In Tuesday's class we'll be watching the second half of the visually/musically/conceptually stunning film collaboration between Russo-Soviet and Cuban artists called "I am Cuba," and framing this conversation with selected works by the screenwriter/post-Stalinist youth poet extraordinaire, Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
(*Pay special attention to the poem and the person, Mayakovsky. You've encountered him before with the cartoon "Black and White," and will again with Yevtushenko's poet-peer Andrei Voznesensky, and once more with Frank O'Hara on our Mad Men/Cuban Missile Crisis day.)
Please post your curious questions and other interested observations below...
(*Pay special attention to the poem and the person, Mayakovsky. You've encountered him before with the cartoon "Black and White," and will again with Yevtushenko's poet-peer Andrei Voznesensky, and once more with Frank O'Hara on our Mad Men/Cuban Missile Crisis day.)
Please post your curious questions and other interested observations below...
In his anthology of selected poems, Yevtushenko makes continual reference to the concept of freedom, often juxtaposed with the concept of "unfreedom" or slavery. In these works freedom is not venerated, but rather positioned as dishonest or immoral. I'm particularly interested in the poem "On the Question of Freedom," where Yevtushenko writes,
ReplyDelete"And maybe I'll be loved by the people for this
For spending my life
(not without precedent in this iron age)
glorifying unfreedom from
the true struggle for freedom"
How might we understand Yevtushenko's conceptualization of freedom in the context of the Cold War? Even more broadly, what might freedom differentially signify in the scope of capitalist vs. communist ideologies? And finally, how and where do images of freedom and unfreedom appear in the film I am Cuba? How do these images compare with Yevtushenko's poem?
In "On the Question of Freedom," it seems to me that Yevtushenko defines "freedom" as a kind of forgetfulness. The poet was a young teenager at the end of WWII and references it alongside other conflicts in his poetry (i.e. "In a Steelworker's Home"). For Yevtushenko, it would be wrong to forget the critical events that led up to and were contained by the Cold War even though some might find the idea of leaving those troubling moments behind comforting (or even "freeing"). Although "On the Question of Freedom" centers primarily on negative historical events (the Holocaust, the Vietnam War...), other poems more fondly remember the kindness and similarity that once existed between Russia and the United States. In "In A Steelworker's Home" he writes,
Delete--without translation
understood
each other perfectly
goddammit,
on the waters where victory met victory!
So when Yevtushenko frames freedom as something dishonest, I believe that he is talking about a freedom from the past.
Many of Yevtushenko’s poems feature birds. What are the implications of this metaphor in terms of travel and communication? If, as in “The American Nightingale”, the birds that represent the American and Russian governments “speak one language”, what does this mean for the people (not birds) of each nation? Are the people excluded from the language of international politics? In “A Ballad about Nuggets”, birds are “frozen in flight”. If the birds take on the same meaning, are the governments stagnant? Is this due to external forces (represented by weather) or a lack of foresight (because birds are supposed to migrate before winter)?
ReplyDelete"I Am Cuba" used the positioning of characters to highlight the positions of power; for example, when Sr. Acosta goes to oust the farmer from his sugarcane fields, Sr. Acosta not only rides upon a black horse (symbolizing, perhaps, the bearer of bad news) but also calls down to the farmer from atop a hill, representing the disparity of power between the socioeconomic classes. Are there examples of intentional positioning in any other works that we have read? How does it add to the underlying themes?
ReplyDeleteIn Maria/Betty's story, we see a sharp contrast between the lives of the poor Cuban masses and those of the rich white men filling up bars and casinos. There is a clear power hierarchy (both racial and in terms of gender) between the white men and the Cuban women that they take to bed as well. For example, just in the first scene, a white man asks a dancer: "Why don't you ever learn to say no?" Later, a man who pays for Maria's affections takes her crucifix, despite her objections. What does this shameless hierarchy say about the lives of Cuban women at this time? Did they know they deserved better, putting up a show in order to be paid later, or does this hierarchy alter their mindset and make them believe they are lesser than the white men in the film?
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