This month's cover of The Ukrainian Observer is devoted to the paparazzi, those infamous photographers who stalk stars and celebrities in the hope of catching one in a compromising position on film, which they then sell to a tabloid in order to satisfy the less discriminating of public tastes.
Paparrazi are a common phenomenon in the West, but lately their exploits have gained renown in Ukraine, a country that has traditionally given the benefit of the doubt, in terms of admiration and respect, to anyone who manages to raise his face or fanny above the insignificant masses.
And unlike other countries of central and eastern Europe, whose famous often have to reconcile themselves to a local audience of the devoted and curious, Ukraine has some world-class paparazzi bait: the Klitchko brothers, Andrey Shevchenko, Viktor Yushchenko and (to a lesser extent) Ruslana are well known abroad.
So in order to capitalize on these homegrown resources, some of the publications in the nation's well-established tabloid industry have recently allowed themselves to be naughtier than usual.
For sure, many an oligarch (best defined as a politician with significant business interests that often include a piece of the mass media) has been roasted in the public eyes by opponents of the same stature, and Ukraine's yellow press seems to abound in unabashed reports of hapless criminals, brazen alcoholics and madcap village grannies, but now some newspapers and magazines are going after the people's idols - those demigods that have helped erase the stigma of Chernobyl in the eyes of the world and given even the most dejected elements of post-soviet society a reason to be proud.
What's behind this reversal in reverence, this surge in sacrilege, which has some of the nation's most powerful and once-beloved people looking over their shoulders to make sure they're not the victims of a sniper looking through a zoom lens?
According to Boris Merzliakov, a professional photographer for the woman's magazine Natalie, there are no paparazzi per se in Ukraine. Tabloids simply take photos off the Internet or buy them from an ordinary photographer who just happens to have been in the right place at the right time.
Not only do the photos not fetch enough to feed a 'real' paparazzi, explains Merzliakov, but the country doesn't boast enough hot shots to make hunting them worth the effort. "If you are talking about stars in Ukraine, we simply don't have them," he says.
But what about the Klitchkos and Shevchenko? Well - they live abroad. Ruslana? It's been done. And as for President Yushchenko, the hero of last year's Orange Revolution, this brings us full circle, back into the domain of politics, an area that has never been left untouched by post-Soviet publications that thrive on feeding politicians to the public.
Moreover, these articles are paid for by someone bent on ruining a reputation or two - if not ordered directly by the oligarch who owns the publication. Thus, they don't qualify as the kind of material printed by Western tabloids, which pander to their readers' interests.
"Just try to take a photo of one of our oligarchs in his underwear. No magazine will publish it," says Merzliakov. Only a publication with equal backing (i.e. from another oligarch) could thumb its nose at the lawsuits and tax checks that would likely follow such 'an affront'. Even editors and journalists on the payroll of a politician usually restrict themselves to verbal (rather than photographic) mudslinging, and often do so through a leak or insinuation at that.
With regard to the photographers, many of whom work as freelancers anyway, why would they not be willing to take a juicy picture, remain anonymous and collect some well-needed income. One need only recall the Reuters cameraman killed in Iraq, Taras Protsyuk, as evidence that Ukrainian has its fair share of courageous shutterbugs. Talent and experience are also not lacking.
All the same, the money paid to catch a Ukrainian celebrity with his pants down just doesn't pay off. "Anywhere from five to fifty dollars for a good shot," says Merzliakov. The effort would be financially justified, however,
if the photographer got a rare picture, for example, of Yushchenko's son, just by luck. And this is what is happening. Ironically, it is precisely the kind of media freedom that the Ukrainian president has promoted that has made it easier for the few publications that play up their paparazzi potential.
In late September, the luxury car of the project director of Ukraine's Paparazzi magazine, Walid Harfouch, was fired bombed. His brother and the magazine's publisher, Omar, reported to the media that he had received threats from "a high government official" after an upcoming Paparazzi cover featuring Yushchenko's son had been made public.
Yushchenko's team was quick to respond. "He and his family would never allow anyone to try to pressure journalists about any kind of material," read
a statement by the president's spokesperson, Irina Gerashchenko, who suggested that the Harfouch brothers might be trying to boost the ratings of their magazine with a scandal.
Even the international journalist organization Reporters without Borders condemned the firebombing, leading Yushchenko to order the interior minister to personally look into the incident.
Although this wasn't the first media scandal involving the president's nineteen year-old boy, its seems unlikely that Yushchenko or his family, who have faced far worse pressure in the past, would stoop to thug tactics. Moreover, the photographs on the cover in question were not the least bit controversial, simply showing the teenager hugging his girlfriend during a vacation in Turkey.
Paparazzi is one of the first magazines in Ukraine that has apparently tried to make the leap from tabloids that serve up hard boiled politics with a side dish of the absurd to the kind of celebrity oriented publications common in the West. In order to succeed, they will have to rely on mass subscription rather than someone's patronage.
"We are not a political journal. We don't depend on politicians or politics at all," said Anna Filimonova, Paparazzi's editor-in-chief, adding that the magazine earns revenue from subscriptions and ads. Filimonova couldn't say whether this covered all operating expenses for the bimonthly publication.
In the same issue dedicated to Yushchenko's son, Paparazzi included significant material on the daughter of Yulia Tymoshenko, one of the president's chief political opponents. Both the young people were selected not on the basis of their parents' policies but because they are famous, said Filimonova.
So where do they get the photos from? "Mainly from photographers who work with us - that is, freelancers... but it happens very often that ordinary Ukrainians come to us," Filimonova explains. Other sources include - again - the Internet and staff photographers.
So is the rise of the professional Ukrainian paparazzi a myth, publicity stunt or the latest copy cat from the West? Maybe. But according to Filimonova, her magazine additionally gets material from French publications that Harfouch has a working relationship with. Paparazzi could pay "upwards of thousands of dollars" for a photo if it’s good, she underlines. But ultimately the development of a professional class of camera-wielding snoops who hound the rich and famous to their graves will depend on the choice of ordinary Ukrainians and their willingness to pay for it at the newsstand.
|
