10.13125/2039-6597/1137
We can structure the relationship between the mass and the leader as a seduction, as an erotic ritual. This erotic ritual functions through a scheme (boy meets girl) that we can consider as  a starting point to define the nature of the mass when is approaching the Power. I want to use as a case study two scenes from the film The Fall of Berlin,  a war/love drama directed by Michail Chiaureli, a stunning example of propaganda films of late Stalinist period. First, I am going to analyse the relationship between Alesha (the hero of the film, or, we can say, the alter hero of the film but not Stalin) and Stalin, focusing my attention on this so called ritual of seduction; the one in love (Alesha), the object of scopophilia (Stalin), according to the work made by Laura Mulvey. Then, through the analysis of the ending scene of the film, I will try to delineate some characteristic of the mass and Stalin facing each others; from Canetti to Agamben, the importance of gestures. From a  submissiveness crowd unable to control their gestures in front of the leader, to a crowd steady and controlled (as in Gezi park); the immobility as a weapon to manifest dissent, the immobility as a key to problematize our use of the body.
application/pdf
2039-6597
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en
Lorenzo Gramatica
Between
Power.
The Leader and the Mass: The Political Body and the Power of Rhetorics
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between
4
Ore Rotundo. Ethics of Public Intervention
2014-05-30
2014-02-16
2014-05-27
2014-06-04
1
Lorenzo Gramatica
2014/05/30
10.13125/2039-6597/1137
2039-6597
7
Power.
en
The Leader and the Mass: The Political Body and the Power of Rhetorics
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/1137/996
4
        The Leader and the Mass: The
       Political Body and the Power of
                   Rhetorics
                            Lorenzo Gramatica


      A person A meets a person B. Person A is attracted to person B.
Person A tries its best to win over person B in love. Person B, aware of
its charm, lets person A idolize itself. It is not just person A to be in
love with person B, there is a bunch of people feeling the same
sentiment for person B; a crowd, a mass. More or less, this sounds like
the plot of a romantic comedy. My aim in this paper is to delineate the
relationship between individual/mass and leader/power through this
scheme: a seduction, an erotic ritual. Using as a case study two scenes
from the film The Fall of Berlin, a war/love drama directed by Chiaureli,
a stunning example of propaganda films of late Stalinist period, I will
focus my attention on the relationship between mass and power; from
the relationship between Alesha, the hero of the film, and Stalin as
object of scopophilia, to the use of the body (and its rhetoric) and the
importance of gestures, from screens to streets. It would be impossible
to delineate in a short essay an exhaustive configuration of this
dynamic; so, conscious of the limits this format imposes me, I will just
present and analyze this case study, leaving an in-depht study of the
topic to the authors mentioned in the bibliography.

     The Fall of Berlin is a film made by Chiaureli in 1950, a historical
drama that recounts the heroism of the Soviet army against the Nazis.
The film is considered a stunning example of Stalinist
culture/propaganda, that «answered the demands of Stalinist culture



Between, vol. IV, n. 7 (Maggio/ May 2014)
Lorenzo Gramatica, The Leader and the Mass: the Political Body and the Power of Retorics



so accurately that it was denounced by Nikita Khrushchev in his
“Secret Speech” and was buried deep in the archives of the Soviet film
industry. And yet the film demonstrates, above all, “the perverse logic
of Stalinism”» (Kaganovsky 2008: 146).
      The film opens with a celebration in a steel town in Belorussia.
Alesha Ivanov, a stackhanovite worker, has received the Order of
Lenin for his achievements. Natasha, a teacher of the same town, is
asked to give a speech to celebrate Alesha. Alesha suddenly fall in love
with her, while she is shy and reluctant to love him back. Alesha has
been invited to Moscow to speak with Stalin. Stalin “blesses” the love
of Alesha for Natasha and Natasha starts to love him back. Then,
suddenly, the war starts. Alesha and Natasha are separated; the first
one is injured and then involved in the war, while Natasha is captured
and sent to a concentration camp. Then the Soviet army enters in
Berlin, the war is over and Natasha and Alesha are finally reunited in
presence of Stalin, surrounded by the crowd.
      First of all, it is necessary to try to define the notion of hero (as
alter ego of Stalin and representative of the mass).

