Pride and Panic

Yana Hashamova

Description

Through the looking-glass of Russian national cinema, Pride and Panic explores Russia’s anxious adjustment towards the expansion of Western culture. Russian film is shown, in both its creation and perception, to expose the intriguing dynamics of societal psychological conditions. Using specific film examples, the book delves into the subterranean recesses of Russian national consciousness, exposing an internal ambivalence and complex cultural reaction towards the rise of the West. These fears, fantasies and tremulous anxieties are examined through the representation of the West in films by both established and lesser-known Russian directors. Using a highly original and unorthodox approach, the author parallels the shifting dynamics of attitudes and identity in Russia, caused by globalization, to stages of development in an individual human psyche. The book cohesively unveils the psychological turmoil experienced by Russia towards a change in global relations. A text of particular interest to scholars, students and readers involved with contemporary film and, in particular, Russian cinema and culture.

Sujets

• Social Science
• Popular Culture
• Performing Arts
• HISTORY
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Película fotográfica
• General officer
• History of Asia
• History of film
• General
• Cultural Studies
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841509594
• Langue: English

Extrait

Pride and Panic
Russian Imagination of the West in Post-Soviet Film
Pride and Panic
Russian Imagination of the West in Post-Soviet Film
Yana Hashamova
First Published in the UK in 2007 by Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
First published in the USA in 2007 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2007 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons
Copy Editor: Holly Spradling
Typesetting: Mac Style, Nafferton, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-156-7 / Electronic ISBN 978-1-84150-959-4
Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press.
C ONTENTS
Note on Transliteration
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One
The Western Other (Foe and Friend): Screening Temptations and Fears
Chapter Two
The Russian Hero: Fantasies of Wounded National Pride
Chapter Three
Mobilizing Internal Forces: The Idealized Past and Culture
Chapter Four
(Im)possible Relationships: Looking for the Other
Chapter Five
West, East, and Russia: Ambivalence, Reflection, and Traversing the Fantasy
Conclusion
The West and Beyond
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
N OTE ON T RANSLITERATION
I have used the Library of Congress transliteration system for all Russian names and titles except for citations from secondary sources (e.g., Zassoursky instead of Zasurskii). Where familiar spellings for Russian writers exist - Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. - I have opted for them.

