You know how the Goncharov (1973) poster has “winter comes to Naples” on it? I want you all to know that currently, Naples is very cold (for our tastes), we have snow on top of Vesuvius, our mountains have snow, and some of the surrounding towns have snow. This is not normal. You all did this to us. You cursed us.
ETA: This is a discussion of Goncharov as a meme and how it relates to Queer culture, therefore I am not tagging it with the “unreality” tag. Goncharov is not a real film, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important; for reasons I will now explain.
I may be going crazy, but I think I am on to something regarding the true meaning of the whole Goncharov phenomenon, and it’s kind of related to Vaporwave and the image that people who didn’t grow up in the 1980s or early 1990s (or who have hazy memories of it from their earliest childhood) have enshrined it in the “aesthetic” of vaporwave. But while the themes of Vaporwave are tied to capitalism and consumerism, the “aesthetic” of the 1970s has very different associations.
The whole 70s-to-80s transitional vibe is a favorite topic of mine: right before the Muskrat bought twitter, I tweeted a whole thread about how Panos Cosmatos channels that whole vibe better than nearly any director I’ve ever seen. (Yes, even Quentin Tarantino - fight me.)
People are watching the new Star Wars media, which are all based around the Original Trilogy and therefore have sort of the same 70s “aesthetic look” of the time in which those movies were made. George Lucas was incorporating and repurposing as much regular stuff that existed in the 1970s that he could, and it contributed to his “used, lived in future” vibe that I think people really glommed onto when they saw the films.
For example: Aunt Beru’s outfit from the first film looks like something the actress could have worn on the street in 1977 without anyone giving her a second glance.
People all over the film (but particularly in the scenes on Tatooine) were wearing regular clothes and then making them over or putting accessories over them to make them look futuristic and alien; “Star Wars Bounding” before that was really even a thing. Their regular 1970s street clothes.
This is related to Goncharov because: people are watching Andor and The Mandalorian, and they’re starting to ask “what happened to the 1970s aesthetic? Why don’t we bring that back?”
The joke about the Goncharov film hoax is how it’s a “forgotten film” and about “analyzing the themes of Goncharov.” About themes of homoeroticism, about two men (one of them a Discotheque owner on the run from a repressive regime) and two women who are in love, all of whom are unable to consummate that love, because of toxic masculinity and cultural expectations. About clocks being a frequent and repeating symbol - about the characters’ time running out. And the film basically disappearing from public knowledge and being forgotten for decades because these themes were “ahead of their time.” (All of this originating from a post about a pair of knockoff boots.)
Because this is a metaphor for the LGBTIQ experience in the 1970s if ever there was one. About a time when an intersection of Queer-BIPOC culture proudly asserted itself for a single shining moment in time - then was eventually subject to both a bigoted, racist backlash and a horrific epidemic so damaging and deadly that we’re still analyzing the human cost and the effect it had on society as a whole. Queer culture exploded onto the scene in the 1970s - and then its time suddenly ran out. Or was cut short.
Goncharov - or rather, the spirit and the moment in time that it represents - wasn’t “forgotten.” It was buried. First under a racist, homophobic/transphobic backlash, then by the malignancy of Reaganism and the AIDS virus that Reagan and his policies enabled to spread and kill thousands. Under the sneering condescension and bigotry of the people who want this spirit to stay buried.
But this spirit is unkillable. Tumblr just gave this spirit a name: Goncharov.
This same spirit is in Andor, to a point - because Queer culture is being actively repressed by the usual bigots and fascists, and Star Wars in general has a running theme of resisting oppression, and it is firmly anchored to its 1970s roots despite taking place “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” Spoiler warning for the Andor season finale: but it was impossible for me to see the scenes of rebellion and not flash back on this recent tweet from Dan Savage in the wake of the Club Q shooting:
(“Out of the bars, into the streets!”)
One of the things I think about all the time is what would have been if the right wing bigoted backlash had been turned back, and how things might be different if Reaganism and the AIDS crisis had never happened. What our culture might have become. How much further ahead we might be than we are now.
We’re still facing that same toxic right wing backlash right now, but it’s our duty to resist and survive however we can, hoping that this time we might turn the tide.
Stonewall lives. Disco lives. Goncharov lives. Long live the Rebellion.
obviously the homoeroticism talked about in ‘goncharov analysis posts’ had to remain subtext to make it a concievable product of the 1970s but i think its funny that this means even when tumblr makes up a fake movie to obsess over it still isnt canonically gay
Mo and Lois discuss Katya and Sofia’s relationship after catching a rescreening of Goncharov at the local indie theater - Dykes to Watch Out For, May 22, 1991
Just saw someone reblog some Goncharov post tagged #unreality and hoo boy, are the people who wanted warning tags for that stuff probably having a suddenly weird week on here
i know i’m going to get called a pretentious filmbro for this and i’m not trying to start discourse or anything but i hate the way mainstream audiences discuss world cinema. like it’s so clear that most of you wouldn’t care about anything made outside of the hollywood studio system if there wasn’t a big name attached. i get that the real problem is with traditional models of film distribution and i probably shouldn’t blame people on tumblr specifically but it’s hard not to when everyone on here seems to just automatically assume that martin scorsese directed goncharov and they don’t even bother to credit matteo jwhj0715
i got these knockoff boots online and instead of the brand name on the tag they have the name of an apparently nonexistent martin scorsese movie??? what the fuck
I FIGURED OUT WHAT THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE
After searching in depth on every possible term on these shoes, I ended up in the filmography of Italian producer Domenico Procacci, leading me to the film Gomorrah, which I noticed KINDA looks like Goncharov. So I did some digging into Gomorrah and it’s about the Naples mafia… which finally led me to finding this image
Martin Scorsese is on it because he lended his name to it to boost its reception in the US
This post has haunted me for so long I’m so glad I figured this out
A computer “read” the Gomorrah poster in the same way that, say, @nostalgebraist-autoresponder can “read” a meme you send her. and just like how sometimes Frank badly misreads the text in a meme you send and goes off on a tangent about cats or something, the computer that did the OCR for the boots misread Gomorrah.
And so we get Goncharov, the greatest movie never made.
I have no idea why the knockoff boot company decided to make boots centered around the poster for Gomorrah, but here we are.
