scholarly journals Ken Loach,Family Lifeand Socialist Realism: Some Historical and Theoretical Aspects

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
Mark Cresswell ◽  
Zulfia Karimova
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
Institutional Psychiatry ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Ken Loach

This article considers certain historical and theoretical aspects of Ken Loach's 1971 film about mental illness, Family Life. Historically, it explores the film's influences, particularly that of the 1960s ‘anti-psychiatry’ and counter-cultural figure, R. D. Laing. To this end, the article examines in detail a contemporaneous critique of Family Life, namely Peter Sedgwick's hostile review for Socialist Worker in 1972. In the light of this critique, the article then reconsiders, theoretically, Loach's strategies of socialist-realist representation in Family Life, particularly as they relate to, firstly, mental illness and institutional psychiatry; and secondly, the distinction drawn by Raymond Williams between artistic and political forms of representation.

“Socialist Realist” Critiques of Neoliberal “Shock Therapy”

2019 ◽  
pp. 431-451
Author(s):  
April A. Eisman
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Shock Therapy ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
German Art ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
East German ◽  
Insight Into

This article focuses on the East German artistic response to the 1973 putsch in Chile, an event now recognized as foundational in the development of neoliberalism. Outraged and saddened, artists in East Germany responded to the putsch with thousands of works of art. These works disrupt Western expectations for East German art, which was far more modern and complex than the term “socialist realism” might suggest. They also offer insight into the horrors of the putsch and remind us that there have been—and can once again be—alternatives to neoliberal capitalism. In addition to creating prints, paintings, and sculptures, East German artists organized solidarity events to raise money for Chile and spearheaded a book project with artists from sixteen communist and capitalist countries to document the event and losses suffered. This article ultimately shows that communist visual culture can serve as a model for art as an activist practice.

Socialist Realism and Socialist Realist Romanticism

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-277
Author(s):  
Irina Zavedeeva ◽  
Albina Ozieva ◽  
Jeremy Howard
Keyword(s):  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Socialist Realist

The Hopscotch of Life

2019 ◽  
pp. 77-98
Author(s):  
Ashwin Desai ◽  
Goolam Vahed
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Textile Industry ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Home Life ◽  
Indian Family ◽  
Extended Families ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
The 1960S

In this chapter, we delve into the lives of working class women, many of whom obtained jobs in the clothing and textile industry from the 1960s, and whose incomes were crucial for upward mobility. It reveals how they negotiate life in an environment of extended families and patriarchal relations and how paid work offered them freedoms from the strictures of home life. Of particular relevance is showing how post 1990 the opening of the economy to cheap imports affected the lives of working class women and in turn, what consequences this had for Indian family life.

Szasz and the Law: An Alternative View

1976 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee S. Weinberg ◽  
Richard E. Vatz
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Previous Issue ◽  
Medical Models ◽  
Institutional Psychiatry ◽  
Thomas Szasz

In a previous issue C. G. Schoenfeld attempted to disprove Thomas Szasz’ theory that mental illness is a “myth” and to dispute Szasz’ contention that current views of “mental illness” promote violent subjugation of human freedom in institutional and legal settings. This article argues that typical of many who criticize Dr. Szasz, Mr. Schoenfeld misunderstands and misrepresents Szasz’ rich theoretical arguments concerning “mental illness” and the prevalent use in law and institutional psychiatry of medical models for analyzing human behavior. Additionally, the authors urge responsible researchers to further pursue the implications of an accurate understanding of Szasz’ arguments for legal theory and practice.

Stalinallee

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Stangl
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
State Building ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Housing Issue ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
Building Program

For more than a century before the war, debate over the “housing issue” engaged politicians and reformers in Berlin, although Communists refused to participate, seeking revolution rather than reform. After World War II, newly empowered Communists had no choice but to address the housing crisis. Initially they joined others in supporting modernist planning efforts, with a first “residential cell” that would be constructed along Frankfurter Allee in Friedrichshain. The introduction of socialist realism necessitated a halt in construction as new plans for a monumental Stalinallee were developed. This formed the centerpiece of the state building program until the 1953 Uprising, which along with a shift to industrialized construction in the Soviet Union would result in a search for a new “socialist architecture.” As a result, the section of the street between Straussbergerplatz and Alexanderplatz would be built combining some socialist-realist tenets with modernism, while highlighting technological power.

scholarly journals Hidden Modernism: Architecture Theory of the Socialist Realist Gap

