FEMINIST PERFORMANCES IN THE SOCIALIST FILM: THE BULGARIAN CASE

I. INTRODUCTION

WHEN I STARTED WORKING ON MY research on gender performances in Bulgarian socialist film in 2008, the description of the socialist period in local and international media was generalized as a time of darkness and political oppression. Although useful for neo-liberal political propaganda and for the conservatives in Eastern Europe that led to the rise of neo-fascism, this description had started to gradually fall apart. Different real experiences of socialism are now shared, making the popular label of Gulag, attached undisputedly to all socialist experiences around the world, to peel out.

In this essay I review two films from 1960s Bulgaria. I hope this will contribute substantially to these much more detailed views of real socialism, and specifically to the history and the ideological complexity of feminist film making.

Many people, even art historians, would say that there was ‘no feminism’ in Bulgaria during the socialist period. This statement is completely false. It is in line with the Western colonial agenda of erasing the socialist period as a real time with real history, when people really lived and really did different things to follow their dreams for better societies and happiness. Yes, people did many more things than waiting in line for bananas, whining about the lack of variety of toilet paper, or trying to illegally cross the border with the capitalist West.

One of those things is that they created strong and rebellious female film characters that bravely critiqued the so very steady regime.

II. I AM THE REVOLUTION: TONY

TONY, (1) THE LEAD CHARACTER character in the film Monday Morning (1966), is a young woman with delinquent behavior. The film opens with a scene in which Tony is beating up a rapist with her purse. Dancho, (2) a communist activist who guards the streets from crime, helps her fight the rapist. He invites her to his house for the night, since she had missed all transportation. Tony likes him and goes with him, expecting that he wants to sleep with her. She is quite surprised, but also happy, that he leaves her alone in the room. In the morning she buys sweet buns and a pitcher of fresh milk for breakfast. They become ‘the props’ of the metaphorical sex scene that follows. She seduces him by sipping right from the pitcher, justifying this action with the lack of cups. He gets the pitcher in his hands and turns it to the point where her lips touched it and sips from there. This play continues several times until they finish the milk and represents a quite erotic and egalitarian sexual scene.

Dancho makes an attempt to return Tony back to ‘normal life.’ He wants to save her from delinquency, which was the reason she was expelled from the communist youth organization that everybody was a member of during this era. In that era, expulsion negatively affected the life and opportunities a young person could have. Dancho is a foreman of a construction unit at the shipyard and offers Tony a job there. In this male collective, however, she is not well accepted.

The first stroke between Tony and the rest of the unit is at a dinner party in the house of ZKPCH, (3) who is one of her major opponents. ZKPCH has a high position in the administration of the factory. Tony strikes everybody right away with her appearance, as she is fashionably dressed and has a good hairdo. The wives of all the other workers embody the quite unified image of a proper female citizen fitting almost any patriarchal vision of a married woman around the world. In this scene men and women are separated in two different rooms. Women are in the kitchen, talking about kids and cooking, while men are in the guest room, playing cards, smoking, and talking about ‘cool chicks.’ The frame is constructed so this division is very strongly presented visually. Tony transgresses the gender split by denying women’s offer to hang out with them ‘like women do’ and goes to check out the men because ‘it is more interesting with them.’ She also transgresses the border between the two spaces visually. She is dressed in a small black dress and has almost white-blond hair, displaying a binarity and transgression at the same time. Men first begin flirting with her and later try to humiliate her by implying that she is a whore. Tony says they know that because they themselves are whore-lovers.

The conflict between Tony, her male colleagues, and their wives unfolds in a series of scenes where she challenges their ideological hypocrisy. She is not only a feminist character, she is an ideal embodiment of both the sexual and class Revolution. She is the internal critique intrinsic to communist ideas, which have been drained by formalization and bureaucracy, against which she appeals.

Here I would like to make a short historical reference to what was called ‘women’s emancipation.’ This was a governmental program for equalizing the rights of men and women across the Socialist Block, which started in Bulgaria in 1944. The women’s emancipation program was a result of the efforts of many feminist movements that preceded them, and specifically by the socialist feminist movement, which insisted on intersectional approaches to issues of gender and class. This program, which was realized differently across the countries in the Socialist block and the Soviet Union, made changes that rapidly improved women’s rights to an extent that most Western capitalist countries are still not able to achieve. Besides granting voting rights (Soviet Russia was one of the first countries in the world after Norway to do that in 1917), women’s emancipation secured motherhood and childhood by granting fully paid maternity leave (in Bulgaria it was up to two years), free day-care, free children’s kitchens, free healthcare, free education and supported the participation of women in male dominated professions and education, to name a few. Achieving equality in the family and at the workplace, however, was a process, rather than an immediate result. Sometimes the effort of achieving equality was used for goals far from its nature. Tony embodies a critique of this hypocritical tendency.

