The Voice of Technology: Soviet Cinema's Transition to Sound 1928-1935 (Indiana University Press, 2018).
How did the coming of sound change the Soviet cinema industry? What was made possible and what was foreclosed when Soviet cinema began to “talk”? The 1927 Warner Bros. release of The Jazz Singer radically altered the art of cinema. Despite the many sounds – narrators, piano players, organs, etc. – that had been audible in the movie theater, the “silence” of silent film had been perceived as integral to the very art of cinematic expression. Everywhere, the coming of sound to cinema at the end of the twenties meant a thorough rethinking of cinematic technique, production and distribution. Everywhere, the cinema industries had to be reorganized to convert the silent screen into “the talking pictures.” But in the Soviet Union the introduction of synch-sound technology also coincided with a cultural, political, and ideological shift during the period known as the Great Turning Point. Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932) began with a massive industrialization campaign that led, among other things, to a complete restructuring of the Soviet arts. Industrialization and centralization of the cinema industry greatly altered the way movies in the Soviet Union were made, while the introduction of sound radically altered the way these movies were received. Looking at the intersection of art and technology, of politics and policy, of art and the state, this book examines Soviet cinema’s conversion to sound as a moment of historical transition (1928-1935), not only from silence to sound, but from avant-garde theory to socialist realist practice, and shows the way the voice of Soviet power is transmitted via the new technology of film sound.
Голос техники. Переход советского кино к звуку. 1928-1935, trans. Natalie Ryabchikova (Academic Studies Press, 2021).
В этой книге рассказывается o переходе к звуку в советском кино на рубеже 1920–1930-х годов в контексте первой пятилетки и формирования принципов социалистического реализма. Эти фильмы примечательны не только своим новаторским, экспериментальным, неожиданным и сложным использованием звука, но и тем, как они отражают — в том числе благодаря новой звуковой технологии — сложности исторического момента: перехода от немого кино к звуку, от 20-х годов к 30-м, от авангардного искусства к искусству соцреализма. В центре внимания автора — эксперименты со звуком Григория Козинцева и Леонида Трауберга («Одна»), Дзиги Вертова («Энтузиазм: Симфония Донбасса», «Три песни о Ленине»), Эсфирь Шуб («К. Ш. Э.»), Игоря Савченко («Гармонь»), Александра Довженко («Иван», «Аэроград»), а также фильмы Всеволода Пудовкина, Николая Экка, братьев Васильевых и других режиссеров. Основное внимание уделяется тому, как с помощью новых звуковых технологий показаны взаимоотношения между кино и властью.
В этой книге рассказывается o переходе к звуку в советском кино на рубеже 1920–1930-х годов в контексте первой пятилетки и формирования принципов социалистического реализма. Эти фильмы примечательны не только своим новаторским, экспериментальным, неожиданным и сложным использованием звука, но и тем, как они отражают — в том числе благодаря новой звуковой технологии — сложности исторического момента: перехода от немого кино к звуку, от 20-х годов к 30-м, от авангардного искусства к искусству соцреализма. В центре внимания автора — эксперименты со звуком Григория Козинцева и Леонида Трауберга («Одна»), Дзиги Вертова («Энтузиазм: Симфония Донбасса», «Три песни о Ленине»), Эсфирь Шуб («К. Ш. Э.»), Игоря Савченко («Гармонь»), Александра Довженко («Иван», «Аэроград»), а также фильмы Всеволода Пудовкина, Николая Экка, братьев Васильевых и других режиссеров. Основное внимание уделяется тому, как с помощью новых звуковых технологий показаны взаимоотношения между кино и властью.
How the Soviet Man Was Unmade: Cultural Fantasy and Male Subjectivity under Stalin (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008).
How the Soviet Man Was Unmade argues that against the background of Stalinist monumental art, socialist realist novels and films of the same period surprisingly often rely on the figure of the wounded or mutilated body to represent the New Soviet Man. The blind and paralyzed Pavka Korchagin from Nikolai Ostrovskii’s novel How the Steel Was Tempered (1932-34), the legless Aleksei Meres’ev from the Boris Polevoi novel A Story about a Real Man (1947), or the wounded, tubercular, one-legged Aleksei Voropaev from Petr Pavlenko’s novel Happiness (1947)—these are not incidental or accidental figures in an otherwise physically untroubled socialist realist landscape. Rather, these figures represent one of the main, but heretofore unexamined, tropes of Stalinism’s ideological and cultural fantasy: the radical dismemberment of its male subject. By re-situating both ‘classic’ and lesser known examples of socialist realism within the historical, political, and cultural framework of the Stalin period, this book anchors the readings of socialist realist fiction within the discourses of political anxiety and historical trauma, while taking into account the theoretical contributions of post-structuralist, psychoanalytic, and gender theory. By placing questions of gender at the center of discussion, this study seeks to address a different set of issues from those previously formulated for Stalinism. The ‘subject’ of Stalinist socialist realism is first and foremost a gendered subject, the locus of a discourse of power and pleasure, desire and drive. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how a period of historical trauma turns a discourse of privileged masculinity into a discourse of lack.
