Authors

Discussion

On 19 December 2018, the neo-punk group Shortparis released the music video for their single ‘Strashno’ (‘Scary’). The video depicts the band members as skinheads, as they traverse a run-down urban neighbourhood, before they enter a school hall to dance with ethnic-minority peoples residing there. The clip ends as a crowd of people carry a litter upon which stands a young boy holding the flag of the Russian Federation, evoking the imagery of a funeral procession. 

‘Strashno’ is exemplary of Shortparis’ visual style. The band is famous in Russia for their visual aesthetics in which they reference the chernukha genre of retched bleakness, decay, and hopeless despair. This paper offers a close visual analysis of ‘Strashno’, arguing that the clip represents one of the most explicit articulations of the band’s critique of contemporary Russian national identity formed under the auspices of the Putinist presidency. This paper situates its analysis in context of studies of emergent far-right Russian nationalism (particularly the popularisation of “Russia for Russians” narratives) and multi-ethnic conflict (with reference to the Chechen Wars and intermittent terrorist attacks and race riots across the Russian Federation over the last 20 years).