She is used by the managing director of the ship-factory as ‘an emblem’ of women’s emancipation. “A girl (‘beautiful girl’ he says) is taking a traditionally male profession like ship building!” His cheap propaganda results in newspaper publications, while in reality Tony and he are in constant conflict about gender roles. She is almost completely rejected by her male colleagues and named a “whore.” Tony points towards double standards not only in gender relations, but in the politics of labor division. While her portrait is printed in the newspaper, male workers think she is not supposed to be in their work unit. They believe women should stay at home, cook and take care of kids, while sexual adventures outside of the family are imagined with ‘whores’ like Tony.

She leaves the work unit with a scandal. Her final and most shocking statement is against ideological hypocrisy and the union between political and patriarchal dominance. Dancho is an idealist, he believes in equality, and he loves Tony. This is the reason he is willing to accept her and her past as it is, loud, aggressive and independent. His unit is awarded the prestigious title ‘Communist Unit.’ Tony makes a big scandal and tells Dancho that this is a pure hypocrisy because there is nothing ‘communist’ about people whose ideals are philistine, and who are either interested in material goods or women. She blames him of being naïve, and compromising the very ideals of freedom and equality in which he believes. She argues that her female delinquency is her way to defend these very ideals.

Film still from Monday Morning (Ponedelnik sutrin, 1966). Directors Irina Aktasheva and Hristo Piskov.

Dancho excuses his compromising behavior, as a moderator of the conflict between the men in his unit and Tony, by saying that he knows that people are hypocrites, but still ‘Something has to be done, and nothing better has been invented.’ The strike between the ‘possible’ and ‘unrealistic’ methods for social and political change is being presented, with Dancho as a realist, and Tony as a dreamer. While Dancho believes in changing people through what is permitted as conventional education, or good examples, he is also ignoring the fact that these methods are not always successful and therefore perhaps not enough. Although he sees that Tony’s subversion had substantially changed the dynamics in his unit, he is afraid of appropriating her methods, because they require a frontal strike, a scandal, lost peace.

One of the final conflicts between Tony and her most active opponent, the macho ZKPCH, happens at the opera, where everybody has gone to see Carmen. Their conversation is just another collision between his backward philistine patriarchalism with Tony’s futuristic emancipatory drive. ‘The freedom’ is juxtaposed to ‘the bread.’ Starting with a small talk about the opera, their conversation expands to an argument about life values. For Tony, Carmen is an inspirational character, while for ZKPCH she is a ‘cool chick.’

Tony, the outsider girl, wants freedom, sincerity and equality, and blames the hypocrisy of the authorities and patriarchal domination for the failures of the revolution. ZKPCH, the well established administrator – doesn’t care about freedom because: ‘Bread is much more important than freedom. And together with the bread comes a new house, washing machine, nylons for the woman.’ After that conversation Tony leaves both the work unit and her lover Dancho–and takes a walk around the city alone. In the amusement park she gets on a swing carousel and talks to a boy who swings next to her and tries to flirt with her. She tells him she wants to get to the stars, to which he answers, ‘I like it here better.’ The futuristic dream of getting to the stars and creating an entirely new life there, is her last performance in this film.

The scenes of conflict described above were pointed to in an interview I did with directors Irina Aktasheva and Hristo Piskov in 2008, as the most probable reason this film was not shown in Bulgaria (only at international festivals) until 1989. A curious fact is that the Bulgarian state sponsored not only the production of the film, but also its tours to international festivals, where it was presented as Bulgarian national participation. This internal communist critique, which intertwines gender with class, is not unique. It is intrinsic to most of the socialist countries in that era. Nevertheless, since 1989 the film has been presented as ‘anti-communist,’ showing that ‘people were not left alone to live the way they want.’ The film’s profound social and political critique, which came from the left and not from its political opposition, or the right, was misinterpreted numerous times in the context of anti-communist binarism that dominated the years after. The feminist critiques have never been analyzed, as far as I have been able to determine from the existing literature, press and TV shows. (4)

As a consequence of ‘reversed Cold War rhetoric,’ Eastern European dissidents have been popularly defined for the last twenty years mostly as anti-communist. (5) This view brings back the critique of power to an unproductive bipolar political space. But if we abandon this polarity, we will see that since the very beginning of the ‘real-socialism’ (Bulgaria after 1944) there is a strong internal communist critique of the progressively bureaucratic and oppressive power. Another example is the work of writer Blaga Dimitrova.

