Dystopia, Fact to Fetish: The Eastern Bloc Girl and Aestheticisation of a Fallen Regime

Abstract

Many envision the ultimate utopia as heaven and dystopia as hell, to be experienced at some distant point in the future. However, we recognise that reflections of both already coexist in the world we live in. This awareness makes it apparent that re-imagining the past from the lens of the present profoundly shapes our collective meaning-making efforts. In this visual essay, we share our reflections on the fetishisation of Eastern Europe's controversial past, focusing on the visual cues in the cultural creations of an ironic girl-blogger account on Instagram. We use the preliminary findings from the social media content analysis to illustrate the themes in which parodical re-imagination co-operates with the remedies of historical experience for contemporary identity re-making relying on visualisation. We capture the visual reframing of socio-material remnants of the socialism/communism periods in prior decades, and leveraging this enables an aestheticisation process that fosters authentic self-identification among new-generations in the societies that are vaguely referred to as the former Eastern Bloc nations. The essay offers a discussion that draws from visual studies and consumer culture research, and contributes to interdisciplinary endeavours bridging these fields.