Queer women of Kantemir Balagov: subjectivities in extreme contexts

ABSTRACTThe discussion focuses on two films – Closeness (2017) and Beanpole (2019) – by Kantemir Balagov, and is concerned with interrogating the possibilities of queer-crip dynamic in contemporary Russian-language cinema. I argue that the queer-crip dynamic allows the film director to stage a critique of ableism and heteronormativity as part of the examination of power dynamics in Soviet and post-Soviet contexts. Balagov demonstrates that the heteronormative, cis-gender, able-bodied, white person of mainstream cultural identity dominates the discourse by placing oneself in charge of power relations. Balagov’s self-criticality permits a complex understanding of queer women as powerful individuals forming relationships through own agency. In his oeuvre, crip-queerness emerges in extreme contexts encompassing a range of tropes such as claustrophobia, punishment and strangulation, which are associated with sexual practices, on the one hand, and on the other, with the protest of the queer body against repressive social regimes. The discussion advances debates about crip-queerness in world cinemas by conceptualising the notions of queerness and extreme contexts, that is, contexts characterised by the extensive and intolerable magnitude of experience and its physical and emotional effects on individuals.KEYWORDS: Kantemir Balagovqueer/cripsexualityextreme contextviolenceNorth Caucasus AcknowledgementsI thank Olga Andreevskikh and Katia Suverina for feedback on the first draft of this article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. For reviews of Balagov’s films see Ezerova (Citation2018) and Kaganovsky (Citation2020).2. It includes short films that he made at the start of his career and most recently, unfinished work on the television series The Last of Us (HBO, 2023, multiple directors) (Kit Citation2021).3. Moscow-based film studios and cultural institutions function in the same way, that is, by exercising hegemonic discursive power over other centres of cultural production.4. An example of ethnic othering of film culture of the RF can be found in McGinity-Peebles (Citation2022).5. According to the scholar, the chief aim of this scholarly approach is critiquing accounts of global queering in terms of the spread of Western, especially US, sexual and gender cultures (Jackson Citation2009, 15).6. Research in this article does not focus on violence against queer subjects (e.g., Kondakov Citation2022), but on how queer subjects sustain themselves in regimes of violence.7. For a discussion of body movement and gestures in Balagov’s films, see Stepanova (Citation2023); for a discussion of queer meaning of gestures in Russian cinema, see Strukov (Citation2016b).8. See, for example, Strukov and Hudspith (Citation2014), where in film representations of the Caucasus the dominant narrative of captivity is inverted thanks to the queer optic.9. For example, in Andrei Zviagintsev’s The Return (Vozvrashchenie, 2003), the father comes back home to impose order on his sons, whilst their caring mother remains at home awaiting their return from a fishing trip.10. See, for example, Goscilo and Hashamova (Citation2010). It is possible to argue that Closeness belongs to a new trend in contemporary Russian cinema, which focuses on mother-daughter relationship, as we find in Vasilii Sigarev’s Wolfy (Volchok, 2009).11. For an autobiographical account of a Jewish woman growing up in the North Caucasus, see McPhail (Citation2014).12. The discussion of reasons for such portrayals are outside the scope of this article.13. For a conceptual overview of the uses of violence in Russian literature and theatre, see Beumers and Lipovetsky (Citation2009).14. In the 1990s, Western propaganda referred to them as ‘freedom fighters’, whereas Russian media used the term ‘terrorists’. There was a change in Western usage of terms in the 2000s following the start of ‘the war on terror’ by the Bush Jr administration.15. It is possible to read the final scenes of Closeness in this temporal aspect, too: the characters contemplate the majestic, eternal mountain range of the Caucasus, that is, frozen time.16. The choice of locations is an allusion to a wide range of films and literary texts, including The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.17. Katia Suverina has suggested that Masha wishes to re-claim her gender because she thinks that she lost it due to her inability to get pregnant. This supposition evidences the violence of the patriarchal doctrine of gender and also explains Masha’s transgressive behaviour as an attempt to re-gain womanhood through exercise of female heteronormative sexual practices.18. The colour symbolism of the film – as a reference to Aleksei Iu. German’s films – was noted by Nancy Condee, who writes that ‘here exactly is the importance to Balagov’s color palette: its near-unbearable saturation of greens and reds is the visual language of how memory will come to recollect “Autumn 1945,” an elusive “meaning-beyond-cognition suffusing” everyday life’ (Condee Citation2021, 391).19. I am grateful to Olga Andreevskikh for suggesting that the shape of the scar – side to side – symbolises the cancellation of any prospects and hopes of motherhood. It is similar to the C-section scar, making associations between maternity and violence.20. The open discussion of sexuality of male subject traumatised by the war is not canonical; see, for example, Kaganovsky (Citation2008).21. Some may argue that Balagov starts with the representation of two stereotyped categories of disabled bodies: oversexed perverts and asexual innocents (Brown Citation1994, 125). Indeed, Masha is portrayed as a sexually aggressive person whilst Iia is asexual and/or innocent. Their roles are manifested in the dating scene when Masha meets Sasha and forces him to have sex with her in a car. Iia keeps querying if that was necessary and at this stage it is not clear whether she asks because of jealousy or because of her own asexuality. Later in the film, the representation of the two characters becomes more balanced as the two complete a journey towards one another.22. And he firmly rejects the discursive iterations of totalitarianism with its obsession with health, heteronormative masculinity and abled bodies (on the latter, see Kaganovsky Citation2008).Additional informationNotes on contributorsVlad StrukovVlad Strukov (PhD) is a London-based multidisciplinary researcher, curator, and cultural practitioner, specialising in art, media, and technology cross-overs. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Leeds, working on global visual cultures. He is currently carrying out a research project interrogating the relationships between streaming media and (inter)national film cultures (2022–24, funded by the British Academy). He previously worked on a major project dedicated to contemporary queer visual cultures (2016–20, funded by the Swedish Research Council). He is the author of many publications on visual culture in global settings, including a monograph on contemporary Russian cinema (2016).