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The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

thecritic.co.uk

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Re: The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

#121

Post by fuoqi »

dandanua wrote: post #110
fuoqi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Democracy" in which the president has closed 3 popular TV channels with a single executive order, applies sanctions against leader of the second largest political party, and has tried to pass a clearly unconstitutional law to disband the сonstitutional сourt. "Democracy" in which the main security agency uses far-right nationalist forces to terrorize opponents [0] and fabricates a moronic political case [1] against…

Dude, you're just re-translating what Russian propaganda says on every channel they control 24/7 for years. But you can't overcome the truth no matter how loud you scream. It's the Russia who ruin everything around them to gain power and control. This broken superpower still can't accept its loss and apologize for all evil it has done. It disrespects the world and the truth.

>But you can't overcome the truth no matter how loud you scream.

Then argue what exactly is not true in my previous comment, not simply yell loudly about me spreading "Russian propaganda". Everything I wrote can be easily verified and fact checked. If you can not do that, then it's you, not me who got blinded by a propaganda machine.

Re: The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

#122

Post by fuoqi »

rkantbe wrote: post #99
fuoqi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Democracy" in which the president has closed 3 popular TV channels with a single executive order, applies sanctions against leader of the second largest political party, and has tried to pass a clearly unconstitutional law to disband the сonstitutional сourt. "Democracy" in which the main security agency uses far-right nationalist forces to terrorize opponents [0] and fabricates a moronic political case [1] against…

The funny thing is that I'm from Luhansk and you are just parroting russian propaganda, Russia lost control over Ukraine when Yanukovich had run away, and at first annexed Crimea and then started a war in eastern Ukraine, Girkin (Strelkov) himself takes responsibility of starting the war who is russian, but his just a Kremlin's puppet. Anyway, please, stop spreading russian propaganda

It's funny that two people has claimed that I spread Russian propaganda, but none of you have even tried to deny the facts presented in my comment. If you are indeed from Luhansk, then you should know that everything I've said is factually true and you simply can not argue against it.

>Girkin (Strelkov) himself takes responsibility of starting the war who is russian

While he indeed played a big role in the uprising (though I think he tends to oversell his role), the cause was strongly supported by simple folk. (Don't forget about the last line in my previous comment.) The videos from the early stages with simple people blocking unconstitutionally deployed military forces is a good supporting evidence for this statement. You can call them "brainwashed by Russian propaganda" all you want, but it does not change the fact.

Re: The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

#123

Post by gumby »

eps wrote: post #101
avmich wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't recommend highly enough, this is a defining movie.

Nowhere close to the Bond-style films though. Just a fair warning to the uninitiated.

Thanks, I wasn't really asking for the actual bond but speaking Russian; I was asking "how did the Soviets address the same kinds of issue in popular culture" (if they did at all -- a parallel commenter suggests that it wasn't really a topic safe for anyone to touch).

Re: The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

#124

Post by gumby »

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #102
gumby wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be interested in pointers to Soviet equivalents of the James Bond books or films.

Soviet spy movies are like James Bond written by Checkhov :) For example, there's "The fate of the secret agent" (1970) [1] and while it depicts a spy, it's very much not a James Bond type of guy. E.g. he only gets a single woman in the movie and he actually loves her. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314736/

Thanks, I'll give that a try! The very differences are the point; if it were nothing but a reshoot of an existing trope that wouldn't be so interesting. So your "like James Bond written by Checkhov" is the kind of approach that would be interesting.

Re: The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

#125

Post by gumby »

myth_drannon wrote: post #17
gumby wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be interested in pointers to Soviet equivalents of the James Bond books or films.

Not a spy movie but Eastern (as a Soviet Western) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Home_Among_Strangers

Also sounds quite interesting! The very familiarity of the tropes is what makes the different kinds of interpretations more illuminating.

Re: The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

#126

Post by AzzieElbab »

rainydaybook wrote: post #90
AzzieElbab wrote: post #61

Growing up in the USSR I always been fascinated by how only a few of soviet writers/comedians/directors were allowed some level of freedom while the rest had to stay true to the party propaganda lines. Obviously, these few were most appreciated.

It was just easier to do some kind of a propaganda film. No risk, no reshoots, no script rewrites, just stamp it out and make a little bit of money and a trip to Yugoslavia and a black sea vacation.

My theory is that the elites needed entertainment too. I am judging by the flood of previously unknown art during perestroika. Those books, movies, and the rest took years of work to develop. They didn’t just appear out of thin air after Gorbachev declared glasnost

Re: The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

#127

Post by osacial »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #118
osacial wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These languages have similar grammar, because they all have evolved from Old Church Slavonic, but Russian had different path of evolution, where it has gained a lot of Turkic vocabulary among others. I know Russian on native level and have visited friends in Lviv. Sure it is possible for me with Russian language to understand some things and with what I know it would be very easy to LEARN Ukrainian, but I don't live…

They didn't evolve from Old Church Slavonic. OCS was an artificial South Slavic literary standard based on the language from around Thessaloniki, as spoken by Cyrill and Methodius's mission. Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian are East Slavic languages, a different branch of the family. Indeed, they all have a common ancestor in Proto-Slavic, but the relationship of Russian etc. and OCS is one of cousins, not parent-c…

1. Russians do not have common ancestry in Proto-Slavic, because ancestors of Rus people in majority did not even speak Slavic languages, but Baltic, and Finnic languages - Rus themselves initially spoke Scandinavian. Poland and NW area of Ukraine is place where Proto-Slavioc originated. Do your math.

