For almost two decades, the media has been regularly supplied with images of Vladimir Putin that depict the Russian leader in manly, heroic roles. The kind of worship that these images have attracted in Russia is a familiar continuation of the cult of personality from the Soviet times. However, unlike the hyper-masculine representation of Putin, Russia’s communist leaders were pictured in a much more neutral manner. What inspired the Kremlin to adopt the shirtless leader as a key visual communications approach? And what are the political messages underlying Putin’s bare-chested posturing?
Here in Finland, on the eastern border of the European Union, analyzing the Russian president’s imagery is not just about art and style. As a small nation emboldened by some unlikely historical coincidences to declare independence from revolution-torn Russia in 1917, we still take a keen interest in the words and images chosen to project Russian leaders and to justify their political power. Deciphering the nuances of Kremlin’s propaganda is part of our survival story in the armpit of a superpower over the past 99 years.
Unacknowledged inspiration
The Tom of Finland stamps published by the Finnish postal service in 2014 were condemned by a Russian lawmaker for breaking Russia’s law against homosexual propaganda if they were sent across the border. But when Putin’s face is added to a Tom of Finland image and turned into stamp, it could easily pass for a Russian propaganda stamp.
The artistic source consistently utilized – but never acknowledged – by the Kremlin’s media department is none other than Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), better known as Tom of Finland. For those unfamiliar with Tom of Finland’s work, originally featured in American physique magazines in the 1950s and eventually reaching mainstream recognition at MoMA, MOCA and many other museums and galleries during the past decade, it consists of highly stylized homoerotic images of confident, muscular men.
Putin’s propaganda images and Tom of Finland’s iconic gay men share the same visual catch: the admiration and extreme exaggeration of masculinity and male strength. Some Photoshop hypothesizing led me to take a closer look at the compositions and individual poses in these two bodies of work. It quickly became apparent that the parallels are not just an amusing coincidence. Tom of Finland has provided the inspiration for Putin’s iconography, a treasure chest of unadulterated macho poses that the Kremlin has put to good use in creating Vladimir of Russia.
Given Putin’s negative views on homosexuality, his supporters probably view the link to Tom of Finland’s work as defamatory and blasphemous. The courageous people standing up for LGBT rights in Russia may find some satirical ammunition there, if they haven’t already. However, the aim of this exploration is not to make fun of Putin’s homophobia with the help of Tom of Finland but to examine the underlying intentions behind Putin’s images and the political narrative they are contributing to.
Common cultural roots
The cowboys, sailors, bikers and pilots featured in Tom of Finland’s work were all typical macho man stereotypes of the homophobic dominant culture of the 1950s. His genius was to hijack these stereotypes, place them in a new context and harness them for the liberation and amusement of gay men. Previously, gay men were often represented in the mainstream as effeminate sissies or deviants, but in Tom of Finland’s images gay men became even more manly than their role models in the dominant culture. With his ground-breaking imagery, Tom of Finland promoted the right of gay men to masculinity. His work had a major impact on gay culture and aesthetics, and inspired gay men to start dressing in leather.
Since then, the dominant culture of the liberal West has largely rejected the macho man stereotypes that he embraced. These days, the liberal West accepts Tom of Finland -spirited strutting as part of a harmless gay subculture because in this context it does not represent an equality issue between men and women, and does not cause any particular harm to society. Otherwise the liberal culture largely sees macho behavior as something to be eradicated.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been living in the good old days all the time.
Saving traditional values
Just like Tom of Finland, Putin has also positioned himself in the macho man role, presenting himself as a force against the dominant culture of the Western world. The liberal West of today has rejected traditional values, while Putin’s macho images symbolize their flourishing in present-day Russia. Putin appears to the Russian nation as a savior of traditional values and also actively seeks allies from people with similar values in the West.
As Putin’s imagery returned the macho man stereotypes hijacked by Tom of Finland to its traditional roots, he also brought macho behavior to the core of political power and as its justification. It is the decaying democracies of the West that are sissy, whereas Putin dares to be a man – both in pictures and in real life.
The value conflict over macho behavior has further emphasized the confrontation between Russia and the West. The threat of conflict justifies the fact that Russia is led by an unpredictable macho man who is ready and willing to win by any means necessary. The mistreatment of the Kremlin’s internal opponents – and the local civil society in general – can also be justified with this external threat. Russia may not be able to compete economically with the West but in the use of force it challenges the West with more than just propaganda images.
Object of the gaze
It has traditionally been the passive female body that is placed in front of the camera as an object to be gazed and in general women are more often depicted as sexual beings than men. In both Putin’s and Tom of Finland’s imagery, it is of course the undressed male body that becomes the object of desire.
In Tom of Finland’s images both the presumed viewer and the object of the gaze are men. Putin’s naked upper body sends a strong symbolic message to men and women alike. The message for women is that this is a performance by a virile ladies’ man. Desirability in the eyes of women also emphasizes the dominant male’s power towards other men. Putin’s red-blooded reputation has been further enhanced with rumors of his various relationships and ‘news stories’ in the Russian media about the admiration that he attracts from the female population.
At the same time, real life political developments have also produced surprisingly many iconic images where Putin’s Russia has put young women behind bars for threatening the country’s interests. Pictures of Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Greenpeace’s Finnish activist Sini Saarela and the Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko in jail have become part of the story about a strong leader, a real man who is not afraid to show uppity women their place in the world.
Emblems for exercising raw power
A mythology that celebrates Putin and supports the Kremlin’s narrative has been created – and may be still under construction – in Russia through photographic art. It is driven by the idea of Russia as a lighthouse that leads the conservative forces globally and saves the world from the degeneration of the liberal, democratic forces in the West.
Similar ideas have also attracted increasing support in the West, as it has struggled with immigration and economic troubles. Populist movements in Europe and America have promised to fight the negative social impacts of globalization by turning the clock back to the 1950s, when the world was ruled by the macho characters that once inspired Tom of Finland. America had a copycat president who successfully adopted Putin’s unpredictable macho man image and openly expressed his admiration for the Russian leader. Where the former Soviet intelligence officer has been using propaganda photos, the American celebrity president used Tweets to make the same point.
Mass-circulated images are powerful messages and how they are used by a state always reveals something about power itself. The argument sketched here concerns the cultural and social significance of Putin’s images which may be creating a new national identity for Russia more effectively than any single political decision by the president.
Such emblematic images are also used to justify the exercise of raw political power. In that sense, it is interesting to compare the original, hyper-masculine and virile representations to the most recent propaganda images representing Vladimir Putin. In the latest photos published last week, we see an outdoorsy president who is driving a military all-terrain vehicle with his defence minister. Now 69 years old, Putin has successfully adopted a stereotype of an older macho man. He is no longer at the top of the food chain because of his physical qualities. It is not the president’s body that represents raw power anymore but the machinery of violence that he is commanding – from the driver’s seat of course. Putin also no longer needs to express his capability for using force in his own personal capacity because there are others who are ready, willing and able to do the dirty work on his behalf. These are worrying times for all Russians and the rest of us wishing for more peaceful times on this artsy but seemingly self-destructive planet.