The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review

Grief and Simulation in Kira Muratova's "The Aesthenic Syndrome" Author(s): Ellen E. Berry and Kira Muratova Source: Russian Review, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Jul., 1998), pp. 446-454 Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/131957 . Accessed: 12/04/2014 07:03
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Simulation Muratova s in Kira Syndrome A esthenic The

Grief and

ELLEN E. BERRY MikhailEpsteinidentifies the In "TheOriginsand Meaningof RussianPostmodernism," process of simulation-most extensively theorizedby Jean Baudrillard-as central to an formulaof Russiancultureboth historicallyand currently.In Baudrillard's understanding tion, simulationdescribesa momentin advancedcapitalistcultures-especially in Americain which reality itself has dissolved completely into an incessant proliferation and dessimination of media representationsof this reality. Whereas modernismwas distinpostmodernism guished by production,expansion, energy, and movement, Baudrillardian of by entropy,inertia,loss of affect, and, again crucially,by reproduction is characterized models without originals. From this process of simulationemerges a cultureof pure imirreages, codes, andspectacles-a hyperreality-in which realityas suchis fundamentally to processes of technologicalreproduction. coverable,so radicallyhas it been subordinated This producesan absoluteimplosion of sign andreferent,a collapse of the real into a dense, in the social seductive,andnihilistic society of the hyperreal.The resultis a radicalrupture symbolic that definitively and permanentlyalters previous conceptions of individualsubjectivity and socioculturalrelations.' sense nor areneitherexplosive in a revolutionary Subjects in postmodernhyperreality sense but remainimplosive and blind. They proceedby pure sensacritical in a traditional tion-seeking, a desire for absolute spectacle, or they lapse into a fatal inertiaratherthan being motivatedby any stance of social agency or informedconsent. The system of capitalspiralof simulation, ist productionattemptsto fight this fatal indifference,this catastrophic by "secretingthroughthe media one last glimmer of reality in which to found one last glimmerof power." But in so doing, capitalismonly multiplies and acceleratesthe play of concludes, within an Americanpostmodernmoment,while simulations. Thus, Baudrillard everythinghappens as if we were continuing to produce history, "in reality we are only
'JeanBaudrillard,"TheYear 2000 Has Already Happened,"in Body Invaders, ed. Arthurand Marilouise Kroker(New York, 1987), 35-44. The RussianReview 57 (July 1998): 446-54 Copyright1998 TheRussianReview

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feeding the end of history by accumulatingsigns of the social, signs of the political, signs of progressand change. The year 2000 has alreadyhappened."2 For Baudrillard,simulationand its effects appearto be a purelyWesternand a relatively recent phenomenon. In his reworkingof the concept, Epstein suggests that it has the course of its history:"Throughout in Russia throughout been "ironicallyaccomplished" Russianhistory,realityhas been subjectedto a gradualprocess of disappearance.Realities have always been producedin Russia out of the rulingelites' mindsbut once producedthey were imposed with such force and determinationthat these ideological constructionsbeRussianhistory,realitywas forced Since in variousways throughout come hyperrealities."3 to coincide with those ideas by which it was described,it effectively became nothing other than a creation,a simulation,of those ideas. Signs, in this instance, do not refer to social actualitiesbut ratherconceal a fundamentallack of reference,becoming "labelspulled off ideas denudedof a materialreferentwere of emptiness." In the Soviet context particularly, in fact the only true and genuine substanceof the Russian lifestyle.4 Russian variantof simulationallogic operatesat all levels of society, The particularly from everydaylife to the sociogovernmental.Producedthroughthe historicalenactmentof decades of simulationis a "society of deficit,""a desert of the real itself," of empty selfpresentations. Soviet Marxism, according to Epstein, is the epitome of the Russian simulationalpenchantand the ultimateachievementof Russian postmodernism: of "auLong beforeWesternvideo technologybeganto producean overabundance thentic"images of an absent reality, this problem was already being solved in Russia by our ideology, by our press, and by statistics that calculated crops that of a percentagepoint.... Roads lead would neverbe harvestedto the hundredeths to villages that have disappeared;villages are located where there are no roads; constructionsites do not become buildings;house buildershave nowhereto live. A civilization of this type can be defined as a system with an absence of meaningful essential elements.5 Despite major changes in Russian culture, this simulational habit of mind persists in a moment, becoming, if possible, even more evident though the modes of its contemporary expression have changed. "The Soviet regime was careful to maintainsome presuppositions of truthbehind its evidently simulativeideological activities, but now that the Communists are no longer in power, no one monitors events, and the simulativenatureof the In a contemporary moment,the once-securereferentsof Commucivilizationis laid bare."6 nist ideology implode, becoming detachedfrom theirpreviousmeanings. A post-Commupostmodernism,is a play of signs and gesnist politics emergeswhich, like Baudrillardian tures that have no stable referents, that lead to pure simulation on the level of political of meaning"in a hyperrealsociety characterized deconstruction eventsandto the "universal
2Ibid., 43.

