[HN Gopher] The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies
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The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies
Author : hyperrail
Score : 71 points
Date : 2021-03-07 17:36 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thecritic.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (thecritic.co.uk)
| pjc50 wrote:
| Strange how the meaning of "political correctness" has shifted,
| since it was coined to cover the deployment of "political
| officers" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar )
| enforcing adherence to communism within the Soviet military and
| wider society. All of these films were made under a strict
| political censorship system.
|
| (Russian cinema is legitimately great, though; why not watch the
| traditional pre-launch Soyuz quarantine film, "White Sun of
| Desert"; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066565/ It's rather like a
| more cynical, more Russian "Dollars Trilogy" film)
| cema wrote:
| To add a little background, the "White Sun of the Desert"
| belongs to the genre which is sometimes called the "eastern",
| in the footsteps of the American "western". It describes what
| was known in the Soviet historiography as "the establishment of
| the Soviet power in Central Asia".
| klyrs wrote:
| Words can have multiple meanings. From a US perspective, this
| does seem weird, as "political correctness" is largely about
| not punching down on people who face adversity in our culture.
| The Russian definition seems to mean punching up; criticizing
| the government.
| sublimefire wrote:
| Most of us who lived in the soviet union, watched a couple of
| those at least a few times: - Kavkazskaia plennitsa
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping,_Caucasian_Style -
| Operatsiia ,,Y" i drugie prikliucheniia Shurika
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Y_and_Shurik%27s_Oth... -
| Dzhentl'meny udachi
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentlemen_of_Fortune - Ironiia
| sud'by, ili S liogkim parom!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irony_of_Fate
|
| Last one is something you'd see every new years eve. (spoiler
| here) It uncovers a stupidity of cities in the USSR, when those
| were identical up to a street name.
|
| My mom and dad would probably come up with a slightly different
| list of their favorites, nonetheless they would agree these can
| be called "true" classics.
|
| The important bit to remember here is that all of that production
| was going through "checks" to make sure there are no anti-
| communist ideas in the movies. Creators had to either be very
| careful to disguise some of the sentiment or not to have it.
|
| At the end of the day people were not idiots and understood the
| role of the government. We all had someone close who was a
| survivor from gulag or a returning labor camp prisoner or a
| displaced individual with no right to get back to his village. So
| our lives were kind of similar to everybody elses in the west,
| provided you eliminate those awful bits. And maybe because those
| terrible parts were absent in these movies, we were able to have
| a good laugh.
|
| Honestly watch those and have a laugh. If it seems not funny then
| try learning some russian and watch them again :D I know it is a
| terrible dad joke.
| eugenejen wrote:
| As a non russia speaker years ago, I walked into a russian bar
| in nyc with those movies on tvs behind the bar.
|
| i was hooked and watch them many times. i started to learn
| russian from duolingo.
|
| years later, i laughed when i heard the dialogue. i am also
| happy that those movies got me to learn another language.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| I never quite understood how the Soviet system permitted some of
| these films that quickly becam e classics of their genre: The
| Twelve Chairs
| trhway wrote:
| you couldn't openly and clearly critique/satirize the whole
| System nor the Party nor the Leader (with all 3 being basically
| equivalent). You were allowed (and to some degree and in some
| shape encouraged) to critique and have a laugh at supposedly
| small and separate defects/impurities on the shining body of
| the System, the defects which were still present as supposedly
| exceptions and not the rule ("otdelnye nedostatki") thus your
| work would supposedly be improving the System instead of
| weakening it. The great talent of some of those writers,
| directors, actors, etc. was to show those supposedly small
| separate defects in the formally allowed way while really
| making it a deep and profound satire of the whole System.
|
| The approach of course isn't unique to USSR, it has been the
| forced choice of artists through the history of ideological
| oppression in human civilization, and giving the rise of
| ideological intolerance everywhere today i expect to see again
| that approach more and more.
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| The "political incorrectness" angle is really an unnecessary and
| very stupid aside that tarnishes an otherwise decent piece:
|
| > Nor could [Office Romance] be much less politically correct.
| One can only imagine what a modern HR-manager would make of
| Office Romance, of its "power-imbalances", "problematic"
| attitudes and "inappropriate" behaviour. That said, the same HR-
| manager should at least pause to wonder what, in doing all we can
| to make such relationships shameful and unfeasible, we're also
| doing to ourselves.
|
| The correct answer of course is that any professional, HR or
| otherwise, prioritizes facts over nice stories in movies. And the
| facts are that many supervisor-subordinate relationships are
| exploitative, often start from illegal harassment, and in any
| event are bad for business. Putting concepts like power
| imbalances and inappropriate behavior in scare quotes is just
| creepy and indicates sexist contempt for victims of workplace
| sexual harassment.