How the Soviet Man Was Unmade argues that against the background of Stalinist monumental art, socialist realist novels and films of the same period surprisingly often rely on the figure of the wounded or mutilated body to represent the New Soviet Man. The blind and paralyzed Pavka Korchagin from Nikolai Ostrovskii’s novel How the Steel Was Tempered (1932-34), the legless Aleksei Meres’ev from the Boris Polevoi novel A Story about a Real Man (1947), or the wounded, tubercular, one-legged Aleksei Voropaev from Petr Pavlenko’s novel Happiness (1947)—these are not incidental or accidental figures in an otherwise physically untroubled socialist realist landscape. Rather, these figures represent one of the main, but heretofore unexamined, tropes of Stalinism’s ideological and cultural fantasy: the radical dismemberment of its male subject. By re-situating both ‘classic’ and lesser known examples of socialist realism within the historical, political, and cultural framework of the Stalin period, this book anchors the readings of socialist realist fiction within the discourses of political anxiety and historical trauma, while taking into account the theoretical contributions of post-structuralist, psychoanalytic, and gender theory. By placing questions of gender at the center of discussion, this study seeks to address a different set of issues from those previously formulated for Stalinism. The ‘subject’ of Stalinist socialist realism is first and foremost a gendered subject, the locus of a discourse of power and pleasure, desire and drive. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how a period of historical trauma turns a discourse of privileged masculinity into a discourse of lack.
Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos, eds. Lilya Kaganovsky, Scott MacKenzie, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport (Indiana University Press, 2019).
The first English-language book to bring together leading experts and exciting new scholars from musicology, music theory, film studies, history, and cultural studies, this edited volume explores the importance of sound in Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet cinema from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives. Our goal is to challenge the ways we look at both cinema and cultural history by shifting the focus away from the centrality of the visual and the literary towards the recognition of acoustic culture as formative of the Soviet and Post-Soviet experience. The essays included in the book address the little-known theoretical and artistic experimentation with sound in Soviet cinema, issues of aesthetic ideology and music theory, institutional and industrial development and changing practices of voice delivery and live translations on and off the screen, close readings of canonical films, recently rediscovered masterpieces, and contemporary blockbusters, bridging the divide between “art” and “popular” cinema and cultural production and drawing attention to the cultural and historical specificities of the uses of voice, music, and sound on Soviet and Post-Soviet screens.
The first English-language book to bring together leading experts and exciting new scholars from musicology, music theory, film studies, history, and cultural studies, this edited volume explores the importance of sound in Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet cinema from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives. Our goal is to challenge the ways we look at both cinema and cultural history by shifting the focus away from the centrality of the visual and the literary towards the recognition of acoustic culture as formative of the Soviet and Post-Soviet experience. The essays included in the book address the little-known theoretical and artistic experimentation with sound in Soviet cinema, issues of aesthetic ideology and music theory, institutional and industrial development and changing practices of voice delivery and live translations on and off the screen, close readings of canonical films, recently rediscovered masterpieces, and contemporary blockbusters, bridging the divide between “art” and “popular” cinema and cultural production and drawing attention to the cultural and historical specificities of the uses of voice, music, and sound on Soviet and Post-Soviet screens.
Sound, Music, Speech in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema, eds. Lilya Kaganovsky and Masha Salazkina (Indiana University Press, 2014).
The first English-language book to bring together leading experts and exciting new scholars from musicology, music theory, film studies, history, and cultural studies, this edited volume explores the importance of sound in Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet cinema from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives. Our goal is to challenge the ways we look at both cinema and cultural history by shifting the focus away from the centrality of the visual and the literary towards the recognition of acoustic culture as formative of the Soviet and Post-Soviet experience. The essays included in the book address the little-known theoretical and artistic experimentation with sound in Soviet cinema, issues of aesthetic ideology and music theory, institutional and industrial development and changing practices of voice delivery and live translations on and off the screen, close readings of canonical films, recently rediscovered masterpieces, and contemporary blockbusters, bridging the divide between “art” and “popular” cinema and cultural production and drawing attention to the cultural and historical specificities of the uses of voice, music, and sound on Soviet and Post-Soviet screens.
Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics and Style in the 1960s. Eds., Lauren Goodlad, Lilya Kaganovsky, Robert A. Rushing. (Duke University Press, 2013).
Mad Men, Mad World is a comprehensive analysis of this groundbreaking TV series, Mad Men, which began airing in 2007 on the cable channel AMC. In this volume, scholars from across the humanities consider the AMC drama from a fascinating array of perspectives, including fashion, history, architecture, civil rights, feminism, consumerism, art, cinema, and the serial format, as well as through theoretical frames such as critical race theory, gender, queer theory, global studies, and psychoanalysis. In this volume, contributors from across a number of disciplines explore the show's popularity; its controversial representations of race, class, and gender; its powerful influence on aesthetics and style; and its unique use of period historicism and advertising as a way of speaking to our neoliberal moment. Mad Men, Mad World also includes an interview with Phil Abraham, an award-winning Mad Men director and cinematographer. Taken together, the essays demonstrate that understanding Mad Men means engaging the show not only as a reflection of the 1960s but also as a commentary on the present day. Contributors include: Michael Bérubé, Alexander Doty, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Jim Hansen, Dianne Harris, Lynne Joyrich, Lilya Kaganovsky, Clarence Lang, Caroline Levine, Kent Ono, Dana Polan, Leslie Reagan, Mabel Rosenheck, Robert A. Rushing, Irene Small, Michael Szalay, and Jeremy Varon.