Dziga Vertov's silent film, Kino Eye, is revolutionary in its technical as well as social dimensions. The film is one long sequence of innovative cinematographic maneuvers. It's subject matter is twofold: first, early Soviet society, taken as a whole; and second, the beneficent activity of the Communist youth association, the Young Pioneers.
What does the naked eye of the camera reveal about the Young Pioneers? They are, quite simply, selfless, helpful, healthy, ubiquitous, and progressive. The Young Pioneers, the junior of the two official Communist youth organizations--the other being the Komsomol-represent the future of Russian society twice over. First, the Young Pioneers are, of course, future Communists. Second, even as youngsters, they are actively reshaping Russian society according to Marxist principles.
The camera's eye catches the Young Pioneers celebrating new Communist holidays, demonstrating Communist enthusiasm by marching in quasi-military marches, teaching drunkards about the negative consequences of drinking and smoking, putting up propaganda posters related to public health and the merits of buying from economic cooperatives (the First Red Supermarket is cheaper than private enterprise), exercising or grooming, helping widows with their agricultural work, making tin implements for needy villagers, and drilling for the coming conflict with capitalist warmongers. As one woman remarks in text, "...they aren't going to church, but I'm happy anyhow."
The camera's eye depicts the essential role of the Young Pioneers in building Russian socialism. But its canvas is broader than that. Kino Eye takes the viewer throughout urban and rural Russia, depicting technological triumphs such as trolleys, light bulbs, telephones, and radio receivers, realistic scenes such as T.B. sanitariums and mental health institutions, and complex, multi-step economic processes, such as bread making and slaughterhouse activity.
At times, the film's subjects seem to have been chosen purely for their suitability for the medium. How else can we explain an elephant's trip to the zoo, a record player's movement, or a Chinese magician entertaining a crowd? But overall the film retains a visual idea: Communist Russia is complex, forward-looking, and actively overcoming a traditional heritage in the interest of progress. This isn't a simple approach to agitprop; the director shows us drug addicts, vagabonds, alcoholics, seemingly backward-looking peasants, and insane people. Nevertheless, these honest scenes of ugliness only highlight the accomplishments of the Young Pioneers and the worthiness of the Communist project.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
Comedy of Communism
Soviet Roulette is biased: it is naturally obsessed with those authors who mix personal ruminations with historical or literary observations about the Soviet Union. See, for example, previous posts on The Possessed and Inside the Stalin Archives. One of the best efforts in this strange genre is Ben Lewis' Hammer and Tickle: A Cultural History of Communism. Lewis, who isn't afraid to describe an illuminating relationship with a neo-communist East German girlfriend, believes that humor lies at the heart of the communist experiment. Lewis' book (which expands on a movie on the same subject) is an open-ended investigation to decades of communist jokes, which were used both to ridicule socialist states as well as their alleged enemies, including capitalists, Western powers, and even foot-dragging apparatchiks.
Lewis doesn't provide readers with any easy answers about the meaning of communist humor. He tracks jokes by topic, regime, era, purpose, and venue. He contrasts competing historical and cultural theories related to the impact of jokes on despotic regimes. Did the ubiquitous jokes undermine the regimes they denigrated or serve them by replacing more meaningful, action-oriented forms of political protest? Lewis offers no simple solution, although he does admit that people seem to have put away humor when they finally took to the streets in the late 1980s to bring down communist rule once and for all.
If Lewis doesn't advance a single thesis about communist humor, he does help to show how his approach to understanding the logic of communism is indispensable. Humor is at the heart of many different facets of the European experience of communism. People told jokes about almost every facet of communist existence, including shortages, shoddy goods, the cult of Lenin, stupid or corrupt leaders, sham elections, police surveillance, and capitalist economic supremacy. Stalin told jokes about his enemies. Communist periodicals derided the state's perceived enemies.
