The film "Circus" provides an immense level of entertainment as well as a great deal of Socialist Realism. The film is about an American performer named Marion Dixon who ends up in Russia after being chased out of her American home for having an affair with a black man that leads to her having a black child. She finds a home in Russia and falls for a young Russian performer named Ivan Petrovich Martynov, but fears that they will not accept the fact that she has a black child. Her sinister German manager Von Kneishitz uses this information to get what he wants from her. Eventually in an attempt to ruin her he relays this information to a crowd but no one cares.
This film is full of Socialist Realism and one key example of this is the fact that Marion finds her home in Russia. It is presumed that she traveled through a great deal of countries from America to Russia but it is Russia where she finally settles. Another example of this is when the crowd of people don't care that she has a black child they all accept him just the same, as well as claiming that they welcome all types of people. Both of these are extremely unlikely due to the sorry shape the country was in, and the fact that Russia was known for discriminating against all sorts of racial and ethnic groups. This film provided a large dose of both propaganda and entertainment, which is most likely the reason it was such a success.
I agree that there is a ton of propoganda in this, and it is all in the end. I'm not sure if that's what would have made it popular with the people, though, since propoganda is used to try and convince the population of the government's ideas.
ReplyDeleteIt is incredible the propaganda the Soviets used. I wonder how they convinced people that the country was the best place on earth when in reality, it was a living hell.
ReplyDeleteSoviets (or at least 99.9% of them) had no contact with the outside world so they were subject to whatever information and propaganda they were issued. The society would remain unbelievably closed until the latter half of the 1980s.
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