{"id":1084,"date":"2020-04-29T01:17:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T01:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/?p=1084"},"modified":"2020-04-29T01:17:35","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T01:17:35","slug":"socialist-realist-themes-in-cheburashka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/gbatista\/socialist-realist-themes-in-cheburashka\/","title":{"rendered":"Socialist Realist themes in Cheburashka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coming into this class, I’ll admit, I didn’t think we’d be watching many cartoons. Especially cartoons made for kids, which I assume this is. That being said, I found Cheburashka<\/em> to be reminiscent of the socialist realist genre, in the sense of unity through work and overcoming struggle.<\/p>\n

The story of a little furry ball of mystery, a crocodile, and a little girl caught me a little off guard. I wasn’t quite sure what the message was until they started building, but then the theme of unification of work was readily apparent. Not only do those three meet and decide they want to build a house for others, but they want to build that house for anybody who needs a friend. It’s clear that this is a message to children about the values of friendship, but the fact that they met that larger group of people through building that house makes me think that there’s a message just beyond the surface. That message regards how work can build a community, which was a major feature of previous socialist works. I also saw the emphasis regarding the ambiguity of the little fur ball as meaning that anybody can meet others, casting out a wider net to inspire more people to work, and possibly find friendship and unification.<\/p>\n

In addition to the friendships gained by building the house, the group of friends manages to turn an ill-mannered, cruel woman into a person who is remorseful of their actions, sparking growth in those with more malicious intents through their work. The character growth was seemingly only brought on by the completion of the project and the unity she saw it bring to all those involved. I read into this as an allusion to the toxic environment that was pervasive in socialist realist stories. In those stories, the hero overcame the negativity and all that was weighing them down to achieve something great, and the apology from the woman at the end signified Gena the crocodile’s defeat of evil.<\/p>\n

In the end, it’s a fun kids story about friendship, but there are some hidden layers that harken back to the older days of story telling. I’m not sure when socialist realism was un-codified, but this story shares many similarities, so I imagine that this was at least somewhat intentional. Do you guys think that’s the message the filmmakers were sending?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming into this class, I’ll admit, I didn’t think we’d be watching many cartoons. Especially cartoons made for kids, which I assume this is. That being said, I found Cheburashka to be reminiscent of the socialist realist genre, in the sense of unity through work and overcoming struggle. The story of a little furry ball […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1018,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-11-stalinism-thaw-and-stagnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1018"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}