April 5 2013 Olga Stuchebrukov on Crimes Without Any Punishment at All:Dostoevsky and Woody Allen in LIght of Bakhtinian Theory
Reception Studies, Friday, April 5 2013, 1230-2 pm 912 Sproul
Crimes Without Any Punishment at All:Dostoevsky and Woody Allen in LIght of Bakhtinian Theory.
Separated by more than a decade, Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Match Point (2005) are similar not only in their recourse to Dostoevsky’s classic Crime and Punishment, but in their anti-Dostoevskian artistic method. I attempt to challenge the entrenched view of Allen’s style as polyphonic. My main concern is not to privilege the novel over the films, or Dostoevsky over Allen, but to show the fallacy of applying the terms polyphony and dialogism, in their true Bakhtinian meaning, to Allen’s oeuvre. Bakhtin defines polyphony as all-inclusive and profoundly life affirming; as such, it is incompatible with existentialist nihilism, despair, or hollow playfulness. In the broader sense, Allen’s reading of Dostoevsky and modern critics’ application of Bakhtin to Allen expose the problem of dialectical reception of dialogic authors.