/lit/ - Literature

In Arsenal, Dovzhenko foregrounds an ‘aesthetic of anarchy’. Contemporaneously writing about Arsenal, Eisenstein commented on this anarchy as a rearticulation of film form: “The liberation of the whole action from the definition of time and space. . .a dramaturgy of the visual film form”[152].

In Culture and Imperialism Edward Said suggests that ‘nation states’ and ‘imperiums’ themselves are ‘narratives’ and ‘fictions’ with their own structured ‘mythologies’[153]. Said suggests a correlation between the nineteenth century realist narrative and a culture of imperialism. Dovzhenko figures an avant-garde liberation against this type of formal imperial correlative. In terms of film form, Arsenal’s thrust is against the ‘three act narrative structure’. In a contemporary review (1929), Eisenstein would comment about Arsenal , “I do not think there will be any students of this genre either. Perhaps this is one of the consumer faults in a planned economy”.[154] Eisenstein’s valorization makes a connection between a cultural superstructure and a certain type of ascendant economic base, now at variance with Dovzhenko’s aesthetic. Significantly, in 1929, Eisenstein places Arsenal’s form in alignment with the revolution’s utopian aspirations.