From my
January Talking Meme.
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selenak asked about most annoying to you clichés about Russian characters in Western media
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Cranberries don’t grow on trees, of course. It is an old joke in Russia – used since 19th century to mock ridiculous tales of foreigners told about Russia. Foreigners would come visit – for business, on diplomatic missions, exploring or just traveling for fun - and then wrote about what they saw. Some of it was truth, some – misunderstandings, some – parts of the whole, some outrages fantasies or whatnot. There were never accounts of cranberries (Oxycóccus) that grow on trees, but highbush cranberry is English name for (Vibúrnum ópulus), a totally different plant with red berries that do grow on trees. So it’s both truth and a hilarious image of a tired stereotype of weird mysterious Russia.
If I to study Russia by popular movies and tv series I would have learned that it’s always winter there. That it’s populated by beautiful young women who are all study in their ballet schools to be perfect spies and assassins. And who – if not killed in time - suddenly turn into old and weird and wrinkled baba yaga-like elderly women, without a missing link.
And ugly brutish men of all ages who only eat vodka and do crime.
And there are indeterminate grey masses who don’t do anything.
Stereotypes are changing with the times – it used to be all shiny princes and princess vs. unwashed masses, then just unwashed masses, then spies, than criminals, and then criminals and spies…
What annoys me most is not even that those stereotypes exist… Let’s face it: Russia does have cold winter, and criminals, and spies, and ballet, and vodka is being drunk as we speak. But there are so much more, and nobody cares. Movie after movie is being made with spy heroines - but we made her so cool! She is, like, a strong woman! And so sexy! And I am tired. There are quite a lot of Russian and former USSR emigration in USA, Canada and the rest of the world these days. They do all kind of stuff, work all kinds of jobs – there are a lot of actors and actresses with Soviet (not necessarily Russian) background, and I see them portraying Russian mobsters, criminals and spies only…
There are few exceptions and I had to dig in strange places to find them. Like take Jupiter Ascending. It’s strange to point at this movie as a good example of anything, but I am grateful that Russian emigrants in it are weird but regular folk, and Jupiter does unglamourous but regular and legal work (or are they illegal aliens? And all they do therefore illegal? They don’t do crimes as a regular job, anyway)
There are other glimpses and I find myself cheering for them. But mostly, writers are inserting Russians in story for exotic purposes and easy villains and such. It’s not that anyone is going to complain… And if they do, one can always point at Russia’s actual problems and tell them to fix all and then come back.
And the thing is… Russians are not going to complain. But for a different reasons. I actually asked friends in Russia about that issue of representation of Russia in Hollywood, and they mostly laugh and say, “Americans are all idiots, what else can one expect of them?”
Well.
My issue with the pervasive stereotypes is that they divide people, they put us all in little boxes and help us dehumanize each other. We really don’t need to dehumanized each other ever, but especially right now, in this harsh and brittle political climate.
Another thing – thinking beyond stereotypes makes for better stories. Take Agent Carter. I loved the series, but the discovery that Dottie Underwood was Russian from the Black Widow program, and the whole Russian storyline was the worst for me, because it made no sense. Everyone cheered, but the thing was she was an empty doll, not a character who was supposedly trained in Russia. It was 1946. Just after WWII, which was a huge trauma for everyone in USSR, everyone was affected, everyone lost someone. What did she do? Whom did she lost? How it affected her personally? Just a little bit of meaningful personal information would have made her a more interesting character.
I hate the line that Natasha says in the Avengers “Regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over that, I'm Russian. Or I used to be.” Because it doesn’t make any sense! In Russia regimes don’t fall everyday. She might have said as a spy, sure, but not connected to being Russian.::headdeask::
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