Bakhtin’s Theory of Carnival and Modern Russian Talk Shows

This paper is aimed at recognizing and identifying elements of carnivalesque (based on the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin) in the context of functioning of modern Russian talk shows. Carnivalesque is supposed to remain viable during the last episodes of contemporary cultural history: moreover, television presumably has become one of the most concentrated locus of its distribution. The research sample is chronologically limited to the conditional period of development of modern Russian television (early 00s) and includes the range of talk shows with the largest potential for internal carnivalesque details (“Окна”, “Пусть говорят”, “Вечер с Владимиром Соловьевым”, "Гордон Кихот"). The applicable methodological grid includes visual analysis of empirical data (selected episodes of Russian talk shows), discourse analysis, narrative analysis, semiotic analysis, lexical and stylistic analysis. During the study the manifestations of carnivalesque are investigated in the selected talk shows and examined in the context of the deployment of the cultural logic of postmodern. The carnivalesque elements are presented in modern Russian talk shows in different variations, which indicates the possibility of applying the carnival theory to the study of the phenomena of modern culture.