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    Men Out of Focus
    The Soviet Masculinity Crisis in the Long Sixties

    Marko Dumančić (Author)

    9781487505257

    Hardback, published 18 January 2021

    344 pages, 71 b&w illustrations
    23.6 x 15.9 x 2.4 cm, 0.62 kg

    "Men Out of Focus presents a diverse range of films and other cultural materials to provide a snapshot of Soviet cultural history with global implications. Written in a lively style, it is accessible to the general reader, just as the inclusion of numerous translated political cartoons prove quite enjoyable. The specialist, too, will appreciate Dumančić’s heterogeneous selection of films."

    - Jess Jensen Mitchell (H-Soz-Kult)

    "A fascinating piece of work, meticulously researched and detailed, yet thoroughly accessible. While Dumančić’s main source is Soviet cinema, it would be doing this book a great disservice to see it only as a book about men on film. The wide variety of sources taken from different cultural genres and political discourses, the consideration of multiple facets of contemporary Soviet life, and the effort, especially in the final chapter, to situate the Soviet case among developments elsewhere in Europe, means that this is a seminal book which offers a richly textured analysis of Soviet society that goes far beyond the silver screen."

    - Claire McCallum, University of Exeter (The Russian Review )

    "Dumančić combines close textual analysis with corroborating material, including cartoons in the satirical journal, Krokodil, and debates within the Union of Cinematographers. The result is a nuanced and perceptive monograph which offers readers an insight into the gender norms that allowed sexual inequality to thrive."

    - Simon Huxtable (Contemporary European History) "Marko Dumančić’s first book has been much anticipated in Soviet gender history, and it does not disappoint. Showing an admirable facility with film studies, gender analysis, cultural methodology, and the dynamic terrain of Soviet history in the two decades after the 1953 death of Joseph Stalin, Dumančić offers a deeply researched and persuasively argued portrait of the Soviet gender order from about 1953 to 1968." - Erica L. Fraser, Carleton University (Journal of Family History) "Dumančić is fluent in the social history of the ‘long sixties’ and is to be praised for his focus on popular films, which are quite illuminating in presenting a view of Soviet masculinity different from either Stalinist heroes or the tortured heroes in art films." - Denise J. Youngblood, University of Vermont (Women East-West) "Marko Dumančić’s monograph arrives at a most timely moment … The author is to be congratulated also for the sheer range of his sources, from literary texts to the cultural media, from discussions of films to their reception by the Party ideologues and the public, and from academic studies to archival and documentary materials." - David Gillespie (Slavic Review) "Men Out of Focus is beautifully written and argued. It includes persuasive readings of Soviet films from the forties, fifties, and sixties and employs those readings to create a fresh picture of postwar Soviet society. Carefully situated in the scholarly literature on Soviet film and on the historiography of the postwar Soviet Union, it is a must read for scholars interested in Soviet film and society as well as those interested in gender and in European cinema." - Peter C. Pozefsky, College of Wooster (The Journal of Modern History) "Men Out of Focus is a rich interdisciplinary study that will be of value to anyone interested in the postwar period in the Soviet Union and its cultural production. Marko Dumančić’s book is a great example of how in-depth studies of cinema, literature, and popular culture can be mined for "history" and vice versa." - Lilya Kaganovsky, University of California, Los Angeles (American Historical Review)

    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.

    List of Illustrations
    Acknowledgments

    Introduction: Soviet Men in Need of Saving?

    1. What Was Stalinist Masculinity and Why Did It Change?

    2. Being a Dad Is Not for Sissies

    3. Fathers versus Sons, or, the Great Soviet Family in Trouble

    4. The Trouble with Women: Consumerism and the Death of Rugged Masculinity

    5. Our Friend the Atom? Science as a Threat to Masculinity

    6. 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

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