Our Hearts Demand Change. The Image of a Rock Musician in the Late Soviet Cinema

The article analyses the image of a rock musician in the late Soviet and modern Russian cinema. Having appeared on screen in the mid-80s, a rock musician character type immediately had a cult following. The image represented a hero of the then-new time, a singer of freedom, a bearer of a different, “correct” pro-Western worldview, starting from the appearance and ending with the philosophy of life, and a symbol of disagreement not only with the generation of fathers but also with the then-existing, “wrong” world order in general. A rock musician in the perestroika cinema was a typical rebel character who appeared in the world cinema at the turn of epochs. The author of the article formulates the cultural codes behind the representation of such a character type on screen, traces its transformation, and comes to the conclusion that the meanings behind a rock musician character type are gradually losing their immediate relevance in modern Russian cinema.