in Re-Enteringthe Sign. Articuiat3Mikhail Epstein,"TheOriginsand Meaningof RussianPostmodernism," ing New Russian Culture,ed. Ellen E. Berry andAnesa Miller-Pogacar(Ann Arbor, 1995), 38-39. 4lbid.,40-41. 5Ibid., 32. 33. 6qbid.,

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is the zero level of being: emptybeing, empty by profoundloss of affect. "Postcommunism writing, so thatnow we live in a vacuum,in empty space where all words, all actions seem to have no meaning at all. They can only be tracedon the level of surfaces,with no depth, no truthstandingbehind them."7 The perestroikaera not only opened up culturalpossibilities in the Soviet Union but also exposed the emptiness of years of simulatedexistence. As M. Kuraevremarksof this profoundculturalidentity crisis, "Soviet society saw itself in a mirrorand not before an official holiday banner,saw and did not recognize itself." It is a culturethat continuesto ask, "Who are we, who have we become in the past 70 years?"8 In a post-Communist in a postutopianmoment of culturalzero-time this comoment of ideological bankruptcy, nundrumpresses closely: "How to live after one's own future, or, if you like, after one's own death."9 post-Soviet cultureengendersamongotherthings The ongoing crisis in contemporary of feeling, which share distinctivenew modes of post-Communistsubjectivityor structures FredricJameson,and some featureswith the forms of subjectivityanalyzedby Baudrillard, postmodern. These include varieties of otherWesterntheorists as most characteristically unstableoscillations between lethargy,blankness,or loss of affect, psychic fragmentation, and frenetic burstsof nonproductiveand sometimes vicious activity. Citizens in a culture of simulation,in a society of emptiness, acquirea particularpsychic mold or culturalpaabsurdity, thology markedby lack of motivationor direction,excitedness, causeless terror, apathy,strengthlessness,fragility. Describing or perhaps more accurately embodying this cultural pathology is Kira Muratova's projectin her 1989 film TheAesthenicSyndrome.In it, she offers a diagnosisof perestroikaculturethroughthe metaphorof bodies debilitatedby profoundgrief or stress, remindingus throughthis metaphorthatthe body is often the most immediateand insistent site for inscriptionof the social and especially for socioculturaltrauma. The weakness, or bodily reactionsrangingfrom exaesthenicsyndrome,producesvarietiesof unpredictable treme physical aggressiveness to narcolepsy-responses that Muratovaexplores on both literal and symbolic levels. However,the film is not merely a brilliantlystaged illustration of responses to a culturalcrisis. It also acts as a provocation,a form of shock treatmentor a call to action. I wish to explore here some of Muratova'saesthetic social psychotherapy, in strategies the film; through them she both depicts a culture in crisis and attempts to reverse those processes that produce life as a simulation of living, and, in so doing, to reinvigoratereality,to heal the body politic. The Aesthenic Syndromebuilds througha steady accumulationof fragmentaryincidents and images, pieces of everydaylife, ratherthanthroughthe more conventionalmode of depicting significant or momentous occurrences that tell a central story in a logical
Postmodernism-An Interviewwith "Postcommunist 7EllenE. Berry, KentJohnson,Anesa Miller-Pogacar, MikhailEpstein,"CommonKnowledge(Winter1993): 103-4. of the Past or the Inventionof the Future," SouthAtlantic The Restructuring 8Mikhail Kuraev,"Perestroika: Quarterly90 (Spring 1991): 232, 235. ibid., 409. 9Mikhail Epstein, "Afterthe Future:On the New Consciousnessin Literature,

