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American Femininity in Soviet Films during the Early Cold War (1946—1955)
narrow world of bourgeois femininity, defending not only female but also human
dignity.’
Conclusion
Cinematic representations of American gender order were a weapon in the Cold
War. Gender discourse played an important role in othering the US, serving as
one of the ways to prove that the victory of socialism on the world scale was in¬
evitable: portraying the superiority of Soviet over American gender norms aimed
to convince the audience of the superiority of the Soviet social system in gen¬
eral. American gender norms were represented as determined by the very nature
of the capitalist system, and consequently could only be eradicated by destroying
capitalism. Soviet women embodied normal femininity, while American women
expressed deviant femininity. American women were portrayed with a lack or ex¬
cess of stereotypical femininity: either cruel, hard-hearted, and incapable of love,
or dependent on husbands, narrow-minded, and profligate. In addition, women
possessed all the negative traits of capitalist society, including egotism, worshiping
money, racism etc. The most evident display of ugly gender order was the submis¬
sion of women and their conversion into objects.
At the same time in the eyes of Soviet cinema, a homogeneous American femi¬
ninity did not exist: it varied depending on class, race, and political belief. The vices
of American femininity were determined not by American national culture, but the
essence of the capitalist system per se. The prioritisation of the class principle over
the national principle demanded the creation of the images of the ‘good American
women.
Cinema targeted not only international but also both local audiences. The
rhetoric of international relations served as a tool to build symbolic boundaries
and hierarchies within Soviet society. Since the Soviet system was perceived as the
‘natural’ form of social order, its opponents were proclaimed abnormal in the gen¬
der dimension too: sympathy for the Americans politically and “grovelling before
the West” resulted in their gender deviancy. In its turn, departures from Soviet gen¬
der norms were believed to be evidence of political disloyalty. Thus, the image of
American femininity served as a factor in shaping and reshaping Soviet gender and
political orders, clearly defining norm and deviation, and reasserting the bounda¬
ries of proper femininity in the USSR.
7 In this aspect the image of Cynthia Kidd, a character from Boris Lavrenyov’s play 7he Voice of America
(1949) is significant. She protested against submission of women in the American family, confessing to
her husband: “I want to be your friend and comrade; I want to be a human being. That is not customary
in America. But I want that” (Lavrenev 1952: 39).
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