She was a member of the infamous Council of Three, the Soviet Avant Garde filmmaking group that revolutionized documentary. As an editor working in the Soviet Montage movement in the 1920s, she made a significant contribution to film editing as we know it today. Ever seen a humorous cutaway to something that is not actually related to the scene at hand but provides a welcome punchline to the events of the film? That would be a (bastardized) example of the techniques of the Soviet School of Montage. (The Council of Three was really more interested in using film to change the world -- viva the revolution!)
And yet, most people have never heard of her; those who have know her primarily as the wife/editor of Dziga Vertov, the most famous member of the Council of Three.
I'm blogging anonymously for now, and as a feminist filmmaker and film scholar it seemed appropriate to take on the name of someone whose contributions to film art and culture are immense, but who is so little known as to be almost anonymous herself. For more information:
Yelizaveta Svilova on imdb.com
A short bio from movies.amctv.com
More about the blogger: I am a PhD candidate focusing on the cinemas of Eastern Europe and Russia, as well as feminism and gender in cinema.
I was glad you found my comment on the Art Week thread (at IBtP) sensible. It occurs to me this problem of the artist/art separation is bound up with the relation between (or dialectics of) form and content. One of the ugly features of Stalinism was the way "enemies," once "unmasked," turned out to have been "enemies" all along, so that the Old Bolsheviks put on trial in the 30's were accused not only of conspiring to kill Stalin and restore capitalism but of having been secretly counter-revolutionaries even when they were members of Lenin's inner circle before 1917. Politics was equated to moral character and moral character was permanent, so the wicked were always and irredeemably wicked. Yet this isn't altogether false; politics and moral character, like artistic work and moral character, are distinguishable in theory but not neatly separable in practice. For instance I think Woody Allen's violent misogyny can be seen even in his early farces ("Sleepers," "Take the Money and Run") and his early "serious" pictures ("Interiors," "Stardust Memories") as well as in the middle period generally acknowledged as his peak ("Annie Hall," "Manhattan") and later stuff ("Zelig," "Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Manhattan Melodrama" etc.) Am I "reading back" from later knowledge, like the State Prosecutor detecting sabotage even in Bukharin's early career as a leading Communist? I'm not sure. You've watched a lot more Soviet cinema, and studied it a lot more closely, than I have; I know these issues of form and content were addressed by people like Eisenstein and Vertov, but how do you view the way their theoretical ideas shaped their work? "Bad men can make good art" is problematic, I think, not because we can't decide who's a bad man (child rapists qualify) but because it's not so easy to decide what we mean by "good art" and, for that matter, by "making."
ReplyDeleteIf this seems too long for a Comments thread, you can email me at
john [underscore] burke100 [at] comcast [dot] net.
This is going to be a patchwork response. (Long day at work....)
ReplyDelete"Bad men can make good art" is problematic, I think, not because we can't decide who's a bad man (child rapists qualify) but because it's not so easy to decide what we mean by "good art" and, for that matter, by "making."
Such a great point; thanks for articulating it so clearly! Especially with filmmaking, in which most films are a collaborative adventure, the question of authorship is very interesting and problematic. With American avant gardists like Rivers, however, the authorship is clear and singular, which makes it easier for me to clearly identify the work with the POV and ethics/perspective of the person behind it. (And thus be uninterested in it, because it is so closely aligned with his perspective and his articulation of his own ideas/experiences.)
