Representation of the Ruler in Modern Russian Comedy TV Series: The Transgressive Aspect (on the Example of «God Kul’tury», «Domashnii Arest», «Poslednii Ministr»)

The widely deployed system of soft restrictions on the humorous representation of the ruler on Russian television and the rapid growth of the online cinema market with greater freedom of representation leads to the production of comedy series, where the figure of the ruler appears in the centre of the story (Domashnii Arest (Premier, 2018), God Kul'tury (Premier, 2018 -), Poslednii Ministr (Kinopoisk HD, 2020 -)). As they are produced in the modern cultural context and comedy discourse, one should discuss them in terms of boundaries (the transgressive aspect) of the representation of the ruler. The purpose of the research is to describe the specifics of the transgressive representation of the ruler's figure in modern Russian comedy series. The study describes the theory of representation, critical discourse-analysis, the specifics of a person's transgressive experience, literary transgression and power relations from the perspective of the philosophy of transgression. Based on this theoretical framework, the author's method consists of a critical discourse analysis of comedy TV series aimed at the transgression of codified norms (laws): Each series is checked for authorship: the text contains the description of showrunners' belonging to an elite group. The denotative values of the series are examined: the plot and motivations are checked for the obvious literary transgression of codified norms. The connotations are analyzed. The study points out what dictates the message at the implicit level about the violation of laws by the ruler. The discursive level of the series is analyzed. The quality press about the series is checked following the previous two steps. All the comments received are correlated with each other. The result of the study is the following conclusion. These series inculcate the normativity of the abuse of power (the ordinariness of the transgression of codified norms by the figure of the ruler) and the description of three strategies for such representation.