Soviet Spectatorship : Observing the Body in Physical and Visual Culture (Kino - the Russian and Soviet Cinema)

Goff, Samuel

Bloomsbury Academic（2026/03発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 264 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781350411203
• DDC分類 791.430947

Full Description

What distinguished the Soviet 'look'? How did Soviet thinkers and artists reimagine the relationship between observer and observed?

Soviet Spectatorship answers these questions through an in depth exploration of Soviet physical culture and its on screen representations from the end of the Civil War to the eve of the Second World War. Samuel Goff identifies the three fundamental 'structures of looking' — surveillance, aesthetics, and spectatorship — that shaped representations of the embodied Soviet subject.

Close readings of understudied films such as Happy Finish (1934), The Laurels of Miss Ellen Gray (1935) and A Strict Young Man (1936), are contextualised through a theoretical analysis of the relationship between subjectivity and the body. In doing so, Goff traces the evolution of a specific Soviet 'look', examining perspectives on Soviet aesthetics and theories of body and mind, uncovering continuities within Soviet visual cultures in a period usually understood in terms of discontinuity and rupture.

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Physical/Visual Culture
1. From Bodies to Subjects
2. Beautiful Bodies: The Bather
3. Gendered Bodies: The Runner
4. Violent Bodies: The Footballer
Conclusion: Utopia Incarnate
Glossary
Bibliography
Index