[Xmca-l] Re: Fate of a Man (from Misha)
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Wed Jan 18 15:53:03 PST 2017
Misha went on to criticise my characterisation of the boy's
life-world, and I have to say that I was mistaken about
that. The boy's life world is also "difficult" in Vasilyuk's
terms. ... Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
On 18/01/2017 7:50 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> Misha, a Russian psychologist who has assisted Mike and me
> in analysing previous movies, offers this comment on "Fate
> of a Man."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> I need to re-watch this emotional film. After a while I
> can write something regarding your theme. Glad to hear
> you. I think we'll have a lot of discussions. Only one
> thing I want to say now - This movie is not an
> /illustration/ of perezhivanie but it /is/ really the
> perezhivanie.
>
> I re-watched the movie. Had a wonderful, unforgettable
> experience. Andrey, being a simple Soviet carpenter before
> the War, fell into the millstone of hard, bloody war by
> fate. He miraculously managed to survive, losing his son
> on the front, his beloved wife and two daughters in his
> native village near Voronezh. The war has warped him,
> forced to endure emotional anguish, physical pain and
> spiritual suffering. The war has truly wounded his soul,
> humiliated him as a man, but he remained a man of great
> kindness, taking care of the orphan boy, treating him like
> his own son. The film shows massive heroism of the Soviet
> people. Reading the story /Destiny of a Man/ by Mikhail
> Sholokhov and watching the movie of Sergey Bondarchuk with
> the same name, you can understand what it means to love
> the Motherland truly. Pain and anxiety for homeland and
> personal tragedy of the individual and the specific family
> were organically fused in the fate of Andrei Sokolov.
>
> Andrey's suffering is simultaneously private and public.
> But the hero of the film found the strength in himself not
> to fall down, and continue to work for the use and benefit
> of the country in the post-war period, and, staying alone,
> to raise the kid without assistants, the child who had
> experienced the intensive grief because of losing parents.
> The peculiarity of perezhivanie in this film is closely
> interwoven with the social disaster caused by the
> treachery and cruelty of the Germans in the great
> Patriotic war, and personal grief associated with the loss
> of his beloved family. The score of V. Basner naturally
> complements and musically ornaments this movie. It
> resembles the mood of Shostakovich's symphonies, where you
> can observe fear, terror and mental confusion, but it
> remains with kind and optimistic fundamentals. Sincere,
> not-sugary kindness and human warmth emanates from this
> strong and powerful film. The power of the spirit of this
> man is the good (kind and strong) character of such
> person, united with the solid beliefs of a healthy moral
> order.
>
> The film triggers a strong, intense perezhivanie from the
> audience, where an experience of art even gives priority
> way to perezhivanie of life itself, without losing at the
> same time tonality of high art.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> On 18/01/2017 12:39 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
>> Thank you Marc! It was the third "plane" which was my
>> intention in providing "Fate of a Man" for discussion.
>> You picked out what were for me also the main (but by no
>> means the only) instances of perezhivanija in this movie.
>>
>> It seems to me that Sokolov (the author) offers one
>> perezhivanie in particular as the main theme of the
>> movie. At the beginning of the movie, the man and boy
>> walk up the path to the camera and at the end of the
>> movie they walk off together again. So this is the
>> central theme. As you say, when Sokolov's family has all
>> been killed, even his talented war-hero son who was going
>> to be a famous mathematician, his life has become
>> meaningless. I really liked your reflections of Sokolov's
>> reflections too. He sees the young orphan boy who, he
>> discovers, has no family and doesn't even know what town
>> he comes from, but is aimlessly living on pieces of
>> rubbish. He sees that the two of them are in the same
>> situation. So after some time mulling this over a they
>> sit together in the truck, he lies to the boy and tells
>> him that he is the boy's father, and they embrace. But
>> the boy questions this and he reasserts his claim and the
>> boy accepts this. The man is able to define a new meaning
>> for his life; he has done this autonomously without the
>> help of a therapist, but he still needs another, the boy,
>> to embody that meaning. But he knows it is his own
>> invention. The boy on the other hand has to be made to
>> believe it is true; he is not sufficiently mature to
>> manufacture this meaning himself, but as a child he can
>> be guided by an adult. As you say, Marc, it is very
>> significant when Sokolov tells us how he is now, again,
>> worried about his own death. What if I died in my sleep?
