Question by L:
What is the importance of “The Bedbug” by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Mayakovsky’s work in theatrical history?
Also, would someone please explain {simply} what Social Realism is and how Mayakovsky contributed to this?? I am not socialist at all. This is for a school report.
Thank You please respond ASAP
Best answer:
Answer by Spellbound
Socialist Realism was the approved style for all the arts (except, strangely photo-montage) across the Socialist World.
It can be summed up quite simply. It is realist, not abstract, so that it can be understood by the masses, not an artistic elite. It must portray people in a certain way: the “hero” must always be a worker. The party & party members must be shown in an educative, knowledgeable way. Any depictions of the “former classes” that is the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, must show them as exploiters and cruel or perhaps as misguided and ill-educated. It often points towards a new, technological and utopian future where electrification has spread across the country, a future of factories, apartment blocks and machines.
The Bedbug, although written before the introduction of Socialist Realism as the official style (in 1932), contains many of the elements of it. The hero of the story is the working girl – Zoya. She is seen as educated, forward looking and educative. The “former classes” – Rosalie Pavlovna are shown as stupid and, through her violence towards Zoya, cruel. The anti-hero Prisypkin is shown to have joined the party not out of communist zeal, but for “careerist” reasons. The party was soon to undergo a purge to remove such people. And the future the play predicts has eradicated human vices such as alcoholism, swearing and bourgeois thoughts.
The party is shown as a knowledgeable, humane organisation that is striving for the betterment of all humankind. Marx’s theory of the “inevitability” of socialism and communism is demonstrated by the Chicago Soviet in the future (1979).
In the end the bedbug is shown not to be an insect, rather it is the old kind of human being – Bourgeoisius vulgaris. It cannot feed on the new kind of people – Homo Sovieticus, Soviet Man
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