Hero’s Ideal World in Boundaries of Ideology: From a Minnesinger Knight to an SS Officer (from Wagner’s opera to Seitablayev’s film)

Abstract

The purpose is to identify the common features of idealist hero in the works, that are various in historical, social, cultural and artistic context. There are Heinrich Tannhäuser from the Wagner’s opera and SS officer Heinrich from the Seitablayev’s movie ‘87 Children’, and their motivation in the boundaries of the social ideology. The research methodology combines historical and culturological approach for studying social, politic and cultural context; comparative analyse for definition common and differ in the idealistic heroes’ actions of different historical periods; art history approach and structural analyse for disclosure of the creative method of film-composer; theoretical generalisation method for a comprehensive study of the problem. Scientific novelty is in identification and structural analyse of uncommon creative method applying of opera fragment in cinema, which is a prolongation of musical progress of the previous track in the moment of hero’s audio-visual identification, also this fragment is marker of his personality. Conclusion. The idealist hero, who exists in the axiological system of his community, is its active part, and this system is a basis of his personal ideals. He feels imperfection or fallibility of it, gets a hard experience, suffers and dies in the end of his way to an unattainable ideal. He cannot abandon ideology for the love of an ideal, and conversely. This dilemma cannot be resolved, it is a priori. It is belief in one’s ideal until the tragic end. Disappointment also comes due to striving and impossibility to be understood. Christianity and Nazism do not contradict each other, considering their cooperation in the wrestle against the Jews. The same names explain heroes’ acting logic, and magical, mythological, historical, and mental senses. A fragment of Tannhäuser’s theme from the opera overture is a rare method of applying of the opera quote in the cinema.