>> that would be a shock for my son!
>>
>> For me, this reflection causes me to look back on the
>> man's whole struggle during the war: in the first phase
>> he does not differentiate between his life as a father
>> and husband and his life as a Soviet citizen - war is his
>> duty and he is confident, as is everyone else, of
>> victory. His bravery in driving his truck to the front
>> line under fire reflects the fact that he has never
>> imagined his own death. Then he finds himself prostrate
>> before 2 Nazi soldiers who we assume are going among the
>> wounded shooting anyone who has survived. But
>> surprisingly, he is allowed to live, but is to be used as
>> a slave. Sokolov has been confronted by his own mortality
>> for the first time and he chooses life, but accepts
>> slavery (Sartre and Hegel both thematize this moment in
>> their philosophy). In this second phase of Sokolov's life
>> he is a survivor. Everything hinges on surviving and
>> returning to his wife and family. As you point out, Marc,
>> his later reflections on this are particularly poignant,
>> when he discovers the futility of this hope. Eventually,
>> the life of forced labour becomes unbearable. He cries
>> out: "Why are we forced to dig 3 cubic metres when 1
>> cubic meter is enough for a grave!" Sokolov has accepted
>> and embraced death after all. (Transition to the third
>> phase.) To his German masters this is an unendurable act
>> of defiance. As David points out, there are flaws in the
>> scene which follows, but ... he confronts his own death
>> defiantly, stares it in the eye, spits on it, and his
>> life again gains meaning as a "brave Soviet soldier"
>> unafraid of death even in such an impossible moment. Not
>> only does he survive, but takes the Nazi Colonel prisoner
>> and hands the war plans over to the Red Army. Now, when
>> he is offered the chance to return to his wife as a war
>> hero he declines and asks to be sent back to the front.
>> His life has adopted this new meaning which casts his
>> life as a father into the shade. He no longer fears
>> death. But he is persuaded to take time off and learns of
>> the death of his family. As Marc relates, the continued
>> survival of his son, who is now also a war hero, provides
>> continued meaning and integrates the two themes in his
>> life. This takes work, as Marc points out, and he has the
>> assistance of an older man, in achieving this
>> redefinition of his life. But tragically, with the death
>> of his son (and NB the end of the war, albeit in victory)
>> his life is again without meaning. Fourth phase. He has
>> survived, but has no purpose. By becoming a father again
>> (Fifth phase), he regains the fear of death and meaning
>> in his life. It is real work, and we witness this
>> psychological turmoil as he copes with the idea that this
>> scruffy orphan boy could be a son to him, and eventually
>> he manages it.
>>
>> The transition between each phase is a critical period
>> during which Sokolov's personality is transformed. Note
>> also, that there is a premonition of this perezhivanie in
>> Sokolov's earlier life: his family is wiped out in the
>> Civil War and the famine of 1922, then he meets his
>> wife-to-be, also raised in an orphanage, and they
>> together create a life and have 17 happy years before the
>> Nazi invasion intrudes. So from the beginning of the
>> movie we are introduced to the main theme.
>>
>> These are the main moments in the movie, which caused me
>> to select it for discussion rather than any other movie.
>> Also, there is no doubt that in producing this movie in
>> 1958 the Soviet government was engaged with its people,
>> in a process of collective perezhivanie and by reflecting
>> on the collective perezhivanie during the period of the
>> war, before and after, they aim to assist the people in
>> collectively assigning meaning to this terrible suffering
>> and like the man and his "son" walking again into the
>> future. As a propaganda movie, of course, it is open to
>> much criticism, but that is hardly the point. I
>> appreciate Marc's analysis in terms of the other concepts
>> he has introduced. I wouldn't mind a recap on these. In
>> terms of Vasilyuk's concepts, Sokolov's life-world is
>> *simple and difficult*. The boy's life world is *simple
>> and easy*.
>>
>> Can we continue to discuss "Fate of a Man", while I open
>> another movie for analysis? I think there are at least 10
>> subscribers to this list who have published in learned
>> journals on the topic of perezhivanie in childhood.
>> Perhaps one of you would like to reflect on the boy's
>> perezhivanija?
