Как США представляли СССР в 70-е годы.My translation:
- Садись есть!
- Выпьем водки!
- Мама, можно я пойду, поиграю на балалайке, почитаю Ленина и подою медведя?
- Можно, и не забудь сдать нас в КГБ
- Папа, а где дедушка?
- Стоит в очереди за талонами на талоны.
- Дорогая, становится жарковато! Пойди, выключи ядерный реактор.
- Заткнись, Наташа! Выпьем водки!
- Папа, я написал сочинение « за Ленина я готов гнить на рудниках».
- Отлично Сергей, выпейте водки всем классом!
How the US imagined the USSR in the 1970's.Maybe this is insider/niche humor and thus not funny to many, but as a social document it speaks volumes. This is the Russians' self-deprecating take on how we saw them during the cold war, and for me, a big part of the joke is that it is pretty close to true - both in terms of how things really were and in terms of how they were seen by an earlier generation of Russia-watchers (uh, "Sovietologists," I think they were called back in the day).
"Sit down and have something to eat!"
"Let's drink some vodka!"
"Mama, can I go play the balalaika, read Lenin, and milk the bear?"
"Of course you can, and don't forget to turn us in to the KGB."
"Papa, where's grandpa?"
"He's waiting in line to get ration tickets for ration tickets."
"Honey, it's getting hot in here! Go turn off the nuclear reactor."
"Shut up, Natasha! Let's drink some vodka!"
"Papa, I wrote a composition called "For Lenin I Would Rot in the Mines."
"Excellent, Sergei, your whole class should drink some vodka!"
But it raises a couple of thoughts in my mind.
First of all, how many Americans still think of Russia in this kind of cartoonish way? Probably not a trivial number. And, frighteningly, we seem to still have some influential policymakers here in the US who haven't advanced their opinion of Russia much past this 1970's-vintage caricature.
Secondly, what would the reverse of such a joke (Russian impressions of the US in the 1970's) look like? My guess is that it would be even funnier, and even more misguided, because the average Soviet citizen had fairly limited and distorted sources of information about life in the USA. However, it's impossible to imagine Americans coming up with such a joke and telling it to each other, because caring about what people from other countries think of us is an exotic and unpopular pastime in the United States -- unlike in Russia, where it sometimes seems like a national pastime.
5 comments:
Very good and timely observations Lyndon - Katja and I have been kicking around writing something about Mikhail Zadornov (one of her favorite comedians). While his humor is supposed to ridicule the US ... what I find interesting is his humor says more about Russian impressions, than the reality of the US.
There was one joke (and I paraphrase) he told "This is all you need to know about the US - in the US, McDonalds is a restaurant".
And that is the joke. Slightly funny I guess, but a riot to Russians.
I guess the humor is supposed to be, that all restaurants here - are like fast-food places. This idea is so far from the truth as to be silly. And the irony (to me anyway) is that McDonalds appears more admired (or at least found interesting) in Russia than in the US.
It also came out of our conversations about Zadornov that there is some strange idea that Americans don't make sharp, sarcastic, or cutting humor about our own government. Apparently we aren't seen as very self-deprecating or having a sense of humor about ourselves. I had to find a website with a long list of jokes by late night TV hosts (Jay Leno, etc.) to attempt to dispel that misconception.
Humor is very cultural, and images of other nations in humor - and what other nations joke about us - could be a whole field of study in itself.
There are three things in the joke I find close to -- even reflective of -- the reality of Russia as opposed to the reality of Kremlinology: vodka, талоны, and Lenin. I'm a Muscovite though so талоны entered my life only in Gorby's years. But drunks lying unconscious on the sidewalk are a lovely childhood memory.
W.Shedd -- the humor might be in the fact that, as someone like Zadornov has remarked, "McDonalds is a chain of free restrooms." I'm sorry for the people who still watch Zadornov and his ilk.
Interesting comments all. Thanks. It's true that many people in Russia are still ignorant of the West, but since there are so many more Russians who get to travel internationally the incidence of funny questions has gone down dramatically. When I first showed up for school in Leningrad in the '80's, some people knew my family had previously lived in Africa, and I had classmates asking me whether it was common for people there to walk around without any clothes on.
As for taxing people for opening their windows, it might not be a bad idea for Russia to consider such a tax - just think of all the energy that is wasted every winter as heat floats out of fortochki opened to counter the effects of overly strong, centrally controlled radiator heat.
The only thing, in my experience, that matches the average westerner's ignorance of Russia, is the average Russian's ignorance of the West.
Seconded.
Very interesting. I was born in Siberia and when I mention it to foreigners (and I love doing that), they often say, "No way!" since many people in the West seem to think of Siberia as a huge ice desert which is, erm, not entirely true.
Talking about stereotypes about Americans - of course people in the USSR didn't know much about the States but on the other hand there was always concern about working class which cannot be bad in any country, including America. It may sound naive but many people in Russia believed that we could and we should help poor peole in America. I also vaguely remember stories about black people being treated horribly in the US. Ironically enough, these days black people have problems in Russia :-( but back then we all were taught in school that race and skin color don't matter. I'm not old enough to remember much about Soviet days (I was 11 when the USSR reached nirvana, so to speak) but I do remember short poems and cartoons about capitalists in top hats. :-) Overall, I guess the image of American people in the USSR was better than the one of the Russians in the West - no matter what you say about Russian propaganda, the Western one was no better than ours...
And of course people in Russia generally don't know much about Americans, since the image is mostly formed by American movies full of people suing each other, cursing and shooting. There are also news stories about Americans forcing their own notion of democracy on the countries that are not of immediate danger to them. Why, some people think that the States would bomb Russia if we didn't have nukes - why not? There is certain percentage of Muslims in our country (take Tatars, for instance) and we have oil. And very few Russians feel confidence in their own country which is the root for most problems here, the present level of xenophobia included.
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