|
| Markowski is clearly working in his politics here (which are
| largely centered around hyperventilating about "cancel culture"),
| but even by the standards of the genre it is particularly gross
| to suggest that the only people concerned about bosses who sleep
| with their employees are the PC Prudes who run HR.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| An already dead veteran of pair counseling here in Czechia once
| wrote that of 400 randomly chosen cases of marital infidelity
| that ended up in his office, 397 started in the workplace.
|
| People spend a lot of time together in the workplace, more than
| with their family. It is likely that sex will continue to
| happen there. No doubt some of it is really exploitative; but
| nowhere nearly all of it.
| watwut wrote:
| That however says nothing about how many of those that went
| on between boss ans employe were exploitative, coerced or
| massive nepotism where boss is giving goods to those that
| will couple.
|
| It is orthogonal thing.
| Veen wrote:
| > And the facts are that many supervisor-subordinate
| relationships are exploitative
|
| It's also a fact that many happy marriages began as a
| relationship between superior and subordinate.
| mycologos wrote:
| > It's also a fact that many happy marriages began as a
| relationship between superior and subordinate.
|
| I'm curious about what fraction of superior-subordinate
| relationships you think culminate in happy marriages, and how
| low that fraction has to go before you decide that forbidding
| superior-subordinate relationships is a lot easier than
| negotiating the messy world of allowing it? My guess is that
| the fraction is pretty low, and the world of HR standards in
| the west has already been through this calculus.
| Veen wrote:
| > the world of HR standards in the west has already been
| through this calculus
|
| HR's calculus is dominated by considerations of risk to the
| business, something about which I care not one jot. The
| standards of American corporate HR departments certainly
| should not be society's standard for what constitutes
| acceptable behavior.
|
| As for what fraction of such relationships are "happy
| marriages," I don't know. I do know that my parents met
| that way, as did several couples of my acquaintance.
| tjalfi wrote:
| Miller v. Dept of Corrections[0] is a good example of this type
| of toxic work environment.
|
| [0] https://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/miller-v-dept-
| correction...
| riffraff wrote:
| > What's interesting about Afonya is its picture of Soviet life
| at a time when we were told all was grey, unsmiling misery there.
| Instead it's a world with palpable similarities to the West: pop
| music, glamour photos, consumerism and (undeniably) a class-
| system.
|
| I had a similar feeling watching the 1969 hungarian movie "A
| tanu" ("The Witness")[0].
|
| While the movie is about communist Hungary, it is interesting how
| some of the themes are common to satire of any disfunctional
| organization (incompetents that get promoted because of
| politicking, clueless people in power, nepotism, unjust
| punishment etc).
|
| It's a pretty funny movie, and there's a recently restored
| version so it should be possible to find it if you try a bit.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witness_(1969_Hungarian_fi...
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The Firemen's Ball (1967) is a czech comedy directed by Milos
| Forman, also worth a watch.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Firemen%27s_Ball
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Criterion's streaming channel is currently pairing this with
| the Georgian short 'Fatherland' about a resurrected Stalin.
| rektide wrote:
| any more suggestions would be most welcome
| gumby wrote:
| I'd be interested in pointers to Soviet equivalents of the
| James Bond books or films.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Not a spy movie but Eastern (as a Soviet Western) -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Home_Among_Strangers
| btilly wrote:
| Try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeen_Moments_of_Spring
| pjc50 wrote:
| It doesn't seem to have been a big genre, probably because of
| the difficulty of talking about secret agents in a country
| where secrecy was brutally enforced and the KGB were deeply
| feared.
|
| I can however reccomend the Italian bond knockoff genre,
| including the ridiculous OK Connery:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062078/?ref_=nm_knf_t1
|
| Starring _Neil Connery_. Music by Ennio Morricone.
| gumby wrote:
| OK, now I have to see that!
| versale wrote:
| I believe you'll like it: "Passion of Spies" (Shpionskie
| strasti) 1967
| gumby wrote:
| Great, thanks!
| paganel wrote:
| > James Bond books or films.
|
| I've just read an interview with a Russian book editor that
| mentioned Lev Ovalov [1], which is I think the closest thing
| to what you wanted (in terms of books, anyway):
|
| > Soviet writer, author of detective stories about the
| Chekist-counterintelligence officer Major Pronin .
|
| (...)
|
| > It was for this magazine that the story "Blue Swords" was
| written - the first in a cycle about Major Pronin, after
| which six stories about the hero were published in 1939-1940
| in the magazines " Vokrug Sveta " and "Znamya" , then came
| out as a separate publication in the series " Library of the
| Red Army ", and in 1941 were included in the collection" The
| Adventures of Major Pronin ".
|
| (...)
