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good-looking and beautiful, if they don’t love us, to . . . with them! [to khai idut na . . .].” The melody then changes abruptly to a fast dance tune, if still vaguely folkloric, this time carried by musical instruments. Serduchka (also dressed as a Ukrainian peasant woman) joins in with a humorous song almost entirely in Ukrainian, with only a few surzhyk inserts, calling on the women to party instead of lamenting their fate. The visual narrative features a beautiful young woman dodging kissing attempts by two males sitting around her and a drunken male villager kissing a roasted pig. Then entire party, all dressed in embroidered Ukrainian shirts, joins Serduchka in a fast group dance.20 If there is a parody here, it is one of an ossified “folk culture,” purged and edited by folklorists, which is opposed by a popular culture in Ukrainian, which is very much alive and irreverent.

Another music video, although almost entirely in Russian with a couple of skillful surzhyk inserts, still manages to project a positive image of the Ukrainian countryside, as well as that of a national musical tradition. Taking its name from a popular folk dance, “Chita-drita,” the video begins with Verka (dressed as a pop star) arriving in her native village in a sparkling new car, an old Soviet Volga GAZ 21 model, thus suggesting that the visit takes place in the Soviet past – a generic reference here because this model was discontinued in 1970 and the rest of the clip’s imagery is from the 1980s rather than the 1960s. As Verka unpacks the gifts, she asks that the television be switched on for the kids, referring to the TV set as “Elektronik,” a name melding the 1980s Soviet television set brand (Elektron) and a popular children’s TV film from 1980 (The Adventures of Elektronik). The program on TV also suggests the 1980s, but late into that decade, because the host invites everybody to dance the Lambada (also known in English as Zouk-Lambada), a Latin American dance that became popular in Western Europe and the Soviet Union after the release in 1989 of the French pop group Kaoma’s video called “Lambada.”21 Thus, it is the generic late-Soviet past rather than any specific moment in time when the TV is switched on.

Verka, however, gets all worked up by the host’s suggestion and proclaims in Russian, “Losers (lokhi) dance the Lambada, but we dance the Chita-drita.” She then jumps into the television screen head first and teaches the host to dance the Chita-drita. The refrain is indeed based vaguely on the folk dance Chita-drita, and Verka dances against the background of a Ukrainian carpet

20)See the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpJ44NV6m-E (last accessed March 15, 2009).

21)See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouk-Lambada (last consulted March 15, 2009).

hanging on the wall. Other “Ukrainian” visual clues also provide interesting material for analysis. One male character is an archetypal folkloric “Ukrainian,” mustached and dressed in a full Cossack traditional costume complete with baggy red pants, as if he belongs to some Ukrainian dance group, but the other two middle-aged males apparently represent Ukrainian intellectuals of the late Soviet period – they are sporting traditional embroidered shirts under formal jackets and wearing thick-rimmed glasses suggestive of the 1970s. (However, Verka tells one of them that he looks like Chikatilo in those glasses – a reference to Andrei Chikatilo, the infamous Russian serial killer, a Ukrainian by origin and a schoolteacher by profession, whose arrest was big news in 1990).22 At first, the two “Ukrainian intellectuals” look bewildered, but towards the end they are obviously enjoying themselves, approving Verka’s performance.23 It is tempting to interpret these two village intellectuals as Serduchka’s tongue-in-check answer to her Ukrainian critics.

Th e Eurovision scandal

Soon, however, Verka was to acquire new critics on the opposite side of the post-imperial cultural spectrum – among Russian patriots. In 2007 Serduchka was selected, amid significant controversy, as Ukraine’s representative at the Eurovision song contest. Most of the opposition came from Ukrainian patriotic quarters, where the character was seen as denigrating Ukrainians on multiple levels – their folk culture, their linguistic identity, and the national feminine ideal.24 In April 2007, some nationalist groups organized protest rallies against Serduchka’s selection to represent Ukraine. Western mass media, which did not take the Eurovision nearly as seriously as Europe-leaning Ukrainian patriots, saw the nationalist opposition to a cross-dressing and language-mixing pop singer as curious, so this news was reported widely, including BBC News and Time magazine. Even the Kuwait Times quoted the

22)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Chikatilo (last accessed March 15, 2009).

23)See the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPcD9GXef04 (last accessed March 15, 2009).

24)See, for example, “L’viviany prosiat’ Yushchenka izoliuvaty Serdiuchku,” OBOZ.ua, March 13, 2007 (http://obozrevatel.com/news/2007/3/15/160792.htm), “Ivan Zaiets: Ukraina na Ievrobachenni povynna buty predstavlena naikrashchymy vykonavtsiamy, a Serdiuchka do nykh ne nalezhyt’,” ZIK, Febr. 13, 2007 (http://zik.com.ua/ua/print/2007/02/13/64023) and “NRU: Vierka Serdiuchka – han’ba Poltavy,” Korespondent.net Ukraina, May 22, 2007 (http://ua. korrespondent.net/showbiz/293240, all last accessed March 15, 2009).