Lewis quotes historian Steven Cohen by saying something to the effect that communism was only serious for about five minutes, but has been funny ever since. If this tongue-in-cheek formulation underrates the tragedy of the gulags, purges, and collectivisation famines, it does point to the essential absurdity that always lay at the heart of communist social and economic theory. By the 1960s, Eastern Europeans understood that in many ways their society was a parody of the Western one. Their economy produced things that nobody needed; hard work had almost no relationship to economic reward; and the continued viability of most Eastern European nations was contingent upon the generosity of the Western ones, who routinely gave out large, sub-market loans.
There is a flawed Woody Allen film entitled, Melinda, Melinda, that unconsciously follows Marx's famous dictum about the nature of history. In this tale, Allen makes the point that the same story can be told in two different but equally satisfying ways; either as tragedy or farce. Although it's sometimes hard to credit--see my previous post on film, The Trotsky--looking at communism as comedy somehow seems worthwhile and long overdue.
Lewis doesn't provide readers with any easy answers about the meaning of communist humor. He tracks jokes by topic, regime, era, purpose, and venue. He contrasts competing historical and cultural theories related to the impact of jokes on despotic regimes. Did the ubiquitous jokes undermine the regimes they denigrated or serve them by replacing more meaningful, action-oriented forms of political protest? Lewis offers no simple solution, although he does admit that people seem to have put away humor when they finally took to the streets in the late 1980s to bring down communist rule once and for all.
If Lewis doesn't advance a single thesis about communist humor, he does help to show how his approach to understanding the logic of communism is indispensable. Humor is at the heart of many different facets of the European experience of communism. People told jokes about almost every facet of communist existence, including shortages, shoddy goods, the cult of Lenin, stupid or corrupt leaders, sham elections, police surveillance, and capitalist economic supremacy. Stalin told jokes about his enemies. Communist periodicals derided the state's perceived enemies.
Lewis quotes historian Steven Cohen by saying something to the effect that communism was only serious for about five minutes, but has been funny ever since. If this tongue-in-cheek formulation underrates the tragedy of the gulags, purges, and collectivisation famines, it does point to the essential absurdity that always lay at the heart of communist social and economic theory. By the 1960s, Eastern Europeans understood that in many ways their society was a parody of the Western one. Their economy produced things that nobody needed; hard work had almost no relationship to economic reward; and the continued viability of most Eastern European nations was contingent upon the generosity of the Western ones, who routinely gave out large, sub-market loans.
There is a flawed Woody Allen film entitled, Melinda, Melinda, that unconsciously follows Marx's famous dictum about the nature of history. In this tale, Allen makes the point that the same story can be told in two different but equally satisfying ways; either as tragedy or farce. Although it's sometimes hard to credit--see my previous post on film, The Trotsky--looking at communism as comedy somehow seems worthwhile and long overdue.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Opinionated
Vladimir Nabokov's book of interviews, letters to the editor, and editorials establishes the following: Nabokov... 1) is a genius; 2) knows that he is a genius; 3) doesn't usually make any aesthetic or intellectual compromises; 4) hates communism and other forms of political dictatorship; 5) eschews literary trends and labels and schools; 6) is proud of his scientific publications about butterflies; 7) loves America; 8) thinks The Gift is his best Russian book and Lolita may be his best overall book; 9) believes that Russian liberalism was vibrant on the eve of the Revolution; 10) believes he is better than most other major European or American authors, living or dead; 11) is confident about his translations, and also about his philosophy of translation; 12) is contemptuous of other people's translations; 13) is not interested in religion; 14) dislikes interviews and interviewers, by and large; 15) has a well-established creative process and philosophy of literature; 16) is not particularly found of literary criticism; loathes Freud, Marx, Sartre, et cetera and so on.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
The Wild East
America and Russia have always resembled one another. Most importantly, the concept of manifest destiny isn't unique to America; Russians think of Siberia in much the same way as Americans think of the Wild West. The "frontier myth" is central to both national identities. In Andrei Konchalovsky's lengthy epic, Siberiade, we get the chance to examine the Russian version of an American cinema cliche up close.
