Igor Mantsov. Brothers and sisters

Brothers and sisters
Igor Mantsov

Publication date: June 24, 2004

“The boy and the girl loved each other like brother and sister, although they were neither relatives nor cousins ​​at all, but just neighbors” - Andersen, “The Snow Queen”, good . The first half of the phrase declares love secured by blood relationship, that is, not dependent on time and whims. Further, however, follows a witty clarification: there is no common blood, Kai and Gerda are “just neighbors,” which means they have a chance for a legitimate life together, for doubling the feeling: combining constant love with transient love, reliability with risk, everyday life with adventure. The irresistible charm of the text stems precisely from this anthropological ambiguity.

The “brother and sister” archetype is one of the most effective mechanisms of meaning formation. Andersen moves towards "paradise", that is, inalienable, guaranteed love. However, if a boy and a girl are not “just neighbors,” something opposite happens, “hell.” Still the same guaranteed love, which does not need to be won and kept, but already forbidden. “Brother and Sister” is an ideal combination for plots with good amplitude: hell - heaven - and back. This is the "Little Demon". If I’m not confused, Peredonov sleeps with his sister Varvara, and this explains a lot about him. More than is usually noticed.

On one of David Tukhmanov’s records it sounded something like “Child, my sister, let’s go to those lands where you and I can’t be separated...” . In the book version, these, as well as any other lines of the translated Baudelaire, are decent. Russian literature is, by definition, “decent.” Russian speech blocks any attacks on morality and external good behavior. In this connection, the desperate resistance of the zealots of morality to the sensational Russian “pornographers” is absolutely incomprehensible. Perhaps the texts of pornographers are truly indecent when translated into French or English? But in Russian they look quite innocent , no more dangerous than Baudelaire.

As always, Tukhmanov proved himself to be an insightful anthropologist. Having unmistakably entrusted the number to young Alexander Barykin, he returned to the original source what the text had lost in translation into Russian. Remaining within the aesthetics of the Soviet VIA, Barykin nevertheless presented a decadent languor and vicious curiosity. His always recognizable voice boldly balanced on the line between permitted good behavior and a barely concealed will to crime. I remember my childhood confusion: Barykin sang the permitted words “child, my sister” with some unresolved overtones, not yet clear, but already exciting. With some kind of voluptuous passion.

Andersen came to the rescue: when Kai and Gerda returned from their travels, “the door seemed low ,” because they “had become adults . ” That’s how it is, little me reasoned, this song is about an adult brother and sister, and adults are allowed more. Like what? Let's compare two films about incest. It will be interesting.

Bernardo Bertolucci presented a triangle. Here is his “Dreamers” : 1968, Paris, twenty-year-old heroes. During the absence of their parents, a brother and sister live in the house of an American student. Noticing that new acquaintances are sleeping naked in the same bed, the American is surprised in much the same way as the young me was surprised by the baryka’s vocals: he stares in amazement at the intertwined bodies, in the morning at breakfast he is silent like a fish.

The plot inherits a long tradition, the foundations of which were laid by Henry James, who entertained the public with stories of the clash of American innocence with European sophistication. The brother and sister drag the American into their radical amusements. All three are film buffs and regulars at the Cinematheque. Anyone who fails to guess which movie this or that line is from is fined. First, the sister demands that the brother who has committed a crime publicly masturbate in front of a portrait of Marlene Dietrich. Then the brother demands from the losing American to have intercourse with his sister, who, to the surprise of the newly made lover, turns out to be a virgin.

At a time when revolution is raging on the streets of Paris, three people lock themselves in the house, eating away their parents' money. An American sleeps with a woman, seeking not only the body, but also the soul. However, the brother gloomily insists that the woman truly belongs only to him, that his sister is an inalienable part of him. In the finale, the heroes end up on the street. The brother drags his half, his sister, to the barricades. The American man in love protests, offering his wonderful self to the woman, but in vain.

First, let's deal with incest, with which everything is not as simple as it seems. proverb On the one hand, the Azande states: “Attraction to a woman begins with the sister . ” But here is a polemical attack from a representative of the Arapesh tribe : “Would you like to marry your sister? But what will that give you? Don’t you want to have brothers-in-law? If you marry another person’s sister, and another person marries your sister, you will have "There will be at least two brothers-in-law. If you marry your sister, then you will not have a single brother-in-law. Who will you go hunting with? With whom will you work the field? Who can you go to visit?"