III. DISCIPLINE AND PLEASURE: NEDA 

INTERNAL CRITIQUE EMBODIED IN the main female character, similar to Tony, is Neda (6) in the film Detour (1967). (7) The film is based on a book by Blaga Dimitrova, one of the prominent Bulgarian feminist writers, dissidents and politicians. This is a story about a sexual experiment done by two students in the 1950s — the epoch considered by some to be the most conservative in terms of sexuality in the Socialist Block. Neda and Boyan (8) are students at Sofia University. Boyan is a general secretary of the students’ committee. After a tragic suicide committed by their fellow female student, the members of the youth communist organization bring together an assembly to discuss the case. Boys and girls divide. Girls shout that ‘feelings are sometimes stronger than us.’ Boys think according to the letter of the organization. No feelings should stand before social and political responsibilities. There are few voices in between. As a leader, Boyan condemns girls’ focus on feelings as ‘old fashioned presumptions of romantic mademoiselles’ not suitable for someone attempting to ‘build the new classless society.’ He proclaims five characteristics of ‘true love’:

• common ideas (ideological oneness)
• same class origin,
• professional connection,
• similar personalities and as final,
• physical attraction.

Boyan is asked by a girl in the audience what should be done if, in spite of differences in all four points, people are attracted to each other. He answers that ‘If they are so weak, then ten days will be enough to be fed up with each other, to understand that nothing else but physical attractions is connecting them, and split for good.’ The audience is conceptually and visually divided between loud women, who insist on the importance of feelings, and men, who smile contemptuously, visibly conforming to what Boyan says, but further in the film making clear that they are being hypocrites.

Neda is indignant but decides to challenge Boyan’s statements with action. In front of everyone she tells him she is physically attracted to him, and she can’t do anything but be with him for ten days. He accepts the challenge, insisting that this will be the shortest experiment, that will show how right he was. They end up being really attracted to each other and spend ten days having sex and trying to understand in practice what love is, what the revolution was about, and how to be free. Freedom, gender equality, sexuality and egalitarianism are the topics which the female protagonist elaborates on in a voice over. Neda’s readings from her ten-days sexual experiment diary are intertwined with the film’s narrative. This is her revolutionary manifesto about love and freedom. Similarly to Tony, she is the critic of ideological hypocrisy, and of patriarchal power structures remaining intact in the so called ‘new and equal society’ where everybody was supposed to be free. It is Boyan, who is the embodiment of bureaucracy and as we will see later – hypocrisy and patriarchalism.

A short historical reference is needed at this point. This film is particularly important in discussing gender equality and sexual emancipation because it comments on sexual liberation from three different epochs of socialism — the Bolshevik Revolution, conservative Stalinism (1930-1950s), and the time of the Khrushchev Thaw (the 1960s) when the film was made. The film is based on a novel about the 1950s – the final part of Stalinist rule. 1944-1953 is considered the most conservative period of the socialist history in Bulgaria and the Eastern Block. The generation of the main characters — Neda and Boyan — was called ‘The Lost Generation’. Immediately after WW2 Bulgaria was in ruins, after being bombed by the U.S. army as Germany’s ally. Many of the erotic scenes, arguments and revelations are staged in the ruined attic where Boyan lives, or on a staircase, surrounded by huge holes in the brick walls, almost falling apart. It is not just an extravagant romanticized artistic decision to set Boyan and Neda’s life in this bombed building, it is an accurate representation of living conditions in Bulgaria at the time.

Therefore all young people, including the main characters, were engaged in rebuilding the country after the war. They were also active participants in the rapid industrialization and modernization of the pretty backward agricultural country that Bulgaria was before the war. ‘The Lost Generation’ of the 1950s is the one that spent their youth not only in broken attics but also construction sites filled with dreams about the bright future. The youth of the 1960s came up with the name ‘The Lost Generation,’ and were the first to pick up the fruits of this ‘lost youth.’ Their predecessors were the ones that did not enjoy pleasure as young people ‘are supposed to,’ living a life subordinated to the state and its morale.

