Socialist cinema, gender, and the robot revolution: Ion Popescu Gopo’s Galax, the Doll-Man (1984) beyond Utopia and Dystopia

ABSTRACT

In this article, I argue for the relevance of Eastern European cinema dealing with the robot revolution in the context of Romanian communism. I aim to fill a gap in the literature by focusing on Galax, the Doll-Man (Galax, omul-păpușă, 1984), the only Romanian drama movie centered on a robot, and directed by Ion Popescu Gopo (1923–1989), the most internationally awarded Romanian animator and cineaste during communism. I argue that Gopo’s Galax challenges obliquely socialist realism and the Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters of the period, providing emancipatory gender insights and an appealing alternative to utopian or dystopian scenarios in which robotic technology is either liberating or all-destructive. In Galax, Gopo combines different filmic genres and styles to explore a multi-layered crisis of subjectivity, human relations, and male-dominated public authorities generated by the robot revolution. Gopo’s emancipatory vision reconstructs the transformative relationship between the robot Galax capable of learning and creation, and a young female student (Mariana) who challenges different male authorities built on social, political, and psychiatric rationalities, and thus breaks with the typical female heroes of the Romanian socialist films – the sacrificial worker, mother, or activist.

KEYWORDS:

• Socialist cinema
• robot revolution
• gender
• sci-fi
• myth
• Ion Popescu Gopo

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. To my knowledge, there is no full-fledged academic treatment of Gopo’s Galax. In addition, there is no book dealing systematically with the Romanian sci-fi.

2. Although I focus on Galax for its complexity and originality, Gopo’s short animation ‘Three Apples’ (1979) and his feature film Fantastic Comedy (1975) pose robots at their center as well. In the familiar dystopian scenario of the ‘Three Apples’, a robot turns evil and subdues humanity. In contrast, the feature film is an optimistic comedy in which an extraterrestrial robot (Dem Rădulescu) takes human form and comes to earth searching for a new energy source. In the end, fantasy is the energy source that the alien robot takes back to its far-away planet. Notably, all Gopo’s robots are ‘male.’

3. The Romanian film critic Manuela Cernat calls him ‘our Jules Verne’ (Cernat 1989, 17). It is noteworthy that Gopo served as head of the Romanian Film Directors’ Association from 1968 to the year of his death, 1989.

4. The translations from Romanian are mine except for Mihai Eminescu’s poem ‘The Evening Star/Luceafărul’ (II).

5. Galax was written and directed by Gopo, who also plays the role of Mariana’s father in the movie. The reception of Galax in the communist newspapers and magazines was generally positive, praising Gopo’s imagination (Vodă 1984; Oproiu 1984; Coman 1984; Mihăilescu 1984; Creangă 1984; Lazăr 1984). It is noteworthy that none of these reviews takes seriously Gopo’s insights into robots as self-learning and creative ‘hybrid agents.’ The reviews reduce the robo-narrative to a modern ‘fairytale’ (Vodă) and the robot to the ‘pretext’ for a ‘police film story’ (Lazăr 1984, 4) or ‘just a love story’ (Coman 1984, 2). Likewise, none of the reviews deals with key aspects of Gopo’s vision – gender emancipation; the confrontation with the authority, the role of mythical narratives—, that are central to my interpretation.

6. Dana Duma wrote the most important work on Gopo (Duma 1996, 2020). See also Grid Modorcea’s less inspired monography on Gopo (Modorcea 2008).

7. As Florentina Andreescu argues, ‘The female ideal within communism resembles to a great extent the ideal identified in the Craftsman Manole myth, where the body of the woman and her sexuality are appropriated by the state and strictly regulated’ (Andreescu 2011, 666). Verdery (1994) and Andreescu (2013) analyze, among others, the gendered construction of the communist nation on the patriarchal model of a family whose ultimate pater was Nicolae Ceauşescu. For the (dis)continuities of the representations of gender in Romanian (post)communist cinema, see Andreescu and Shapiro (2015); Petrescu (2020); Godeanu-Kenworthy (2015), Georgescu (2011).

8. In Duma’s interpretation, Sergiu symbolizes the dragon keeping Mariana captive. Galax is, for Duma, the hero who frees her (Duma 2020, 160). However, Gore saves Mariana, not Galax (IV).

9. The invention is not the stroke of a solitary genius but the result of the collaborative effort of the students under professor Roşca’s guidance, among them the brilliant young Gore. Gopo’s representation is gendered: no female researcher is in the team that invented Galax.