Like the American film, Giant, Siberiade revolves around the quest to open up Siberia by drilling for oil. Beginning in tsarist Russia, the film tracks several generations of Russian frontiersmen (and their love interests) and ends with the discovery of oil in the modern era. It also interweaves this local story of a small and fragile outpost of civilization with that of the broader Russian-or rather Soviet-narrative of progress.
Near this tiny village one man spends his life in a seemingly Sisyphean struggle to carve out a road in the Siberian taiga. But his heroic struggle is a metaphor for the larger Soviet story of development. Throughout the film the director inserts historical footage, or classic black and white film footage that appears to be historical footage, to remind viewers that throughout each of the decades that the film covers, the Soviet Union represents the almost Hegelian ideal of progress, movement, technological innovation, hard work, heroism, and forward motion.
If this small group of Siberians eventually discovers the oil that transforms a wilderness into a "Sun City" of economic sophistication and industrial power, the nation as a whole was experiencing this same metamorphosis on a truly Titanic scale. As the film nears its climax, it's interesting to note that Party officials and bureaucrats (rather than the entrepreneurs and capitalists of American mythology) play a decisive role. Although it's an ordinary driller who heroically throws himself into a harm's way in an attempt to close down a burning oil well, it's a regional party boss who defends the project by asking his superior, perhaps a member of the Central Committee, to remember how, in World War II, the two men used to take "risks" in order to defeat the Germans. Thus, even in 1979, the era of stagnation, the Party's leadership is cinematically represented by intelligent, even daring, apparatchiks. Although Party leaders and politicians honor the workers who make things happen on the ground, it is they who should and do make the future happen in Siberia.
Like the American film, Giant, Siberiade revolves around the quest to open up Siberia by drilling for oil. Beginning in tsarist Russia, the film tracks several generations of Russian frontiersmen (and their love interests) and ends with the discovery of oil in the modern era. It also interweaves this local story of a small and fragile outpost of civilization with that of the broader Russian-or rather Soviet-narrative of progress.
Near this tiny village one man spends his life in a seemingly Sisyphean struggle to carve out a road in the Siberian taiga. But his heroic struggle is a metaphor for the larger Soviet story of development. Throughout the film the director inserts historical footage, or classic black and white film footage that appears to be historical footage, to remind viewers that throughout each of the decades that the film covers, the Soviet Union represents the almost Hegelian ideal of progress, movement, technological innovation, hard work, heroism, and forward motion.
If this small group of Siberians eventually discovers the oil that transforms a wilderness into a "Sun City" of economic sophistication and industrial power, the nation as a whole was experiencing this same metamorphosis on a truly Titanic scale. As the film nears its climax, it's interesting to note that Party officials and bureaucrats (rather than the entrepreneurs and capitalists of American mythology) play a decisive role. Although it's an ordinary driller who heroically throws himself into a harm's way in an attempt to close down a burning oil well, it's a regional party boss who defends the project by asking his superior, perhaps a member of the Central Committee, to remember how, in World War II, the two men used to take "risks" in order to defeat the Germans. Thus, even in 1979, the era of stagnation, the Party's leadership is cinematically represented by intelligent, even daring, apparatchiks. Although Party leaders and politicians honor the workers who make things happen on the ground, it is they who should and do make the future happen in Siberia.
Friday, December 24, 2010
What Would Trotsky Do?
There's a quaint little Canadian movie--and what Canadian movie, with its reverential references to Alice Munro or the Cowboy Junkies--isn't quaint--entitled, The Trotsky. It's a film that makes a playful attempt to reconcile the communist revolutionary tradition and contemporary, bourgeois Canadian society. The film is about a young man, 17 or 18, who believes himself to be the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. What would a real revolutionary do when confronted with contemporary social conditions? Would comfortable, wealthy, quasi-socialist Canada warrant revolutionary activity? Leon Trotsky's young avatar never doubts his calling. Notwithstanding a comfortable upbringing, he sets out to organize the workers at his father's business and then eventually attempts to organize the students at his school. His indefatigble efforts to oppose authority in the service of justice bare fruit, reminding viewers that courage, conviction, and the ability to see injustice (whether it's there or not) can have profound effects, even today.