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head of the youth wing of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, Vasyl Popovych, as saying that “Verka Serduchka shows the post-imperial inferiority complex that some Ukrainians still su er.”25

Aside from Serduchka herself, however, there was little in her song entry that could give o ence to patriotic Ukrainians devoted to traditional ideals. The music was generic pop; Serduchka and her backup dancers did not wear Ukrainian costumes or switch to surzhyk in order either to project or parody a Ukrainian identity.26 Instead, Danylko performed in a futuristic silver costume with a metallic star on his head, probably suggestive of Verka’s star status. Rather, Russian nationalists immediately took exception to the song, and that was because of its lyrics. Entitled “Danzing Lasha Tumbai,” the song combined English, German, Russian, and Ukrainian phrases, but lacked a coherent story line. What mattered was the way the singer pronounced the English refrain, “I want to see lasha tumbai,” which on at least one occasion during the Eurovision performance sounded like, “I want to see Russia goodbye.” (Serduchka’s nonsensical claim that “lasha tumbai” was Mongolian for “whipped cream” was denied by the Mongolian Embassy in Moscow.) The song also featured some pro-Ukrainian statements in Ukrainian, which the character exclaims rather than sings: “Ukraine is cool, Ukraine is super” and “Dance, Maidan,” the last being a reference to Kyiv’s Independence Square, the main venue of the pro-Western Orange Revolution. To Russian nationalists, this sealed the image of Serduchka as a pro-Ukrainian Russophobe.

Russian disillusionment with Serduchka was even greater because so many patriotic Russians, who had trouble acknowledging Ukrainians as a distinct nation, used to enjoy her gigs as a parody of Ukrainian culture. They were now facing the painful discovery that Serduchka was really on the Ukrainian side, meaning that previously she had made them laugh at their own stereotypes rather than laughed with them at the Ukrainian culture as such. The jester’s removal of his mask caught them completely unprepared, hence their angry overreaction. Some Russian TV personalities issued calls to boycott Serduchka, which were picked up enthusiastically in the Russian blogosphere. By the

25)See “Nationalist Controversy,” Time, May 10, 2007; Helen Fawkes, “Eurovision Act Angers Ukrainians,” BBC News, April 2, 2007 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/ entertainment/6516927.stm); “Ukrainian Drag Queen a Front-Runner at Eurovision,” Kuwait Times, May 13, 2007 (http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid+NTIzMTk2NzY1). All web sites last accessed March 15, 2009.

26)See the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkoU3lJymj4 (last accessed March 15, 2009).

summer of 2007, Serduchka’s concerts in Russia and appearances on Russian TV decreased dramatically. Danylko’s invitation to the popular “Novaia volna” song contest was cancelled, and his performance at the annual pop show “Slavianskii bazaar” was edited out of the televised version aired in Russia.27

Painful as it was for Danylko’s revenues, the Russian boycott forced the Ukrainian establishment to change its attitude to the artist. In a sense, the 2007 scandal “imposed” on Serduchka the identity of a political, if not cultural, Ukrainian. Verka did not become the favorite singer of President Yushchenko and nationalistic intellectuals, but at least she could no longer be dismissed as simply a pro-Russian parody of the Ukrainian national culture. Perhaps, she could even be useful as yet another Ukrainian “victim” of Russian imperial attitudes. In 2008, the Yushchenko administration awarded Danylko the coveted honorific title of “People’s Artist of Ukraine.”28

Post-ethnic Serduchka

Following the Eurovision scandal, Danylko started exploring new political and cultural identities for himself and his character. He contemplated a run for the notoriously corrupt and splintered Ukrainian parliament as a candidate from his own party called “Against All” or, after the revelation that this name was already registered by another political group, “For Us.” Some pollsters were giving his party two percent of the vote, but in the end Danylko did not run.29 In 2008, a Ukrainian media ranking of Ukraine’s 100 most influential people listed the character of Verka Serduchka in the 98th place, ahead of the former President Kuchma, who was number 100.30 At the same time, late in 2008 Danylko (in the character of Verka) returned to the Ukrainian television to host Verka Serduchka’s Show, a much tamer version of his SV Show

27)See the transcript of the radio talk show on Russia’s Svoboda Radio: “Boikot Verke Serdiuchke: Podelom li?” http://www.svobodanews.ru/Transcript/2007/07/10/20070710120002013. html (last accessed March 15, 2009) and Marta Dyczok, “Ukraine’s Changing Communicative Space: Destination Europe or the Soviet Past?,” in Contemporary Ukraine on the Cultural Map of Europe, ed. Larissa M. L. Zaleska Onyshkevych and Maria G. Rewakowicz (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2009), p. 382.

