Food not eaten: the dialectical image of food in Soviet animation of the Brezhnev era

Abstract

This article analyses the allegorical representation of food in Soviet animated films of the Brezhnev era (1970s–1980s). Following the tradition of considering allegory as a mode of creative expression that becomes particularly prominent in times of social, political and cultural change, this article discusses the specificity of food objects in two animated films: Aleksandr Tatarskii’s The Plasticine Crow (1981) and Iurii Norshtein’s The Hedgehog in the Fog (1975). In both films, food objects are not consumed and demonstrate stability amidst major changes happening to the main characters and the imagery. The article concludes that on the plane of representation in animated films, the culture of shortages characteristic of the 1970s–1980s resulted in a situation when food lost its functional meaning and instead became the catalyst of transformations occurring in the plot. Such a representation of food makes it a mythical object which, when embedded into the allegorical environment of the animated imagery, produces a dialectical image. Its analysis contributes to an understanding of the Soviet social and cultural situation of the period.