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Oleg Riabov
American Femininity in Soviet Films during
the Early Cold War (1946-1955)
“Greta Garbo Wins Elections’, proclaimed a conservative newspaper commenting
on the defeat of the Italian Communist Party in the parliamentary elections of
1948 (Shaw 2007: 26). The results of the vote were one of the turning points of
the Cold War in stopping the spread of Communism to the West. The re-release
of Ernst Lubitch’s Ninotchka (1939) starring Garbo was among the efforts made
by the CIA during the election campaign—at the same time, it could be seen as
nothing but a love story between a Western man and a Soviet woman. This fact im¬
mediately allows us to suppose that gender discourse served as an effective weapon
in the Cold War, which was used actively in cinema.
‘The intersections of gender and national discourses in American cinema during
the Cold War have been intensively explored over the last two decades. This research
shows the mutual influence of collective identity and gender rhetoric, investigates
the role of the cinematic representations of the two superpowers’ gender orders in
constructing the Soviet enemy, in creating Americanness, and in legitimising and
delegitimising social order in the US (Jackson 2000; Heller 2005; Kackman 2005;
Laville 2006). As for Soviet cinema, its study has a long history, and some remark¬
able works are devoted to films of the Early Cold War (Kenez 1992; Turovskaya
1993; Gillespie 2002; Dobrenko 2008; Rollberg 2008; Norris & Torlone 2008;
Beumers 2009; Fedorov 2010, and others). Several researchers have analysed how
the films created images of Soviet gender order (Haynes 2003; Steans 2010; Shaw
& Youngblood 2010; Riabov 2012). However the exploration of cinematic repre¬
sentations of American femininity is just beginning.
‘The present chapter concentrates on some questions which are yet to receive
attention. How did Soviet cinema represent American femininity? What means
were exploited to represent its specific traits? How did these images relate to cin¬
ematic representations of Soviet femininity? The first section of the study is devoted
to clarifying the methodological approaches used to research gender discourse as
a Cold War weapon employed by cinema. The next section deals with cinematic
images of American women as victims of capitalist society. Then the study focuses
on representations of women as part of the enemy's world. Finally, the chapter
demonstrates how these representations of American women varied depending on
characteristics of their class, race, and political beliefs. Four Soviet films, which
centred on picturing the American way of life, form the main material of this study.