The Polyester Curtain: The Aesthetics of Russophobia in the Anglo-American film and television during the Putin era

This paper examines the revival of Cold War tropes in the American and British media since 2010, specifically focussing on the portrayal of Russian characters in fiction film and television drama. The dominant western narratives of the USSR have consistently maintained the discursive practice of ‘othering’ the Soviet citizens, presenting them as either inhumane villains or powerless victims, denying them any subjectivity and agency in their everyday lives - unless their struggle to assert agency and subjectivity in the face of oppressive and brutal state apparatus was seen as the defining feature of their personal identity and character. Three decades after the fall of Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a similar perception of contemporary Russia seems to persist in the Anglophone world’s collective imagination and proliferates in its popular culture. The representational stereotypes of the ‘Russians’ include the violent assassin, the emotionless spy, the sex worker, the ruthless gangster, the corrupt government official and the terminally ill mother with no recourse to state support. Looking at the examples such as Red Sparrow (2018), McMafia (2018), Tenet (2020), The Queen’s Gambit (2020) and Killing Eve (2018-2020), this paper explores the aesthetics of Russophobia through visual analysis of costume, the fashioned body and appearance, and their role in the construction of character. These representations on screen are situated within a broader context of global shift in geopolitics during the Putin era.