State LaughterPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0009
E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol
{"title":"“A Total Racket”","authors":"E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"The subject of this chapter is Soviet urban romantic comedies. Despite the seemingly unsuitable setting of the first decades of Soviet rule, the chapter makes a case for the Soviet spaces, and Soviet forms of life, being an ideal context for vaudevillian misunderstandings, confusions, playful encounters, and romantic mishaps. At the same time, the genre was instrumental in teaching the Soviet audience to merge the private and the public, the intimate and the heroic into a harmonious whole. All the traditional markers of romantic comedy can be found in the texts presented, but the Soviet context and content make the Soviet urban comedy a unique form of popular entertainment and ideological training.","PeriodicalId":176564,"journal":{"name":"State Laughter","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115290184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
State LaughterPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0010
E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol
{"title":"Metalaughter","authors":"E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"This last chapter of the book discusses meta-laughter on the example of the most popular musical comedies of the Stalinist era, whose subject was Soviet laughter itself. This self-reflection emphasizes the important place occupied by laughter in the Stalinist order, where official discourse and low culture were closely interrelated. Their synthesis gave birth to one of the main principles of Socialist Realism ‒ that of popular spirit, which made it possible for the authorities to create the image of the People as the highest legitimizing instance of the authorities themselves. This ideological perpetuum mobile was the most essential trait of the culture of Stalinism.","PeriodicalId":176564,"journal":{"name":"State Laughter","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115862977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
State LaughterPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0003
E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol
{"title":"A Killer Wit","authors":"E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"In this chapter the comic is examined as an element of the ritual of terror. Its central claim is that contrary to the seemingly obvious lawlessness of Stalinist rule, Stalinism was a triumph of law taken to the extreme. Jokes in the legal proceedings during the purges of the 1930s (in particular the party plenum of February–March 1937 where Nikolai Bukharin was interrogated pre-trial), Stalin’s speeches from the time, and the Short Course of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) are analyzed as elements of a special kind of training in the formation of the ideologically correct view of the world. Special attention is paid to the construction of image of the enemy.","PeriodicalId":176564,"journal":{"name":"State Laughter","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131779590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
State LaughterPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0005
E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol
{"title":"“One Might Think It Is a Ward in a Madhouse”","authors":"E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter is divided into two parts that analyze early Cold War Soviet caricature of two kinds—pictorial and verbal. Both focus on the presentation of a new kind of enemies: not immediately and directly dangerous, but deeply alien in their very existence. The first part analyzes pictorial caricature with reference to the Soviet concept of “the typical” and in the context of the principle of “thinking in types” as an attribute of totalitarian consciousness. Pictorial caricatures are explored as a tool of forming a new type of ideologically correct reading of signs. The second part explores a range of satirical texts—from verses to plays on politically relevant topics. The use of traditional comic tropes is examined systematically.","PeriodicalId":176564,"journal":{"name":"State Laughter","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117325964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
State LaughterPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0004
E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol
{"title":"The Funny War","authors":"E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on humor as part of the Soviet war propaganda in World War Two. The emphasis is on Aleksandr Tvardovskii’s poem Vasilii Terkin, and documentary satirical pieces authored by the journalist Il′ia Erenburg. The poem and the satirical newspaper pieces could not be more different from each other in terms of their origin and the genre they belonged to: the former was a poem in the spirit of folk ballads, the latter—biting political satire. However, the creations of both authors enjoyed an astonishing popularity during the war, and their impact on the collective consciousness extended far beyond the war years. The chapter discusses the concepts of the regular versus the exceptional, truth versus falsehood, evidence versus fiction, private versus collective.","PeriodicalId":176564,"journal":{"name":"State Laughter","volume":"96 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122568964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
State LaughterPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0008
E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol
{"title":"The Merry Adventures of Stalin’s Peasants","authors":"E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Following the period of collectivization, it became essential to create works that would show how much better the life of Soviet peasants-turned-kolkhoz members had become. Kolkhoz comedy quickly became popular on both stage and screen after it first appeared in the 1930s. Its farcical humor, mostly borrowed from situational comedy, was not particularly complex, and the plots usually revolved around how kolkhoz labor and everyday life were intertwined. The ideological message conveyed by these works was also very straightforward: those who work well live well. These plays depict a harmonious reality, and the advantages of the Soviet regime are undeniable. The plot templates used in the kolkhoz comedy followed motives that were familiar from fairytales and the popular forms of entertainment traditionally found at village fairs. An examination of the Sovietization of these genres of low mass culture allows us to understand how thoroughly the Marxist ideology was adapted to the peasant masses’ tastes and horizon of expectations, and why it was so efficient. The normalization of the kolkhoz reality resulted in the creation of stereotypical characters, situations, and devices—a true kolkhoz commedia dell’arte, which is analyzed in this chapter.","PeriodicalId":176564,"journal":{"name":"State Laughter","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129272104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
State LaughterPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0002
E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol
{"title":"The Stalinist World of Laughter","authors":"E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This is a theoretical chapter in which different theories of laughter and the comic are explored at length and where the key concepts used in the monograph are explained. It is focused on the aesthetic of a radically popular culture that is based on an adaptation of ideology to the level of a population, half of which came from the peasantry and had a traditional folkloric sense of the comic. The development of this aesthetic resulted in the comic becoming a tool of the Soviet political and artistic project. This tool was then used to ensure that the people internalized the required political and ideological principles. It affected key elements of the comic introducing such a new concept and practice as “positive satire.” A connection between the comic and the heroic was of primary importance, the heroic being the dominant mode of Stalinist culture. We try to formulate analytical models to provide an alternative to the still dominant concept of the Bakhtinian carnival, which is supposed to be always in opposition to power, always undermining the hierarchy. The radical carnival of Stalinism was the exact opposite of this: it strengthened the existing hierarchy, increased class barriers and gaps between social groups, and provided an additional legitimacy to the laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that were in place. It was a carnival of fear and jubilation.","PeriodicalId":176564,"journal":{"name":"State Laughter","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115655355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
State LaughterPub Date : 2022-02-03DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0007
E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol
{"title":"The Soviet Bestiary","authors":"E. Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198840411.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter looks at Soviet satirical fables, from the first post-revolutionary years (Dem’ian Bednyi) to the decades of established socialism (Sergei Mikhalkov), via the little-known peasant poet Ivan Batrak. These texts were typical for the Soviet culture, but most untypical in the general allegorical tradition: Aesopian language that supported the official regime. The analysis follows through the progression from the raw violence of post-revolutionary years, translated in a very particular type of allegorical humor, to the routine devices of allegorical satire in the years of established socialism, when it became possible to use whole blocks of references as minimal recognizable units of the new type of allegory and to turn boredom into a special experience of humor.","PeriodicalId":176564,"journal":{"name":"State Laughter","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130798370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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