Black and White in the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

If the Soviet film "Circus" spoke to you, somehow sparked your interest or left you scratching your head in a good way, I encourage you to make it the subject of your first 1-2 page reader response (due Tuesday, September 24 before the start of class). You'll find some questions to guide your thinking below. Keep in mind: these are possible directions to pursue in your paper, not top-down directives. Feel free to find your own theme and write a couple of coherent paragraphs of analysis about it.

--How are Americans and America depicted? How are Soviets and the Soviet Union depicted? How are Germans depicted?

--What kinds of oppositions—moral and ideological—separate the US and the USSR in the film? How does the film shore up these oppositions with black-and-white/light-and-dark imagery?

--How does the film demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism?

--According to the film, what are the US’s and USSR’s attitudes about race?

--What are the USSR’s attitudes about gender? For instance, who are the new Soviet man and woman? What are their psychological and physical attributes?

--How does the film handle the issues of marriage and romantic love? (Think not only of Marion and Martynov but also Raika and Skameikin.)

--Is this film propaganda, art, entertainment or some combination of the three?

--Why does this ideological struggle take place in the circus? What is the significance of Marion’s “Flight to the Moon” and Martynov’s “Flight to the Stratosphere” acts? What role does technology play in the film?  

--The dominant metaphor of Circus is that the USSR is one big, happy family. Do you agree or disagree? Support your answer.

--What can this film accomplish—artistically and politically—because it is a musical?

--The concept of genre is crucial to the analysis of an artistic text. Circus is not just a musical comedy but also a melodrama. What kinds of emotions does it attempt to invoke in its viewer, how, and to what end?

--What kind of viewer does this film assume? How does it embed these assumptions into its structure?

--How does the film use language—proper and improper Russian as well as non-Russian languages—to convey its ideological message?

For many of these topics, I encourage you to perform a close-reading of the film’s musical refrain, “Broad is my native land.” The lyrics are pasted below: 

Broad is my native land,
Many forests, fields and rivers!
I know of no other land
Where man can breathe so freely!
From Moscow to our furthest outposts,
The southern mountains to the northern seas,
Man walks as the master of
His own vast native land!