Who Is Straight on Planet Pluk?

• In Event: Subtext or Text?: Queer Temporalities and Popular Culture

Abstract

This paper analyzes Georgiy Daneliya’s Sci-Fi film Kin-Dza-Dza (1986)—a potentially singular openly queer portrayal in popular Soviet cinema—as a vital yet conflicted site of queer representation. It argues for Kin-Dza-Dza’s queer ambiguities as performing a speculative function, anticipating post-Cold War futures by collapsing previously “stable” interpretive binaries (socialism vs capitalism, pro-Soviet vs dissident, “straight and moral” vs “queer and amoral”). Contrasting Daneliya’s reductive and moralistic treatment of queerness with a simultaneous abundance of its intimate portrayal, my paper shows how oppositions dissolve with each minute two lost Soviets spend on planet Pluk. Situated between post-nuclear dystopia and queer utopia, Daneliya’s film expands the scope of late-Soviet film historiography and complicates the theoretical efforts to locate the possibilities of queer futures (Lee Edelman, José Muñoz, Elizabeth Freeman).

Author

• Pavel Savgira, UCLA