Numerous villains from Bond movies, Ivan Drago from Rocky IV and Ivan Vanko from Iron Man 2, Viggo Tarasov from the first John Wick, Yuri Komarov from A Good Day to Die Hard, Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Podovsky from John Rambo movie ‘s… And from more recent history, Killing Eve’s Villanelle, an anti-hero character that we all fell in love with.
Have you ever noticed how many Russian villains you encounter in American and European films? If the same thing were done for another nation, there would be serious anti-racist reactions, but most of us would not find it strange when we encounter a Russian evil character. Being bad and being Russian in movies are now so intertwined.
Russians were always a threat to Europe and America. But the antagonization that was reflected in the movies started during the Cold War.
When we say “Cold War”, we are talking about the ideological and political tension between the world’s two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, between 1947 and 1991.
The two countries, one of which was the greatest representative of capitalist and the other of socialist values in their periods, entered into an indirect competition with each other through other countries they could influence, rather than fighting each other directly.
Although many tactics were used during this period, such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons, espionage activities, and the spread of ideological propaganda all over the world, there was no hot conflict. However, the rivalry between the two countries determined the entire world politics.
The 1940s and 1950s were periods when America engaged in intense anti-Soviet and anti-communist propaganda.
A serious climate of fear about communist espionage activities and Russians was spread by the state, called the “Red Danger”. This wind has also reached Hollywood. The “House Un-American Activities Committee” (HUAC) closely monitored the film and television industry, as well as many other industries, for any communist connections.
Under all this government pressure, Hollywood producers, who wanted to prove their loyalty to the country, gave a lot of space to Soviet spy characters, whose characters were quite one-dimensional, and produced violent films that turned these characters into enemies.
Thus, the Russian villain cliché emerged and became normalized with movies spread from Hollywood all over the world.
This situation continued for many years and countless films. In the same years, important directors such as Hitchcock, who approached cinema from a more artistic perspective, also had important productions that were critical of this stereotyping.
Still, those were the times when racism and character stereotyping, or labeling, were not discussed as much as they are today, and Russian villains appeared in thousands of movies.
If the Americans were good, the Russians must have been bad.
Such labels and stereotypes are actually always based on a social story. Homosexual, black, etc. who are excluded by society. Bands are often easily squeezed into narrow or bad molds instead of being the headliners.
Sometimes it is done directly by the state to spread the current political ideology. For the USA, placing this issue in films also helped the audience to easily accept this proposal based on geopolitical rivalries in other areas.
After the Soviets collapsed, there began to be a noticeable decrease in the number of Russian villains in films.
During these periods, the balances in world politics were changing. Especially after the September 11 attacks, there was an increase in the number of Middle Eastern evil characters.
But strangely, these stereotypes were much more easily met with anti-racist backlash than writing a Russian villain.
To write a Russian villain, you no longer had to be interested in the Cold War or American propaganda. The first thing that comes to your mind when writing a bad character might be that he is a Russian with a serious and cold attitude. Therefore, although Russian bad characters have decreased, they have not disappeared.
The decline in bad performances did not last long.
With the rise of Putin’s far-right policies, the occupation of Crimea and especially the occupation of Ukraine, antipathy towards Russia, which has always been established in Western societies, has risen again. This situation was immediately reflected in the film industry; today, the rate of Russian villains in films is close to the Cold War period.
Unfortunately, we are going through a period where racism is rising again around the world. This may cause the entire Russian people to be considered the same as Putin and his policies. But we need to remind ourselves again and again that this is not the case for any people, that state ideology and the individual are completely different things, and we must stand against such stereotyping.
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