When something is wrong with us, then we look for the reasons outside us and soon we find them. It is the French, the Jews, Wilhelm - these are ghosts, but how they alleviate our anxieties.
Anton Chekhov
The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.
George Eliot
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
The financial support of the Ohio State University and the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at the university, as well as the expert advice and the moral support of many colleagues and friends made this book possible. First and foremost, I must thank Nancy Blake and Helena Goscilo, who read and commented on drafts of the manuscript and from whom I have learned a lot over the years. Special gratitude goes to Alberto Hahn who also read the work and who offered excellent feedback on Melanie Klein s apparatus. Luzmila Camacho read this manuscript twice and was a permanent source of advice, aid, and solace. I am indebted to Dina Iordanova for her assistance and encouragement. Delightful and insightful conversations with Charles Batson and Lori Marso influenced this project. In Russia, I received the immense support of my Russian sister, Anna, who opened doors for me and organized exciting meetings with actors, directors, and film critics.
Special appreciation goes to Jeff Parker, Audra Starcheus, Kara Dixon-Vuic, and Robert Cagle who read various chapters and offered helpful editing suggestions. I am happy for the opportunity to express thanks to colleagues from the departments of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures, Comparative Studies, Women s Studies, and the Interdisciplinary Film Program at the Ohio State University for their moral support. I would like to acknowledge the professionalism of Intellect, which eased the publishing process.
And last, but certainly not least, this book would never have happened without the love and encouragement of my family (my mother, Maria, Christo, and my late father). Maria, who is a psychotherapist, gave me invaluable insights about the mental life of adolescents and the cultural applications of adolescent psychology. My mother, who knows intimately the workings of cinema, was my best discussant. They believed in me when I was desperate and helped me keep my sanity.
The film stills are borrowed from S ance , Russian cinema journal, and I thank Aleksei Gusev, its editor, who authorized their use. Various ideas developed in the book (and early versions of chapters two, three, and five) appeared first as journal articles in The Communication Review , Consumption, Markets & Culture , The Russian Review , and Slavic and East European Journal .
I NTRODUCTION
In exploring Russia s fearful adjustment to the expansion of western capital, this book relies on the political, economic, and cultural contexts of Russia s national cinema as the foundation of its investigation. Russian film is a mass cultural phenomenon, one that in both its creation and its perception exposes the intriguing dynamics of societal psychological conditions. My analysis centers on films that illustrate Russia s cultural and psychological ambivalence towards the rise of the West, and uncovers a set of reactions that I identify as fantasies, anxieties, and defenses. I examine the representation of the (western) other in films by some of the most powerful and influential Russian directors as well as in other relevant projects by lesser-known talents. Employing an unorthodox approach, I study changes in Russia s identity formation and the shifting dynamics of Russian attitudes towards the West, as I compare them to stages of individual development (adolescence and maturity), as well as trace the slippery structure of fantasy as support of reality and ideology. The founding of the Soviet Union divided the world into black and white, good versus evil , and us against them . The side of the Iron Curtain from which one perceived the world was irrelevant in this division. The West and the East employed similar mechanisms for constructing the other as an evil empire (Rogin). In the aftermath of the cold war, the West has deemed itself victorious, while Russia has painfully struggled with despondency.
Pride and Panic: Russian Imagination of the West in Post-Soviet Film examines film images, characters, and themes in order to investigate how Russia has reacted and adjusted to the most glaring reminder of this despondency - the expansion of western capital and culture in Russia itself. My analysis focuses generally on Russian films produced after the collapse of the Soviet Union, paying special attention to those made during the last five to six years - a period in which the Russian film industry began to revive and became more market-oriented, fully reflecting social angst. In drawing on film imagery, I address a number of compelling questions: How is the image of the other constructed in recent Russian film? Is it possible to embrace a foreign culture and be simultaneously afraid of it? How does this fear affect the perception of self and other in an ever-changing identity formation? What are the fantasies and defenses that operate when national and cultural identity is in flux?
A key common characteristic unites the films that I have chosen to examine. Each film explicitly enters into a dialogue with the West at the level of characters and/or imagery and provocatively problematizes the resulting relationship. Although some of these films are set in the past ( The Barber of Siberia (1999) and Of Freaks and Men (1998) take place at the turn of the last century, and Gods Envy (2000) in the 1980s), they all contribute to new ways of thinking about Russia s present. Their narratives suggest an anachronistic investigation of the ongoing transition from communism to democracy and of Russia s problematic relationship with the West.
I use examples from some contemporary films that have chosen to portray Russia s historical past rather than the present to show how their creation, visual texts, and reception recount questions of both the present and history. Feature films, even though historical, often present unreliable historical data, but in doing so they uncover the political and cultural conditions in which the films are created as well as the mental and psychological dilemma of their creators. In the introduction to American History/American Film , John O Connor and Martin Jackson advance the idea that films that inaccurately present history reveal a lot about the political agenda of their creators and their times: Mission to Moscow may tell us nothing of life in Russia, but it speaks volumes about what the Warner Brothers and, through them, the Roosevelt administration wanted the American people to think about Russia in 1943 when the film was released (xviii).
Since I am interested in the historical and political circumstances that give birth to films, I have chosen works produced at the turn of the millennium, which are representative examples of a mental and psychological dilemma that structures the artistic energy of their creators. The objective that runs through my discussion of film imagery is to uncover the desire or the unconscious processes behind the symbolic efforts of these films to deal with the anxieties, the shattered illusions, and wounded national pride that have arisen in the face of overpowering western influences.
In Pride and Panic , I construct a working definition of the West as an imagined and imaginary world, as a cultural, political, and economic imaginary, which the Russian collective mind situates beyond the Iron Curtain. My approach is cross-disciplinary, building on the interaction of psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and film studies. While the project as a whole is inspired by psychoanalysis - adapting ideas mainly of Sigmund Freud and concepts developed by other psychoanalytic schools - it persistently engages with contemporary critical theory (from Mikhail Bakhtin to Julia Kristeva) in order to expand its argument about the