Humor and satire in W. Shakespeare's comedies

Chapter 2. Humor and satire in modern journalism.
2.1. Satire in modern journalism.
The traditions laid down by Russian satire of the 19th century were brilliantly developed by such remarkable writers as Zoshchenko, Bulgakov, Ilf and Petrov. They continue to develop in modern literature. I especially want to note the anecdote novel by V. Voinovich about the soldier Chonkin , which absorbed both the anger of Bulgakov 's satire and the humor of Zoshchenko's stories, reminiscent of J. Hasek's novel about the soldier Schweik. The work of V. Voinovich “The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of a Soldier Ivan Chonkin ” has not been published in our country for a long time.
Today, Voinovich's satire deserves a serious and unbiased approach. Before us is the prose of a master who knows how to use and artistically combine elements of different literary traditions in an original way. The writer in the novel subjects to a satirical analysis all the important spheres of the totalitarian Stalinist state: the national economy, the army, the government and the socialist system itself. Heroes of Voinovich sometimes act in situations that repeat the most heroic and touching collisions of world classics, Russian classics and folklore. The protagonist of the anecdote novel is a Red Army soldier of the last year of service Ivan Chonkin . Idiot Chonkin , sent to the village of Krasnoye to guard the crashed plane, forgotten in this useless post in the turmoil of the beginning of the war, in his own way experiences all the adventures of the fabulous simpleton Ivanushka. Humble and trusting, he guards the plane until the end of the war and enters the battle for it, however, with his troops. Chonkin gains the upper hand over his enemies: Captain Milyaga and his assistants, he gains shelter and a good friend Nyura. Ivan receives an unprecedented award from the general's hands in the finale. But here the fairy tale ends: the order is immediately taken away, and the hero himself is dragged into a prison.
The author ridicules the drill, martinetism, stupidity and cruelty reigning in the Red Army. The novel shows the cowardice and stupidity of the army commanders. When the captured “spy” was dragged to Milyage, he first beat him, and then, having learned that the name of the “spy” was Stalin, he was horrified and began to humiliate himself in front of the victim. By the way, Stalin personally is not present in the novel. It is a kind of magic word, one that in a world of fear and deceit means more than reality. Declared a state criminal, Chonkin is far from freethinking. He honors the leader and respects the army charter. Only ruthlessness, a popular virtue of those years, Chonkin lacks. He pities everyone: Nyura, his captives, the boar Borka. Even Gladyshev, who tried to shoot him, Chonkin regretted, for which he suffered. It is not clear to the naive hero of Voinovich that a good heart is also sedition. He, with his gift of compassion, is truly an enemy of the state.
The novel is structured in such a way that the word becomes the cause of all decisive turns of action. The life and death of the heroes of the work depends on the word spoken or written. The anecdote novel ends with a bitter smile from the recent tragic past. Nugget breeder Gladyshev finds a gelding killed by a stray bullet on the battlefield. Under the horse's hoof lay a crumpled piece of paper with the inscription: "If I die, please consider me a communist." The writer's observation is sharp, but also bitter, the irony does not let you forget that his hero is a fooled, destitute poor fellow, living as if in a delusional dream, from the category of those who are truly tormented.
Voinovich is inexhaustible in portraying comic situations, but too compassionate to be funny. Voinovich's work "The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of a Soldier Ivan Chonkin " was perceived differently by literary criticism and representatives of society from the army and ideology. The problems posed by the writer in the novel touch the most painful points of our moral, military and ideological life, and they are still relevant today.
In a recent interview with a Kiev journalist, Gennady Khazanov said that there can be no satire today - I quote verbatim: “What kind of satire, when, thank God, not all alternative media are closed yet and there is a non-one- party system ?!”
It's probably black humor. Because in the days of a one-party system and uncontested media, the situation was most accurately described by a reprise from the Ryazan Garage: “A specialist in Soviet satire? Amazing profession. You are doing something that isn't there." That is, there was something, of course, but it was something that castigated "individual shortcomings." And real satirical works like " Chonkin " or "Yawning Heights" were published where few people understood them.
Today, in the sense of satire, we have a poor, but demonstrative situation in which Russia, laughing excitedly, parted with its past. Such a past is today the 90s, the omnipotence of the press, PR, parliamentarism and partly glamour (which is also, in essence, a product of liberal ideology and oligarchic practice). For some reason, Russia, true to the Marxist formula about a mocking parting, does not want to smile at all, meeting with its future. But it would be much braver and, most importantly, more useful.
In Russia today, you can laugh at almost everything that is living its life: over a free press, over parliamentarism, over electoral madness with the participation of priests and pop music ... Andrei Konchalovsky showed the satirical comedy "Gloss" - about the mores of a secular party and about a near neophyte, rushing there. There is a very funny head of a modeling agency - a complete freak performed by Shifrin - and an equally funny oligarch in an equally convincing version of Domogarov . Unfortunately, all these characters are also people of yesterday; there are no words, their vulgarity deserves a solemn flogging, but at least it is a living vulgarity, not aggressive and perfectly aware of itself. The oligarchs were disgusting not with bad manners, but with claims to steer, but in this capacity, alas, they do not attract any satirists, because this quality of theirs remains in demand to this day, just the helmsmen have changed. Instead of juicy and colorful characters, what is the hero of Domogarov , faded, erased ones appeared, with the same St. Petersburg biographies; it is more difficult to portray them, but they are no less ridiculous with their statist rhetoric and Orthodox concerns. It’s just that we won’t see them - such - in any satirical film, and this is understandable: now is their time, and our satire is done with yesterday. Domestic glamour , with its unbearable vulgarity, has become the same yesterday - no words, all this is vile, but still not as vile as the domestic kvassophilia of the new spill, also glamorous , but much less amusing. The world of political strategists and corrupt artists is terrible, equally tirelessly "scratching" the Russian provinces, but the world of new-style political strategists is no better. It is even more terrible, for it is more impersonal. But for some reason, this audience does not cause a desire to laugh at it - or, more precisely, this desire is blocked in time by an internal censor. After all, Gleb Pavlovsky of 1999 is just a political strategist, and Gleb Olegovich of 2007 is a translator of the supreme truth. He himself will laugh at anyone you want - he invited Maxim Kononenko to the program, also a satirist. But after all, the Kremlin loves to read Kononenko's stories because all the satire there has long ended. Pavlovsky is now being ironic mainly at Kasparov and Kasyanov, and this is already a “falling push”.