Why Potap Is Actually Already a People's Artist

Indeed, Potap is right one hundred percent when he says he is ready to exchange the title of Honored Artist for the title of People’s Artist, i.e., to move up, so to speak. You cannot deny this person a sense of humor, nor an understanding that today the “people” are consuming. And the current “people” still consume everything connected with sex, brutality, or the typical traits of his life.

And from this follow all these tracks — “We Have in the Neighborhood,” “Dog’s Style,” “give me a branch to suck,” “don’t love my brains” and so on in the same aesthetics, where the texts are dominated by jargon and doublespeak idioms. And you know what? The clips for these songs have incredibly high view counts — several millions! So Potap is right — the people in the last decade have consumed this product with immense appetite!

So in what way is Potap not right when he considers himself People’s Artist? Formally he is right — likes and views testify in his favor! So what’s the matter!?

I’ll try to explain now what the matter is. And why the words of some “gloomy patriots” who propose abolishing all titles and at the same time demand to strip Potap of the title of Honored Artist look absolutely absurd and a crime.

Here, at this boundary, lies the cornerstone from which we must begin counting. Because it all depends on the criteria. They are utterly different in CULTURE and in show business.

Cultural criteria (especially musical) lie in the fact that our Ukrainian tradition has a rich and deep history — in the melody of works, and in the texts. Art historians assert that folk songs can be used to study the everyday life of Ukrainians, their crafts, their holidays and rites, their surrounding nature, their psychology and mentality. I confirm this, because I personally studied this topic professionally while preparing my dissertation.

A song — as a bright sample of intangible culture — in an ideal would rely on our immense experience of generations, developing and enriching native song culture. We should not desecrate the song, not mock it, but admire its perfection and enrich it with new meanings, sounds, and fresh voices.

But in reality we see an absolutely opposite policy — suppression, leveling, and destruction of traditional native song, which is a model of our internal moral-aesthetic code of culture.

And now it is time to define show business. This phenomenon lies not in culture but in the commercial plane of our life. Show business is a sum of certain technologies and techniques that help sell a certain product, even if that product is a song. Show business knows which technologies will work in a given situation — an exposed female body, an atmosphere of scandalmongering, considerations of high prestige, fashion, or the principle of novelty. I’ve named just a few technologies, and there are dozens! I speak of this as a specialist who taught creative technologies for more than ten years at the department of show business.

But there is one most important technology on which everything rests: it consists in making people who listen to a new song, watch a clip, or go to a concert become clickbait as a default. That is, provoke the strongest possible emotional and mass reaction to the event! It does not matter whether people will praise this musical product or criticize and become indignant. They will give the necessary wave of interest, create the needed hype, which is crucial for successful sales of this product.

And also note for yourselves — if in culture or art the number of positive and negative reviews were subtracted and the remaining balance could tell whether the product was truly good or bad, then in show business success and scandal, or even outright hate and anger, add up to produce a total result — they boost mass interest and keep that product, or its producers, in trend!

Thus you must understand why, for example, Potap or Nastya are not just indifferent to your opinion, but even rejoice at your reaction — because you are, indeed, clickbaiters — you help keep them in trend!

Since today there has been a substitution of concepts and culture, with its criteria for teaching something “smart, good, and eternal,” has yielded to aggressive show business, armed with marketing technologies, you must understand that without conscious state support culture today simply will not survive! It is the state — and its top officials — who must be armed with those criteria that allow some people to grant the highest state titles in the field of culture and the arts, while others must be kept as far away as possible.

And believe me, the matter here is not crowded halls collecting stars inflated by show business, nor the number of sold records or the number of likes. The matter is the highest criteria of care for national culture.

Once at a meeting with the former Head of the President’s Administration, Dmytro Tabachnyk, who was an outright Ukrainian nationalist foe and was already then promoting the idea of abolishing state titles, he also used arguments like: the People’s Artist Michael Jackson, and said: for me the only criterion of the cultural product’s significance is how well it sells. I could not hold back and publicly replied that toilet paper also sells well, but what is its aesthetic value? The hall laughed and applauded then...

So, perhaps we should remember that toilet paper also has its price, but it is on another plane of our life — and we must not connect these planes under any circumstances! What is the current government doing instead of saving Ukrainian culture? It is simply investing in supporting show-business projects that are profitable even when they run counter to traditional culture of the people, and thus to its ethics and morality.

So, I return to where I began — Potap is absolutely right. TV and radio channels controlled by oligarchs, in the last 25 years have created exactly that people for whom Potap creates his “masterpieces.” And if you add his creative collaborations with other artists and groups, it turns out that he has been and remains one of the most prominent figures in culture (sorry, in show business!) of the last two decades!

And I am forced to tip my hat to him. Because in his body of work there are artifacts to which other authors still have to grow. I mean his immortal hit “Malibu,” recorded in a duet with Positive. That is where fantasy, audacity, and the flourish of argot-stylistics soar! If you manage to find this hit on YouTube — definitely listen!

And in conclusion — if naive Ukrainians think that banning Potap and Nastya will solve something, don’t count on it! Because the matter is not the consequences, but the causes of this phenomenon. As long as our information space exists in its current form — perhaps a little repainted and retouched, nothing will fundamentally change!

Therefore I urge you — if you cannot love Potap and Nastya with all your heart and soul, at least do not waste your precious energy in feeding all sorts of infernal entities in this state, which for some reason still bears the holy name — Ukraine.