Claude Lévi-Strauss notes that there is nothing to suggest that marriages between blood relatives are biologically harmful, at least not in the long term. The danger of recessive defects completely disappears after just a few generations, and bad heredity can easily be caused by a hundred other reasons. Men refuse to marry their close relatives, agreeing to give them as wives to representatives of other family groups in which they can choose their own wives, in order to ensure social exchange. According to Levi-Strauss, the ban on incest is the decisive event thanks to which the transition from nature to culture took place .

In the episode when a brother , forever in love with his sister , gritting his teeth, still gives her to a stranger , Bertolucci demonstrates how in the depths of our everyday life, here and now , every moment, there is something unidentified by anyone, but no less grandiose than thousands of years ago. , the work of transforming nature into culture!

For culture is not a purely translated Baudelaire, but the whimsical voice of Barykin, returning Baudelaire's identity. Culture is not a library, universal literacy and the most reading country. Culture is the blood on the hands and lips of an American student who has just entered into an exchange relationship with someone else's family, so that he has someone to visit, with whom to hunt and plow. Culture is the sperm spewed by a brother onto a portrait of Marlene Dietrich at the request of a loving sister who denies him the last intimacy. Thus encouraging him to look for a woman on the side. Culture is a terrible effort . Culture means voluntarily giving up your blood so that a society can be realized from lawless and self-seeking savages. This is what Bertolucci's great film is ultimately about.

The cinephilia of the characters is annoying until you recognize it as the equivalent of Culture, teaching young people social codes and norms of behavior. Bertolucci makes the characters imitate the stars of the screen, and in the stated context this imitation signifies the Culture's tireless work of self-preservation. Correlating their gestures and remarks with the behavior of screen stars, Bertolucci’s cinephiles carry out the same social exchange, but no longer at the level of biological matter, but at the level of signs. They seem to go beyond the boundaries of their biological bodies, identifying themselves as members of certain social groups.

Of particular interest are the themes of the Revolution and the theme of America, which space does not allow to develop. I will only note that the “liberty, equality and fraternity” canonized by the modern liberal state give priority to the individual over the group. Of course, this is nothing more than a project, a declaration and a utopia, because social connections always, in any society, limit the freedom of a private person. However, utopias are contagious, and projects are realized for a while. That’s why in the finale the brother and sister unexpectedly resign to the American: by rushing into the Revolution, it’s as if they are breaking the social contract! Refusing exchange and everyday reproduction of sociality, they are betting on a miracle, on a leap into the impossible! They hope, like Kai and Gerda, to find paradise. However, being a brother and a husband at the same time, without social consequences, is possible only in a fairy tale. In reality, love comes with the risk of losing it.

Igor Minaev's film Moonlight Glades , which won at Kinoshock a couple of years ago and has now settled on television, embodied the collective unconscious of post-Soviet Russia. Of course, it was “ordered” by our new elites, but, in all honesty, the majority of the country’s population agrees with the morality of the elites, although they pretend to be an injured lamb and groan.

Brother and sister are in love. Since childhood, secretly from their parents, they have slept in the same bed. Then a radical difference from Bertolucci’s plot begins: having reached puberty, the brother and sister, by mutual consent, copulate, becoming husband and wife! To explain the depth of the fall of the post-Soviet society , I would demonstrate these pictures in pairs, in the Duma and the Security Council, with commentary.

So, in order to preserve the existing social order, so as not to share anything with anyone , our lovebirds refuse to exchange! Everything goes into the family: both seed and affection. The brother rejects his sister's girlfriend, a sexy girl with a saxophone. The brother copies Chekhov and Dostoevsky by hand: he learns genius. The sister affectionately combs the stubborn curls of her literate beloved: “You are talented! Oh, the poems of previous years! You simply must write!”

The elites and the masses who agree with them in the depths of their hare souls want to consume without risking anything. Let me remind you that the problem is not that monsters will be born in corporate communities. And to hell with them, with other people's freaks! The trouble is that everyone else will have nothing at all.

Who will they go hunting with tomorrow? With whom will they work the field? The lawless lovers of Moonglades take poison and die. The only possible, inevitable ending. We're waiting, sir.