Imitations of Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia by Louise s> McReynolds Joan Neuberger (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 723 European cultures, with no extenuating circumstances, neither superior nor inferior, but above all as one which can be analysed with the same critical apparatus and methodologies, and hence as comprehensible to an Englishspeaking audience as any other 'foreign' culture could be, or would be once properly explained. This achievement, together with its direct and clearsighted approach to many controversialand alternative issues in the diverse complexity (as it is now clearlyrevealed)of Polishculture, make it an entirely worthy memorial to its dedicatee: Donald Pirie, Stepek Lecturerin Polish at the University of Glasgow (i 984- I994) and Grossman's predecessor in this post, who died inJanuary I997. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies URSULA PHILLIPS University College London McReynolds, Louise and Neuberger,Joan (eds).Imitations ofLife.TwoCenturies ofMelodrama inRussia.Duke UniversityPress,Durham, NC, and London, 2002. x + 338 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. /4I.95; [14.50. As its title suggests, this wide-ranging collection of eleven essays, with an introduction by the editors, explores, in broadly chronological order, the nature,function and fate of melodramain Russia over two centuries,fromthe earlynineteenth centuryto the end of the twentieth. Between them, the essays examine artisticmanifestationsof melodrama in Russia, including theatrical works, popular novels and films, but more unexpectedly they also analyse the use of melodrama in real life events, such as the funeralsof wellknown figures of Russian and Soviet cultural and political life and the show trialsof the Stalinistyears. While the editors and contributorsdraw their definitions and conceptions of melodrama from the existing body of scholarship on the genre in particular Peter Brooks's seminal work 7The Melodramatic Imagination. Balzac, Henygames,Melodrama, andtheModeofExcess(New Haven, NJ, 1976) and the essaysin ChristineGledhill'sedited collection Homeis Where theHeartIs: Studies inMelodrama andtheWoman's Film(London, I987) Imitations ofLifedoes not merely rehearseor gloss existing approaches,but develops them in interesting ways. That the contributors situate their consideration of melodrama specifically in Russia also marks this book as a new departure, for, as the editorsnote, althoughendlesslypopularwith consumers,melodramahasbeen 'routinely denigrated' and dismissed by the Russian intellectual elite as a debased, lowbrow and essentially conservative genre unworthy of serious study (p 5) Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger's detailed and densely footnoted introduction provides a useful 'history of melodrama in Russia' (p. 4), that also examines the changing critical responses to the genre through time, in Russia and the West. It also sets out the general approach adopted by most contributorsto theirmaterial.Underlying the entirecollection isthe argument that, as a genre defined by its 'presentism' and its 'engagement with contemporaneous social issues', melodrama offers cultural and social 724 SEER, 8i, 4, 2003 historians a rich, untapped source of 'documentary evidence of the social traumas of the past' (p. 9) and can shed new light on 'the dominant ideologies political, culturaland social -in which each storyis set' (p. 5). As it is difficultto dojustice to each essay in the space available,the following comments aim to provideprospectivereaderswith an overviewof the material discussedin this collection. Theatrical melodramaisthe focusof severalessays.Richard Stitesdiscusses the composition of the Russian audience for melodrama and the reception of three particularlyinfluentialmelodramas from the early nineteenth century. Julie A. Bucklerexplores four nineteenth-century melodramas by European writers that all use Russia as a location or a character, showing how they exploit melodrama in order to create an imaginaryRussia more revealing of Western anxieties about Russia than of Russia itself. Julie A. Cassiday examines, against the background of Anatolii Lunacharskii'spromotion of melodramaasavehicle forsocialandpoliticalpropagandaamong unsophisticated audiences, the messagescommunicated to viewersin the so-called Soviet temperance dramas both theatricaland cinematic that were popular in Russia in the twenties. Lars T. Lih's contribution examines what he terms 'political temperance dramas'. He dates the development of this genre to the I930s and argues that, as they enact the fundamental 'political' and 'constitutivemyths of the prewar Soviet Union' (p. 178), a link can be made between such plays and the show trials of I936 to I938, which manifested Stalin'sconsummate manipulationof melodramaticstructuresto awardGood and punish Evil. Finally, Susan Costanzo's study discusses Rolan Bykov's innovative I 958 stagingof a Czech melodramaattheMoscow StateUniversity studenttheatre. The melodramatic novel receives less attention. Beth Holmgren's essay examines one of the most successful, Anastasiia Verbitskaia...