ABSTRACT

This article focuses on two recent Russian films – Vasilii Sigarev’s Living (2012) and Natasha Merkulova and Aleksei Chupov’s The Man who Surprised Everyone (2018) – that exploit the multivalent potential of the pregnant body. Both films enlist the symbolism with which Russian traditional culture has infused that body to create complex, nuanced cinematic depictions of the porousness between the realm of the living and that of the dead. The folk symbolism of pregnancy facilitates the directors’ subtle critiques of contemporary Russian society, including its cynicism; casual, ubiquitous violence; and rigid gender hierarchies. These films highlight the pregnant woman’s destabilising potential, one that challenges the Russian state’s increasingly fervent incursion into the intimate realm separating life and death. They also prompt us to recall that feminist thinkers have turned to the pregnant body as a source of insight. With her challenge to the notion of a singular, unified body, the pregnant woman points to new philosophical models of the self – possibilities that have yet to be explored fully on screen, but towards which the two contemporary Russian films discussed in this essay may point.

摘要

本文重点介绍最近的两部俄罗斯电影——瓦西里·西加列夫的《生活》（2012 年）以及娜塔莎·梅尔库洛娃和阿列克谢·楚波夫的《让所有人大吃一惊的男人》(2018) – 利用孕妇身体的多价潜力。这两部电影都运用了俄罗斯传统文化注入身体的象征意义，以创造出复杂、细致入微的电影描绘生者与死者之间的多孔性。怀孕的民间象征有助于导演对当代俄罗斯社会的微妙批评，包括其玩世不恭；随意的、无处不在的暴力；和僵化的性别等级制度。这些电影突出了孕妇破坏稳定的潜力，挑战了俄罗斯政府日益热切地侵入生与死之间的亲密领域。它们还促使我们回想起女权主义思想家已经将怀孕的身体作为洞察力的来源。随着她对单一统一身体概念的挑战，