     «What distinguishes a hero from a nonhero? The heroic act
transforms the hero’s body from a medium into a message» (Groys
2008: 138). The body of the hero becomes the way in which the virtues
of the regime takes form. Through this ideal body, the body of the hero
Alesha, Stalin manifests himself: a body ready to sacrifice, ready to
destroy and to be destroyed, a living, breathing weapon. Through this
body, the invisible is unveiled and functions as a “living manifesto”:
the body of the hero, transformed into a message, needs a «public
created by the media» (ibid.). The screen is the way the body penetrates
in our collective imagination; it creates a stage, where the ideal body
can function and satisfy the requirements of the regime. «What
distinguishes the heroic body of a media star from the unheroic bodies
of the audience? Where lies the magic border that separates the hero
from the nonhero on a purely corporeal plane?» (ibid.: 139). Through
the heroic act; it is in the gesture that lies the “extraordinary” in
Alesha, it is through the gesture that Alesha distinguishes himself from


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the crowd, the one in the diegetic world of the film, the one in the
theatre: a crowd that aims to be like him. Alesha is didascalic to the
point of nausea; more than a character, he is a breathing manifesto of
Stalinist propaganda. Alesha has a double function in the diegetic
world of the film: he is, clearly, an alter ego of Stalin, but also an
accessible role model for the invisible spectator, the Soviet citizen, to
whom the didascalic film is addressed (empathy/ self-identification
with the figure of Stalin, represented on the screen in a metaphysical
dimension, is impossible).

     The body of the actor, performing as the body of the hero, has the
aim to penetrate the collective imagination of the spectator, to make his
body imitating (possibly) the ideal body of the hero/actor. Alesha, the
hero of The Fall of Berlin, embodies the characteristics of the
archetypical “alter” of Stalin: big, muscular, brave. Alesha has to be
observed on the screen, but he also has to observe Stalin as a model.
On the other, Stalin (just like Hitler as described by Groys) doesn’t
have to observe: he only has to be observed, he wants to be observed.
«And he wanted not only to be observed but to be admired, even
idolized, as a hero. He understood art, artists, and artworks as objects
of admiration—not as the subjects of observation or analysis. For him,
observers, viewers, critics, writers, and archaeologists were always
other people» (ibid.: 142). But Alesha does not simply embody Stalin’s
virtues in a “human” form, in a material dimension; he also embodies
the mass’ desire to face the leader and to become his alter ego.
     Alesha’s gaze on Stalin is the archetypical gaze of the mass on
Stalin: a sentiment of admiration, almost configurable as an erotic one.
The first scene I want to analyze from The Fall of Berlin perfectly
exemplifies this tendency of representation of the hero in relation to
Stalin. First, as I have said before, Alesha is the perfect example of the
ideal Soviet citizen: proud, muscular, stakhanovite. However, even
though Alesha embodies every quality of the Stalinist hero, he is
human, too human. In fact he cannot sustain a comparison with Stalin:
he is wounded after the war, he is an invalid heroic figure but, we can
argue, he was also “damaged” before being compared to Stalin. He is


