It's all part of the propaganda. They haven't let up from the Russia bad since the end of the cold war. Now whenever they want, they can blame something on Russia and it sticks no matter what. The populace is conditioned to think "Russia bad."
Remember how Tom Clancys Jack Ryan series treated the Russians?
It ends with Russia in NATO and US and RUS fighting China's invasion of Siberia together.
On the other, though, he said that his time on the station has sometimes forced him to confront American culture's misrepresentations of Russian people — and that it all came to a head on movie night.
It should be obvious to literally anyone. Especially any movies made during the cold war. Hell, even Chekhov was portrayed as an arrogant, but bumbling, fool. Star Trek gave someone from Japan more respect than someone from Russia.
Thing is, let's not pretend the Americans aren't going to be the bad guys in Soviet era films.
This is just silly. The US and Russia have been rivals since the end of WWII. That is, in fact, part of the reason for joint space ventures like this -- to build a bridge between said rivals. Of course some of our popular entertainment is going to portray them as the bad guys.
I note they didn't mention which movie it was. And further, it looks like it was the American astronaut who brought it up.
Like, for a while, on my previous flight, we would, once a week, get together and watch a movie. The U.S. support team on the ground was really good about coordinating with movie directors who were excited about sharing their movie with us. Even before it came out in theaters, we’d get this latest blockbuster and watch it all together. A lot of action movies. And I realized at one point that all the bad guys were Russians.
This previous flight was in 2017.
Was that awkward?
Yeah. It kind of gives me chills even thinking about it because at one point, I looked at my cosmonaut crewmates and said, “How does that make you feel?” And they said, “It’s kind of scary when we see that everybody in the United States, the mass media in the United States, is portraying Russians as the bad guys.” And so we shifted to instead of us just getting the latest movie, everybody got a turn to pick a movie they’d seen and wanted to share with everybody else. It became much more like a film festival type of thing and much more pleasant and less awkward because of that.
It's all part of the propaganda. They haven't let up from the Russia bad since the end of the cold war. Now whenever they want, they can blame something on Russia and it sticks no matter what. The populace is conditioned to think "Russia bad."
Remember how Tom Clancys Jack Ryan series treated the Russians? It ends with Russia in NATO and US and RUS fighting China's invasion of Siberia together.
It should be obvious to literally anyone. Especially any movies made during the cold war. Hell, even Chekhov was portrayed as an arrogant, but bumbling, fool. Star Trek gave someone from Japan more respect than someone from Russia.
Thing is, let's not pretend the Americans aren't going to be the bad guys in Soviet era films.
This is just silly. The US and Russia have been rivals since the end of WWII. That is, in fact, part of the reason for joint space ventures like this -- to build a bridge between said rivals. Of course some of our popular entertainment is going to portray them as the bad guys.
I note they didn't mention which movie it was. And further, it looks like it was the American astronaut who brought it up.
Looking into the interview, it's hard to say.
This previous flight was in 2017.