Pankov was remembered like a king – Newspaper Kommersant No. 37 (7482) dated 03/03/2023

On the night of March 2, the first two episodes of the series The King and the Jester appeared in the Kinopoisk online cinema. A few hours later, the exhibition “Punk Culture. Korol i Shut”, telling not only about the group, but also about punk rock and the accompanying lifestyle. Tells Igor Gavrilov.

The idea to create a series about the Korol i Shut group appeared in Yandex offices when statistics for 2021 showed a fourfold increase in music listening to the group, whose frontman Mikhail Gorshenev (Gorshok) had died nine years earlier. And it was not only the Yandex.Music phenomenon. The monthly number of listeners at the “King and the Jester” on Spotify was more than, for example, current rappers Husky and ATL.

The series “The King and the Jester” is not only a biopic.

In parallel with the history of the group, the story takes place in a fantasy world in which the two main characters, Pot and Prince, have to save the princess from the clutches of an evil sorcerer. Such a decision is quite obvious: the world of the songs of “The King and the Jester” is the world of fairy tales that were created by musicians, primarily Knyaz (Andrey Knyazev).

He wrote stories and drew characters, giving birth to a kind of comic book universe of The King and the Fool.

It all starts in the dressing room of the group, when the group has just gathered its first full house in the St. Petersburg Yubileiny hall, and Pot suddenly thinks about suicide, since everything that he dreamed about has already been done. The musician climbs on an advertising billboard and, as it should be for a punk, relieves the need for the whole damned world right from its top. At this moment, an evil demon appears next to him, appearing in the form of a Jester, which can be seen on all the products of the group. The dialogue between the Pot and the Jester should probably immediately give the series a philosophical depth, but it lasts too long and is played in a completely Tyuz style, despite all the talent of the leading actor Konstantin Plotnikov and Yevgeny Tkachuk, who is appropriate in almost any role. At first, it is difficult to get used to the overly theatrical presentation of young actors, characteristic of the entire series, especially when they find themselves in the same frame with the older generation – it is represented, for example, by Alexander Adabashyan in the role of a restoration school teacher. But over time, the series is addictive, and the winning ones are, first of all, just the same fragments related to the fairy-tale world.

It is not easy to get used to the fact that the songs of the “King and the Jester” for the series were covered by other people. The original versions are so deep in the subcortex that any other reading, even due to the technical and creative needs of the creators of the series, hurts the ear. In the series, for example, there are songs that Gorshok sang in the original, but in the film they were given to the Prince. As a result, both studio soundtracks, and recordings made directly for the series, and archival materials, and new vocal parts of the Prince were used. But this, as it turns out, can be reconciled.

Fans are already arguing online about how accurately the series reproduced the details of several eras, from the late 1980s to the early 2010s.

If you nitpick, you can, of course, find clothes that were not worn and words that were not spoken. It is difficult to agree that in 1989 Gorshok could say to the Prince: “Drawings are a test!”

However, for those who value authenticity, an exhibition accompanying the series “Punk Culture. King and the Clown”. It consists of two parts. The first one is dedicated to the group and the TV series, and in it you can just carefully examine the stage outfits of the musicians, manuscripts, drawings and fragments of the series’ scenery.

At a press conference dedicated to the opening of the exhibition, Andrey Knyazev, among other things, spoke in detail about how he painted the first backdrop for the group’s concerts, having hardly fit paints and canvas in his room.

This story is an argument in favor of the absolute conformity of the worldview of The King and the Jester with the punk philosophy of DIY (do it yourself). According to it, a musician can not only compose and play, but also record his music, create album designs, draw concert posters, publish magazines, organize his own performances and send recordings to fans. For all this, he does not need a label, which in fact only limits his creative freedom.

The second part of the exhibition, “Punk Culture”, immerses the viewer in the details of the punk lifestyle and builds a classification of the genre, which is illustrated by a huge family tree of punk. Two important halls belong, respectively, to the foreign and domestic punk canon.

Visitors will certainly actively take selfies in the toilet of the New York club CBGB, the Mecca of punk, reproduced by the creators of the exhibition. In general, in the conditions of Russia’s isolation from the world artistic process, it should be considered a real miracle that the artist Jamie Reed, who created the main visual images for the Sex Pistols, and director Julien Temple, who also worked a lot with them at the beginning of his careers. This is the case when authenticity at the exhibition is really all right.

Another room that is sure to draw a lot of attention is GrOb-Studio, the home studio of Civil Defense leader Yegor Letov. The widow of the musician Natalya Chumakova helped reproduce it at the exhibition. There are also three real Letov’s guitars here, which, together with the studio, as you know, can become the basis of a separate exhibition about Siberian punk. He deserved it.