28)Fakty, Aug. 21, 2008, p. 4; Segodnia, Aug. 21, 2008, p. 5.

29)Andrei Okara, “Kak Andrei Danilko i Verka Serdiuchka ne stali deputatami Verkhovnoi Rady,” APN, Aug. 28, 2007, http://www.apn.ru/publications/article17676.htm (last accessed March 15, 2009).

30)Gazeta po-kievski, Aug. 22, 2008, p. 8.

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from the 1990s, which featured mostly reverent interviews with Russian pop and film stars, and very few elements of surzhyk or attempts at political humor. Verka was now dressed as an ethnically neutral pop star, often wearing her Eurovision headdress with a large shining star.

Serduchka’s songs and music videos also changed after the Eurovision controversy. The image of a Ukrainian peasant woman disappeared along with Ukrainian musical references and the language games, which had positioned the character on the Ukrainian-Russian cultural divide. If Serduchka mixed any languages in her album “DoReMi DoReDo” (July 2008), they were more likely to be German and English than Ukrainian and Russian. Musically, Serduchka was no longer within the ethnically marked “world music” trend, but rather was undergoing a transition from generic pop to pop-punk. Danylko’s producers now targeted audiences in France and Germany.31

Two songs from this album, however, may be viewed as a commentary on Verka’s recent troubles in Russia and her new political identity. Both use text sparingly, though, each consisting of one or two sentences repeated over and over again. In the first case, it is “I am [the] Eurovision queen / I am [the] Eurovision queen” with the refrain “Russia tumbai.” There is no doubt about the refrain’s first word – in this song Serduchka is clearly singing “Russia” rather than “Lasha,” which makes the use of the forcefully pronounced “tumbai” instead of “good-bye” even more powerful, almost a carnivalesque replacement of a swear word. In the second case, the entire song consists of a single phrase, “Mikhail Gorbachev / Thank you very much!” with an insert from the traditional Russian song “Kalinka” towards the end. Of course, Gorbachev remains extremely unpopular in Russia as the person who “destroyed” the mighty Soviet Union, but this is precisely the reason why people in the rest of the world remember him fondly. Post-Soviet countries other than Russia also trace their independence to the Soviet collapse, yet another reason to thank Gorbachev.

In other words, Serduchka reemerged after the Eurovision scandal as a postethnic cultural figure with a political agenda and commercial orientation towards Europe. Danylko did succeed in making his way back to Russian TV and the concert circuit, but his reputation there is forever tainted. Forced to position himself on one side of the Russian-Ukrainian political divide, Danylko has lost the opportunity to play on the cultural ambiguities that served as Verka’s main attraction early on. He abandoned the Ukrainian image

31) KP v Ukraine, July 10, 2008, p. 20.

and folk motifs because Russian audiences no longer trusted him as a performer of enjoyable parodies, and his Ukrainian audiences (now including some members of the political and cultural establishment) could perceive these gigs as o ensive. This is unfortunate, because Serduchka’s “ethnic” image with all its built-in ambiguities would have been a healthy critical antidote to the cultural and political “certainties” of the late Yushchenko period in Ukraine and the Putin/Medvedev era in Russia.

One possible way of analyzing Verka Serduchka’s fall from grace in Russia is to argue that since the Orange Revolution the two countries have drifted apart “psychologically,” that the post-Soviet and Russian-speaking cultural community is disintegrating.32 In other words, it has become impossible for entertainers like Danylko to straddle the cultural border while remaining popular with both Russians and Ukrainians. Logically, however, this would have to result in Serduchka’s popularity collapsing in Ukraine, not in Russia. It would be Ukrainian audiences, with their new-found national consciousness, that would reject a parody act targeting their nation. What happened instead was Serduchka’s rejection in Russia as a renegade jester, who revealed his (or her) true views after playing for years to the audience’s stereotypes. I am not suggesting that from the very beginning Danylko had an elaborate plan to undermine the Russian stereotype of Ukrainians (shared also by many Ukrainians), but, like many gifted comedy artists, he could be guided in the evolution of his character by audiences’ reactions. National self-parody can develop from the notion of inferiority imposed by an imperial master to triumph over a stereotype, when the indigenes reclaim it in a spirit of irony.33 Perhaps, this is exactly what was happening to Verka Serduchka until politics led to the erasure – hopefully, not a permanent one – of the character’s ethnic dimension.

Comedy,” Critical Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2000); 7-18, here 11-13.

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