                                                                                3
Lorenzo Gramatica, The Leader and the Mass: the Political Body and the Power of Retorics



not the Leader, simply. And that is enough. The triangle between
Stalin, Alesha and Natasha is impossible to solve, not least because,
after all, Alesha too is in love with Stalin, like Natasha. In the scene I
want to analyze, Alesha is invited to meet Stalin: he has to take a flight
to Moscow. The first reaction of Alesha is an anxious one; just the idea
of facing his leader generates in him a disordered reaction; it is
impossible for him to control his body, to control his gestures. He starts
walking around the room nervously, incapable of accepting the idea of
facing his model and also his object of desire. He had already tried to
avoid meeting him twice: «For God’s sake, let me go!»; Alesha,
welcomed by Stalin, is nervous to the point of being unable to
pronounce correctly the Leader’s name. Alesha is too shy, like a lover
going to a first date with the object of his desire. Stalin, here
apparently, embodying power, functions as the phallocratic, dominant
figure (Alesha is like a feminine character, cowering in front of the
strong male figure). But approaching the situation from a different
angle, Alesha can be considered as a man that, when facing the object
of his desire, is experiencing a typical anxiety to fail, which manifests
itself in his difficulty in elocution, and his fear of not being
“masculine” enough.
      Stalin, confident of his charm, looking perfect while gardening, is
conscious of his (her?) status of perfection. The scene is not too
dissimilar from those belonging to the tradition of romantic comedies:
shy lover versus confident, inaccessible object of desire. Anxiety,
paranoia, logorrhea, a kind of tourettism. Will there be a happy
ending?
      In the second scene of the film I want to analyze, the final scene,
we do not just have a happy ending, but an overdose of happy ending
and the role of Alesha/Natasha as representative of the mass is
rendered explicit.
      Berlin is conquered, the war is over.
      Alesha, the stakhanovite hero, is finally reunited with Natasha,
his lover. The dynamic of desire functions, again, through the
triangular relationship between Alesha, Natasha and Stalin. Here, once
again, Stalin is central and present, being the true object of (Natasha’s)


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desire. Indeed, the camera captures Natasha while she is looking at
Stalin and, ecstatically involved, has to look away from him, since the
figure of Stalin – in its utter perfection and pure spirituality – is too
much to bear for more than a few seconds (Kantorowicz 1957). Natasha
then sees her other love, Alesha. In a hectic and confused shot, the two
hug each other, while Stalin, the one that initially propitiates their love,
blesses from a distance their encounter. The hug between the two
lovers does not last more than a few seconds; Natasha, having
forgotten about Alesha, feels the need to homage Stalin and she asks
«May I kiss you, comrade Stalin? For everything you have done for our
people, for us». The real object of Natasha’s desire is Stalin, not Alesha.
Yet, the real object of desire of Alesha is Stalin, not Natasha. We can
argue that the conflict generated by this “love” triangle, is more about
the relationship between Stalin and Alesha: Stalin is a better version of
Alesha, and Alesha feels a profound admiration for him. Alesha’s love
for Natasha is also aimed to satisfy, appease Stalin, the one that blessed
their union. Through the relationship with Natasha, Alesha is able to
love Stalin (and of course, Natasha is able to love Stalin, the
“unattainable version” of Alesha). We can describe the condition of
Alesha as a kind of “heterosexual panic”; as I mentioned before, the
anxiety he feels the first time he meets Stalin is similar to the anxiety of
a man that meets his object of desire. Heterosexual panic can be
defined as «an acute attack of anxiety that results in the frantic pursuit
of heterosexual activity in response to unconscious or latent
homosexual impulses» (The Free Dictionary). Yet, while such a
triangular conflict is usually resolved in favour of homosociality,
instead of heterosexual marriage, here the relationship between Alesha
and Stalin is imbalanced: Stalin is not a friend of Alesha, he is his
mentor, master, model. But he is also the object of his sexual/emotional
desire. So the only way to love Stalin is to please him through the
relationship with Natasha. The only way to love Stalin is to avoid his
homosexual feeling and accept an heterosexual/heteronormative
convention.
      Alesha, aware of his position of inferiority, lets Natasha kiss her
(and his) real, impossible lover. And through her, in a sense, he is


