Literature Review Starring:
Russian Children's
Literature and Culture (2013) Edited by Marina
Balina and Larissa Rudova. Florence: Routledge.
The Storytelling Animal :
How Stories Make Us Human (2012) By Jonathan Gottschall.
Boston: Mariner Books.
Today’s blog will be a casual literature review of Russian Children’s Literature and Culture,
edited by Marina Balina and Larissa Rudova and the paperback The Storytelling Animal, written by Jonathan
Gottschall. Both of these texts were ones which I had chosen to deepen my
understanding of narrative messaging, how storytelling can be used to
disseminate information and the effectiveness of such a form.
The first text Russian
Children’s Literature and Culture is a 390-page book containing 16
monographs on specific aspects of children’s entertainment in the Soviet Union.
As I had a limited loan on this book I chose to focus on only two of these
monographs which studied film and animation.
The 1st monography was: Arresting Development: A brief History of Soviet Cinema for Children
and Adults by Alexander Prokhorov. As the title suggests, this text was a
historical account of the development of Russian cinema over the 20th
Century, and how it was adopted by the government to communicate propagandist
messaging to children and adults. In the beginning Russia cinema was more
commercially focused, however as time went on the Bolshevik (Russian Social
Democrats) Party came to see its potential as an educational tool to
disseminate their communist ideologies. The text is very informative in these
areas, going into detail, analysing how films succeeded or failed in achieving
this. Stalinist era children’s films would often exploit the impressionable
nature of their target audience, using appealing characters, environments and
genres as a hook whilst bombarding them with ideological messaging at the same
time. Protagonists as walking models of the communist ideal were wholly loyal
to their county and tended to demonstrate self-sacrificial behaviour, martyrs.
The author quotes Evgenii Donrenko, who writes how these films fostered an
‘infantile deindividualized audience, obedient to the government as the
audience’s ultimate parent. Infantilism guarantees the underdevelopment of
individual personality and agency.’ Essentially brainwashing viewers into
accepting these ideologies.
The second monography I read, Comforting Creatures in Children’s Cartoons by Birgit Beumers, gave
a deeper analysis into the animated films of this time which were treated very
differently to their live action counterparts.
Unlike live action, animation was not fully adopted by the government
and was often sidelined to communicate economic and political news. Without
being bound to the same level of scrutiny, it had less constraints and could
therefor get away with its subversive critiques of society. The boom of Disney
in America saw a rise of animation in Russia with the government beginning to
appreciate the impact which it had on Children. Fairy tales were commonly
chosen as the narrative medium of choice, the author writes: ‘the fairy tale
suited propaganda purposes for two reasons: on the one hand by drawing on
national heritage, on the other hand because of the inherent element of moral
instruction as considered appropriate over centuries and could therefore hardly
contradict socialist principals.’ However, fairy tales worked to both serve and
dismiss propagandist messaging, focusing on morality rather than ideology.
Visually, Russian animation was far less cartoony than its
American counterpart, many animators coming from graphic design backgrounds.
Some films had a very realistic aesthetic with character animation based off live
action reference, others, like the work of Yuri Norstein, had a much more
handcrafted feel, using painted textures and/or puppet animation.
Overall, I found this text to be very informative, it was
especially interesting to know some of the workings behind propagandist film
making and how certain film making decisions can work for and against their
messaging. In terms of my research project and its focus on narrative as a
communications tool, this text provided me with some insight into how fairy
tales, which are associated with tradition and morality could function as
familiar (safe) vessels for with to safely conceal ideologies and messages.
The second text, The
Storytelling Animal illustrates the breadth of storytelling and how it
permeates our lives and culture, covering television, dreams, advertising,
science media etc. The text also studies how stories effect our brains, how
narrative sufficiently simulates real world events enough that it tricks us
into believing them as real (which is why as spectators we become so
emotionally invested in the stories we are reading). The author speculates why
this may be the case and why we are drawn to storytelling in general, ‘fiction
allows our brains to practice reacting to the kinds of challenges that are, and
always were, most crucial to our success as a species.’ He also brings up some
interesting research such as fiction being more persuasive in disseminating
information than non-fiction, which has to do with us dropping our guards when
we are immersed in story.
Like Russian Children’s
Literature and Culture, The
Storytelling Animal observes the function of narratives in helping us, as
humans, understand the world. The former mentioned text observes the different
forms of storytelling for children in Russia with great emphasis on its role in
propaganda, governments employing narrative devices to engage viewers whilst
feeding them subversive, ideological messages. The Storytelling Animal could be seen as a sort of prequel to this
book, while Russian Children’s Literature
and Culture is very specific, The
Storytelling Animal is quite general and highlights the breadth of
storytelling in our culture. Despite the fact that this text could have been
longer or more focused it does a pretty good job capturing how and why we are
attracted to stories and how, like humans, stories have adapted over time.
