Author: Natalia Nyagolova
St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo
M. V. Lomonosov State University of Moscow
Published in Slavyanski dialozi, XIX, 2022, 29, 94-106. [In Bulgarian]
Abstract: Medical discourse plays an important role in certain Soviet films of the 1970s such as Matters of the Heart (1973; dir.V. Levin), Hello, Doctor! (1974, dir. V. Levin), and An Urgent Call (1978, dir. Kh. Bazhanov). In these films the shifts in the sociocultural context in the USSR after the Thaw are evident in the acquisition by medicine of a legitimate social status in society. Analysis reveals that the specific features of the image of the doctor are imbued with a particular kind of paternalism based on Socialist Realism and the nineteenth-century cultural tradition. The depiction of medical intelligentsia in the cinema of the 1960s and 1970s reflects the changes in the cultural and ideological atmosphere during the period of the Brezhnev “stagnation”. The analysis of the medical discourse demonstrates its important role in the cinematic stylistics of the films mentioned as well as the enlargement of the socialist realist canon.
Key words: medical discourse, poetics, paternalism, Socialist Realism, “stagnation”