Matil’da (2017) as a Political Event. Towards Scandalization of Royal Sanctity

Abstract

Scandals accompany and belong to public debates about Russian identity, past and present. Although they seem to be “public”, there is a lot of state influence, especially when the state stages scandals in the mass media in order to control discourse production in dealing with Russian collective memory and its past. This paper deals with the scandalization of the film Matil’da (Uchitel’, 2017) since the film provided a “wrong” interpretation of the character of the last Russian tsar Nicholas II. These measures are accompanied by legitimization of a powerful state and a powerful ruler for the modern Russian Federation and committed to Russian collective memory as well. The reasons, methods, and forms of scandalization and marginalization of the film in Russian media space will be discussed. It will be shown which political grounds contributed to the marginalization of this film. Based on various sources (newspapers, film reviews, posts on social networks), the dynamics, actors and interest groups of scandal will be analyzed. Factors of prohibition and release of the film will be in the foreground of consideration. The research method is critical discourse analysis.