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.

An exploration of Soviet physical culture in film and other visual media, examining how the unique Soviet 'gaze' offers new perspectives on the aesthetics of the body.

About the Author
Samuel Goff is Affiliated Lecturer in Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is Editorial Director of the film platform Klassiki, and a former editor at The Calvert Journal.

Reviews
Soviet Spectatorship brilliantly combines subtle and sophisticated analysis of evolving early Soviet understandings of psychology, socialised communality, physical culture, spectatorship, beauty, gender and violence with bracingly original readings of the work of key painters and film makers of the period. -- Julian Graffy, University College London, UK



Book Information
ISBN 9781350411166
Author Samuel Goff
Format Hardback
Page Count 272
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC