Hollywood Myths

There are few places on Earth that have been subjected to as much negative Hollywood propaganda as Russia. Sure, the studios have made preposterous films about just about every corner of the globe, but no country has been given the treatment quite like Russia. Or the Soviet Union, actually, as most of the films I'm thinking of were during the heyday of the cold war. But consider how Hollywood has portrayed this country... The first image that comes to my mind is Ivan Drago, the nemesis of Apollo Creed and "the Italian Stallion"in Rocky IV, a huge beast of a man, expressionless, pumped up on steroids, humorless, stoic, & patently cruel. Ivan Drago is an inhuman portrait of the Russian people, a caricature cooked up by a bunch of folks catering to America's basest instincts to vilify what it is incapable of understanding. That's what Hollywood does best, by selling a bunch of lies to people desperate to be validated with stories only the incredulous or willfully obtuse could find entertaining. Excuse the hyperbole, but I'm realizing I'm angry. I'm here in this place for the first time, and what occupies a substantial part of my understanding of Russia is simply fluff like Red Heat and terrible spy novels and media portrayals of a people too convoluted to really understand. I've read my share of great Russian novelists, but I grew up in the 80's, and sadly, Rocky IV is far closer to the forefront in my mind than the writings of Solzhenitsyn or Tolstoy. One is popcorn fare for idiots, the other is high-minded literature poring over dense ideas. I wish I could purge the propaganda from my brain and see this place through unfiltered eyes, but that's quite impossible. Our perception is colored by our cultural constructs...and Hollywood has made a lot of money over the decades foisting stereotypes on impressionable young people like me...