Ballardian Russia

As far as I can discern, the meme of Russian dash-cam videos is under-theorized territory, if not wholly un-.

But why would that be? It seems like such supremely ripe subject matter. Exegetic explorations of the disconnect between the necessitating conditions of the phenomenon's (meatspace) production and its (virtual) casual public consumption, the gap between the two being both broad and deep enough to allow all variety of analysis and critique, as well numerous avenues for extrapolatory twofold punning on the matter of the "death-drive." Plus with something about the degrees of disorderative disassociation between said death-drive and the so-called "anus of concrete", vis-à-vis the varied layers of societal and mediated distanciation. Or what about a thesis on how the trend is a product of the suppressed and morbid cathectic undertow of commodity fetishism, with the author (predictably) drawing a cross-referenced comparison with the opening sequences of Godard's Weekend? Or one in which the Spectacular phenom of watching cocooning chasses shatter upon impact like so many glass globules is posited against the gore-fest films commonly used in driver's-ed school programs of previous generations, the former perhaps being/developing as a libidinal Inverse Other of the latter. Nothing too histrionic or apocalyptic, mind you; because anything deemed "dystopic" has long become passé -- mainly due to the recent overuse of the term. But I'm sure there's no shortage of venues that'd be eager to publish such a thing.

I'd write one, myself; but I imagine there are plenty others who're far better suited to the task.

At any rate: Yeah, a common complaint about Tarkovsky's Solaris concerns the film's pacing, its "boring"-ness. The frequent question being: "Why did the director choose to include an uneventful five-minute POV sequence of nothing more than a drive through the city, with only the accompaniment of an electronic soundtrack to offset the tedium?" And then you go a forum for this sort of thing above, and see that some contributors spam the thing by uploading videos that involve nothing more than an uneventful five-minute driving POV sequence through city streets, accompanied by a soundtrack of some muted balearic doof-doof.