Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: This article argues that a queer temporality emerged during the era of Soviet Stagnation: the Stalinist past was unspeakable and the future postponed or foreclosed. In response to the limited horizon of “developed socialism” – the loss of narrative coherence and futurity, the never‑to‑arrive communist promise – an expanded present rich in possibility and feeling was brought into being in animated films, providing a time and space where one could desire again. Iurii Norshtein’s Ëzhik v tumane (Hedgehog in the Fog, 1975), Fëdor Khitruk’s Vinni‑pukh films (1969‑72) and Bremenskie muzykanty (Bremen Musicians, 1969) activated desire and altered fantasy not, as one might expect, through a reestablishment of linear time, but a reimagining of stagnation as a domain of thrilling, non‑teleological explorations. Where the fog in Ëzhik v tumane precipitated a lack and set the libido in motion, Vinni‑pukh provided a partial solution to the Brezhnev‑era desire crisis by staging polymorphous perversity and an elastic “kitchen time”; and Bremenskie muzykanty further developed the new socialities, loves, and forms of enjoyment communicated by such queer temporality. Gaps, magically intimate spaces, queer embodiment, and disfigured time were performed within the diegetic frame as well as instantiated by the film‑as‑object, asking spectators to playfully examine the impasses of late socialism, and imagine a libidinally saturated life, abounding with potentiality.
Source: Cahiers du monde russe
Author: Anna Fishzon
Institution: Duke University
Language: French
Topic: Cinema History and Criticism
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2263592504