“This Idiot Hasn’t Seen Goncharov”: How an Online In-joke Heralds a New Conception of Communal Music-making

Goncharov is a Martin Scorsese film from the 1970s that doesn’t exist. Instead, the concept of it was created by the community on social media blogging site Tumblr as an inside joke. Despite its unreality, there is an abundance of creative material relating to it, including a full score. What does the process and result of such an absurd creation reveal about communal creative activity online? This paper begins by analyzing the in-joke itself through the lens of folklore studies, clarifying the nature of the phenomenon and describing its relevant themes and ideas. It then uses the resulting framework to map concepts onto an analysis of the score itself. Finally, it addresses the lasting implications of Goncharov artistically and provides a model for how to document these phenomena going forward.