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Borbála Jász
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Le Corbusier ◽  
Architectural Theory ◽  
Public Buildings ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Architecture Theory ◽  
Late Modern

The aim of this paper is to clarify and exemplify the difference between modern, socialist realism and late modern in architecture. In the general pre-theoretical use of these terms, this distinction is often blurred; a unified expression, socialist realism, is used for all the aforementioned terms. This paper will examine a possible answer for this phenomenon by using examples from different areas of eastern-Central Europe, especially from Hungarian architecture.The paper first focuses on the façadism of socialist realism in the architecture of eastern-Central Europe. Following this, it shows that the architectural tendencies of classical modernism did not disappear in this period; they were just not explicitly manifest in case of public buildings for example. Finally, the paper argues that after this socialist realist gap, architectural theory and planning tendencies of the interwar period returned and continued, especially the work of Le Corbusier.

Lyrical Socialist Realism

October ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 147 ◽  
pp. 56-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Kiaer
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Large Piece ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
Geometric Patterns ◽  
Soviet Art ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Revolutionary History

The thirty-three-year-old artist Aleksandr Deineka was given a large piece of wall space at the exhibition 15 Years of Artists of the RSFSR at the Russian Museum in Leningrad in 1932. At the center of the wall hung his most acclaimed painting, The Defense of Petrograd of 1928, a civil-war-themed canvas showing marching Bolshevik citizens, defending against the incursions of the White armies on their city, arrayed in flattened, geometric patterns across an undifferentiated white ground. The massive 15 Years exhibition attempted to sum up the achievements of Russian Soviet art since the revolution as well as point toward the future, and Deineka, in spite of his past association with “leftist” (read: avant-garde) artistic groups such as OST (the Society of Easel Painters) and October, was among those younger artists who were anointed by exhibition organizers as leading the way forward toward Socialist Realist art—a concept that was being formulated through both the planning of and critical response to this very display of so many divergent Soviet artists. Known for his magazine illustrations and posters, Deineka had also established himself at a young age as a major practitioner of monumental painting in a severe graphic style that addressed socialist themes, such as revolutionary history (e.g., Petrograd), and, as his other works displayed at the Leningrad exhibition demonstrate, proletarian sport (Women's Cross-Country Race and Skiers, both 1931) the ills of capitalism (Unemployed in Berlin, 1932), and the construction of the new Soviet everyday life (Who Will Beat Whom?, 1932).

scholarly journals Ken Loach and the Comedians: The Politics of ‘Acting’

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 280-302
Author(s):  
Neil Archer
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Film Making ◽  
Ken Loach ◽  
Theoretical Considerations

This article explores a gap in the scholarship on Ken Loach's film-making, focusing on his casting of comedians in central roles and the specific impacts of such casting strategies across Loach's work. While the relevance of such casting to Loach's project has been anecdotally acknowledged in criticism, this article recommends a more systematic historical and aesthetic approach. After summarising the theoretical considerations around acting as a practice and its ‘problem’ within Loach's terms, I consequently look at the broader institutional and political contexts of actor preparation training and casting in British television and film since Loach's emergence as a director in the 1960s, and the relevance of comedian casting within these. Drawing on a sample of Loach's films, I then offer a more systematic analysis of how the comedian's body, voice and action signify, examining how such ‘realist’ performances respond to the cultural conventions of ‘trained’ actor practice, as well as the narrative and broader institutional conventions of comedy performance in mainstream film.

The New Left and its legacies

Soundings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (74) ◽  
pp. 136-163
Author(s):  
Michael Rustin ◽  
Jeremy Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
New Left ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Stuart Hall ◽  
May Day ◽  
History Of ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Relationship Of

Mike Rustin discusses his lifelong involvement in the New Left, which began when he was still at school. He describes the history of the First New Left, including the role played within it by figures such as Stuart Hall, Edward Thompson and Raymond Williams, and the role of the New Left in student politics in Oxford University, where Michael was a student and a leading member of the Labour club. He looks at the changing relationships between the New Left and the Labour Party in the 1960s and the publication of the May Day Manifesto in 1967. He also discusses the founding of the New Left Review and the transition from the time of its first editor, Stuart Hall, to that of its second, Perry Anderson, as well his two terms as a member of its editorial board, and his continuing disagreements and agreements with its editorial direction. His reflections on contemporary politics include a discussion of the relationship of New Left ideas to current movements and the Labour Party, a critique of vanguardism, and the founding of Soundings.

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