{"id":1097,"date":"2020-05-01T04:00:15","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T04:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2020-05-01T13:37:15","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T13:37:15","slug":"the-two-scales-of-annas-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/zflood\/the-two-scales-of-annas-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The Two Scales of Anna’s World"},"content":{"rendered":"

One aspect of\u00a0Anna<\/em> that stood out to me was the simultaneous exploration of the end of the Soviet era on two scales: the broadcasts seen by tens of millions, and the father-daughter relationship ordinarily only visible to a handful of people. Breaking from an oblique treatment of official state iconography in the privately produced Soviet works we have seen this semester (barring Burnt by the Sun<\/em> by the same director), Nikita Mikhalkov makes extensive use of footage of national leaders, military parades, Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, anthem recitals, state funerals, Young Pioneer conferences, the Olympics, state funerals, concerts, and other major events. It is easy to see the national cult attested by Mikhalkov through the footage and make sense of his daughter Anna’s fears of war and not saying the right thing. At the same time, we never get the sense that the official footage is the complete picture of the era. The dirt road that reappears in the final scene and the shots of peasants show a barrier on the scope of the televised image of the country. Sure enough, Anna’s first series of responses make no reference to the nation as presented on television, while her later responses gradually dispute previous points about the efficacy of the Soviet systems. Hence, in addition to giving context to Anna’s perspective, the footage juxtaposed with with Anna’s interviews conveys the loss of a teleological narrative, a rift between the state image and ordinary lives, and ultimately the collapse of the country.<\/p>\n

In viewing the film, it is important to acknowledge Mikhalkov’s unusual status within the Soviet Union. On the one hand, he is an ideological dissident in his Orthodox Christian views, aristocratic heritage, and rejection of communism. On the other hand, his father wrote the lyrics to the “State Anthem of the Soviet Union” and his family clearly enjoys privileges unknown to most Soviet citizens. It recalls a dynamic from 19th-century works wherein the artist has a vested interest in the institutions they critique. While we should thus be careful not to deem the \u00a0film an objective view of the late Soviet Union, we should also recognize its value as a Russian motif.<\/p>\n

*Edited to further develop the second paragraph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One aspect of\u00a0Anna that stood out to me was the simultaneous exploration of the end of the Soviet era on two scales: the broadcasts seen by tens of millions, and the father-daughter relationship ordinarily only visible to a handful of people. Breaking from an oblique treatment of official state iconography in the privately produced Soviet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-12-perestroika-and-the-new-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097","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\/1021"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}