There was a generally accepted stereotype that this 1950s ‘lost’ generation was uniformly submissive to conservative sexual morale and role models, dismissing any joy or pleasure as distraction from big goals. But, surprisingly and contrary to this stereotype, discussions about famous revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai’s ‘free love’ ideas arise at the communist gathering in the university where Boyan proclaims the ‘rules of true love.’ Alexandra Kollontai, was the first woman in the world appointed to lead a governmental department. She was the People’s Commissar (out of dislike for the bourgeois term minister) of the Social Security in the Bolshevik government immediately after 1917. Her focus on sexuality as a necessary part of revolutionary philosophy however was considered by her comrades an unnecessary distraction from the higher goals of the egalitarian society. (9) In this film, Kollontai’s ideas are mentioned during the students’ heated arguments about love, as ideas that she herself supports, while opposing one of her male opponents.

But Neda’s manifesto does not end with sexuality. The film critiques the idea that not only sexuality but also the ‘women question’ as a whole should be subordinate to the issues of class, which was the generally accepted philosophy in most of the socialist countries’ policies of that time. This is what Neda writes:

‘Do not be afraid of taking risks, security is what you should be afraid of! Isn’t it why this revolution had happened in the first place? For the human to be free… to love and to be loved…. Men and women meet not only to give birth to children, but for the world to be born in them.’

Dimitrova’s books have auto-biographical elements, thus all of her heroines are a bit like their author, as can be seen in her biography. In most of her books, women openly talk about sex, without even considering its relation to marriage. Following the revolutionary communist idea of emancipation of the individual, which included sexual emancipation, this film showed the liberating mood of an epoch alongside a very complex picture of internal contradictions. The radical ideas about personal and sexual life in this film reproduce the contradictions of the sexual matter in Bolshevik Russia and its projection on the conservative morale of the 1950s.

It is very important that Neda is an excellent student of archaeology and Boyan is an architect. She looks at history as a “broken vase” and puts together its pieces, to understand what we are now and why. He does not care about the past, he does not learn from mistakes – he creates the future from scratch and disregards criticism:

Isn’t it strange that Boyan longs for beauty, but is a bit dry; he is the dream, but is too rigid.   Perhaps this is how the dreamers should be, in order to pursue their dreams. But I am “dreamy,” according to his words. I pay with pain every single mistake before love. I came because I wanted and I will leave as I want. Why are you, my fellow classmates, looking at me as if I am an anomaly? Is it so strange that I am a human being, not an object: I came because I wanted and will leave as I want.

Dimitrova’s heroines are free to choose and free to build the new world of equality, despite external circumstances. They are “the new human” that is supposed to be born as a result of the revolution. Most often they are construction workers or students who build the new after-war country. The visual contrast between demolitions from WWII and new construction works is intentionally chosen in the film to not only illustrate the epoch, but to also imply ‘the construction’ of the new human. Dimitrova makes an ironic comment on the relationship between the individual and society, and the contradictions it creates, through her heroine’s manifesto: ‘Lovers of the world unite!’ writes Neda, and immediately erases it, considering it ridiculous.

The story of the young Boyan and Neda is inter-spliced with a road trip they make twenty years after their split on the tenth day of the experiment. The reason for the split was that Neda got a fellowship to continue her studies in archaeology in Moscow. Boyan did not accept the fact that she had made a decision to go after her career, without asking his permission, although she never said that she wanted to put an end to their relationship altogether. He blamed her for betraying him, which ended their relationship. They meet again, unexpectedly, twenty years later, at an archaeological excavation that she works on as an already established scientist. Boyan was on his way to a conference and was forced into a detour because of construction work on the road. This detour led him to the archaeological site, back to his past, to question once again his values. Neda and Boyan are now mature and pretty much changed by the life they live, although this is more the case with Boyan. Neda is still the “dreamy” one. They are still strongly attracted to each other, and Neda is still challenging his ideological orthodoxy, which subdues his and her personal choices.

Perhaps not surprisingly, twenty years later Boyan’s rules do not follow utopian ideas: they follow the pattern of societal conventions and patriarchal morals. Here we see one more time the variety of power formation in regards to gender relationships. He always follows what is ‘right’ according to his current occupation — as a young communist leader, or a mature professional, with family and kids.

Neda’s performance is carefully structured to promote the ideal of the independent although idealistic individual. They split as young students because her independence is too much for him to handle. Twenty years later she is ready to stay with him, in spite of her family and kids, but he once again subordinates his feelings to the common morale—being ideological or societal. The author Blaga Dimitrova clearly juxtaposes the ideals of communist sexual emancipation (Kollontai) to the mechanisms of oppressive power. These mechanisms function independently from utopian revolutionary ideals both on the state and domestic level. They follow traditional patriarchal customs. Perhaps surprisingly for the viewers, Neda actually confirms that the first of the ideological rules Boyan puts forward, as a young leader, is indeed the most important for two people to be together. This was the ‘oneness of ideas,’ which obviously the two of them never had. She—idealistic dreamer, “pleasure seeker,” revolutionary. He—realistic conformist, disciplined, the guardian of the letter.