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temporalprogression. Scenes often shift abruptlyand confusedly; moods, tones, and episodes arefrequently juxtaposedin such a way thatrelationsamongthem areunclearor even violently at odds with one another. The film's pacing or visual rhythmis irregular,even spasmodic,alternating between moments of complete silence, slow camerapans, long still shots, andfrenetic activityor extremelyrapidcuttingbetween scenes, a techniquethatrepandfrenzy/ licates andreinforcestwo thematicpoles in the film: stasis/disengagement/death, aggression.Muratova's challengingcollage aestheticof clashingmoods andconfusingevents presentsa mode of developmentthatdislocateshabitualpatternsof sense-makingandforces a greaterdegree of engagementon the partof the viewer. A statementoffered by a patientin a mental institutionat the end of the film provides insight into Muratova'smethod and what she hopes to accomplish by it. The patient is describinga form of paintingin which inharmoniousor clashing colors arejuxtaposedin a seemingly randomfashion, a method, he argues, that characterizesthe work of the most interestingpainterssince these works throughtheir impossible ugliness paradoxicallydisclose the impossibly beautiful. Such unusual combinationsthat shock throughtheir violence andugliness allow for greaterinsight into the truenatureof things-profound meanings often emergeunexpectedlyclose to the banaland the dull, Muratovaseems to suggest. It is on the level of the everyday-most especially of the body-that social pathology becomes most immediatelymanifest and on which it must first be diagnosed and solved. The film opens with four separate scenes that illustrate Muratova'sjuxtapositional method and establish the film's groundtone. In the first, a long close-up of a doll covered with flowers lies atop a junk pile. In the second, a young boy blows bubblesthatfloat away throughan open window and burst. In the third,three old women-a kind of Greek chorus-mouth such platitudesas, "I thought after all the people read Tolstoy that everyone In the fourthscene, a groupof men terrorize a cat by tying would become kind andclever."'" a metalpan to its tail (cats die of heartattackin this way, literallyscaredto death). Twomen laugh at the spectacle as one tells the other of his "terriblepassion":his propensityto eat sausage with horseradishas he delivers telegrams on the job (distractionthrougheating forms a majormotif in the film). A numberof the film's central concerns are establishedhere. The doll, a simulated human,and the boy obviously symbolize the innocence of childhood,the bubblesthe evanescence or the burstingof its hopefulness. The threeold women fail to offer the wisdom that comes with age; worn-outplatitudesmust substitutefor genuine guidance and consolation. The scene also offers an ironic commenton art'sability to change behavior,a belief that is both criticized and maintainedin the film. The final scene of senseless cruelty, viciousness for fun, and sadisticlaughtersuggests a deathof the heart,or of humanresponsiveness and compassion. This scene is echoed later in the film in a horriblesequence in which threewomen come to the poundlooking for a lost dog. The film is completely silent for some minutes as the cameraslowly pans cage after crowded cage of animals that will soon die. The scene is especially eerie because the animals are so quiet, as if they have given up hope and are signallingthattheirmiseryis of no use. The sadnessof the scene, the women's and our grief, is punctuated by the ribaldjokes exchangedby the men who work
10All translations by EkaterinaDobrotvorskaya.

