A FAMILIAR MEME. A NEW CONTEXT.

Navalny With Instant Noodles

What this meme means

Photoshops based on photos by Evgeny Feldman published on August 29, 2017, in which Alexei Navalny eats instant noodles from a white bowl. The photos came from the photographer's Instagram and his campaign website.

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Circumstances of the shoot

According to published reports, photographer Evgeny Feldman published a series of photos on August 29, 2017. In the photo, Navalny is sitting on a wooden bench in a room with large windows, holding a white bowl in one hand while bringing instant noodles to his mouth with the other. He's wearing a dark suit and a burgundy tie, with a dark backpack sitting on the bench beside him.

The photos were published on the photographer's Instagram and on his website devoted to Navalny's election campaign. This is an important point: the photographer was working as part of the campaign and was documenting the politician's day-to-day life and travels. The exact location of the shoot is not known.

Why the shot became a meme

The photo turned out to be well suited to edits because of its mundane setting. A politician who normally speaks in front of crowds looks, in the photo, like an ordinary person having lunch. That contrast between the public image and everyday life became the basis for the jokes.

The photoshops were built around transplanting the bowl and the noodles into other scenarios: new captions appeared, comparisons to well-known figures, new settings. The tone of the jokes was mostly ironic rather than hostile, and many of the edits were taken as a light-hearted play on the image of a busy politician.

Spread

The series quickly spread across social media and sites with humor roundups. It was reposted by both the politician's supporters and his opponents, which is typical for topics involving a well-known public figure. The pictures were short and easy to grasp, so they didn't require any knowledge of context.

The database dates the meme to 2017, which lines up with the period of the active campaign. Photos from that time often became material for photoshops, since the campaign published a great many photographs from trips and meetings.

Political context

In 2017, Navalny was preparing to run in the 2018 presidential election and was actively working in the regions. The Anti-Corruption Foundation, which he headed, published investigations, and his activity remained a subject of debate. Because of this, any photographs of the politician quickly drew the internet's attention.

It's important to note that the photo itself is documentary, while the jokes are a comment from their authors. An encyclopedic description should rely on the facts of the shoot and the publication date, and not go beyond them.

Significance of the meme

The series is a good example of how a mundane shot of a politician can turn into a lasting reference. Memes like this help fix an image and a date in memory while also cementing the recognizability of the scene. The noodles and the bowl became symbols of the shot, and they're enough on their own to trigger the association.

The meme also illustrates a general trait of Russian-language internet humor: captions and photoshops often turn public figures into characters in everyday scenes, while still keeping a connection to the real photograph.