How did Bulgarian politics turn into political entertainment? But so. When there is no civil pressure, the political class has an account to sell you entertainment, writes Ivaylo Noisey Tsvetkov.
They overdid it, all in all. All turned aside, together they became depraved; there is no one who does good, not even one. (No one but me has read the Bible, but this is a sentence from Paul's Romans, 3:12.)
But at least they decided to entertain you, I boldly add, to distract you from the essentials. And additionally loathe them. See only after the last election.
How they distract you
The first, Borisov, is a real Chitalist talent – today so, tomorrow – otherwise, the day after tomorrow – with the SUV, beyond – with PKP, onwards – you'll land me on the government one, but I'll need some Viagra, as I don't like anything but weather reports. I will offer you the same of the same as if 2020 never happened. I also have a new friend, don't fat-sham him – we already decide together, not to say that he decides. I don't have a problem with that, if only that Dimitrovgrad tonsil doesn't come with the belly.
The second poses as the same Ashley Graham – the fat is also already beautiful, and strictly Euro-Atlantic, you will all fall for the magnetic one, don't listen to Borisov, I'm here, the political cialis is still holding me, I will kick out my internal opposition and wait for everything to officially come to me. There is nowhere to go, and if someone has a good and successful business, it would be nice to meet, to see the possibilities of partnership.
The third ones kind of tiredly talk about pigs and pumpkins, as if I were writing something satirical against the status quo, imitating Jerome K. Jerome in 2017 in “Ofnews”. It is already difficult for me to call them “reformists”, because they made it so that the very word “reform“ to become dirty and emptied of content. Because of excessive and unacceptable agreement with the fat. Don't tell me how it couldn't – explain to me what the other is while you sit in helpless opposition. Get rid of all the fifth generals and Fridays and bet on someone like the brilliant Elisaveta.
Fourth graders release at least one large, clumsily painted matryoshka a week (the last – “Orthodox“) while they are fully aware that it is hollow and doesn't have any smaller, even funnier dolls inside.
The heels are in Sartreian existential self-abnegation as in Huis-clos (not knowing who Sartre is and that hell – it's the other wing, pathetic post-communists turned capitalists), but they too amuse their dwindling audience with media arguments and who is to blame for the apparent loss of body weight, an obvious symptom of an irreversible illness.
The six, the real circus performers, work in show business anyway, but they never realized that the “now we are going to have breakfast” it's not politics. But they don't stop with the fun either – they want the third term like a baby wants its pacifier.
Sevens completely trusted the fun – there is both a “Historical Park” and a leadership zoo, and they are ready for deviant psychoanalysis.
The tendency is as follows: when you have no political arguments, bet on political entertainment. Distract the table with media circuses – so they won't remember that the particular party – or political parties in general – they do not produce a democratic product.
I'll say it again. They do not produce a democratic product.
The democratic product implies many things – from the judicial conversation about the inviolability of private property and basic freedoms to our borrowing of the Russian oligarchic model (the latter is a fact). In this model, a group of oligarch politicians once again have a “royal mandate” to do whatever they want as long as they don't report to each other. If they want to stay alive, not like Berezovsky and Nemtsov.
Ergo, those who always have and will have power in Bulgaria are doing something very smart in terms of communication – reduce everything to “polytainment”. When you entertain the masses and distract them from serious issues, they continue to live in the rabbit hole of Bulgarian slavery.
This also becomes part of their clever poly-entertainment system because it feeds low social media passions and diverts public attention from serious matters. This is how polytainment works, in case you were wondering.
If I had to sum up where we are, no matter how much of this polytainment is paid for: exactly nowhere, civil.
And this reaffirms a system that we already “enjoyed” until 2013.
But let me explain anyway. The term “politainment“ refers to two processes: (1) political entertainment - how the entertainment industry exploits political themes in various entertainment formats; and (2) entertainment politics - how political actors take advantage of their notoriety (organizing photo shoots, performances at party conventions, appearing on talk shows, etc.) to improve their image and popularize certain issues. Ours fall into hypothesis 3: they ingeniously decided that if there is enough polytainment, especially on Facebook, there is no need to answer questions about the program and the system itself.
They don't pass us by, but only us, the hundred citizens. The fat ones know the fourth power very well and not only have they taken it over, but no one there, in the national televisions etc., with an excuse, dares to fart without having arranged it with the important “messengers” of the fat ones.
Ergo, polytainment instead of real criticism. All parties offer you only this.
And more: when broadly defined, political entertainment goes beyond its association with infotainment to consider popular culture as a potential space for political insight and action and to recognize entertainment formats as sources of political knowledge, value orientation, and civic engagement.
As more and more international scientific studies testify, new hybrid media formats increasingly engage "political reality" across genres, traditional and new, in new television formats such as political satire and reality television, fictional realism (in film, television, telenovelas, and interactive video games), and new variants of the celebrity media event genre.
Such research recognizes that the pleasures found in popular cultural formats of everyday life can also be ways of cultivating audiences' conscious motives for political participation.
Ergo: are you really pecking the Bulgarian “politainment“? When are you going to organize civilly to overthrow the power of the fat?
Let me guess – never.
Not so, det call the FSB.
Who will free us from Bulgarian slavery itself?
This comment expresses the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and of DV as a whole.