Authors

Discussion

Today’s popular cultural media play an important role in the reconstruction of collective imaginations of history. Mainstream films, comics, television series, computer games and music videos generate, revise, perpetuate, dismantle or question common notions of the past, and thus contribute to an affectively charged visualization and virtualization of history. Primarily in comics and animated films in recent years, established figurations of new or recovered heroes are often shaped by emotionalized representation of the imaginary past or by unexpected re-interpretations of historical events. Especially in Eastern European cultures we see a veritable boom of comics and animation art that deals with the contemporary society's relationship to global, national or family history via images of new/old heroes and their counterparts. In my paper, I will discuss strategies of dramatization, emotionalization and personalization of the Soviet and pre-Soviet past in Belarusian and Russian comics and animated films. The starting point of my discussion will be that the combination of textual and visual storytelling seems to be predestined to grant the "heroes of history" a new face and unexpected scope for action. This serves both to reappropriate national history and to open new, unexpected personal perspectives on the past as well as on former categories of friends or enemies.