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there and are beyond the point where they can be shocked and saddened. Muratova'sown comments about this scene help to contextualize it within the films's largerthematics of crueltyandgrief: "Peopleonly have what they createthemselves. Not so the animalsin my film. They are tortured. It's a hauntingthought. I hoped that if I made a film about it, I would get it out of my system. But this was not to be. I wake up and I think:the dogs we filmed have been butchered.They died a gruesomedeath-like in a deathcamp.And this is what we do to others and other animals."" Following this opening sequence the film shifts to an extended segment focusing on the inconsolable grief and rage of Natalia, a woman whose husbandhas just died. It tracks her from the gravesitethroughthe next day when she quits herjob as a doctor,presumably from the recognitionthat,unableto heal her own damage, she is unlikely to be able to heal others (she does not have the heartfor it). What is most strikingaboutthis sequence is the juxtaposition of the typical and the extraordinary.The ordinarinessof death is made extraordinary throughone's personalexperienceof it; to live afterthe death of a loved one is to live in a violently transformed and alien world. The film establishesthis theme through Natalya's insistent rejection of all human contact, all attemptsto console her. Platitudes offeredas consolationfor herhusband's deathareequivalent, the film suggests,to a woman's smiling face on a plastic bag thatNatalyaglimpses on the subway,or to the photographsof the dead thatshe imagines seeing endlessly replicatedeverywhereshe looks. In both cases, images simulatethe living self but in no way replace it. Recognition of this fact is underscored throughthe strangenessor "inappropriateness" of Natalya's reactions. She experiences her grief physically, alternating between such senseless destructiveactions as breaking glasses and unpredictableviolent outburststoward complete strangers(misanthropic rage at all normal people), and the dumb muteness of an automatongoing through the motions of living-her particularmanifestationof the aesthenic syndrome. This opening sequence thus replicates in miniaturethe alternationbetween stasis and frenetic activity that structuresthe pacing of the film as a whole. Natalya's hostile outburstsare echoed later in the film by a woman who directly addresses the camera and swears brutally,recountingthe story of her interactionswith her husbandand relatives, part also of a largertheme concerningbreakdownsin humanrelain the family as a social unit. Viewersfeel assaulted tions, including,especially, disruptions by this direct address,a crucialelement in Muratova'sshock treatment,her unwillingness to allow the audience to be passive observersof "otherpeople's" problems. As Mikhail Yampolskynotes, this scene made an especially strong impact on viewers because it is a woman who swears and because the treatmentseems totally unmotivated. SeveralotherjuxtapositionaltechniquesironicallyreinforceMuratova' s centraltheme of social and personaldislocation and trauma. Sentimentalhappy music from the thirties, forties, and fifties frequentlyis layeredover and at extremevariancewith an accumulation of tragic or sordid scenes. For example, the first use of "ChiquitaCome Back to Me"-a repeatedmusical motif-is with a close-up of people tearingapartand eating a whole fish whose glassy eyes stare out at the viewer, the very antithesis of romance. This scene is echoed laterin thejuxtapositionof a crowdedfish marketwith the impassioneddiscussion
I"ViktorBozhovich, "I Make Films aboutWhat Is In Me," SovietFillm,1990, no. 4:19.

