The Spectator as a Lifelong Pupil: Bringing up a Soviet Man. Review of: Mikhailin, V., & Belyaeva, G. (2020). Skrytyi uchebnyi plan. Antropologiia sovetskogo shkol’nogo kino nachala 1930-kh — serediny 1960-kh godov [Hidden Curriculum. Anthropology of the Soviet School Cinema in the Early 1930s — mid-1960s]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. 584 p.

Abstract

In the Russian humanities, cultural and anthropological studies of Soviet feature cinema are poorly represented. The monograph reviewed is one of the few significant studies in this field. On the one hand, in cultural anthropology, feature films are considered a significant visual source. On the other hand, there are serious theoretical and methodological difficulties in the investigation of such cultural policy instruments that make it possible to form a certain anthropological type. V. Mikhailin and G. Belyaeva solve these difficulties, relying on the idea of the fundamentally empathic nature of feature films and the normative poetics that accompanied different periods of Soviet history. The authors carry out painstaking work on the analysis of plots, practices of camera operation, film directors’ decisions, actors’ play, typical characters, and collisions of the Soviet “school” cinema. The film analysis is supplemented by a clarification of the historical and cultural context of their creation. The review notes that the theoretical sections of the work are written concisely. This does not allow for full substantiation of the monograph’s starting idea, i.e. the statement that normative poetics makes it possible not only to transmit the authorities’ idea of the “Soviet man”, but to achieve its internalisation.

Keywords

• культурная антропология
• советское кино
• школьное кино