Responses on queer literature and film

Fri Apr 27 18:06:38 UTC 2012

Dear Colleagues,
Thank you so much for all the responses that I got on and off list to my
query about teaching queer literature or film.  Several of you asked that I
compile the answers and send them to the list, so I have done so:  see
below.
take care,
Gabriella

Kevin Moss, ed., Out of the Blue
http://www.amazon.com/Out-Blue-Russias-Literature-Anthology/dp/0940567202

As to film: Stolpovskaya & Troitsky's You I love is probably the best, and
you can include the Kalmyk angle.

 Nagrodskaya's *Wrath of Dionysus*, which deals with gender and sexual
identity.  It's an easy read (about 200 pages), and my students responded
to it.

Diana Burgin's biography of Sophia Parnok?

In addition to what was mentioned before I would recommend Nadezhda
Durova's *Cavalry Maiden *(excerpts); Marina Tsvetaeva's early poems, to
complement Parnok's poetry and biography;  Mikhail Kuzmin's poems; Simon
Karlinsky's *Sexual Labirynth of Nikolai Gogol*; Valery Todorovsky's 1998
film *The Land of the Deaf*.

Another interesting film to explore would be *Serp i Molot *(Hammer and
Sickle).  It deals more with gender identity than sexual identity, but the
plot revolves around a Soviet citizen who undergoes a state-sponsored sex
change operation, a fate that befell some known homosexuals as well during
the Soviet era.  Cinematographically, it's a very intriguing movie!
 Another suggestion I've got is a film called *Veselchaki *(Jolly Fellows),
essentially a Russian take on *The Birdcage*, with a much more pessimistic
ending.  The film itself is not fantastic, but brings up worthwhile
discussion points.  Hope this helps!

Sympathetic gay characters have begun to enter mainstream TV plots. So you
might want to look at Физика и химия, a Russian localization of the Spanish
telenovela of the same title. The gay character Fedya gets lots of airtime.
His story culminates in a scene where he comes out to his parents episode
10, if I am not mistaken. Of course, ФиХ is a fairly faithful localization
of the Spanish series, which is more explicit in its depiction of Fer's
(=Fedya) love life.

Valeria Gai Germanika's new series Краткий курс счастливой жизни also has a
gay character but he doesn't get as much airtime. Still, the series has a
quirky coming out scene that ends up as an embarrassment to everyone.

Just remembered: there are references to gay culture in Russia in a  2012
film about boxers, "Sterva".

I'm not sure if these are what you're looking for; it depends on how you
are defining and using 'queer,' of course, and to what aim. On the
pop-culture front, Sergei Lukianenko's Dozor series--the novels and film
versions (all available in English or with subtitles)--offers several fun
episodes of queered identities.  Sluzhebnyi romans 2 has a character whom
we are led to believe is gay until the film's finale. There is also a
romantic comedy from a few years ago: Liubov' markov' and another TV series
based on a telenovela: Margosha (although neither of these have been
subtitled). None of these sources address contemporary identities in the
human rights sense but the ways in which gendering and sexualization take
place give some insight into contemporary lgbtq realities, especially
perceptions of in relation to the West, capitalism, and shifting social
values. For a more down-to-earth (and brief) glimpse into real political
struggles, "Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride" (Canada 2009) is a
documentary with a short expose on Russia as well as a few other E/SE
European countries. I hope this is of some help to you.

I just finished teaching a first-year seminar on Love and Sex in Russian
Lit and Culture, and one of the books they liked best was Kuzmin's
WINGS. I had them buy the new translation, by Hugh Aplin, and it's much
more effective than the older translation (I forget whose; it was
published in a larger collection of translations of Kuzmin). The
students had a lot of questions about the way gay sexuality and
self-expression was depicted (some felt it was very closeted, others
pointed to the thread of misogyny that felt a bit like what medieval
monks wrote about women when they were striving to stay chaste), but
they all praised the quality of the reading experience.

if by "queer identity" you mean gay writing, the classic is Evgeny
Kharitonov. He was published in English by Serpent's Tail and we published
one story in Glas.

I thought that you could look at фильм Алексея Учителя "Кавказский пленный"
(sound just the right bit different from "Кавказский пленник") for your
week of of discussion of Russian queer identity.

Марина Цветаева - http://lib.ru/POEZIQ/CWETAEWA/sonechka.txt - повесть о
Сонечке - lesbian

Михаил Кузмин "Крылья" - http://az.lib.ru/k/kuzmin_m_a/text_0270.shtml -
gay

Лидия Зиновьева-Аннибал - "Тридцать три урода" -
http://www.silverage.ru/poets/zannib_33.html - lesbian

София Парнок - http://www.stihi-rus.ru/1/Parnok/ - lesbian poetry

Эдуар Лимонов - Это я Эдичка - http://lib.ru/PROZA/LIMONOV/edichka.txt -
bisexual

http://books.google.com/books?id=NHJE_JP3ypgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Rebecca+Kay%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XdeVT9jwNObf6QGt_ci8BA&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=inauthor%3A%22Rebecca%20Kay%22&f=false<http://books.google.com/books?id=NHJE_JP3ypgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Rebecca+Kay%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XdeVT9jwNObf6QGt_ci8BA&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=inauthor%3A%22Rebecca%20Kay>

http://books.google.com/books?id=98xiqfrFT4sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Rebecca+Kay%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XdeVT9jwNObf6QGt_ci8BA&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=inauthor%3A%22Rebecca%20Kay%22&f=false<http://books.google.com/books?id=98xiqfrFT4sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Rebecca+Kay%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XdeVT9jwNObf6QGt_ci8BA&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=inauthor%3A%22Rebecca%20Kay>

-- 
Gabriella Safran
Professor and Director, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Chair, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305

tel. 650-723-4414
fax 650-725-0011
gsafran at stanford.edu <gsafran at stanford.edu>

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