The film has a brilliant leading man, but doesn't quite work. Is the problem that communism isn't very funny? This explanation seems implausible, as a subsequent post on communist humor and the book, Hammer and Tickle, will make clear. But certainly it's difficult to calibrate mirth with a real social message, as this film tries, heroically sometimes, to do. On the one hand, the film's protagonist is a wonderful pastiche of the historical actor, whose encounters with ordinary Canadian high school students and authority figures are often awkward, unexpected, and exceedingly funny. On the other hand, the film is ultimately about how young people can or should organize for social justice in a world of post-modern malaise. (By the way, I didn't invent that term; rather, I was accused of "post-modern malaise" by a job interviewer who thought I was being to flippant about the rhetoric of education and empowerment.)
Using the Bolshevik example in this context can seem perverted against the historical background of communist brutality and democide. The incongruity is more or less disturbing at various points in the film. Take, for example, the scene in which Trotsky's father finally acknowledges his love for his wayward son by giving him a copy of Mao's Little Red Book. It's signed, "From your favorite fascist," or words to that effect. One wants to laugh, but Mao (to say nothing of Hitler) was responsible for so much twentieth century tragedy, one doesn't.
In fact, this film makes one doubt whether the radical revolutionary tradition has anything at all to recommend it. Certainly the Trotsky's successful kidnapping of the school principal doesn't dispel any doubts one might have about this style of school reform. Even so, the film deserves some credit for sketching out a portrait of a modern radical, as opposed to the modern reformer we all know so well. It's still useful to ask questions about the role of radical opposition even after such opposition has become so endangered by parliamentarianism, financial stability, and (Canadian) socialized medicine.
The film has a brilliant leading man, but doesn't quite work. Is the problem that communism isn't very funny? This explanation seems implausible, as a subsequent post on communist humor and the book, Hammer and Tickle, will make clear. But certainly it's difficult to calibrate mirth with a real social message, as this film tries, heroically sometimes, to do. On the one hand, the film's protagonist is a wonderful pastiche of the historical actor, whose encounters with ordinary Canadian high school students and authority figures are often awkward, unexpected, and exceedingly funny. On the other hand, the film is ultimately about how young people can or should organize for social justice in a world of post-modern malaise. (By the way, I didn't invent that term; rather, I was accused of "post-modern malaise" by a job interviewer who thought I was being to flippant about the rhetoric of education and empowerment.)
Using the Bolshevik example in this context can seem perverted against the historical background of communist brutality and democide. The incongruity is more or less disturbing at various points in the film. Take, for example, the scene in which Trotsky's father finally acknowledges his love for his wayward son by giving him a copy of Mao's Little Red Book. It's signed, "From your favorite fascist," or words to that effect. One wants to laugh, but Mao (to say nothing of Hitler) was responsible for so much twentieth century tragedy, one doesn't.
In fact, this film makes one doubt whether the radical revolutionary tradition has anything at all to recommend it. Certainly the Trotsky's successful kidnapping of the school principal doesn't dispel any doubts one might have about this style of school reform. Even so, the film deserves some credit for sketching out a portrait of a modern radical, as opposed to the modern reformer we all know so well. It's still useful to ask questions about the role of radical opposition even after such opposition has become so endangered by parliamentarianism, financial stability, and (Canadian) socialized medicine.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Avoidance Therapy
I once had a friend who was deeply troubled by psychological disturbances. She took medication to stabilize her mood disorder, but her treatment plan naturally included a healthy dose of talk therapy. My friend went diligently to her therapist for perhaps two years. Over time, my friend's mental health improved dramatically, but she still struggled with paranoia and a host of minor but nevertheless troubling mental health issues. For instance, my friend labored under the delusion--perhaps not wholly constructed by her infected imagination but nevertheless distorted by bipolar disorder--that her supervisor and colleagues at work were out to undermine her and ultimately get rid of her. In her opinion, they might even be contemplating active sabotage, subverting her scientific studies for instance to render her experimental data ridiculous. This was the type of delusion she regularly discussed at weekly therapy sessions. Well, one day my friend brought another of her worries to me. She was saddened by a romantic breakup, and missed a former a lover. Further, she now felt at sea when dealing with members of the opposite sex, and consequently worried that she would not be able to "move on" in her romantic life. After some discussion of the matter, I asked her what her therapist made of this complaint, and what he suggested as a remedy. Without hesitation she explained quite forcefully that she never discussed her personal life with her therapist.
My friend meant of course that she used her therapist as a vehicle for stabilization, but only in reference to her more serious, chemically-grounded, mental problems. For the quotidian woes of everyday life, she had her friends and her normal psychological resources. Boy troubles simply didn't rise to the level of professional treatment, and were none of her therapist's business anyhow. Yet still, the statement, which amounted to a general principle or credo, that one should never discussed private life with a therapist, stayed with me, and seemed emblematic of the way many of us approach external scrutiny. Surely, we avoid it whenever possible--even do our best not to discuss that "real thing" that lies at the heart of our neurosis.
Take another example, culled from another conversation with a friend over her therapy, which illustrates the same point. This second friend told me once that she had gone back into therapy with her former psychologist ,even though this therapist lived in another state. When I asked how this was possible, she said that naturally they conversed by phone. Not having heard of telephonic therapy, I asked how well this worked. She said that under ordinary circumstances it wasn't ideal but that her therapist happened to be blind, which meant that there really wasn't much difference between meeting with her therapist in person and talking to her by phone. Somehow, the idea of a blind therapist struck me as a wonderful metaphor of the way most of us go about delving into the truth about ourselves. On some level--the ego, is it?-- want to set up the mechanism for self-discovery and inner investigation, but on another level--if I say Id, do I have that right?--we want to do everything possible to avoid revelation, light, truth, and self-knowledge. In the end, we all want a blind therapist.
In the quest to understand the Revolution, I sometimes wonder if I'm self-sabotaging. If not, why do I constantly move away from the central revolutionary texts to explore distant pre-revolutionary events, nineteenth century literary history, recent Russian films, and even the current dramas of the Putin and Medvedev administrations? Why don't I spend more time getting to know the primary texts of Revolution, such as Trotsky's detailed treatment and the others? Why don't I learn the Russian language in order to explore primary texts? Am I looking for a blind therapist?
My friend meant of course that she used her therapist as a vehicle for stabilization, but only in reference to her more serious, chemically-grounded, mental problems. For the quotidian woes of everyday life, she had her friends and her normal psychological resources. Boy troubles simply didn't rise to the level of professional treatment, and were none of her therapist's business anyhow. Yet still, the statement, which amounted to a general principle or credo, that one should never discussed private life with a therapist, stayed with me, and seemed emblematic of the way many of us approach external scrutiny. Surely, we avoid it whenever possible--even do our best not to discuss that "real thing" that lies at the heart of our neurosis.
Take another example, culled from another conversation with a friend over her therapy, which illustrates the same point. This second friend told me once that she had gone back into therapy with her former psychologist ,even though this therapist lived in another state. When I asked how this was possible, she said that naturally they conversed by phone. Not having heard of telephonic therapy, I asked how well this worked. She said that under ordinary circumstances it wasn't ideal but that her therapist happened to be blind, which meant that there really wasn't much difference between meeting with her therapist in person and talking to her by phone. Somehow, the idea of a blind therapist struck me as a wonderful metaphor of the way most of us go about delving into the truth about ourselves. On some level--the ego, is it?-- want to set up the mechanism for self-discovery and inner investigation, but on another level--if I say Id, do I have that right?--we want to do everything possible to avoid revelation, light, truth, and self-knowledge. In the end, we all want a blind therapist.