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between two groups concerningthe deathof one of theirfriends, a combinationthateffectively rendersboth incidents fundamentallyequivalentin importance. Anothertechnique involves juxtaposing central scenes with peripheral,seemingly randomor incidental images andfragmentsof conversations-much in this film is overheard.This techniqueestablishes important emotionaland thematicresonances,if not logical connections. Moreover, this strategyeffectively underscoresMuratova's message thatthe key to diagnosingcultural malaise lies in an examinationof the banalandtrivial,of the everyday,ratherthanof seemingly consequentialpublic events. The aforementionedpaint story is one example of this technique; anotheris a bizarrestory of a woman who believes that a snake has come to inhabither stomach,heart,and soul and is sucking the life fluids out of her, a particularly link between the physical andspiritualdis-ease of the traumadirectexample of Muratova's tized body/bodypolitic. This incident,raised early in the film by two people waiting for a bus, is repeatedmore elaboratelynearits end in the story of a dentistwho is convinced that his body is inhabitedby snakes and whose stomach must be cut open to "save"him, an operationthatpresumablykills as it cures. A second technique, strikinglyevident in the film, involves inversionof social roles and moralvalues, which Muratovaagain uses to suggest the social and psychic dis-ease of contemporaryRussian culture. Yampolskynotes inversion of gender roles in particular: women swear ratherthanmen; Natalyais extremelyaggressive;Nikolay is extremelypassive; and men appearnude ratherthanwomen. If the first partof the film is dominatedby a doctor who cannot or will not heal the body (and by extension the body politic), the second primarilyconcerns a writerand teacherwho both fails to heal the soul and fails to inspirerespectanddesire in his studentssince he has no useful knowledge to offer them for the futureandhas ceased to believe in himself. Both failures,the film suggests, springfrom a largerfailureof love. This is not the abstract universalor brotherlylove which the teacher preaches to his class, and which is subjected to the same critique as all banal platitudes since they areused to hide an absence, a simulation,of real feeling. Neitheris it an erotic or romantictype of love, which is representedas either sordid or pathetic in the film. (Exampleshere rangefrom Natalya'sattemptto find solace in a casual pick-upto a sad tableau on the on the topic "Love"that several young people pose for). Rather,Muratova-focuses simple, almost mundaneability to reach out towardan other with genuine compassion, a simple act that seems to elude nearly everyone in the film. Soon afterwe meet him, Kolya, the teacher,describeshimself as a "middle-agedman, whom the darknesshas submergedinto a soft lullaby-likefabricof speculationsabouthimself." He liked to think about himself in the third person, slightly ironically and a bit sadly. He was very wise and he was kind, his soul, secluded in the shell of the thoroughlylived life, was burdenedwith the wrinkles of memories, old attachments. He tried to be kind to everyone; it was impossible. He tied new knots without untying the old ones. This burdenbecame heavier,hardlybearable,and he didn't have enough anger to drop it. He wanted something sentimental,some melody with no words, or a returnof the fashion for Nord cigarettesor long curly hair,and then to say, "I love you."... He has vague presentimentsof love. No, not

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Ellen E Berry love, for it seemed too determined,so definite.... Recall, recall when asked what are you thinkingabout and answer coldly, "Nothing,really."

The artist who should remain awake to new culturalpossibilities here is being lulled to sleep by his own insights. The "lullaby-likespeculations"lead him only to cliches (dead language);thatis, to increasinglystatic and disengagedstates of emotionaland intellectual coldness/death. WhereasNatalya's grief and disgust with life express themselves largely throughaggressive, frenetic, and futile movements, Kolya is a somnambulist. In our first and last glimpse of him he is asleep in the subway,indicativeof this largerrefusal to engage with life or to act on what he knows. Instead,in his self-aggrandizingway, he prefersto remain he says. distractedand deceived. "I see myself and my narrowness," I see where my kindness stops and whereI become a beast. I don't wantto understandanything. I close my eyes so I do not see the point at which I become a beast. I don't want to understandanything. I close my eyes to see nothing. Money, anger,and intolerance,everythinghas the same power over me as over the most loathsomeof scum. In my fatherI recognizewith disgust the habitsI dreadhaving myself. His family/childhoodwas an endless corridorof hatred:the walls made of hatred,the floor of hatred,everythingmade of hatredmixed with disgust, mixed with shame, mixed with impotence. There's only one way out of this corridorinto cruelty or into self-restraint. Kolya's disengagementfrom life (a pathologyof "self- restraint"), his inabilityto love and his mixtureof self-disgust, self-deception,shame, and impotence are not just personal of his family and failures, althoughthe film takes pains to make clear the impoverishment emotional life. Instead,they reflect largersocial failures which the film explores in part anextendedcommentary on theeducationsystem. Theparticular inversionMuratova through works with here is embodied in the statementof one school board member that the eggs oughtnot to teach the hen. Yetthis is precisely what seems to be happening.An educational creativepotentialunfettered system thatonce preachedconformitynow tries to "encourage by outdateddogma,"in the wordsof one school council member. But school seems wholly irrelevantto the studentsin Kolya's class-a joke, a jail they struggleto escape (truancyis a serious problem,the council notes). The teacherson the whole seem interestedonly in theirpersonalwelfare,whetherthe pension system will still be in place when they retire,for example, ratherthan in finding a solution to the crisis. Although some acknowledgetheir own irrelevancy,admittingthat "we are not needed, nor are our diplomas,"none has any idea what to do. Significantly,throughout the meeting, Kolya sleeps on a bench in the back of the room. Kolya's self-loathing and his refusal to take responsibility,as either artistor teacher, are so debilitatingthat he eventuallyretreatsto a mental hospital. The ending of the film deals with the final failureof love. One night two of his formerstudentsawakenhim to take him from the hospital. "Remember," one says to him, "you asked us why you were so sleepy all the time. I only now realized why. Since you've been sick and I don't see you anymoreI am so awfully sleepy too. Withoutyou life is boring and dreary. We can't get tired of one anotherever. The dull everydaynesswill disappear. Just be with me please."

