Title
From ‘Sots-Romanticism’ to Rom-Com: The Strugatskys’ Monday Begins on Saturday as a Film Comedy
DOI
10.3828/sfftv.2015.10
Document Type
Post-print Article
Publication Date
2015
Abstract
The Strugatskii brothers’ novella Ponedel’nik nachinaetsia v subbotu (Monday Begins on Saturday; 1965) imagines bright young scientists working at the cutting edge between quantum physics and folktale sorcery in a setting that was undeniably contemporary and local. I argue that the story can be best understood as ‘soc(ialist) romanticism’ – an aesthetic mode that celebrates the possibilities for individual questing and agency in late Soviet socialism. Konstantin Bromberg’s 1982 adaptation of the Strugatskiis’s story abandons both the romanticism and complexity of the novella, but, by incorporating elements of the‘youth film’, it represents a different kind of Soviet rom-com.
Recommended Citation
Howell, Yvonne, "From ‘Sots-Romanticism’ to Rom-Com: The Strugatskys’ Monday Begins on Saturday as a Film Comedy" (2015). Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications. 66.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/mlc-faculty-publications/66
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2015, Liverpool University Press. The definitive version is available at: http://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/sfftv.2015.10?journalCode=sfftv.
DOI: 10.3828/sfftv.2015.10
Full Citation: Howell, Yvonne. "From ‘Sots-Romanticism’ to Rom-Com: The Strugatskys’Monday Begins on Saturday as a Film Comedy." Science Fiction Film and Television 8, no. 2 (2015): 127-43. doi:10.3828/sfftv.2015.10.
Included in
Film and Media Studies Commons, Slavic Languages and Societies Commons, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies Commons, Television Commons