Armenian cinema in the late Soviet years: desexualisation as a narrative convention

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article addresses Soviet-Armenian love narratives in cinema in the Soviet political and cultural context, revealing the negative impact of ideological restrictions on Armenian romance films between 1970 and 1990. On the one hand, the state censorship of film production and, on the other hand, the local conventions on social and sexual mores were detrimental to the development of Armenian romance films through a sanitisation of the subject-matter, particularly sexuality. The article examines Armenian love narratives through the philosophy of the being of love and with reference to the principles of realistic narratives and the romance genre. In a range of aspects, from cinematic articulation of heterosexual love, through a variety of theories of cinematic realism to features of visual narration, Armenian love narratives are shown to make use of a set of features aimed at the desexualisation of male and female love interests. Using a selection of films from the 1970s and 1980s with desexualised love narratives, the argument is made that characterisation and narrative are deficient inasmuch as they refrain from realistic representations of Armenian men and women in psycho-sexual terms.