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shown by works concerning “the cultural turn” in Cold War studies (Griffith 2001;
Johnston 2010). On one hand, culture actively shaped international affairs. On the
other, it is difficult to understand many aspects of cultural life during the era, such
as Westerns, the Barbie doll, the space race or ice hockey, outside the context of the
contest between the two superpowers.' Cinema was one of the main arenas of the
cultural Cold War. On both sides of the Iron Curtain the leading directors, actors,
and scriptwriters were involved in producing the films.
The Cold War divided mankind into two opposing camps, producing a Mani¬
chean picture of the world according to which each superpower was believed to
be the main enemy of the other. There were several stages in the Soviet efforts to
represent American imperialism as the primary enemy. This move was reinforced
by a 1949 decree, The Plan on the Reinforcement of Anti-American Propaganda in
the Near Future. It recommended underlining thirty-seven themes in anti-Ameri¬
can propaganda, including “Propaganda of amorality and bestial psychology in the
USA” (Plan meropriyatii 2005: 324). The idea of the moral decline of the Western
world served as one of the cornerstones of Soviet propaganda, which necessitated
the creation of pictures of deviant gender order in America.
Cynthia Enloe points out that the Cold War was, apart from the superpowers
rivalry, a series of contests over the definitions of masculinity and femininity (Enloe
1993: 18-19). Indeed in any war gender discourse is a weapon for imposing upon
the audience the modes of masculinity and femininity that are to be considered
exemplary and normal. According to the methodological principle of intersection¬
ality, cultural patterns of oppression are bound together and influenced by inter¬
secting systems of society, such as race, gender, class, and ethnicity (Collins 2000:
42; see also Crenshaw 1991). It explains the way in which socially constructed cat¬
egories of differentiation interact to create a social hierarchy. A number of factors
make it possible to consider gender outside of relations between the sexes proper.
Fredrik Barth, developing his theory on his study of interethnic markers, showed
that social boundaries between communities are established with the help of ethnic
markers or elements of culture selected by group members themselves in order to
emphasise their difference from those around them (for example, in their clothing,
language, lifestyle etc.) (Barth 1969: 14). Based on these ideas, Nira Yuval-Davis
suggested that gender symbols should be interpreted as “symbolic border guards”,
which, along with other markers, identify people as members or non-members of
a certain community (Yuval-Davis 1997: 23). Images of men and women serve as
markers enabling the process of inclusion and exclusion in the formation of collec¬
tive identity, in separating ‘us’ from ‘them’.
' For instance, Uta Poiger’s book demonstrates that the West German perception of rock ‘n’ roll, jazz,
gangster movies, and consumerism influenced their attitudes towards the US in the context of the Cold
War confrontation. These cultural phenomena were perceived as deviant both in national aspect (they
were alien to Germanness) and gender aspect (they demasculinised Germans) (Poiger 2000).