Strategies of Mature Ukrainian Mashup-Prose: Leaving the Matrix

The rise and prime of mashup-prose in 2000–2010s made this subgenre the most controversial in the modern literary process. The Ukrainian embodiment of mashup-prose stands out against the world background thanks to the writers’ creative reinterpretation of its key formulas in combination with a critical vision of history and a pronounced folk humor. We define the specifics of the mature form of mashup expression in Ukrainian literature using the example of the story by O. Dekan (and I. Nechui-Levytskyi) “Kaydash Family vs Zombies” for the first time. O. Dekan’s reinterpretation of the mashup model “transformation of a classical artistic work” is indicative and testifies to the creative implementation of the Western artistic matrix in the mature Ukrainian subgenre of 2020s. The interaction in this story of sequentially located plot-image blocks, where the matrix is sustained and where the classic plot by I. Nechui-Levytskyi is left behind, can be considered as a hybridization of a mature mashup-form in the previously predicted by us the transition from mashup as a subgenre to the mashup as local artistic technique. The mashup-processing strategy by O. Dekan of I. Nechui-Levytskyi’s story is organic to the world experience of this subgenre and, despite the shortcomings of the text, proves the writer’s original attempt to develop canonized scheme to a level of a new subgenre type. The “Kaydash Family vs Zombies” among similar national texts reflects the main parameters of the updated at the beginning of the XXI century fantasy paradigm as a whole.