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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Simmel, Ninotchka And The Revolving Door, Jon Cockburn
Simmel, Ninotchka And The Revolving Door, Jon Cockburn
Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)
In this paper, Jon Cockburn examines the device of the revolving door employed by Ernst Lubitsch in the opening scene to the film "Ninotchka" (1939), in which the operation of this architectural mechanism metaphorically prefigures several key themes in the film. Specifically, these themes are first, the complementary necessity of coupling efficiency with desire and second, that firmly held principles should be balanced with mutual pleasure. In the late 1930s, in articulating these contrasting attributes the film described the balancing act that confronted self-sufficient modern women, who faced expectations that they be industrially efficient yet noticeably sensual. However, while recognising …
Clothing The Soviet Mechanical-Flâneuse, Jon Cockburn
Clothing The Soviet Mechanical-Flâneuse, Jon Cockburn
Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)
Jon Cockburn looks at fashion trends on both sides of the Atlantic to examine images of and ideals for the modern woman. At the center of his analysis is a history of the Soviet “mechanical-flâneuse,” a distinctive twentieth-century variation upon the nineteenth-century European metropolitan “flâneuse” (or intelligent idler), that emerged through Soviet interpretations of the American efficiency movement. Cockburn traces the efforts of three avant-garde designers who tried to realize the mechanical-flâneuse in the Soviet Union, but shows that as Stalin rose to power, production of the mechanical-flâneuse was restricted to an increasingly theoretical realm. Politics eventually trumped the efficient …