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>
>> On 18/01/2017 5:14 AM, Marc Clarà wrote:
>>> Hi, all,
>>>
>>> and thank you, Andy, for sharing this amazing film,
>>> which I didn't know. I
>>> think it will be very useful to share and discuss our
>>> respective views on
>>> perezhivanie.
>>>
>>> In my view, the film could be analyzed in terms of
>>> perezhivanie in three
>>> different planes. First, we could consider the person
>>> who watches the film,
>>> and we could study how the meaning she forms for the
>>> film restructures her
>>> relationship with aspects of her real life -such as, for
>>> example, her own
>>> death or the death of a beloved one, etc. (perhaps this
>>> is a little bit
>>> like what Beth and Monica, or Veresov and Fleer, do with
>>> their study of
>>> playworlds?). In this plane, which would be perhaps the
>>> most naturalistic
>>> one, the film could be studied as an human-made cultural
>>> artifact which
>>> restuctures psychological functions; here, the meaning
>>> formed for the film
>>> by who watches it and uses it as mediator in her
>>> relation to her real life
>>> would be an m-perezhivanie.
>>>
>>> In a second plane, we could proceed as if the film was
>>> real life, and we
>>> could consider Sokolov telling his story to the man he
>>> meets by the river
>>> (a little bit like Carla telling her story to me). In
>>> this plane, Sokolov's
>>> narrative (i.e., what is showed to us as narrated
>>> flashback) could be
>>> considered as a cultural artifact that Sokolov uses to
>>> relate to all what
>>> happened to him. At this plane, the meaning of this
>>> narrative would be the
>>> m-perezhivanie that, in that moment, mediates the
>>> relationship between
>>> Sokolov and the war events he experienced years ago (but
>>> these events are
>>> still very present to him, so although relating to past
>>> events, there is
>>> here a Sokolov's activity [towards the past war events]
>>> which is in present
>>> -this echoes Christopher when, within our conversations,
>>> said: “Part of
>>> this might also be a question of what it means to
>>> describe and represent
>>> one's own perezhivanie figuratively/narratively (whether
>>> to others, or to
>>> oneself), as opposed to living that perezhivanie.
>>> Especially if the attempt
>>> to capture/represent one's own perezhivanie is, perhaps,
>>> also central to
>>> the living of it?”
>>>
>>> In a third plane, we could proceed as if Sokolov's
>>> narration was not a
>>> retrospective narration, but the on-time sequence of
>>> events with on-time
>>> Sokolov's explanation of these events (in the moments in
>>> which the narrator
>>> voice is assumed within the flashback). In this plane,
>>> there are several
>>> interesting perezhivanie phenomena. Clearly, there is a
>>> Sokolov's activity
>>> of experiencing-as-struggle, which initiates when he
>>> realizes that all his
>>> family, except one son, had been killed 2 years ago. At
>>> this moment, his
>>> life becomes meaningless; the meaning (m-perezhivanie)
>>> he uses to relate to
>>> all his life (including the past) at this moment is
>>> expressed in his
>>> conversation with his oncle: “it's got to be that this
>>> life of mine is
>>> nothing but a nightmare!”. In this moment, Sokolov's
>>> past in the prision
>>> camp becomes also meaningless: then, his link to life
>>> (the m-perezhivanie
>>> that made being alive meaningful to him) was meeting his
>>> family; but at
>>> that time his family was already dead, so when he
>>> discovers it, he realizes
>>> that this m-perezhivanie (the idea of meeting his
>>> family) was linking him
>>> to death, not to life, so all his efforts to surviving
>>> become meaningless:
>>> “Every night, when I was a prisioner, I talked with
>>> them. Now it turns out
>>> that for two years I was talking with the dead?”. In
>>> this conversation,
>>> however, his oncle offers him an alternative
>>> m-perezhivanie to relate to
>>> his life: he still has a son, so the m-perehivanie of
>>> meeting his family
>>> can still turns Sokolov's life meaningful: “you've got
>>> to go on living. You
>>> have to find Anatoly. When the war is over, your son
>>> will get married, you
>>> will live with them. You will take up your carpentry
>>> again, play with your
>>> grandkids”. It takes some time to Sokolov to enter into
>>> this
>>> m-perezhivanie, but he does it and his life becomes
>>> meaningful again: “and
>>> then, unexpectedly, I've got a gleam of sunlight”. But,
>>> then, Anatoly also
>>> dies. How to keep living? Here, Sokolov holds the
>>> m-perezhivanie that
>>> linked him to life until that moment, and therefore, he
>>> needs a son;
>>> pretending being the father of Vanya turns his life
>>> meaningful again.
