![\"Chip_impersonation2\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitaldomostroi\/files\/2014\/11\/Chip_impersonation2.jpg\")
<\/a>There is a precedent for this kind of widespread performance of class. As Sheila Fitzpatrick argues in\u00a0Tear Off the Masks<\/em>, the chaos of the Civil War destroyed the material basis of the proletariat, forcing the Bolsheviks \u201cto invent the classes that their Marxist theoretical commitments told them must exist\u201d by ascribing class identities to people based on factors other than their relationship to the means of production (29). In order to be ascribed to the \u201cclass\u201d that legitimated Bolshevik power, people began to \u201cimpersonate\u201d proletarians, seeking to be identified as a member of that class by behaving as a member of it should.<\/p>\n Lacking the material basis for an appropriately presentable middle class, Russian filmmakers have engaged in a similar process of invention, filling their screen with characters who behave as middle class characters should, performing impersonations of ideal models drawn from outside of Russia. Piling performance on performance, impersonation on impersonation, the primary role of the cinematic middle class seems to be to embody the inauthenticity that Western culture has long pinpointed as a central characteristic of their middle classes. Thus in Roman Prygunov\u2019s\u00a0Dukhless<\/em>\u2014itself an imitation of a French original, Jan Kounen\u2019s\u00a099 Francs<\/em>\u00a0(2007)\u2014Max performs the role of a ruthless corporate schemer. He is allowed to truly become himself only with the loss of his position and wealth at the conclusion of the film (a near-death experience in the back of a garbage truck helps as well). Middle class Marina, the heroine of Angelina Nikonova\u2019s\u00a0Twilight Portrait<\/em>, is so entranced by the simple authenticity of Andrei, a suburban policeman, that she abandons the shallowness of her own life. The fact that, before meeting Andrei, she was merely performing the role of wife, mistress, and social worker is made clear to her when he along with two other policemen rape her, causing reality to brutally intrude on her impersonation of a happy woman.<\/p>\n Perhaps the place of inauthenticity, impersonation, and performance at the heart of the Russian cinematic middle class is most clearly visible in Dmitirii Fiks\u2019s\u00a0White Moor, or Intimate Stories about My Neighbors<\/em>. The film\u2019s three male protagonists lead private lives revolving around deception. Andrei is unfaithful to his wife and Lenia is a closeted homosexual. While Misha is not as overtly deceptive as the others, his daughter diagnoses in him an existential inauthenticity, that prevents him have having real relationships either. This is related to Misha\u2019s choice of profession\u2014he is an actor who is shown throughout the film playing the lead role in\u00a0Othello<\/em>, a Western role-model for tales romantic intrigue and deception among a professional class. As in\u00a0Dukhless\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Twilight Portrait<\/em>, Misha\u2019s performance is interrupted by reality as he is stabbed by his wife after attempting to strangle her in a fit of (authentic) rage before turning to his daughter and asking, \u201cam I real now?\u201d<\/p>\n November 2013<\/p>\n Works Cited:<\/p>\n Fitzpatrick, Sheila.\u00a0Tear Off the Masks: Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia<\/em>. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chip Crane, University of Pittsburgh In \u201cCooperation,\u201d the fourth section of Sergei Loban\u2019s\u00a0Chapiteau Show, Roma Kuz’menko is a Viktor Tsoi impersonator being used by Serezha, a promoter obsessed with simulacra, in an attempt to replace the original Tsoi with an \u201cersatz star.\u201d The game played with the relationship between image and reality by the film, … Continue reading Impersonation, or How to Play a Middle Class Russian<\/span> <\/a>