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Mar. 5th, 2023 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI picked up To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture on osprey_archer's recommendation, and it turned out to be exactly the kind of nonfiction I like best: a detailed, loving examination of how cultural phenomena enter a cultural milieu and the impact and influence they have on different audiences once they're there.
The book mostly covers the period of the Khruschchev Thaw, taking the 1957 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow as its starting point before doing a deep dive on, respectively, the process of importing and translating Western books, films, and art for a Soviet readership.
The books chapter focuses on Hemingway, Remarque, and Salinger -- I especially loved the bit about Soviet Salinger Discourse, in which much of the readership seized on Holden as a sweet and unsullied youth tragically wandering the capitalist metropolis (an anti-Holden critic: "But where did you get this innocent boy? Where do you see this innocent boy?"), but I also found the details about translation choices fascinating, especially the bits about how American slang did or did not get translated and how that did or did not reflect actual Soviet youth culture and the slang in use there.
The film chapter was mostly about Italian neorealism, which forms the bulk of what made it over to a Soviet audience and is a genre with which I am not very familiar, but I also loved reading about the highly detailed process of Soviet dubbing (Soviet film theory of the time appears to have held that subtitles ruined the image of a film and therefore they would only subtitle films they tacitly wanted to die and be seen by nobody). This extended to not only adding dialogue any time someone's mouth was moving silently onscreen because otherwise audiences would be mad, but in fact lovingly recreating the entire soundtrack with Soviet music and re-created Foley, and honestly made me want to hunt down Soviet dubs of 60s films just for the Experience.
However, the most dramatic chapter was the one about modern art, which was so controversial that there were fights in the streets between adherents of Socialist Realism and ardent young Picasso advocates during the first post-Thaw Picasso exhibition. Of course this is not the first nor the last time that people have rioted over art, but every time I read about it happening it still hits me a little bit again, like, oh shit! This stuff does matter to people on a deep and profound level! ("Viewers who declared 'my grandson could draw this ten times better' risked hearing the retort 'but it is clear you've been a police informer" says the book about this particular conflict, which did make me laugh at the universality of human experience in re: culture wars...)
The book closes by talking about Soviet encounters with Western culture in its original habitat -- the opening up of (limited) tourism, the émigré experience and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union -- which is equally fascinating although often quite depressing. Broadly speaking, the book argues that France and Italy were quite recognizable to Soviet visitors through their experience with Western literature, but the American Experience was never really recognizably translated in a way that could make it familiar; yesterday at the used bookstore I found a small volume of translated excerpts from Soviet travelers in the US which seemed like a good follow-up so more on this anon, I suppose. Anyway, this one's recommended!
osprey_archer's recommendation, and it turned out to be exactly the kind of nonfiction I like best: a detailed, loving examination of how cultural phenomena enter a cultural milieu and the impact and influence they have on different audiences once they're there. The book mostly covers the period of the Khruschchev Thaw, taking the 1957 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow as its starting point before doing a deep dive on, respectively, the process of importing and translating Western books, films, and art for a Soviet readership.
The books chapter focuses on Hemingway, Remarque, and Salinger -- I especially loved the bit about Soviet Salinger Discourse, in which much of the readership seized on Holden as a sweet and unsullied youth tragically wandering the capitalist metropolis (an anti-Holden critic: "But where did you get this innocent boy? Where do you see this innocent boy?"), but I also found the details about translation choices fascinating, especially the bits about how American slang did or did not get translated and how that did or did not reflect actual Soviet youth culture and the slang in use there.
The film chapter was mostly about Italian neorealism, which forms the bulk of what made it over to a Soviet audience and is a genre with which I am not very familiar, but I also loved reading about the highly detailed process of Soviet dubbing (Soviet film theory of the time appears to have held that subtitles ruined the image of a film and therefore they would only subtitle films they tacitly wanted to die and be seen by nobody). This extended to not only adding dialogue any time someone's mouth was moving silently onscreen because otherwise audiences would be mad, but in fact lovingly recreating the entire soundtrack with Soviet music and re-created Foley, and honestly made me want to hunt down Soviet dubs of 60s films just for the Experience.
However, the most dramatic chapter was the one about modern art, which was so controversial that there were fights in the streets between adherents of Socialist Realism and ardent young Picasso advocates during the first post-Thaw Picasso exhibition. Of course this is not the first nor the last time that people have rioted over art, but every time I read about it happening it still hits me a little bit again, like, oh shit! This stuff does matter to people on a deep and profound level! ("Viewers who declared 'my grandson could draw this ten times better' risked hearing the retort 'but it is clear you've been a police informer" says the book about this particular conflict, which did make me laugh at the universality of human experience in re: culture wars...)
The book closes by talking about Soviet encounters with Western culture in its original habitat -- the opening up of (limited) tourism, the émigré experience and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union -- which is equally fascinating although often quite depressing. Broadly speaking, the book argues that France and Italy were quite recognizable to Soviet visitors through their experience with Western literature, but the American Experience was never really recognizably translated in a way that could make it familiar; yesterday at the used bookstore I found a small volume of translated excerpts from Soviet travelers in the US which seemed like a good follow-up so more on this anon, I suppose. Anyway, this one's recommended!
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Date: 2023-03-06 09:53 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2023-03-06 01:25 pm (UTC)Anyway YES I'm glad you enjoyed this book. So many amazing moments. The Youth Festival! The Salinger Discourse! The Grand Theory of Dubbing! (I too would love to see a Soviet dubbed film, but would I be TRULY experiencing a Soviet dubbed film if I have to watch it with English subtitles? So many layers of translation here.) The letters to the editor pro and con nudity in movies.
Somehow I had forgotten the fistfights over Picasso. What stuck with me re: art was Ilya Ehrenburg's article suggesting that the impressionists were, perhaps, NOT decadent capitalist nonsense but in fact pretty nice actually, and the wistful letters that followed from people who wanted to see the paintings to judge for themselves, and could they have photographs or slides or what have you?
One of the things that always strikes me about the Soviet Union is that in certain ways it really valued and promoted high culture, created an incredible longing for it - and then with the other hand frustrated that longing.
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Date: 2023-03-07 02:03 am (UTC)Thank you so much again for recommending it! (I think perhaps the way to do it would be to see a Soviet-dubbed film that one knows so well in the original that one can tell what is happening even without the English subtitles ... unfortunately I don't know that there are any Soviet films that currently fit this bill but one would be intrigued to find out.)
And yeah I too was really struck by the letters of people who found the Ehrenburg articles convincing and really wanted to see the art for themselves -- and then the ones who did see it for themselves and were like 'hmm. I expected to like this from the write-up! alas, I did not, and now I feel bad about it' which also is a very relatable emotion...
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Date: 2023-03-07 03:02 am (UTC)Hmmm, yes, I also don't think I know any Italian neorealism films well enough to truly compare the dubbed vs. original-with-subtitles versions. By which I mean I'm not sure I've seen an Italian neorealist film ever... Something I should correct perhaps?
It was FASCINATING to me that these Italian neorealist films were so popular in the USSR and in the USA you couldn't pay mass audiences to watch them. Completely different universes of cinematic appeal.
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