10. Mariana’s ‘desire complex’ is made of curiosity but also of two forms of the desire for overcoming – through absolute love and the scientific invention of a superior ‘being’

11. Galax is largely made of wood. According to Gopo, he chose to make Galax out of wood to confer it warmth (Gopo, apud Duma 2020, 161). It is also noteworthy that Galax wears a Sumerian male wooden mask whose eyes are two black holes, which creates an aura of enigma. Vodă argues that the mask gives Galax ‘an air of tender melancholy, of sweet pain, which radiates over the entire film … ’ (1984: 87), yet this contradicts the overall optimistic end of Galax. In turn, Mihăilescu sees in the Sumerian mask a ‘strange mixture of present and future’ (1984: 87). She is spot-on but fails to explain the rationale of this mixture. For my interpretation of Gopo’s prolix mixture of past and present symbolic references, see II).

12. Mariana is portrayed as being unwell. Upon Sergiu’s medical advice, Mariana’s mother tries to solve her crisis with medication. They both miss the ethical-existential nature of her malaise. Mariana’s disease is a metaphor for and the somatization of her growing subjectivity crisis.

13. As Vodă’s persuasively argues, ‘Gopo cultivates a discreet fantastic that plausibly emerges from within the most ordinary life’ (Gopo cultiva un fantastic discret rasarit verosimil din cel mai cotidian-cotidian) (1984: 87).

14. Cyrano is a man with a ‘nose as huge as his heart’ who helps the fine-looking Christian to get close to the beautiful Roxane. Cyrano loves Roxane yet he lends his gift of words to Christian to charm Roxane. Only shortly before Cyrano’s death Roxane finds out the truth. According to one interpretation of Galax, Gore/Cyrano uses Galax/Christian to court Mariana/Roxane. In a 1983 interview, Gopo himself suggest this reading of Galax based on the literary myth of Cyrano (see Duma 2020, 206). However, the significance of the film is more open and complex, as it combines different myths and narratives without privileging the story of Cyrano. Moreover, the movie does not show at any point Gore programing Galax to tell Mariana what he does not dare. In fact, he declares himself to Mariana a couple of times and gets a slapping. Finally, Galax articulates robophilosophical problems and complexities (machine learning; a cooperative robot-human relationship) and cinematic themes (I) that are irreducible to a love story based only on the literary myth of Cyrano.

15. Anticipating Her (Spike Jonze, dir.), Galax stands for a disembodied and seductive voice. In Jonze’s dystopia, the main character, a lonely writer (played by Joaquim Phoenix) is happily seduced by an AI voice (Scarlett Johansson). By the end of the movie, their perfect ‘love’ turns into a terrible disillusionment: the voice caters at once to the need for ‘personal’ love of thousands at once. However, Galax inscribes a similar dysopian scenario into a broader narrative of coming of age.

16. ‘ … Încă de mic/Te cunoşteam pe tine,/Şi guraliv şi de nimic,/Te-ai potrivi cu mine.’ The translation is from the bilingual edition of ‘The Evening Star’, Eminescu 2022: 195–224.

17. Gopo’s excessive and prolix symbolic-mythical citations can be interpreted as the symptom of the impossibility of adequately naming the event of the robotic invention (see III).

18. The father, Gopo himself, is the animator in the movie. This playful self-referentiality is characteristic to Gopo’s oeuvre (Duma 1996; 2020). By playing the role of Mariana’s father, the director makes a declaration of paternity. In her interpretation, Mihăileanu is spot-on to argue as follows: ‘Gopo himself, in the role of the understanding father, takes us with his mind to a sorcerer’s apprentice full of goodwill, whose heart doesn’t seem to let him forbid another’s dream, fantasy’ (1984: 87). His opposite is, as Mihăileanu notes, Sergiu, who constantly brings Mariana down. In this context, it is noteworthy that in Gopo’s film The Wizard’s Apprentice (1985), the filmmaker (played by Gopo himself) is Galax’s creator. In one scene showing the filmmaker in his studio, surrounded by his characteristic tools, Galax sits lifelessly in a corner. When the filmmaker/Gopo goes out of the studio, Galax comes to life together with the tools of the creator.

19. Mariana’s savior tries to kiss her, but she slaps and rejects him.

20. e.g. ‘Praslea the Brave and the Golden Apples’

21. The robot’s creativity refers to producing novel and original artifacts based on machine learning and the manipulation of a dizzying quantity of data. Robotic creations can move and stir up emotions and imagination even if they are not the product of agents endowed with consciousness, emotions, and imagination.

22. Oproiu argues that Gopo’s film is a ‘radiant story’ (o istorie luminoasă) which banks on youth, love, and science (Oproiu 1984, 2). Still, Oproiu glosses over the dramatic elements of the denouement of Gopo’s film.

23. Even in the more recent sci-fi films, the feminization of the robot imagination often reproduces gendered models: in I am Mother (2019), Her (2013), Ex-Machina (2014), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machine (2003), the female robot represents a dangerous, dystopian alterity. In this sense, they are echoes of Fritz Lang’s evil robot Maria in Metropolis (1927).

24. Special thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their critical comments, and to Dana Duma and Bogdan Popa for their help. All errors are mine.