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Emma Widdis Socialist Senses

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Socialist Senses: Film and the Creation of Soviet Subjectivity by Emma Widdis from the Slavic Review established by the association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies considers how Soviet cinema perpetuated socialism, and the universal measure of political superintendence of our sensory faculty. The article draws on three types of evidence to inform the thesis; psychological debates on cinema 's role in Soviet reformation, the socialist psychological premises for such debates, and three films showcasing efforts made in molding soviet subjectivity. Emma Widdis states that the debates in the Soviet film press intended to “create prototypes of Soviet Subjectivity in offering new models of sensory and emotional experience” (Widdis, …show more content…

This second type of evidence was informative to understanding how global conflict and human behavior could be wielded theoretically, technically, and metaphysically to satisfy political agendas, specifically that of the Marxist Soviet Union. By considering the ideological habitat for Socialism between 1928 and 1933, the interdependence between cinema and political superintendence of sensory faculty can be clearly shown. The last piece of evidence Widdis presents is a reflection of three films. Two of which were made in 1928, while the other was made in 1931. The first film is Sergei Iutkevich 's “Kruzheva” or “Lace” released on the first of June. Iutkevich 's film is an effort to humanize and soften machinery with the artful juxtaposition of Lace. Widdis discusses how this film set in a lace factory worked to reconstruct human sensorium. The second film is Abram Room 's “Ukhaby” or “Potholes” released on the tenth of …show more content…

In my opinion, Soviet Senses: Film and the Creation of Soviet Subjectivity is a highly fascinating and informative article which recognizes the intimate, and yet universal, cinema for its political, social, and emotional significance. A favorite filmmaker of mine, Werner Herzog, once described film as “Collective dreams of human consciousness.” Pertinent to Soviet Subjectivity, efforts to reshape the sensorium bears testimony to the collective dreams of a new Marxist world of socialism, industry, and an “emancipation of the senses.” This is not to say that the article is without its daunting aspects. A singularly compelling and daunting concept was the unique understanding of “feelings” versus “emotion” in Soviet Marxist psychology. 1928 began a transitioning period from a cinema of “socialist emotions/feelings,” replacing the cinema of “concepts/abstractions that dominated the previous decade. There is a unique distinction between “feelings” and “emotion” in this psychology. Socialist cinema, according to Emma Widdis, worked to eradicate emotions using sensibility. Emotion was seen as a bourgeois antiquity which threatened the new order. This prospect was a cataclysm for the political superintendence of the sensory faculty. I also feel that the article could have benefitted from further background information regarding the civilian perspective. It seems an easy assumption to make that when considering the effectiveness of these attempts at sensory reconstruction, it

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