The Red Atlantis (Culture And The Moving Image) [Paperback]

J. Hoberman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2000 | Series: Culture And The Moving Image

For most of the twentieth century, American and European intellectual life was defined by its fascination with a particular utopian vision. Both the artistic and political vanguards were spellbound by the Communist promise of a new human era so much so that its political terrors were rationalized as a form of applied evolution and its collapse hailed as the end of history. "The Red Atlantis" argues that Communism produced a complex culture with a dialectical relation to both modernism and itself. Offering examples ranging from the Stalinist show trial to Franz Kafka's posthumous career as a dissident writer and the work of filmmakers, painters, and writers, which can be understood only as criticism of existing socialism made from within, "The Red Atlantis" suggests that Communism was an aesthetic project, perhaps the aesthetic project of the twentieth century.J. Hoberman, staff writer for the Village Voice, writes on film and culture for the "Voice", the "Voice Literary Supplement", "Artforum", and other publications. His books include "Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds" (Temple, 1995) and "Vulgar Modernism: Writing on Movies and Other Media" (Temple, 1991), which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award in criticism. He is an Adjunct Professor of Cinema at the Cooper Union.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For half a century, the cold war between the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union defined world politics. And then, in 1989, everything changed. The Warsaw Pact disintegrated, the USSR collapsed, and the Berlin Wall came down. Soon there was (almost) no communist culture left on the planet, just the cultural detritus of a "Communist utopia which, in fact, never existed." J. Hoberman of the Village Voice sifts through the wreckage of that culture, in a series of illuminating essays that take on everything from the Socialist Realist art movement to the novels of Victor Serge. Among the highlights is his "History of Communism in Twenty-Four Scenarios," a batch of film reviews that draws a line through Sergei Eisenstein's October ("the Soviet equivalent of the Sistine Chapel") and the original 1950s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the Reagan-era Red Dawn.

There's also a splendid essay on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted by the U.S. government of giving H-bomb secrets to the Reds and--amidst much controversy--executed, and who, Hoberman concludes, "were framed for an activity that all available circumstantial and psychological evidence suggests that they committed." It's one of the most effective displays of Hoberman's grasp of history and culture, not to mention his erudite wit: "Someone must have denounced Julius Rosenberg, for without his having done anything wrong, he was arrested one fine evening by the FBI." --Ron Hogan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"These essays, at once funny and heartbreaking, survey the work of Soviet and Eastern European artists, writers, and filmmakers. Hoberman is an expert gifted with high intellectual spirits, but he doesn't take cheap shots: he never lets us forget the pressures and dangers that affected even the most devoted Communists under Communism." oNew Yorker "Zooming back and forth from Berlin to Moscow to the Lower East Side, J. Hoberman has compiled the best evocation of the lost world of Jewish communism since the historian Raphael Samuel's memoir of working-class East London in New Left Review." oThe Lingua Franca Book Review "In J. Hoberman, the ruins of communist culture have found a passionate and erudite archeologist. A collection of essays on communist art, film, and literature, The Red Atlantis is an elegy for the 'Communist utopia which, in fact, never existed.'" oDissent "This is a superb collection of essaysodeft, penetrating, erudite, witty and altogether a pleasure to read." oWashington Post "Provocative, insightful, funny, J. Hoberman's The Red Atlantis explains howowith Philistines generally in chargeoCommunism, in contrast always to anti-Communism, managed to encourage some of the most interesting, most Jewish, and silliest art of the century." oPaul Buhle, co-author of Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist "Intelligently stitched together from Hoberman's many reviews, this volume introduces readers to the lost continent of communist culture...Well documented and written with enviable verve, this provocative book should reopen old debates and spark useful reevaluations of the countless compromised masterpieces produced by well-meaning but ultimately misguided intellectuals over more than 70 turbulent years." oChoice

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Product Details

• Paperback: 315 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press (April 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566397677
• ISBN-13: 978-1566397674
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,519,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

J. Hoberman is the senior film critic for the Village Voice, where he has worked for more than thirty years. He is the author of Bridge of Light, The Magic Hour, The Red Atlantis, Vulgar Modernism, and The Dream Life (The New Press) and the co-author, with Jonathan Rosenbaum, of Midnight Movies. He has written for Artforum, the London Review of Books, The Nation, the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times, among other publications, and has taught cinema history at Cooper Union since 1990. He lives in New York.