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Genuineconnection such as the studentsoffer is, Muratovasuggests, the only real antidote to the "dull everydayness"and its thousandpetty tragediesthroughwhich the film relentlessly conducts us. But Kolya responds to this plea with his usual weariness, suggesting that his sickness with life itself is perhapsterminal. Although he leaves the hospital with the two students,he again falls asleep, on the subway this time, and cannot get off. Muratovaframes this last encounterbetween Kolya and his studentswith the aforementionedscene of the woman who swearsat the audience. "'Fuckyour ass,' I tell him, and he answers, 'Fuck you.' And I answer, 'Then you, asshole,' and he says, 'Whore, scum, reptile,'and he tells me, 'You'rea swine yourself."' This indicates a final brutalfailure of love, of humanconnection. Insteadof regardbetween family members,between husband of wishing to degrade(fuck) othersbefore they fuck and wife thereis only the brutalization you. Muratovaalso offers overt statementsof the film's thematic motifs, as in a moment which occurs directly afterthe pound scene nearthe end of the film: "The smell of sorrow saturated everythingthroughandthrough.And the clouds aremade of sorrow,andthe dress is made of sorrow,and the rain and the sounds, and the dust and the flowers too. And the bedsheets and the hair and the smiles and the drinks and the bread and the sleep and the dreams." Here, Natalya's individualgrief with which the film opens has come to pervade the very materialfabric of everydayreality. This is a bleak message indeed, and the film fails to offer any grandconclusions or solutions to the deep malaise. Yet by immersingus so relentlessly in it, Muratovasuggests thatfeeling/experiencingthis sorrowis, perhaps,a necessary first step to breakingits hold on social consciousness. Muratova'saim in The is, firstof all, to illuminatethe specific or characteristic manifestations AesthenicSy)ndrome of a social and spiritualcrisis in contemporaryRussian culture. Secondly, she seeks to dislocatehabitualresponses,to shock the audienceinto feeling, andin so doing, perhaps,to awakena sleeping populace to the crisis. The film thus functions as a form of social psychotherapythat attemptsto purge inheritedculturalreflexes, social mythologies, and stereotypes, even as it suggests the immense difficulty of doing so. Muratova directnessin the film by implicacknowledgesthis difficultywith particular Russian culture. In a itly questioningher own effectiveness as an artistin contemporary scene sandwichedbetweenNatalya'sstoryandKolya's,Muratova breaksthe fictionalframe of the film and takesus to an auditorium where the segmentwe havejust seen is going to be discussed by the woman who has played Natalya in the previous section. As the lights come on the audience stampedesout of the theateramid pleas by the moderatorthat they stay to discuss the film: "Wehave an opportunityto exchange opinions, ask questions,ask the actresssome questions. It isn't very often thatwe have a chance to meet a serious actor who has workedwith serious film directors. We shouldn'tlose the opportunityto discuss the film we have just seen. I think that the serious cinema is worth thinking about these days." Obviously the audiencedoes not agree. "Why," they mutter,"is this movie so sad? I get tired at work and I only want some fun and entertainment, some music." These commentsreinforcethe themes of escapism and distractiondevelopedthroughout the film. But they also point to otherissues at stakein the particular culturalcrisis that is Muratova'ssubject,including the culturalsignificance of the artist,as well as the power of artto motivatecriticalreflection and emotional engagement at a time when culturehas

