Oldal 298 [298]
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296 Oleg Riabov 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 Manichean 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-American 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 intersectionality, cultural patterns of oppression are bound together and influenced by intersecting 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 categories 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 collective 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).
