Men Out of Focus : : The Soviet Masculinity Crisis in the Long Sixties / / Marko Dumančić.

• VerfasserIn: Dumančić, Marko,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2020]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (344 p.) :; 71 b&w illustrations

Men Out of Focus charts conversations and polemics about masculinity in Soviet cinema and popular media during the liberal period – often described as "The Thaw" – between the death of Stalin in 1953 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The book shows how the filmmakers of the long 1960s built stories around male protagonists who felt disoriented by a world that was becoming increasingly suburbanized, rebellious, consumerist, household-oriented, and scientifically complex. The dramatic tension of 1960s cinema revolved around the male protagonists’ inability to navigate the challenges of postwar life. Selling over three billion tickets annually, the Soviet film industry became a fault line of postwar cultural contestation. By examining both the discussions surrounding the period’s most controversial movies as well as the cultural context in which these debates happened, the book captures the official and popular reactions to the dizzying transformations of Soviet society after Stalin.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction Soviet Men in Need of Saving? -- Chapter One What Was Stalinist Masculinity and Why Did It Change? -- Chapter Two Being a Dad Is Not for Sissies -- Chapter Three Fathers versus Sons, or, the Great Soviet Family in Trouble -- Chapter Four The Trouble with Women: Consumerism and the Death of Rugged Masculinity -- Chapter Five Our Friend the Atom? Science as a Threat to Masculinity -- Chapter Six De-Heroization and the Pan-European Masculinity Crisis -- Epilogue The End of the Long Sixties and the Fate of the Superfluous Man -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index