Page 116 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

absolute freedom, 3 6 they constitute a new hyper-realistic development of the horror genre. Predicated
on exploitation of the 'new' Russian poor - hippies, drug addicts, beggars, alcoholics - it reverses the
noumenal obsession of Russian literature with the 'lower depths', prompted by its sense of guilt and
compassion, into its diabolical double: intense psychological fear of destitution, born out of purely
phenomenal - and neo-capitalist - preoccupation with physical and social well-being
OF FREAKS AND MEN: PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR FROM THE MODERN INTO THE
POSTMODERN

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, society was gripped by profound disappointment and
scepticism, threatening to wipe out not only the myth of Paradise on Earth but also the very notion
of good. This bleak mood is best reflected in Alexei Balabanov's Pro urodov I ljudei (Of Freaks and
Men, 1998) as it ventures into the little discussed pornographic industry, identifying sex with waste
of creativity, with nothingness, the major cause for the 'universal tragedy of the dualism of the
phenomenal and noumenal worlds'. Like Island of the Dead, Of Freaks and Men is a meta-linguistic
pastiche about the formative years of Russian cinema. Both films recognise the ambiguous role of the
new medium in the 'universal tragedy' but Kovalov believes in cinema's mediating power to break the
compulsory cycle of repetitions and exorcise the collective unconscious from its death wish before it
is too late.
Conversely, Balabanov sees cinema as an accessory to this death wish, worse — its instrument. The
allure of death in Russian arts has traditionally defied the magnetism of sex. The presence of death
- whether related to Christian Orthodox mysticism or violations of its powerful taboos or by imports
of the Gothic - is strongly felt in the Russian arts from the turn of the nineteenth century. Indeed,
what many leading literarati saw in the new medium was its death-like quality, linked to temporality
and material decay. Maxim Gorky's feeling of cinema as 'The Kingdom of Shadows',

was shared by many ... Russian writers [who] treated cinema as a minor literary cliche ... a
convenient metaphor for death. ... For Zinaida Gippius ... the colorless figures of the screen
evoked the legendary 'White Nights' of Russia's northern capital and ... the phantoms they
were believed to conjure up. ... The 'symbolism' that [her hero] perceived in the cinema ...
was a part of a larger cultural pattern, the so-called 'myth of St. Petersburg' ... a favorite point
of reference for Russian Symbolist writers, to whom the ending of the world and the swamp-
like instability of seemingly solid reality were of special interest as literary motifs.'7

Lacan's argument that the death drive is by far the strongest one, 3 8 overpowering even the sexual,
is very relevant to the discussion of Balabanov's film, arguably the first one featuring intense
psychological horror to come out of contemporary Russia. The film is structured around characters,
introduced in three episodes, made in the style of the first silent shorts. Their theme is announced
in inter-titles: 'Johann passes through immigration control and enters the town', 'Doctor Stasov
adopts the Siamese twins' and 'Engineer Radlov and his wife photograph their daughter Liza'. The
ensuing events take place a few years later and feature the same characters, their families and maids,

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