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Lorenzo Gramatica, The Leader and the Mass: the Political Body and the Power of Retorics



finally able to kiss Stalin. «I will kiss the lips that kissed Stalin» we can
say paraphrasing Barthes (Piretto 2007: 7). Stalin here acts as an object
of scopophilia: he is the passive/female (using Laura Mulvey)
character, object of the male gaze (Alesha’s but also Natasha’s; her gaze
can be here canonically considered as the gaze of the male). «Woman
displayed as sexual object is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle [...]
signifies male desire» (Mulvey 2005: 309). If «the presence of woman is
an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her
visual presence [...] freezes the flow of action in moments of erotic
contemplation»(ibid.: 311). Stalin is the object of every gaze, functioning
as a female character in the traditional scheme of narrative cinema.
Assuming that Stalin in this scene is acting as a female character, we
can quote Budd Boetticher: «What counts is what the heroine
provokes, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the
concerns he feels for her, who make him act the way he does» (ibid.).
Alesha actions are dictated by love, not just for Natasha, but for Stalin.
His aim is to be admired by the leader; to be reunited with Natasha, in
order to be able to love Stalin through her. Too much? Maybe. But
coming back to Mulvey, we can absolutely point out, using her words,
that Stalin in this scene can be considered as a female character, an
object of eroticism: using again Mulvey: « she is isolated, glamorous on
display, sexualized [...] by means of identification with him (the male
character), through participation, the spectator can indirectly possess
her too» (ibid.). Through Alesha and Natasha, two counterparts of the
same feeling for Stalin, the spectator can experience the realization of
his desire to love him. Stalin, dressed in white, as a virgin, offers
himself to the voyeuristic gaze of the mass.
      Attention has to be paid to the mass surrounding Stalin in the
scene of him landing to Berlin. Stalin, as written by Piretto, was
incapable of facing the crowd, the mass; his media body had the duty
to do what his material body was not able to.
      This paranoia, this idea of being always observed, changed his
iconography: during the annual procession to celebrate the Victory, in
1945, Stalin avoided parading on the Red Square, « […] trusting Zukov
with the duty of appearing riding a white horse. Stalin was standing


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and looking at the parade from Lenin’s burial place, hidden from the
crowd’s gaze, allowed to be immobile and static» (Piretto 2007: 6).
There is, arguably, a juxtaposition between the crowd’s gestures and
Stalin’s immobility. As Agamben argued in his Notes on Gesture:

       What is most extraordinary is that after these disorders had
    been observed in thousands of cases from 1885 onwards, there is
    practically no further record of them in the early years of the
    twentieth century - until the winter's day in 1971 when Oliver
    Sacks, walking through the streets of New York, saw what he
    believed were three cases of tourettism within the space of a few
    minutes. One of the hypothesis that can be constructed to explain
    this disappearance is that ataxy, tics and dystonia had, in the
    course of time, become the norm, and that beyond a certain point
    everyone had lost control of their gestures, walking and
    gesticulating frenetically. (Agamben 2008: 325)

     Agamben suggests, quoting Oliver Sacks, that this catastrophe of
gestures is, in a way, a social construction, motivated culturally in a
society that has lost its capacity to control its movements: a very
particular type of Tourette syndrome that the living habits made
pathological.
     What Agamben writes can be applied to the enthusiastic crowd of
screaming, frenzied men and women that greets Stalin in the final
scene of The Fall of Berlin. As if caught in a “gestures’ Holocaust”, a
schizophrenia of gestures and movements, falling victim to a pure
ecstasy towards Stalin, Soviet citizens abandon all sense of decorum in
their manifestation of affection, esteem, submission to their Leader.
Stalin, on the other hand, is the opposite of this tendency: still,
steadfast and self-assured, he is the embodiment of discreet power.
Canetti, in his Crowds and Power, dedicates some attention to
schizophrenia in relation to the nature of the crowd: «The
schizophrenic subject, in his condition of extreme susceptibility,
behaves like the member of a mass; he is equally exposed to exterior
strains and stimuli. However, because he is alone, the possibility of



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Lorenzo Gramatica, The Leader and the Mass: the Political Body and the Power of Retorics



him being in such a situation is never considered. The schizophrenic is
a fragment torn from the mass» (Canetti 1984: 390).