>>>
>>> Another interesting thing, still at that level, is how
>>> Sokolov's relation
>>> with his own immediate death changes along the different
>>> occasions in which
>>> he faces it. I thing here there are examples of
>>> experiencing-as-contemplation -in my view, this is not
>>> experiencing-as-struggle because the situation of
>>> impossibility (the
>>> immediate death) is removed existentially (Sokolov's
>>> life is given back to
>>> him), so that there is not a permanent situation of
>>> impossibility which is
>>> initially meaningless and is turned into meaningful. In
>>> each occasion in
>>> which Sokolov is faced with his immediate death, the
>>> m-perezhivanie that
>>> mediates this relationship is different. When he is
>>> captured, his
>>> m-perezhivanie is expressed as: “here's my death coming
>>> after me”. When he
>>> is conducted to meet the nazi official, the
>>> m-perezhivanie is expressed as:
>>> “the end of your misery”, “to my death and my release of
>>> this torment, I
>>> will drink”. In the first, the death is running after
>>> Sokolov; in the
>>> second, it is Sokolov happily going to meet death.
>>> Later, at the end of the
>>> film, he faces his immediate death again, and the
>>> m-perezhivanie is
>>> expressed as: “I'm really worried that I might die in my
>>> sleep, and that
>>> would frighten my little son”.
>>>
>>> Well, just some thoughts after watching this wonderful
>>> film.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> Marc.
>>>
>>> 2017-01-15 0:06 GMT+01:00 Christopher Schuck
>>> <schuckcschuck@gmail.com>:
>>>
>>>> Yes, definitely that article! And specifically, when I
>>>> used "pivoting" I
>>>> couldn't help but think of Beth's earlier example about
>>>> how a child will
>>>> use a stick as a pivot for a horse. Perhaps a somewhat
>>>> different
>>>> application but related, no?
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 4:06 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil
>>>> <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Chris, all,
>>>>>
>>>>> your post is totally relevant to Beth's and Monica's
>>>>> article in the
>>>>> special issue. They write about film and perezhivanie
>>>>> (quoting Sobchack)
>>>>> the following:
>>>>>
>>>>> The reason that film allows us to glimpse the future
>>>>> is that there is a
>>>>> connection between filmic time and ‘real’ time: “The
>>>>> images of a film
>>>> exist
>>>>> in the world as a temporal flow, within finitude and
>>>>> situation. Indeed,
>>>> the
>>>>> fascination of the film is that it does not transcend our
>>>> lived-experience
>>>>> of temporality, but rather that it seems to partake of
>>>>> it, to share it”
>>>>> (1992, p. 60).
>>>>>
>>>>> And later
>>>>>
>>>>> "Specifically, the way that the flow of time becomes
>>>>> multidirectional is
>>>>> that “rehearsals make it necessary to think of the
>>>>> future in such a way
>>>> as
>>>>> to create a past” (1985, p. 39). As Schechner
>>>>> ex-plains: “In a very real
>>>>> way the future – the project coming into existence
>>>>> through the process of
>>>>> rehearsal – determines the past: what will be kept
>>>>> from earlier
>>>> rehearsals
>>>>> or from the “source ma-terials” (1985, p. 39)."
