The creative morality of Soviet art

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Soviet art was, apparently, really brilliant, since my post “Composition based on a picture” still continues to receive comments, and discussions about the movie “Spring on Zarechnaya Street” for some time overtook the top news by another throw-in from Artyom Lebedev. It means that it is alive, it is debatable, it excites.

At one time, I made an attempt to consider Soviet painting, cinema, and even the design of magazine covers from the point of view of an ordinary lay viewer. Based on the principle like / dislike. What do you like? She talked about light and color, then about height, about space. Socialist realism calls and fills our life with full-fledged colors, pleases the eye and heart. But Fragonard's paintings are also charming with their artificial skies, silk roses and smooth faces - there are also colors that delight. Or, Hollywood cinema has always shown us and even sometimes continues to show numerous happy ends, fine-tuned at the "dream factory", crowning the plot. But not the colors of paintings by Gerasimov, Pimenov or Yablonskaya, not happy ends, thanks to which we know for sure that in 9 months the Novoseltsevs will have three boys, and another. What? Soviet art has always addressed to human consciousness, and did not rummage through its winding, sometimes dark, and another time - in the dirty sub-creation … Socialist realism, as a method, showed a person in work, in the family, in the development of personality, in heroism, in sports.

This method, which is closest to classicism, did not imply an increased interest in base or, say, criminal motives of human activity. Even the detectives were distinguished by their enchanting sterility - we were shown more well-coordinated work of the police than the work of a criminal. For why should a Soviet person show the formation of the fall and its subsequent "exploits" when we have positive examples? For the negative hero, two or three juicy strokes were suitable - he loves a beautiful life (on the walls there are posters with blondes in swimsuits and a chic mafon in the pier glass area, for there is also imported perfume there), cynical towards his own girlfriend (beauty, but with doubts), hates work - so the boy has sunk to the act marked by the criminal code as a crime. Bad are always bad. The good are always good. The bad ones must improve, the good ones must help. This is probably very flat, but for didactics, which permeated all Soviet life, this is exactly the right thing to do. The bourgeois-hostile art, among other things, loved to excite the area of the lower chakras, so to speak. Fear, hatred, lust, the desire to neigh - all this is actively used in commercial cinema, in literature, in the media. Of course, not all commercial art is designed for "simple movements." But this is precisely the moment where socialist realism decisively diverged from the local styles and methods. In the USSR, actual juicy books were not written that could raise a whore, a psychopath or a murderer. Yes, there was a lot of ideologized rubbish, but at least it did not harm.

There were no horror films in the USSR (some samples, like Viy, don't count - it's just an adaptation of the classics). At one time, the Soviet press wrote that Western horror films are needed in order to show the common man that … life can be even worse. Like, you are simply unemployed or you have no money to pay for water at the tap, and there, on the screen, the green-speckled biomass eats the same ordinary Americans like you. You're okay boy! Nobody bites you except Uncle Sam. Then, in the 1990s, they began to write that everything was wrong. On the contrary, fear is a commercial sentiment that sells well in well-fed countries. When everything is so sterile and smells so sweet of vanilla from a well-groomed kitchen that you already want to be afraid and scream, looking at the sea of blood or at the invasion of robots from the Proxima Centauri area. And, of course, being afraid is a habit, you can. This is the basic moment - the fear of death, of the unknown, of aliens … And it was also written that horror was not needed in the USSR, because Soviet Power itself was a horror. In fact, socialist realism simply had no need for intimidation, much less for intimidation on a commercial basis. On the contrary, the theme of fearlessness was constantly being discussed. Do not be afraid of hooligans in the yard, difficulties in the taiga, fascists in a fierce battle. I was brought up on the principle: to be afraid is a shame. In other words, they uprooted the ancient, animal limiter, thereby creating a superman. Fear is shameful, it is stupid, it is disgusting. And selling fear is even more disgusting.

Lust is the same. Connoisseurs of the topic and "professionals of coitus" often write to me that yes, in the USSR there were images of naked women and even naked men, but this nudity does not call for copulation, but stupidly depicts an academically chaste, even dull body, asexual to the extreme. I can’t say anything, except that I’ll bashfully note that the blond beasts from Alexander Deineka’s painting “Souls” are much more inviting than the sickening porn actor Ron Jeremy, whom I, fortunately, saw only in clothes. But I suppose that without the pants I would have liked him even less. He faintly resembles a man, unlike. So. In the USSR, there really was no lust in art. She was also unnecessary, like fear. There was love, there was a healthy desire - it was considered by adults who understand that the heroes of Nikolai Rybnikov are by no means platonic youths. Or girls from the canvases of the same Deineka. They are healthy in body, they are ready for love and for childbirth, everything is in order with their heads. And with what is below. There was no sex in the USSR, but meaningless perversions. People looking at the hugging couple understood that after the wedding they would have a bed, and then children. Show Novoseltsev, who takes possession of Kalugin in the midst of a heap of business papers? What for? Or continue the scene where Vasya Kuzyakin saw his Nadyukha in a new way? For what? There are adults in the hall - they have understood everything, but the children do not need this. Sex is an act given by nature for procreation, not for dirty fantasies with stockings and latex. Soviet art also showed beautiful, healthy males and females (which is already there!), Which create normal families.

They shied away from Soviet art and other unhealthy tendencies - it did not idle to show the crazies who crush and destroy. It did not wander into the realm of a darkened mind that creates ugliness. Censorship stood guard over mental health and peace of mind. To show the ugly, the sick, the dirty is, unfortunately, profitable. For falling is easier than climbing uphill. It is easier to laugh at a man in dirty trousers than at the pearls of Ilf and Petrov. The beautiful body of the marble athlete does not awaken dirty fantasies, but shows the lines of the reference individual. You know, a person brought up on good and high will always want exactly what is good. Even this advice-nostalgia that has cut through in forty-year-old boys is a normal reaction of former pioneers to tired of all sorts of Comedy Clubs, from the strained bugag and from the stupidly ubiquitous advertising of easy relationships - they ate sweetened shit, I want fresh bread and fresh milk again. Therefore, all the holiday TV programs are packed with Shuriks, Aunties Charlie and Novoseltsevs, who will certainly have three boys in 9 months!