AREQUIPA ‐ PERU
2.2.5 CARACTERÍSTICAS DE LA DEPRESIÓN:
Mitia expresses no desire of aborting his hockey career and his commitment to Danila’s and his twin brother’s (nationalistic war) cause is unclear and doubtful. Instead he is wearing bright colours, has an expensive flat and is interested in the future income from his career when he is handed back his money by Danila. This suggests assimilation and integration into American society and being an ice-hockey star as an attractive Russian commodity.27 It could even be asserted that Mitia’s cultural capital is one that is viewed favourably in the labour migration system, which is underlined by the ‘Russian’ (Russian-speaking) players continuously coming to get Mitia when he meets Danila on the skating rink. The hockey players abroad could be viewed as the banal nationalism of a small nation, cherishing their homegrown products doing well in the US. Balabanov, however, is far more subtle than this, connoting Mitia’s ‘cowardly’ interest in money rather than in ‘truth.’
Nationalism thrives in newly emancipated states that seek to revert the neo-colonial processes, which have emerged after the colonial administration has left. This
26 The scene in Brother 2 bears resemblances to a scene in Meeting Venus when Szanto encounters with
the West in Paris. However, where Szanto is passive and comments from the voice-over, Viktor is active in ridiculing the system.
27Postmark Paradise (Thompson E. Clay, 2000) equally has this discussion about the best hockey
player and the all-American characters have troubles finding an American player to celebrate as the best. In the end, they land on a Russian player. This mirrors a discussion in Eddie Murphy’s film,
Coming to America (1988), where in a barber’s shop they discuss sports legends and have trouble finding a white American boxer to counter the vast contingency of Black boxing champions.
courting of nationalism by the decolonised state is deeply contentious; it often leads to a bourgeois nationalist ideology, which is equally problematic. Here, the exploitation of class replaces the exploitation of the colonised, or what Frantz Fanon saw as narrow self-enslavement to capitalism.28 Nationalism, according to Fanon, should promote a “would-be hegemonic form of national consciousness – a liberationist, anti-imperialist, nationalist internationalism” (Lazarus 1999, 162). The national project, in Fanon’s mind, has the potential to become a vehicle for new international formations, which through the articulation and expression of resistance, creates changed social(ist) constellations (Lazarus 1999, 163). In accordance with this, Balabanov resists the neo-colonial system through the expression of nationalism, which allows him to claim that there is a ‘truth’ that can be articulated and valorised only through the rejection of the capitalist, hegemonic centre.
Returning to Mitia then, the perception of his treason lies in the fact that he has become successful abroad; he has accepted the bourgeois nationalism of exploitation and has abandoned resistance. In this criticism, the position of the filmmakers becomes paramount, because this is not a diasporic film that seeks to highlight a success story of how to become integrated into a host society. On the contrary, the expressed ‘treason’ of the emigrant comes from the ‘home’ country, Russia, and is therefore not likely to laud the shedding of a ‘true’ Russian identity in favour of a hybrid one.
28 In the opening of Balabanov’s film, there is mockery of the new Russian class of entrepreneurs. A
heavy Russian man is shooting an advertisement spot, where he is reciting Pushkin without affection while staying by his massive jeep.
Part 1: Russian Cinema
Chapter 3: Russians Abroad in Drama Fiction
If Mitia is not excited by Danila’s cause, then the same cannot be said for Dasha. We as spectators are introduced to Dasha when Danila enters Chicago in Ben Johnson’s truck. They drive down a street where three African-American prostitutes are
standing. When they stop at a red light, Dasha jumps into the truck and offers Danila a blow job for $35 and $10 for Ben to watch. Danila refuses and Dasha jumps down swearing in Russian. Danila immediately catches up with her and asks for her name. Dasha first replies ‘Marilyn,’ but when Danila keeps asking for her Russian name she replies ‘Dasha.’ Danila gives her a ten-dollar bill, but just as Ben and Danila drive off in the truck, Dasha’s pimp arrives. He gets the bill from Dasha and hits her. Danila wants to stop the truck, but Ben tells him that this is the way pimps treat their prostitutes.
Danila’s encounter with Dasha is significant on two accounts: firstly because throughout a good part of the narrative Danila searches for and finds Dasha, who becomes his ‘sister’-in-arms, and, secondly, because Danila ‘saves’ Dasha from prostitution and, more importantly, from the grasp of the foreign land. After meeting Dasha, Danila obsessively goes looking for her. It becomes his mission, equally important to him as retrieving the money from Richard Mennis. Why is there such an urge to save this Russian prostitute, who is not as glamorous as Danila’s conquests (Irina Saltykova and Lisa Jeffrey)? On the one hand, this could be seen as Danila’s way into the criminal world where he can get the required weaponry for dealing with the American gangster. On the other hand, Dasha also represents the fallen Russian woman, who has, because of wrong actions (migration), been led into a foreign Sodom and Gomorra. Dasha ‘needs’ a guiding hand to be led back to the fold where
she ‘belongs,’ and Danila, of course, is the man who can do this. This is why the two, Dasha and Danila, click and form a bond. When the two enter Lisa Jeffrey’s flat, she asks Dasha whether they are gangsters, upon which Dasha replies, ‘no, we’re
Russians.’ The bond of Dasha and Danila is not defined by a transnational
brotherhood of crime, but one that is mostly cemented by their shared nationality. In this regard, it is highly significant that Dasha is de-gendered after her rescue from her African-American pimp by having her head cleanly shaven and by changing into a green boiler suit. In removing her attractiveness, the representation destroys her connotation as a prostitute; she is no longer the postcommunist female, trapped in the clothes that neo-colonial capitalism has made her wear. She has been liberated from her postcolonial condition. Together with male resistance to neo-colonial power structures, this is a female awakening to fight the American system of exploitation.
