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A number of media commentators, both pro- and anti-Satisfaction, compare the performance to something one might see at the Moscow “Blue Oyster” bar, a gay nightspot whose name is both a gay pun in Russian and apparently inspired by a scene from the first Police Academy movie. Certainly, Gessen’s story of the clip’s condemnation by identically pantsuited sexologist sisters deserves a video campaign of its own. It is true that some of the defenses of the Satisfaction boys have come in the face of anti-LGBT attacks. As a dedicated binge-watcher and meticulous completist, I have to echo Gessen’s recommendation to watch the videos in production order if you want to get all the satisfaction these videos can provide.Īfter years of unrelenting Russian media attacks on the LGBT community (not to mention the ever-increasing rates of physical attacks for which the anti-gay campaign provides cover), what could be more heartening than apparently ordinary Russians showing solidarity with a group of boys who so comfortably inhabited a two-minute homoerotic performance? Could actual tolerance, or even acceptance, be in reach, somewhere over the rainbow? I don’t have time to show them all to you, but for those of you who do not read Russian, I suggest taking a look at Masha Gessen’s New Yorker post on the subject, which includes links to videos made by construction students, agricultural students, emergency workers, stable jocks, a theater troupe, nurses, and, most delightfully, two headscarved and housedress-bedecked babushki in a St. Soon people throughout the Russian Federation began posting their own “Satisfaction” clips, initiating a viral video campaign that, in a departure from the original English usage, Russians call a “flashmob”. Sadly for the guardians of Russian public morality, this was not the end of the story. The answer to the question, “Is nothing sacred?” has apparently become, “Everything is sacred.” But it is also part and parcel to the general official response to perceived cynicism. Perhaps this would be forgivable by children, but not by people who are dedicating their lives to aviation.” Granted, this works in part because of the Stalin-era cult of aviators. Indeed, critics of the boys (and if everyone in Russian could call Pussy Riot “girls,” I have no problem calling these students “boys”) were at great pains to construct a notion of the public sacred on the fly, as it were: the head of the Samara Flight Club called the clip “ a scandal for aviation. Calling a freshman dorm a “cathedral of science,” on the other hand, only makes sense if you’ve never actually been to a freshman dorm. The connection to Pussy Riot, the most infamous example of young people in Russia appropriating a public space without a hint of solemnity, is to be expected. “ This is a great insult to the Ulyanovsk region, and to veterans.” And this is a cathedral of science.” The Rector of the Ulyanovsk Aviation Institute, Sergei Krasnov, agreed. I would even compare it with Pussy Riot, when they made a mockery of the cathedral. “It’s a tragedy,” declared famous aviator Magomed Tolboev. And, in a climate of increased censorship and selective prudishness, the responses from Russian officialdom were even more predictable.
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With the benefit of hindsight, it should surprise no one that this became a cause celebre on Russian social media.
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In the middle of January, freshmen cadets at an aviation academy in Ulyanovsk (a provincial town bearing Lenin’s original last name), posted a clip inspired both by the Benny Benassi’s 2002 “ Satisfaction” and a 2013 all-male British army parody, surely never intending to become the latest flashpoint in contemporary Russian culture wars. (This post is adapted from a presentation at the Davidson College Queer Russia Symposium on February 17, 2018)