Vices and Virtues of Capital's Glamor: Typical Character of the Consumer Society in the Modern Russian Television Series

The article analyzes the iconic and linguistic signs through which the authors of the Russian television series represent the media images of the consumer society of the modern Russian city. The modern consumer society, according to its screen representation, is characterized by the destruction of basic ideas about humanistic values: family relations, the institution of marriage, social relations, for example, charity, public service, etc. The screen demonstrates the absence of any moral atmosphere in modern Russian society. All characters, without exception, talk about love. However the boundaries and essence of this concept are so blurred that it is difficult for the viewer to focus on any of its facets. Typical mass media characters, such as a provincial woman who comes to the big city, a schoolgirl in love with a teacher, a policeman, an official, etc., are presented in the format of a modern mass consumer society, in which everyone parasitizes on each other. Dependents of both genders are trying to balance their social status. The success in the world of glamor, shown in the series, is conditional, beauty is artificial, feelings are simulated. Presumably the intention of the authors of the series was to make it clear that genuine values must be sought in a different social environment. On the one hand, the screen representations of the mass consumption society of modern Moscow cultivate the conventional values of the world of glamor, on the other hand, they reveal the vices of a perverse, cynical, hypocritical society in which artificiality prevails over naturalness.