DOI: 10.21064/WinRS.2019.4.3
Based on focus-groups, conducted in Saint Petersburg and Ivanovo in November 2018, the paper examines the contemporary Russians’ reception on the images of U. S. militaries’ masculinity that were created by the Soviet and American films. The authors, at first, analyze the informants’ views on cinematic images of U. S. militaries, then, compare them with evaluations of these images after the screening the fragments of the Cold War movies (“Red Dawn”, “The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!”, “713 Asks for Landing”, “A Cadet from the Schooner «Columbus»”, and others). The informants had stable and shared beliefs about how Soviet and American cinema represented U. S. militaries’ masculinity. After screening the fragments of movies the informants’ evaluations have changed: 1) they gave strong emotional response; 2) the informants started to identify themselves stronger with the Soviet past; 3) their evaluations became more nuanced. They considered the image of the American militaries created by Soviet movies more truthful that created by U. S. films. The informants’ attitudes varied depending on only their age (their gender, education, place of residence, and political preferences were not important).
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