Open AccessFirst Russian Cyclists and Their Bicycles: Images in Literature and in Cinema
Author(s) -
Lyudmila Saraskina
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
hudožestvennaâ kulʹtura
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2226-0072
DOI - 10.51678/2226-0072-2021-3-466-493
Subject(s) - movie theater , sight , everyday life , perception , history , aesthetics , visual arts , political science , art , art history , psychology , law , physics , astronomy , neuroscience
The paper, first, recapitulates the centuries-long history of designing and developing bicycles; in this history, inventors from many countries have taken part. As a result of the evolution of this wheeled transport, bicycles have become the most popular vehicles in cities as well as in villages; in many countries cycling has become the way of life. But, at the beginning, it was quite a problem to get accustomed to the sight of “riders on wheels”, especially if they were women. In capitals and in provincial towns, perceptions were quite different. The Russian cinema has documented the stages of introducing bicycles into the everyday life of the country, from the 1860s up to 1895. The feature films A Few Days from the Life of I.I. Oblomov (1979), The House of the Dead (1932), Man in a Shell (1939), as well as the retro-serial Anna, the Detective (2016–2020) have shown, with more or less details, how this and other European innovations were domesticated in Russia.