Thread: Western Propaganda aka клюква lol

I think USA has this kind of movies as a consequence of freedom of speech. Anyone with a budget can film a trash movie about evil Russians to fit the target audience's expectations. In USSR, on the other hand, there was censorship, and censorship doesn't necessarily mean "dissidents and free-thinkers", it also means "censorship of different kinds of trash no sane person wants to see", every movie had to have some profound message, morale (="evil propaganda of evil communists" , obviously dumb & ugly cowboys invading Vladivostok to build McDonalds restaurants isn't one of those, Soviet propaganda was about more specific & subtle political ideas.

Originally Posted by car

I think USA has this kind of movies as a consequence of freedom of speech. Anyone with a budget can film a trash movie about evil Russians to fit the target audience's expectations. In USSR, on the other hand, there was censorship, and censorship doesn't necessarily mean "dissidents and free-thinkers", it also means "censorship of different kinds of trash no sane person wants to see", every movie had to have some profound message, morale (="evil propaganda of evil communists" , obviously dumb & ugly cowboys invading Vladivostok to build McDonalds restaurants isn't one of those, Soviet propaganda was about more specific & subtle political ideas.

See, sane people usually choose to decide what they will see and what they won't, and don't rely on censorship doing it for them.

Originally Posted by car

I think USA has this kind of movies as a consequence of freedom of speech. Anyone with a budget can film a trash movie about evil Russians to fit the target audience's expectations. In USSR, on the other hand, there was censorship, and censorship doesn't necessarily mean "dissidents and free-thinkers", it also means "censorship of different kinds of trash no sane person wants to see", every movie had to have some profound message, morale (="evil propaganda of evil communists" , obviously dumb & ugly cowboys invading Vladivostok to build McDonalds restaurants isn't one of those, Soviet propaganda was about more specific & subtle political ideas.

Well the "target audience" get their expectations from these types of films. There is no other material readily available. That is why Hollywood's stereotyping of Russians is such a great pity. I suspect that many in the US base their understanding of Russians and Russia on what they see on TV and cinema.

It is not like the US produces a great deal of balanced documentaries about Russia, for instance. It was much worse during the Cold war, but contrary to what you might thing, things do not appear to have improved. To the degree that any documentaries were made during the cold war, they were about some negative aspect that would picture the enemy country in negative light. I think it's fair to say that the USSR produced documentaries that focussed on the negatives of the USA, such as rasism or class division.But I don't think it villified Americans in films at all, while this is/was standard fare in US entertainment i.e. "evil Russians".

Even in media like Reader's Digest or Time magazine they choose negative stories from Russia - the trend from the Cold War has continued although I think the twist has changed a bit. Now it seems more like Russians are depicted as unscrupolous, corrupt, ruthless and involved with criminality.

One trend from the Cold War was that if there ever was a nice Russian person in the film, it was somebody who wanted to defect, slept (literally) with the enemy or was persecuted by their country.