Novel: The Difference Between the USA and Russia

Novel: The Difference Between the USA and Russia

Since childhood we've been programmed to receive what you taught us with the canned goods from the nine-to-five days, swallowing commercial and industrial garbage from a young age. (Renato Russo)

The canned goods of the superb American machine, reproducing and repeating ad nauseam the same formula for success that creates a single genre and subgenres of TV and film, now videos, easily distinguished by the structural scenic artifacts of the great single genre, the matrix of subgenres.

When I began to learn about Russian productions from the Soviet era, I understood why East Germans, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, had uncensored contact with Western art represented by the American school, and quickly perceived the superficiality of the genres and subgenres, especially in advertising.

What's the difference?

For those not immersed in the paradigm of complete immersion and Western intellectual conditioning, if they don't have an open mind or are not trained to perceive adversity, they wouldn't be able to perceive the difference between sides, like a fish that can't imagine a world without water; in fact, the fish doesn't perceive its aquatic immersion.

The North American genre is based around the protagonist; there's always a protagonist who must also possess exceptional gifts, or outstanding behavior, or exceptional attributes; the story's argument is built around this exceptionality; so our protagonist must do or have exceptional conduct that sets them apart from normality: they are superhuman, exceptionally courageous, exceptionally resigned, exceptionally beautiful, exceptionally intelligent, exceptionally brave, exceptionally honest, exceptionally selfless, exceptionally wealthy, exceptionally humble, unwaveringly determined, an exception to the requirement of adverse conduct, exclusion of illegality, non-imputability, altruism, solidarity, infinite kindness—these elements alone would make up the front page of any daily newspaper or television news program; these could be a good script for a North American literary production.

The Russians, from their written literature, Dostoevsky and others, tell us stories of ordinary, everyday characters, people as common as a quiet neighbor or coworker; no heroism; there are no comic books in Russia, in the East, all the characters are normal beings, and they did contingent things, pressured by life's circumstances, by chance events that forced them to make difficult choices, and that's where the drama of the Russian characters lies: deeply needy, taciturn, without charm, without anything exceptional, just ambitious people who lie, deceive, disguise their darkest desires, and don't use superpowers or privileged superior intelligence; their actions are those of ordinary people, with planning flaws, and with luck always choosing the side that will be privileged; everything depends only on chance, on Machiavellian luck.

Russian characters don't walk through walls, they don't guess the thoughts of their adversaries, they don't risk their professions and careers to right injustices against others, they don't suicidally throw themselves into saving anonymous fellow human beings, they don't defend universal values ​​of ecology, human rights, social justice, egalitarianism, or state ideology; seventy years of communism have indoctrinated them to be discreet, pragmatic, individualistic, and sober.

Roberto da Silva Rocha, professor universitário e cientista político