Khrenov N.A. Cinema and Myth: Reception of Cinema in the Urban Culture of Russia in the Early XXth Century

Abstract: In the article the author attempts to identify mythological implications that determine perception of particular films produced by various directors in different time periods. These implications have a strong influence on public consciousness but this impact does not comprehended. Among other things the content of mass reception of cinema includes out-of-cinematic manifestations of collective unconscious. Mental projections of images - archetypes which came into existence in different periods of cultural history and connected with utopian visions, myths, and religious symbols are becoming actual in it. Noteworthy that projections on the city precede the projections of collective unconscious on the cinema; the latter are transferred on the cinema later on. Finally, the cinema in principal makes a colossal intertextuality in which cultural history is reflected both in its axial and pre-axial aspects. The subject under analysis of the present article is the projections that become realistic already at early stages of the history of film. In his research of the perception of early cinematography (mostly Russian) Khrenov has applied methodologies of such psychological schools as psychoanaysis and analytical psychology as well as crowd psychology as it was introduced by Gustave Le Bon and Serge Moscovici. The main conclusions of the research are the following: a) the audience of the early cinematography had the layers of urban population that preserved folklore stereotypes in their minds; b) perception of the city occurs in accordance with the folklore stereotype of perceiving the city as a holiday; c) the aura produced by the public consciousness on the city is defined by the attitude of public on the cinema. The author's contribution to the research of cinema perception is his analysis of cinema as a city myth. According to the author, early cinematographic plots reproduce motives of the holiday myth. The novelty of the research is caused by the fact that the author defines specific archetypes that become actual in the process of cinema perception. 

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