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been freed from its servitudeto politics and the oppositionalrelationshipbetween official culturehas come undone. As Nancy Condee andVladimirPadunovput it, andunderground "culturehas gained its political freedom while losing both its audience and its economic Removal of state controlsover and subsidies to publishinghouses and cinema security.""2 studios has led to an almost franticpursuitof new consumersin the entirecultureindustry, ratherthan aestheticvalue determinesthe productionof art. It has in which marketability also popularizedculturalconsumption,a fact made clearin the film audience'sinterestonly ratherthan socially provocativeor artisticallysignificant. in films that will be entertaining This suggests that the post-Communistcrisis also has led to a wholesale devaluationof all received culture-whether oppositionalor official-manifested in deliberatelyaggressive inversions of the former demand for positive social values. As one film critic put it in characterizingthe features of many perestroikafilms, the crisis has unleashed a process leads to the mixing of culturallayers, to the outpouring that,"likea geological catastrophe, of barbaricemotions, to explosions of egocentrism and violence on the one hand and to apathyand confusion on the other.""3 Clearly,in this post-Communistmoment artistsface at least three difficulties, if not downrightconundrums. First, they need to confront and move beyond to demythologize-the psychoculturallegacy of Stalinism. Moreover,faced with the recognition that old ideological structuresremain strongly embedded in the collective psyche, they must recognize the difficulty of doing so. As TatianaKliavianaput it, "it is no simple matterto thatit has get rid of a deeplyrootedway of life, even when one clearlyfeels andunderstands 14 Secondly, they must find exhaustedits reserves and offers no possibilities whatsoever." the desire to expose the vacuousnessof inheritedideological discourses,productsof a culture of simulation,and discover new subjects,genres, styles, and methods of signification that would adequatelyreflect and respond to a changing sociohistorical landscape. But of oldercanonicaltexts, whetherofficial or here,finally, they runup againstthe "incapacity foundationon which to build an argument,a belief unofficial, to provide an authoritative system or any othercoherentcode, a situationthatpreventsculturefrom acquiringmomen15 tum on the bones of received knowledge." has to startat groundzero, and For all these reasons,the artistas culturalcommentator in many ways Muratovadoes this in TheAesthenicSyndrome. Her relentless examination of the countlesspetty pathologies of crueltyand apathy,seemingly inconsequentialfailures of the humanheart,take on enormousculturalsignificance. By locating her analysis at the level of the mundaneand the trivial, of the everyday-a level on which we all meet-she forces the audienceto experiencedirectly,almostviscerally,the dangersof this social crisis, and she begins to suggest a way out of it.

Suicide:Not By BredAlone,"NewLeftReview,no. 189 Condee andVladimirPadunov,"Perestroika "2Nancy (September-October1991): 70. '3"InSearch of New Values:A Film RoundTable,"trans. KurtShaw, unpublishedmanuscript,3 (originally publishedin Iskusstvokino [5 May 1990]). manuunpublished trans.Anesa Miller-Pogacar, Empire," '4Tatiana Kliaviana,"Onthe Ruinsof the Theatrical ofArtStudiesAlmanac [1991]). script, 12 (originallypublishedin PetersburgInstitute Suicide,"88. '5Condeeand Padunov,"Perestroika

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