeon and Masha’s troublesome experience as a kommissar, Hemment provides greater context and a wider sample of experiences. At the same time, Hemment sometimes ignores troublesome implications of the Russian nationalism revival orchestrated by Nashi in the Putin-era civil society. With the good and evil organization dispersed, time will continue to dictate such