Taxi Blues: The anxiety of Soviet masculinity

Abstract

Using the lens of cultural analysis, this study examines Pavel Lungin’s Taxi Blues as one of the characteristic examples of perestroika cinema. The homosocial theme of the movie is explored in much detail, while using the available historical and comparative materials taken from Russian and Western cultural history. Taxi Blues traces the development of a relationship between a musician and a taxi driver during Russia’s perestroika period. The taxi driver ‘saves’ the musician from alcohol dependency, imprisonment, financial ruin and self-destruction, only to be forgotten once the musician achieves fame abroad. Their relationship demonstrates a reversal of fortune in which economic and social status is conflated with sexual identity. As such, the homosocial relationship of the two men is disrupted when their personal fortunes are reversed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The sexual overtones in the relationship implicitly evoke various cultural stereotypes (degenerate sexual behaviour, Jewish effeminacy) as well as inherent power dynamics (master and slave, teacher and pupil) to engage the explicit issues of social and economic status in a society that has been turned inside out by perestroika.