|
| > On July 5, 1941, Lev Ovalov was arrested on charges of
| divulging classified information and convicted, after which
| he spent 15 years in labor camps and exile. There, the writer
| worked in his main specialty - a doctor, and met the nurse
| Valentina Klyukina, with whom they began to live together in
| the late 1940s .
|
| [1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0
| %BE...
| gumby wrote:
| Thanks! I'll check it out.
| uniqueid wrote:
| Well, if you're into 'politically incorrect' movies, virtually
| anything before 1980 will fit the bill. You could start with
| Birth of Nation which celebrates the KKK. Then move on to the
| Jazz Singer which prominently features black face. Breakfast at
| Tiffany's is famous for Mickey Rooney's 'ching chong' routine.
| There's really no shortage.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I am guessing they are asking for more Russian media... weird
| to focus on the political correctness part.
| uniqueid wrote:
| You're probably right. It's 'political incorrectness' as a
| selling-point that irritates me. I don't know if that's
| weird, probably not worth debating
| drewcoo wrote:
| Mickey. Mickey Rooney. Who when he was younger did a lot of
| movies as a character named "Andy Hardy."
|
| Andy Rooney "played" a curmudgeon on 60 Minutes.
| uniqueid wrote:
| Oops, I've corrected the comment now.
| pjc50 wrote:
| How about
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbelievable_Adventures_of_Ita...
| ; screwball comedy about running all over Leningrad in search
| of a buried fortune.
|
| I realised it wasn't your ordinary comedy when one of the early
| jokes involved landing an Aeroflot flight on a highway. There's
| a splendidly bizarre explosion/dream sequence bit in the
| middle. And a lion chase.
|
| https://russianfilmhub.com/movies/unbelievable-adventures-of...
|
| Anyway, much of Mosfilm is on Youtube.
| paganel wrote:
| The Soviet mini-series that adapted Jules Verne's "The Children
| of Captain Grant" [1] is really nice, it's from the mid-'80s, a
| time that supposedly was bleak because of Chernobyl and the
| post-Andropov and post-Chernenko years, but nevertheless to kid
| me the TV series seemed full of optimism and of endless
| opportunities and marvels. That's from where I got the nickname
| I use on this website, too.
|
| [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088635/
| versale wrote:
| "The most charming and attractive" 1985
|
| "The irony of fate" 1975
|
| "Winter cherry" 1985
| ben_w wrote:
| I find it curious how the phrase "politically correct" entered
| western political language as as self-critical satire by the left
| (presumably in reference to Soviet political officers), before
| being transformed into criticism by right-wing commentators, to
| the situation of being surprised that the Soviets didn't care
| about power imbalances and what we would now regard as
| inappropriate behaviour.
|
| Such linguistic shifts happen a lot (title of this forum
| included), but nonetheless tickles my mind whenever I see it.
| Veen wrote:
| Something similar happened with "social justice warrior," which
| was originally used by people on the left.
| colordrops wrote:
| One of my favorite movies of all time is Kin Dza Dza. It's a low
| budget comedy sci-fi movie with amazing ideas and a surreal
| aesthetic, and is quite funny and gets better with each watch.
| It's a subtle criticism of the soviet union in the era before its
| fall. You'll be saying "Kuuuu" for days after watching it.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-dza-dza!
|
| Edit: just noticed a critic quoted on wikipedia called it "Mad
| Max meets Monty Python by way of Tarkovsky", which is a very
| accurate description.
| tjalfi wrote:
| Could anyone recommend comedic Russian novels or short stories?
| idoubtit wrote:
| Among the Russian films with a strong political innuendo I've
| seen, "Welcome, no trespassing" was the sharpest and one of the
| most enjoyable. It's about a scout camp where the the director
| oppresses the children with stupid formal procedures, patriotic
| ceremonies, and abuses of power. I could not understand why this
| film was allowed, since the camp is an obvious metaphor of the
| USSR.
|
| I'm also surprised one of the most famous Russian comedies, Sauna
| Blues, was not in this article. Even more since its main actor
| died this year. Sauna blues is a funny romance, yet it depicts
| Russian cities were buildings and furniture are similar and
| spiritless, so much that people can't recognize their apartment
| or their street.
| kome wrote:
| > I could not understand why this film was allowed, since the
| camp is an obvious metaphor of the USSR.
|
| Just like today, you are allowed to make fun of power, but you
| are not allowed to take it seriously.
| rkantbe wrote:
| Soviets != Russia, yes the USSR was sort of a new iteration of
| The Russian Empire, but you can't call armenians, ukrainians,
| georgians and so on russians this simply wrong
| Daho0n wrote:
| >I could not understand why this film was allowed, since the
| camp is an obvious metaphor of the USSR.
|
| It fits the US pretty good too.
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