Reconstructing Aelita: Queen of Mars Open Access

Abstract

Upon its release in 1924, Iakov Protazanov's film Aelita: Queen of Mars sparked outrage across the Soviet Union. The film industry was, until then, dominated by imported films from America and Germany, and Aelita, a massive success in the box office, sparked concern among critics who feared that Soviet culture was becoming too similar to capitalist forms of entertainment. Against this view of Aelita as an example of early communist capitulations to the American culture industry, I argue that Protazanov and his collaborators advanced a criticism of the very phenomenon they were accused of propagating. I begin with a discussion of the debates in which that Protazanov, Exter, and Rabinovich were involved at and around the time of Aelita’s making, then proceed to a historical analysis of the conditions that made Aelita possible. Having established the critical and historical context of the film, I then conduct a formal analysis of the techniques used to depict the urban environments of Moscow and Mars in the film. Complicating accounts of the film that focus primarily on its literary content or reception, I propose that a primary concern shared by Protazanov, Exter, and Rabinovich in making Aelita was formulating an understanding of intellectual life that challenged the division of intellectual and practical labor propagated both in capitalist societies and in the uncritical reproduction of capitalist technologies and ideologies that manifested in the Soviet cities in the process of reconstruction that followed the Civil War.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Aelita and the Soviet intellectual.......................................................................... 1

Chapter I. Protazanov and Mezhrabpom-Rus: between entertainment and politics....................... 11

Chapter II. Alexandra Exter: the cultivation of a social order on Mars.......................................... 23

Chapter III. Isaac Rabinovich: reframing the Soviet city.............................................................. 38

Conclusion: Aelita and the end of technological utopianism........................................................ 51

Bibliography............................................................................................................................ 57

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Art History and History
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	History, Russian and Soviet Cinema Art History
Keyword	Vsevolod Meyerhold Soviet Cinema Science Fiction Isaac Rabinovich Constructivism Soviet Theatre Alexandra Exter Biomechanics Soviet Union Iakov Protazanov
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	André Patrão, Ph.D., Emory University
Committee Members	Christina Crawford, Ph.D., Emory University Paul Buchholz, Ph.D., Emory University

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