William Herrington in the exhibit in Zheleznogorsk. Photo: screenshot from a video by Ruslan Tsyganov
Russian police have tracked down a teenager who sent in a photo of a well-known pornographic actor to appear in an installation honouring war veterans in Russia’s southwestern Kursk region, state-owned news agency TASS reported on Monday.
The agency did not name the teenager or clarify whether he was facing criminal charges, saying only that he had “confessed” and “explained that it was a joke to include a photo of a pornographic actor in the exhibit”.
The creator of the installation, Anton Polsky, told state-owned news agency RIA Novosti that an unnamed 16-year-old had sent in a photo of William (Billy) Herrington, a pornographic actor who died in 2018, to appear in the Battle of Kursk installation in the town of Zheleznogorsk. He said the mayor’s office had filed a complaint against the schoolboy in early May.
Polsky explained why the creators of the installation had overlooked the photo of Herrington, best known for his work in gay pornography in the 1990s and the Gachimuchi meme, which became popular among Russian teenagers in the late 2010s after first going viral in Japanese online communities. “We were brought up with different values. We watch different films. We don’t know these American actors,” Polsky said.
The Battle of Kursk installation was unveiled in Zheleznogorsk at the end of April, featuring over 2,000 photos of veterans of World War II and the war in Ukraine, with pictures for the installation sent in by local residents.
In early May, Ruslan Tsyganov, a former local deputy in Zheleznogorsk, pointed out that one of the portraits in the installation depicted a pornographic actor, not a veteran. It emerged that the installation featured seven photos of Herrington in Soviet military uniform in all. Curators had managed to cover those over with portraits of real veterans in time for Victory Day on Friday, when Russia celebrated the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.