Lesbian love stories and online popular culture: The case of web series

Abstract

<p>This chapter analyses Russian lesbian-themed web series Steklo (Glass) and Eto proiskhodit riadom s vami (It’s Happening Right Next to You) focusing on both their poetics (an analysis of the aesthetic and narrative means of the series) and politics (responses to the anti-gay law and links to LGBTQI+ activism). The chapter argues that the representations of distinctly lesbian identities and female same-sex love in a novel web series format contribute to ‘queering’ some of the central cultural categories and institutions deemed foundational to Russian traditional patriarchal society. They propose a ‘queer format’ in which non-conforming and non-normative female gender and sexual identities can become part of the mainstream TV aesthetic. Through the re-use of the mode of melodrama, the series are queering cultural notions of female love. Ultimately, the chapter uncovers a new queer middle ground in Russian media and culture: a grassroots-led digital space that exists in-between radical political art and state-aligned mainstream culture. The key to understanding this terrain is to pay attention to the creative ways of re-using cultural resources in symbolic production, and to the variety of contexts and communities the stories created in this way speak to.</p>