In the quest to understand the Revolution, I sometimes wonder if I'm self-sabotaging. If not, why do I constantly move away from the central revolutionary texts to explore distant pre-revolutionary events, nineteenth century literary history, recent Russian films, and even the current dramas of the Putin and Medvedev administrations? Why don't I spend more time getting to know the primary texts of Revolution, such as Trotsky's detailed treatment and the others? Why don't I learn the Russian language in order to explore primary texts? Am I looking for a blind therapist?
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Stalinism in Film
Burnt by the Sun, a Russian film set in the late 1920s, follows the lives of a communist war hero, famous for his exploits against the Whites during the Civil War, and his small circle of friends. This lively group of friends share a warm and cozy home, and enjoy one another's company. The colonel's wife and small girl seem especially contented. Even so, this happy home is threatened by vague but unrelenting external pressures.
Everyday Stalinism is a creeping, insidious force. In its most brutal form, the state sends tanks to eradicate the fields of local peasants, presumably in order to enforce collectivization. Relying on his seemingly unassailable reputation as an ally of communist, the colonel narrowly averts this disaster. But the state is closing in on his country idyll. Communist propaganda is a constant presence even in this remote area. It arrives by newspaper harangues against Stalin's enemies, by radio propaganda, by children's parades and communist celebrations, by civilian defense force maneuvers. The result is a low level but unceasing state of anxiety and a fear of strangers.
One such stranger turns out to be a long lost lover of the colonel's wife. This man courts his former lover. Soon, however, the lover's past and present are revealed. He and the colonel are rivals in two levels. Aside from their quarrel over a woman, the colonel knows this stranger to have been a spy during the Civil War, a traitor to the Whites with whom he sympathized. The stranger has been corrupted by the Revolution, turned into an agent of the secret police, a man who destroys others in order to survive.
The stranger's animosity toward his rival in affairs of the heart will be compounded by Stalin's animosity for rivals for the affection of the Russian people. The colonel's bravery cannot save him; indeed, that bravery puts him at risk. The stranger soon calls in the Chekist thugs who will destroy the colonel. Not even a signed photo of the colonel with Stalin can save him. As we know, military leaders were more vulnerable than anybody in Stalin's police state. Their charisma and potential authority was a constant threat to the paranoid sovereign's power. In a clumsy visual metaphor, a balloon carries a portrait of Stalin over the beaten colonel as he is taken away to be tortured and executed for mysterious crimes. Stalin, the sun, seems omnipotent, both life-giving and soul-destroying.
Everyday Stalinism is a creeping, insidious force. In its most brutal form, the state sends tanks to eradicate the fields of local peasants, presumably in order to enforce collectivization. Relying on his seemingly unassailable reputation as an ally of communist, the colonel narrowly averts this disaster. But the state is closing in on his country idyll. Communist propaganda is a constant presence even in this remote area. It arrives by newspaper harangues against Stalin's enemies, by radio propaganda, by children's parades and communist celebrations, by civilian defense force maneuvers. The result is a low level but unceasing state of anxiety and a fear of strangers.
One such stranger turns out to be a long lost lover of the colonel's wife. This man courts his former lover. Soon, however, the lover's past and present are revealed. He and the colonel are rivals in two levels. Aside from their quarrel over a woman, the colonel knows this stranger to have been a spy during the Civil War, a traitor to the Whites with whom he sympathized. The stranger has been corrupted by the Revolution, turned into an agent of the secret police, a man who destroys others in order to survive.
The stranger's animosity toward his rival in affairs of the heart will be compounded by Stalin's animosity for rivals for the affection of the Russian people. The colonel's bravery cannot save him; indeed, that bravery puts him at risk. The stranger soon calls in the Chekist thugs who will destroy the colonel. Not even a signed photo of the colonel with Stalin can save him. As we know, military leaders were more vulnerable than anybody in Stalin's police state. Their charisma and potential authority was a constant threat to the paranoid sovereign's power. In a clumsy visual metaphor, a balloon carries a portrait of Stalin over the beaten colonel as he is taken away to be tortured and executed for mysterious crimes. Stalin, the sun, seems omnipotent, both life-giving and soul-destroying.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)