‘We live like swine and die like swine, because we mean nothing to each other’: The little person, the state and nationhood in contemporary Russian film

McGinity-Peebles, Adelaide

Abstract

Since Putin's third term as president, official discourse of Russian nationhood has become increasingly statist, ethnonationalist, traditionalist and anti-Western in tone and substance. This chapter analyzes the three films, Long and Happy Life, Leviathan, and The Fool, which challenge the Russian status quo particularly through attacking post-Soviet Russian society and the state to suggest that there is, however, a strong tendency across Russian cultural and political spheres to imagine a Russianness against the ‘West'. Since Vladimir Putin's first presidency in 2000, Russia continues to frame itself with respect to its complex relationship with the ‘West', rejecting Western-style democracy for neo-authoritarian government.

Citation

McGinity-Peebles, A. (2021). ‘We live like swine and die like swine, because we mean nothing to each other’: The little person, the state and nationhood in contemporary Russian film. In G. Gergely, & S. Hayward (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to European Cinema (394-403). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003027447

• Online Publication Date: Dec 29, 2021
• Publication Date: Dec 30, 2021
• Deposit Date: Nov 24, 2023
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 394-403
• Book Title: The Routledge Companion to European Cinema
• Chapter Number: 38
• ISBN: 9780367461850
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003027447
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/27598823
• Publisher URL: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003027447-42/live-like-swine-die-like-swine-mean-nothing-adelaide-mcginity-peebles?context=ubx&refId=34809749-b509-449d-9799-4db93cda4a2c
• Related Public URLs: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-European-Cinema/Gergely-Hayward/p/book/9780367461850