IV. CONCLUSION

Neda’s heroine, a 1950s youth, embodiment of the ideal of the revolution, a critic of bureaucracy, routine and hypocrisy, similarly to her soulmate Tony, has been produced in a time considered the most conservative in the history of Bulgarian socialism. Neda and her 1960s soulmate Tony as well as the numerous studies that accumulated in recent years raise a lot of questions against the generally accepted narrative that ‘feminism did not happen’ in Eastern Europe and that the sexual revolution was a priority only of the Western world.

Since the film was based on a book written by a woman, and the narrative was told from her point of view, we see questions of female identity raised. The author Blaga Dimitrova challenges the subordination of women’s issues to issues of class. (10) She also questions the patriarchal customs that restrict individual freedom—both of men and women. However, she doesn’t make direct connection between ‘communist ideology’ and ‘patriarchal morals,’ as some post-socialist feminists do. She doesn’t blame the ‘ideology’ for the morale, as we are used to seeing in recent decades.

Women film directors Irina Aktasheva and script writers like Blaga Dimitrova, were not the only women who worked in film in Bulgaria and created very strong female characters. They preferred not to call themselves feminists for a very clear ideological reason that can be followed historically. During the first wave of feminism there was a need to reflect the necessity of terminological separation between bourgeois feminists and women who intersect their ideas of equality with issues of class. Therefore the word ‘feminism’ was used to name the bourgeois feminists, while the other ones spoke about ‘women’s emancipation.’

If we look at the film characters closely, we will see that they address women’s concerns through a clearly feminist approach. They look into individual experience; they create complex and controversial characters; they don’t claim ‘universal truths,’ but rather deconstruct myths. These remarkable female characters rebel against patriarchal oppression and prejudices; they speak about women’s issues, and they re-invent women’s sexuality as revolutionary.

 

END NOTES

(1) Starring Pepa Nikolova in the film ‘Monday Morning’ (Ponedelnik sutrin, 1966). Directors Irina Aktasheva and Hristo Piskov.

(2) Played by Asen Kisimov.

(3) The Leader of the Cultural Enlightenment Activity (Zavezdast kulturno-prosvetnata chast, ZKPCH), played by Kiril Gospodinov. In every working unit there was a political hierarchical structure. The Leader of the Cultural-Enlightenment Activity was responsible for the ideological education of the workers. He was subordinated to the foreman.

(4) Most of the articles in newspapers are focused on the censorship as a scandalous story and do not touch upon the content of the film and its meaning for both past and present. ‘Kultovata rezisyorka Irina Aktasheva: I pri demokratsiata nikoi ne me e tursil’ [‘The cult film director Irina Aktasheva: Under democracy nobody has been interested in me either’], blitz.bg, October 3, 2008, accessed July 10, 2012, http://www.blitz.bg/article/7187.

(5) Reversed rhetoric’ comes from Susan Buck-Morss’ analysis on the philosophical discourse of the West and the East at the end of the Cold War. She refers to the conference in Dubrovnik 1990, where philosophers of the two former camps came together to discuss ‘Philosophical Problems of Postmodern Discourse.’   Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and catastrophe: the passing of mass utopia in East and West (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 237.

(6) Played by Nevena Kokanova.

(7) Directed by Grisha Ostrovsky.

(8) Played by film director and actor Ivan Andonov.

(9) ‘Detour’ is one of the rare film examples in Bulgaria where Alexandra Kollontai’s notorious free love theory of the ‘glass of water’ has been mentioned. The traditional family model and roles, promoted during Stalinism, were quite different from women’s emancipation as proclaimed by socialist feminists like Kollontai, Rosa Luxemburg and others whose work promoted the sexual revolution of that time.   

(10) Pejic, Bojana. ‘Proletarians of All Countries, Who Washes Your Socks?’; Branislav Dimitrijevic, ‘Suffragettes, Easy Lays and Women Faking Pregnancy. Representation of Women in the Film ‘When I am Pale and Dead’; Keti Chukhrov, ‘In the Trap of Utopia’s Sublime. Between Ideology and Subversion,’ in Gender Check, (exhibition catalogue), ed. Bojana Pejic (Wien: Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, 2009).