Abstract views: 290 PDF Downloads: 223
Keywords
Post-Soviet cinema
Kira Muratova
male body
explicitness
masculinity
femininity
How to Cite
Abstract
One of the paradoxes of mainstream Soviet cinema was that it tended to ‘make a spectacle’ of masculine physicality without (for the most part) drawing attention to it in any explicit sense. The male hero’s body was mythologized in patriarchal structures that imposed themselves as neutral. This paper examines the different ways in which the director Kira Muratova challenges this cultural paradigm, by explicitly foregrounding the male body, and destabilizing the male perspective. In this respect Muratova’s films pose a challenge to the archetypal images of masculinity (and femininity) prevalent not just in the Soviet Union, or in mainstream cinema, but in many other places besides.
References
Bourdieu, P. (1998). La Domination Masculine. Paris: Seuil.
Costlow, J., Sandler, S. & Vow, J. (1993). Introduction. In J. Costlow, S. Sandler, J. Vow, J. Costlow, S. Sandler, & J. Vow (Eds.), Sexuality and the Body in Russian Culture (pp. 1-38). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Goscilo, H. (1993). Domostroika or Perestroika? The Construction of Womanhood in Soviet Culture under Glasnost. In T. Lahusen & G. Kuperman (Eds.), Late Soviet Culture: From Perestroika to Novostroika (pp. 233-255). Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Graffy, J. (2000). Muratova, Kira G. In R. Taylor (Ed.), The BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema (pp. 167-168). London: British Film Institute.
Heldt, B. (1991). Gynoglasnost: Writing the Feminine. In M. Buckley (Ed.), Perestroika and Soviet Women (pp. 160-175). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mikhailov, B. (1999). Case Histories. Zürich: Scalo.
Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual and Other Pleasures. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Neale, S. (1993). Prologue: Masculinity as Spectacle. Reflections on Men and Mainstream Cinema. In S. Cohan, & I. Hark (Eds.), Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema (pp. 9-20). London and New York: Routledge.
Roberts, G. (1997). Look Who’s Talking: The Politics of Representation and the Representation of Politics in Two Films by Kira Muratova. Elementa, (3), 309-323.
Thornhill, J. (1997, November 29–30). Ivan the Terribly Lost. Financial Times.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.