The Moral Vertical in Russian Cinema Female Pilots, Flight Attendants, Cosmonauts and Aliens — Åsne Ø
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Department of Language and Culture The Moral Vertical in Russian Cinema Female Pilots, Flight Attendants, Cosmonauts and Aliens — Åsne Ø. Høgetveit A dissertation for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor – January 2019 The front page illustration is a collage of film posters: Aelita (Protazanov 1924) design by Israil’ Bograd (1927), Letchiki (unknown designer, film directed by Raizman 1935), Eshche raz pro liubov’ (Natanson 1968) design by Miron Luk’ianov, Belka i Strelka. Zvezdnye sobaki (unknown designer, film directed by Evlannikova and Ushakov 2010). “… every valorization is a verticalization…” Gaston Bachelard (1988: 11) The Moral Vertical in Russian Cinema Note on transliteration and translation. When transliterating Russian names and words in the dissertation I have used ALA-LC Romanization tables for Slavic Alphabets, without the two-letter tie characters (so that ц = ts, ю = iu, я = ia) and some of the diacritics (so that ё = e, й = i, э = e). Exceptions are made in the cases where there are other established ways of transliterating a Russian name, such as ‘Leo Tolstoy’, rather than ‘Lev Tolstoi’. Names and words are transliterated from Cyrillic to Latin in the text, while the Cyrillic alphabet is used in the footnotes. The original quotation is referred to in the footnotes in the cases where I have translated quotations from Russian language into English in the text. Note on illustrations. All the illustrations are screenshots from the respective films, taken from online streaming sites. iii The Moral Vertical in Russian Cinema Acknowledgements The goal of a PhD is to write and defend a dissertation. There are many people that deserve to be thanked, as I could not have done this without them. I will mention the most important ones here. First of all, I want to thank my brilliant supervisors Professor Andrei Rogatchevski and Professor Henrik Gustafsson. Andrei, thank you for all the thoughtful and helpful feedback on drafts, reviews, articles, and presentations; for introducing me to colleagues, and opening doors for me; for encouraging me, always with a smile and a witty comment. Henrik, thank you for adding valuable perspectives thoughtful feedback, and also for encouraging me along the way. Furthermore, I am grateful for the opportunity I have had to participate in two research groups – Russian Space: Practices, Concepts and Representations, (UiT NAU), and The Russian Cinema Research Group (SEEES, University College London) – and to present at a seminar of a third group – Engaging Conflicts in a Digital Era (UiT NAU). In these groups, I have been able to present and discuss my own material, and discuss the work of colleagues. Another important arena for sharing and discussing my own and other’s work has been a seminar for PhD-students organised by Professor Anniken Greve at the Department of Languages and Culture (UiT NAU). This has been an enormously fruitful interdisciplinary seminar for discussing ideas, concepts and methods, and for exchanging writing strategies and other PhD-related experiences. In the spring of 2017 I spent five months at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). Here I had the great opportunity to present and discuss my work with Professor Jeremy Hicks, whom I would also like to thank for acting as the external committee member at my halfway evaluation. At QMUL I also had the great experience of attending seminars organised by the Thinking and Writing Centre, where I learnt a lot about my own writing and how to develop a good method and strategy for my research. I would like to thank Dr. Rachel Morley and Dr. Philip Cavendish at The University College of London, too, for including me into the Russian Cinema Research Group and inviting me to present for them at a seminar. iv The Moral Vertical in Russian Cinema Thanks are due to Associate Professor Holger Pötzsch (UiT NAU) for useful comments and feedback during my halfway seminar. I would also like to thank Dr. Josephine von Zitzewitz (University of Cambridge) for giving me valuable feedback and perspectives on the final draft of my monograph in a peer review session. I have had countless conversations about my project with colleagues from various academic backgrounds, from all over, at conferences, seminars, meetings, courses, or in passing in the corridors or over lunch. Not every conversation necessarily led to any break-throughs, but all of them have helped me explain and develop my project, and for this I am grateful. To my fantastic PhD colleagues in the corridor, thank you for making our lunch the highlight of the day – sharing laughs and frustrations, ups and downs. And for generously sharing your concentration at our weekly shut-up-and-write seminar for the past year. Thanks to Motivasjonsseminaret, for motivational seminars on an irregular basis. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family for putting up with my constant talk about my project, as I always somehow seem to steer conversations into obscure Soviet and post-Soviet films: It probably will not end here. Åsne Ø. Høgetveit v The Moral Vertical in Russian Cinema Table of content Note on transliteration and translation. .................................................................................. iii Note on illustrations. ............................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... iv Table of content .................................................................................................................... vi 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Women’s history and feminism in the USSR and Russia .............................................. 4 1.1.1 The woman myth in Russian literature ................................................................. 10 1.1.2 Women on screen ................................................................................................ 12 1.1.3 The (gender) role of the film director ................................................................... 15 1.1.4 Soviet and Russian women directors .................................................................... 16 1.1.5 The need for a culturally specific framework ....................................................... 17 1.2 Space and spatial notions ............................................................................................ 19 1.2.1 Russian space ...................................................................................................... 20 1.2.2 What is verticality? .............................................................................................. 22 1.2.3 Verticality as a metaphor ..................................................................................... 22 1.2.4 The Moral Vertical .............................................................................................. 27 1.2.5 The vertical screen ............................................................................................... 27 1.2.6 Types of vertical imagery .................................................................................... 29 1.2.7 The horizontal in Russian culture ......................................................................... 30 1.2.8 The chronotope .................................................................................................... 32 1.2.9 The chronotope and gender .................................................................................. 34 1.2.10 The chronotope and verticality ........................................................................... 36 1.3 Flying women ............................................................................................................ 36 2 Women in aviation ............................................................................................................ 39 2.1 The war and the women.............................................................................................. 48 2.1.1 Pilots (1935) ........................................................................................................ 52 2.1.2 Heavenly Slug (1945) .......................................................................................... 55 2.1.3 Wings (1966) ....................................................................................................... 59 2.1.4 Only Old Men Go to Battle (1973) ....................................................................... 64 2.1.5 There Are “Night Witches” in the Sky (1981) ...................................................... 68 2.1.6 “A generation not of this universe” ...................................................................... 73 2.2 Airplane disaster films, Soviet- and post-Soviet style. ................................................ 75 2.2.1 The Flight Crew (1979) ....................................................................................... 76 2.2.2 The Flight Crew (2016) ....................................................................................... 81 vi The Moral Vertical in Russian Cinema 2.3 The identity of a pilot ................................................................................................. 87 2.3.1 Can a female pilot actually fly? ............................................................................ 89 2.4 The stewardess, or the flight attendant