[Xmca-l] Re: Fate of a Man (from Misha)
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Wed Jan 18 18:09:30 PST 2017
Misha's own childhood he saw represented in the boy in the
movie. A 1958 Soviet audience was still struggling with the
experience of the war. For the movie to function as a part
of a perezhivanie for the watcher, it has to be reflecting
and repeating something in the watcher's own experience. I
think this is a partial answer to the question you opened in
another thread - the use of story-telling, movies, etc., -
"mediational means" - to help Americans in surviving the
coming period of Trump's America. ... Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
On 19/01/2017 1:02 PM, mike cole wrote:
> It was extremely interesting to read Misha's
> interpretation of Fate of a Man. It provides evidence
> against my speculation that it might have been interpreted
> as Destiny of Mankind. If I understand correctly, Misha is
> saying that the perezhivanie of entire populations is
> reflected in the individual consciousness of the
> character. And the film, combining multiple media and a
> strong, patriotic narrative, creates perezhivanie in the
> viewer.
>
> I did not, personally, experience perezhivanie, while
> watching the film, at least not perezhivanie of the sort
> that Misha is referring to. My orientation toward viewing
> it, and my own cultural-historical background interfered.
> I was viewing it through the lens of our discussion and my
> acute awareness of the elisions and misrepresentations of
> these events in historical time. This lens got in the way.
>
> Misha's note is a good reminder of the difficulties of
> interpretation that we all face in dealing with this
> topic! At the same time, there was no missing different
> forms that correspond to different "kinds" or "conceptions
> of kinds" of perezhivanie in the film.
> mike
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 3:53 PM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> 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://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <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://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <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
> <mailto: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
> <mailto: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
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
> on behalf of Christopher Schuck
> <schuckcschuck@gmail.com
> <mailto: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
> <mailto: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
> <mailto: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
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
> wrote:
>
> I watched it in two
> parts with subtitles:
>
> http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16w7fg_destiny-of-a-man-
> <http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16w7fg_destiny-of-a-man->
>
> 1959-pt-1_creation
> http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16wat4_destiny-of-a-man-
> <http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16wat4_destiny-of-a-man->
>
> 1959-pt-2_creation
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-
> <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
> <mailto:tmacdoca@unisa.ac.za>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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