     The uncontrollable reaction of the mass towards Stalin can be
associated to some manifestations/symptoms of schizophrenia: the
schizophrenic, part of the mass, is alone in fact, although it is reacting
to the same stimuli as a part of a crowd: this crowd of schizophrenics is
united by the same incapacity to control the gestures. Stalin himself
seems affected by a kind of fear of being touched (that’s why he needs
his mediatic body to do what he is not able to do with his material
one):

       Man fears nothing more thanbeing touched by the unknown.
      We want to see whatever reaches towards us: we want to get to
      know it, at least classify it. Everywhere man strives to avoid being
      touched by what is unknown to him. At night, or anywhere in the
      dark, the fear of being touched by the unknown can cause
      absolute panic. (Canetti 1984: 17)

    A situation in which paranoia and impossibility of controlling the
body and gestures became the norm.

     It is interesting to juxtapose the reaction of the crowd in The Fall of
Berlin to an iconic use of the body in the Gezi Park protests. On June
18th of this year, a man, called by the media Duran Adam (literally,
“standing man”), manifested his dissent against the demolition of Gezi
Park and generally against Erdogan, by standing still for hours looking
at a gigantic reproduction of Ataturk. An immobile body, finally
controlled, that interrogates the image of the so called “father of
modern Turkey.” This way of manifesting dissent has inspired most of
the demonstrators. The immobile bodies of the crowd, the eyes
projected towards the future (and the past) are asking to all of us to
take position. From our screens, to our streets. To problematize our
position in a power relation through our body.




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                               Bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio, Notes on Gesture in Infancy and History: On the De-
    struction of Experience, London, Verso, 2007.
Canetti, Elias, Crowds and Power, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984.
Groys, Boris, Art Power, Cambridge, The Mit Press, 2008, it. tr. by Anna
    Simone, Milano, Postmedia SRL, 2012.
Kaganovsky, Lila, How the Soviet Man Was Unmade: Cultural Fantasy and
    Male Subjectivity Under Stalin, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh
    Press, 2008.
Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval
    Political Theology, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957.
Mulvey, Laura, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema in Movie and Meth-
    ods, Ed. Bill Nichols, Berkeley – Los Angeles, University of Califor-
    nia Press, 1985, II.
Piretto, Gian Piero, “I Molteplici Corpi del Compagno Stalin”, Sul Cor-
    po. Culture, Politiche, Estetiche, Eds. Simona Bertacco - Simonetta
    Vallorani, Milano, Cisalpino, 2007.



                             Webography


The            Free          Dictionary        Online,        medical-
      dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/heterosexual+panic web (last ac-
      cessed 27/10/2013).



                             Filmography


The Fall of Berlin, Dir. Mikheil Chiaureli, URSS, 1950.



                                                                                 9
Lorenzo Gramatica, The Leader and the Mass: the Political Body and the Power of Retorics




                                          Author
Lorenzo Gramatica

       Lorenzo Gramatica is graduated in Liberal Studies at Università
degli Studi di Milano, writing a dissertation on Italo Calvino’s
experience in Soviet Union. He has completed his MA in Film and
Screen Studies at Goldsmiths University of London, writing his
dissertation on the body of Stalin in Soviet propaganda films. He
organized a conference in 2013, “Bodies on the Screen,” with his
colleague Yigit Soncul. His research interest is mainly focused on
fiction and non fiction in documentary and mockumentary films,
aesthetics of disgust in Mondo Movies and Cannibal films, Soviet
propaganda films, gender studies and body theories. Lorenzo is also an
independent writer. He collaborated with the online magazine Il Cubo
and he is still writing for the independent literary magazine Colla-Una
Rivista Letteraria in Crisi and for online film magazine Looped.



                                       The paper
Date sent: 16/02/2014
Date accepted: 30/04/2014
Date published: 30/05/2014



                           How to quote this paper
Gramatica, Lorenzo, “The Leader and the Mass: The Political Body and
the Power of Rhetorics”, Between, IV.7 (2014), http://www.Between-
journal.it/




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