The Impact of Media on the Formation of Generations of ‘Hamlets’ and ‘Don Quixotes’ in Russia

The article is devoted to the cultural specifics of the formation and succession of generations in Russia, starting with the literary circles of the XIX century and ending with the network groups of the XXI cen tury. The literary tradition of describing the phenomenon of conflict between “fathers” and “sons” was laid by the novelist Ivan Turgenev (1860) who argued that generations of “hamlets”, old-fashioned individuals, alternate generations of “don quixotes”, pioneers, rebels. The images of foreign heroes not only remain popular in cinema and theater, but are used by Russian scholars as scientific metaphors for the analysis of the history of generations. The thesis of Lev Vygotsky was devoted to the analysis of the image of Hamlet (1917). It is argued that the change of generations is determined by the disharmonious structure of family in two versions. A strong father with absolute authority, a strong identification with an ideal father in children leads to a generation with a focus on the state ideology and the “father” of peoples, to the generation of “hamlets”. Absent or subdominant father, weak identification with him in children leads to the search for ideals outside the traditional family and moral precepts, to the generation of “don quixotes”. The article provides research data on network interactions that reveals the inertia of the archetypes; the cultural resistance towards the technologies; the reproduction of the generation gap between “hamlets” and “donquixotes”; communication barriers and misunderstandings.

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