Бере-менна can not even be explained by Slavic language, or Proto... Baltic, but it can be explained by Swedish language, where bear-men was clear purpose of Rus women.

2. All the survived early written texts of Rus are in Old Church Slavonic - very similar to Russian(and possibly others that were known as Ruthenian, but I have no knowledge of Ukrainian, Belorussian or Rusyn to judge that).

3. You and me are not going to decide the classification of languages, that are based purely on geographic distribution or in case of Rus languages(or as they are known to others - East Slavic) - common history being part of one nation and not based on similar ancestry.

Re: The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

#128

Post by lioeters »

colordrops wrote: post #20

One of my favorite movies of all time is Kin Dza Dza. It's a low budget comedy sci-fi movie with amazing ideas and a surreal aesthetic, and is quite funny and gets better with each watch. It's a subtle criticism of the soviet union in the era before its fall. You'll be saying "Kuuuu" for days after watching it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-dza-dza ! Edit: just noticed a critic quoted on wikipedia called it "Ma…

I second this recommendation. Kin-dza-dza! is a brilliant Soviet-era film of surreal social criticism and satire. I believe it must have had quite an influence on western film makers over the years.

Re: The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

#129

Post by dandanua »

fuoqi wrote: post #121
dandanua wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, you're just re-translating what Russian propaganda says on every channel they control 24/7 for years. But you can't overcome the truth no matter how loud you scream. It's the Russia who ruin everything around them to gain power and control. This broken superpower still can't accept its loss and apologize for all evil it has done. It disrespects the world and the truth.

>But you can't overcome the truth no matter how loud you scream. Then argue what exactly is not true in my previous comment, not simply yell loudly about me spreading "Russian propaganda". Everything I wrote can be easily verified and fact checked. If you can not do that, then it's you, not me who got blinded by a propaganda machine.

Your Tsar has already uncovered your tactics https://youtube.com/watch?v=PoQXvPsBBn8

Re: The blissful political incorrectness of Soviet comedies

#130

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

osacial wrote: post #127
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't evolve from Old Church Slavonic. OCS was an artificial South Slavic literary standard based on the language from around Thessaloniki, as spoken by Cyrill and Methodius's mission. Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian are East Slavic languages, a different branch of the family. Indeed, they all have a common ancestor in Proto-Slavic, but the relationship of Russian etc. and OCS is one of cousins, not parent-c…

1. Russians do not have common ancestry in Proto-Slavic, because ancestors of Rus people in majority did not even speak Slavic languages, but Baltic, and Finnic languages - Rus themselves initially spoke Scandinavian. Poland and NW area of Ukraine is place where Proto-Slavioc originated. Do your math. Бере-менна can not even be explained by Slavic language, or Proto... Baltic, but it can be explained by Swedish langu…

Please pick up a basic introductory textbook to the history of the Slavic languages. Your understanding of the relationship between them is very mistaken. If you want to read in Russian, I can recommend К. А. Войлова’s Старославянский язык, which describes not only what Old Church Slavonic is, but also the family tree of the Slavic languages in general and how Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian are not a direct descendant of Old Church Slavonic. If you want to read in English, Alexander Schenker’s The Dawn of Slavic covers much of the same ground in an accessible fashion.

> Russians do not have common ancestry in Proto-Slavic, because ancestors of Rus people in majority did not even speak Slavic languages

When historical-comparative linguists say "common ancestry", they mean common linguistic ancestry, not the genetic ancestry of the Slavic languages' speakers.

> All the survived early written texts of Rus are in Old Church Slavonic

This is not the case. The Novgorod birchbark letters that were excavated over the 20th century attest some early East Slavic, noticeably different from the Old Church Slavonic language that was borrowed into Russia/Belarus/Ukraine around the same time as a literary standard after the christianization of the region.

> You and me are not going to decide the classification of languages, that are based purely on geographic distribution

The distinctions "West Slavic", "East Slavic" and "South Slavic" aren't actually based on the geographic distribution. Rather, they are based on the isoglosses that set the Slavic languages apart from one another. The terms "East/West/South" for the basic post-Proto-Slavic isoglosses are used only because those isoglosses map roughly with those cardinal directions. Again, this is something covered in any basic textbook.

> Бере-менна can not even be explained by Slavic language, or Proto... Baltic, but it can be explained by Swedish language, where bear-men was clear purpose of Rus women.

No, беременна is a native Slavic word and not a Swedish borrowing; it goes back to the same root as беру. If it looks similar to a Swedish word, this is only because the Slavic languages and the Germanic languages both inherited the same Proto-Indo-European word. A detailed etymology for the Russian word can be found in Vasmer under the headword *беремя*.

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