The Sunday Photos
Taken from the Oborona website, the following images show the groups heroic efforts to erect billboard art to protest against the rise of dictatorship in Russia. There is more true Russian patriotism in the fingernail of any random Oborona member than Dictator Putin has in his whole body.
Translation: The first picture shows a guy named Pupkin (this is the Russian equivalent of "John Doe") saying: "I'm sick and tired of hearing about that Khodorkovskiy!" -- and on the television Khodorkovskiy is shown behind bars. In the second picture, Pupkin is shown on television behind bars, and a menacing looking guy is saying "Enough already about that Pupkin." (We can't read what's written on the guy's hat, though we suspect that's probably part of the joke too.)
Needs no translation. Talk about one picture being worth 1,000 words!
Labels:
russia,
sunday photos
4 comments:
+++The first picture shows a guy named Pupkin (this is the Russian equivalent of "John Doe") +++
Well, I guess this is a bit misleading. "Pupkin" is not such a widespread name to serve as a Russian equivalent of "John Doe". However, one may encounter "Pupkin" (which, incidentally, sounds a bit funny to a Russian ear and literally means "of navel") on Russian web forums as a derogatory euphemism for "Putin".
My sense is this is exactly the context it is being used on the cartoon here. One may only wonder if using "Pupkin" instead of "Putin" is caused by the author's fear of getting prosecuted under some clauses of the recent "Anti-extremism Act".
Thanks for the linguistic insights! Such are always most welcome. One must also wonder how long they'll be able to feel comfortable even using a name that just sounds like Putin, before such things can only go on in secret basements in the dark of night, as in Soviet times.
Well, although LL is right about Pupkin's second meaning, I think in this case La Russophobe described the picture correctly.
We googled "Pupkin" and "john doe" and found this, which may be of interest:
http://ideamarketers.com/library/article.cfm?articleid=25191&from=PROFILE
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