The shaven head, which marks Dasha out, is used in the final scene of the film, where she is on the plane back to Russia with Danila. Dasha asks the flight attendant for vodka, but he refuses on the ground that no drinking is allowed before take off. Dasha is not deterred by this saying, ‘boy, you don’t understand.’ And while taking off her wig and showing her bald head, she says, ‘bring us some vodka. We’re flying home.’ The steward replies, ‘Oh, I see, I’ll be right back.’ The indication here is that she is severely ill and should therefore be granted a drink. The connection between the fallen woman and sickness suggests that ‘émigré illness’ can be healed, or at least reversed, by drinking vodka as a symbol of homecoming.
Part 1: Russian Cinema
Chapter 3: Russians Abroad in Drama Fiction
Something that cannot be healed is, however, the rape of Russian women in the snuff rape tapes that Richard Mennis deals in. He sells them in the US as an ‘attractive’ (cultural) commodity, as alluded to early in the film when Mennis has a meeting with Belkin, the Russian banker. We discover this when Danila goes to the Metro club to find Richard Mennis and settle the score with him. In the style of a videogame, Danila walks through the murky corridors of the American club shooting everybody he meets. Danila finally reaches Mennis’ overweight accountant, who informs him that Mennis has left. However, on a small television screen a rape scene is played. This is a direct reference to Richard Mennis’ business, all built, allegedly, on exploitation of weakened postcommunist Russians. The woman in the snuff-movie screams ‘let me go’ in Russian. Her rapists are also Russian, as they too speak in Russian, however, it all plays out as a ‘foreign’ rape, or rape for foreign consumption. It is with the
violated woman that Danila (and audiences) identify. The camera shows Danila’s point of view when he shoots the TV and thus puts an end to the onscreen rape scene.
The issues of space and spheres of contact are interconnected with how willing, or unwilling, the characters are in forming lasting cross-cultural relationships (Shohat and Stam 1994, 46). Agency and resistance are shown through actions of the characters, which are constructed by filmmakers off-screen. The postcolonial syncretism ranges from voluntary union between characters to involuntary violent rape. It is not a coincidence that in Balabanov’s Brother 2 a Russian woman is raped; it is the strongest reason one can give for his attempt to reverse the postcommunist neo-colonial power structure. Thus, the rape has a significant place in the film and in its effort to tell ‘the truth’ about exploitation in a unipolar world, which is ruled by
Americans and where Russians are relegated to a secondary role. It is not a fluke that the videos are produced for American consumption, because, as champion of the First World, the US is also, in the eyes of the exploited, the champion of the neo-colonial exploitation.29
Conclusion
In Urga, Sergei is the ex-colonial settler, who, like Gombo, is positioned in a no- man’s land where powerful centres yield their influences. However, like the French pieds noir, Sergei is not free from carrying colonial connotations, as was seen with the performance of the song, ‘On the Hills of Manchuria.’ Sergei’s military
connotations point to pre-Soviet Russian imperialism, a choice that is particularly important when made by filmmaker like Mikhalkov, who advocates the rediscovery of a glorious Russian history.
This chapter has looked at the representation of Russians abroad in the work of a filmmaker who strongly desires to align post-Soviet Russians with the white American majority and their First World status, refusing to be ‘degraded’ to the position of Third World standing. Danila’s avoidance of the American interrogation system; his blissfully sleeping through the immigration announcement, and then final dash through immigration control, together with Viktor’s ridicule of the same border control system, all point to a refusal to accept the fallen status assigned to post-Soviet Russians by a hegemonic West. The Russians abroad in Brother 2 are positioned as
29 In Voina/War (2002) Balabanov also uses snuff videos, but this time it is the beheading of Russian
soldiers captured on video and sold on a market in southern Caucasus. Balabanov denied accusations of making this up, saying that these videos exist and therefore merit inclusion into his film. This has not been done in the case of Brother 2, but it points towards exhibiting extremes or making extremes concrete for the wider audiences.
Part 1: Russian Cinema
Chapter 3: Russians Abroad in Drama Fiction
postcommunist postcolonial subjects who seek redemption by wreaking revenge upon the Americans. The postcolonial displaced diaspora is mocked, and instead the ‘good’ Russians return from abroad to their rightful home – Russia.
What has been explored in this chapter is the nationalistic reassertion of Russia’s newly found space in relation to the West. Mikhalkov rejects Western civilisation and the alignment of values associated with the West by inserting his representation of Russianness as part of Russia’s Eastern colonial past. Mikhalkov prefers to highlight Russia’s unique position as neither Western nor Eastern, but rather the saviour of both West and East. Balabanov, on the other hand, asserts that Russians should be on an equal footing with the ‘rest’ of the First World.