>>>>>
>>>>> Alfredo
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ________________________________________
>>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
>>>>> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>>>> on behalf of Christopher Schuck <schuckcschuck@gmail.com>
>>>>> Sent: 14 January 2017 21:43
>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Fate of a Man
>>>>>
>>>>> But that's both the limitation and strength of art or
>>>>> fictional narrative
>>>>> as opposed to real life, isn't it? That art focuses
>>>>> our attention and
>>>>> highlights certain features in a way that is idealized
>>>>> and artificially
>>>>> "designed" to convey something more clearly and purely
>>>>> (but less
>>>>> organically and authentically) than it would be
>>>>> conveyed in the course of
>>>>> living it, or observing someone else living it? One
>>>>> way to get around
>>>> this
>>>>> would be, as David says, to analyze the film in terms
>>>>> of clues as to the
>>>>> stages of emergence. But maybe another way to use the
>>>>> film would be to
>>>> view
>>>>> it not so much as a complete, self-sufficient
>>>>> "example" of perezhivanie,
>>>> as
>>>>> a *tool *for pivoting back and forth between the
>>>>> concept of perezhivanie
>>>> as
>>>>> imaginatively constructed (through fiction), and the
>>>>> concept of
>>>>> perezhivanie as imaginatively constructed (through our
>>>>> real living
>>>>> experience and observation of it). So, it would be the
>>>>> *pivoting* between
>>>>> these two manifestations of the concept (designed vs.
>>>>> evolved, as David
>>>> put
>>>>> it) that reveals new insights about perezhivanie,
>>>>> rather than
>>>> understanding
>>>>> the concept from the film per se.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 3:08 PM, David Kellogg
>>>>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I think there's a good reason why Andy started a new
>>>>>> thread on this:
>>>>> he's a
>>>>>> very tidy thinker (quite unlike yours truly) and he
>>>>>> knows that one
>>>> reason
>>>>>> why xmca threads are seldom cumulative is that they
>>>>>> digress to related
>>>>>> problems without solving the immmediate ones.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, of course, a film allows us to consider an
>>>>>> example of
>>>>> "perezhivanie",
>>>>>> but it is a designed perezhivanie rather than an
>>>>>> evolved one; it
>>>> doesn't
>>>>>> explicitly display the various stages of emergence
>>>>>> required for a
>>>> genetic
>>>>>> analysis, unless we analyze it not as a complete and
>>>>>> finished work of
>>>> art
>>>>>> but instead for clues as to the stages of its
>>>>>> creation (the way that,
>>>> for
>>>>>> example, "Quietly Flows the Don" was analyzed to
>>>>>> determine its
>>>>>> authenticity).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I remember that In the original short story, the
>>>>>> schnapps drinking
>>>>>> scene seemed like pure sleight of hand: an
>>>>>> artistically gratuitous
>>>>> example
>>>>>> of what eventually gave Soviet social realism such a
>>>>>> bad name.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>>> Macquarie University
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 10:04 PM, Carol Macdonald <
>>>> carolmacdon@gmail.com
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Fellow XMCa-ers
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I have watched it through now, thank you Andy, but
>>>>>>> right now only
>>>>>> empirical
>>>>>>> psychological categories come to mind. I will watch
>>>>>>> it again and in
>>>>> the
>>>>>>> meanwhile let my fellows with more recent experience of
>>>> /perezhivanie/
>>>>>> take
>>>>>>> the discussion further.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It is a kind of timeless story, and modern film
>>>>>>> techniques would
>>>>> perhaps
>>>>>> be
>>>>>>> more explicit. At the least I would say it has for
>>>>>>> me a Russian
>>>>>>> understanding of suffering, perhaps because of their
>>>>>>> unique
>>>> experience
>>>>> of
>>>>>>> it. But having said that, WWII must have generated
>>>>>>> other similar
>>>>>>> experiences, apart from the first part about
>>>>>>> Andrei's family dying in
>>>>> the
>>>>>>> famine.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Carol
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 14 January 2017 at 02:15, Andy Blunden
>>>>>>> <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I watched it in two parts with subtitles:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16w7fg_destiny-of-a-man-
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 1959-pt-1_creation
>>>>>>>> http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16wat4_destiny-of-a-man-
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 1959-pt-2_creation
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Andy
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Andy Blunden
>>>>>>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
>>>>>>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-
>>>>> decision-making
>>>>>>>> On 14/01/2017 2:35 AM, Beth Ferholt wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Thank you for taking us to a shared example. I
>>>>>>>>>>> think that
>>>>> having a
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Carol A Macdonald Ph.D (Edin)
>>>>>>> Cultural Historical Activity Theory
>>>>>>> Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics,
>>>>>>> Unisa
>>>>>>> alternative email address: tmacdoca@unisa.ac.za
>>>>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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