Eisenstein and Vertov both made incredible worked that was hugely influenced by their theoretical ideas (although some of Eisenstein's theories were written *after* he made the films, so the films actually preceded his theoretical analysis of them). But for the Soviet Avant Garde, of course, it's all about revolution. The only worthwhile art is that which participates in the revolution. By changing cinema, they believed, we could actually change the world. So whether art is good or bad or not and the "authorship" question were very straightforward for them --
1.) Good art is art that literalizes the collective and, most importantly, dialectical materialism (hence montage editing, esp. Eisenstein's approach to montage versus Pudovkin and Vertov's) -- (Caveat, I'm torn between Eisenstein and Vertov, but when it comes to their theory, I'm much more drawn to Eisenstein, and he is the one who emphasizes the dialectical materialism of montage)
2.) The author of a work is the collective that produced it, never an individual (good Soviets/Marxists/Communists abhor the idolizing of the individual, of course!)
politics and moral character, like artistic work and moral character, are distinguishable in theory but not neatly separable in practice
I don't think it's possible to draw a firm line between the two; at the same time, I think the Soviet Avant Garde + Roland Barthes might offer an answer here, because the "artist" is never JUST the individual who created the work. The work becomes complete when the spectator sees it, "reads" it, and interprets it. "Death of the author, birth of the reader," Barthes wrote. So if the "reader" is able to take something worthwhile from a work, he or she may see it as "good" art, even if the artist and the artist's intentions were terrible. Of course, with art like Ono's film "Rape" or River's film "Growing," that might not be enough to ethically justify distributing or preserving the art! (Not necessarily because of the ideas that inspired the art but because of the conditions of its production -- another Marxist way of evaluating art, I suppose.) However, with works that are more in a gray area (like Woody Allen's films, which probably damaged the participants about as much as most Hollywood or major Indy productions) the reader may be able to redeem meaning from the film that makes it a worthwhile experience despite the purported author's ethical failings.
What do you think? Thanks for your thoughtful response, and I'm looking forward to carrying forward this conversation a bit more!
Many thanks for your reply.
ReplyDeleteI think the Soviet Avant Garde + Roland Barthes might offer an answer here, because the "artist" is never JUST the individual who created the work. The work becomes complete when the spectator sees it, "reads" it, and interprets it.
Yes indeed. Until I started viewing dialectics with a more skeptical eye--i.e. for most of my life until about my fifties (I'm now 68)--I would have added "Another dialectic!" But that's a whole nother discussion.
Good art is art that literalizes the collective and, most importantly, dialectical materialism (hence montage editing, esp. Eisenstein's approach to montage versus Pudovkin and Vertov's) -- (Caveat, I'm torn between Eisenstein and Vertov, but when it comes to their theory, I'm much more drawn to Eisenstein, and he is the one who emphasizes the dialectical materialism of montage)
Here's where my sketchy knowledge leaves me floundering. We watched "Man With a Movie Camera" recently and while I could see something like the point (I think), I found myself unmoved; not so with "Battleship Potemkin" years ago. What am I missing?
However, with works that are more in a gray area (like Woody Allen's films, which probably damaged the participants about as much as most Hollywood or major Indy productions) the reader may be able to redeem meaning from the film that makes it a worthwhile experience despite the purported author's ethical failings.
Conditions of production are certainly an important part of the case against porn, which Twisty rightly calls "pictures of rape." With Allen I just can't get over the steady drumbeat of hostility to women.
"[no one] has succeeded in giving a satifactory answer to the question--or rather, pair of questions--What is the meaning of music? and what is the function of music in human life?... It is easy to understand why. Those are the wrong questions to ask. There is no such thing as music. Music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do. The apparent thing 'music' is a figment, an abstraction of the action, whose reality vanishes as soon as we examine it at all closely."
--Christopher Small, "Musicking"
He's onto reification, of course, a habit of thought that Soviet Marxism too often failed to avoid. Another nother discussion.
to clearly identify the work with the POV and ethics/perspective of the person behind it. (And thus be uninterested in it, because it is so closely aligned with his perspective and his articulation of his own ideas/experiences.)
ReplyDeleteRivers is in that little movie "Pull My Daisy," which manages to embrace, in just thirty minutes, everything objectionable about the Beats, including how lovable they found themselves. I thought it was good stuff in 1959; I was only seventeen, but I've never heard of any woman, of any age, that didn't see what a pile of crap it is.