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A passion for extremes: Hollywood's Cold War romance with Russia

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 3; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/1477570005048081

1741-2676

Dana Heller,

Communism, Protests, Social Movements

This article examines images of Russians in Hollywood film from 1939 to 1990, with a focus on romantic narratives depicting Russians and Americans in love. The article traces a pattern of attachment to Russia as a trope that helps reveal the changing and contradictory contours of American myths of nationhood. The author argues that films such as Ninotchka, Moscow on the Hudson and The Russia House refashion such myths by rhetorically orchestrating structures of society and history, gender and sexuality, desire and consumption, towards the manufacture of a democratic consensus that links the private body to the national body, or the fulfillment of private individuals to the fulfillment of the national ideal.