scholarly journals The Problem of Personality on Soviet Television, 1950s-1960s

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Huxtable
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Source Materials

This article analyses the role of the television personality on Soviet television in its early years in the 1950s and 1960s. Using primary source materials from Russian archives, articles from the professional press, and analysis of a number of television shows, the article argues that television’s appearance in Soviet everyday life brought about a key change in the form of mass communication from a Stalinist model that focused on the pre-prepared and based on written Russian to a more spontaneous model that was closer to everyday speech forms. Analysing the role of continuity announcers, programme hosts, and ordinary individuals on Soviet television, the article suggests that while early television professionals held high hopes for the possibility of television to democratise the post-Stalin Soviet Union, these hopes were in fact riven with contradictions.

scholarly journals Anat Helman, Israeli National Ideals and Everyday Life in the 1950s. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2014. 312 pp.

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Israeli Society ◽  
Weak Component ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1950S

This chapter reviews the book Becoming Israeli: National Ideals and Everyday Life in the 1950s (2014), by Anat Helman. Becoming Israeli deals with those aspects of Israeli society and culture that make Israel distinct from other countries. The book explores how the Israeli society emerged, mainly on its own terms, and tackles the fundamental question of “what it means to be Israeli,” along with the extent to which the characteristics comprising Israeliness emerged in the early years of statehood. Among the book’s strengths is Helman’s choice of foci: the power of her study derives from its locating spheres and behavioral acts that are extremely important but frequently overlooked (kibbutz dining halls, for example). A weak component of the book is its discussion of the subject of humor.

Soviet Americanists, Academic Exchanges, the KGB and the Promotion of Video Media from Capitalist America during the Cold War

2021 ◽  
pp. 361-380
Author(s):  
Sergei Zhuk
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Popular Films ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Cold War

This essay is an attempt, made by using the personal stories of Soviet Americani-sts, to study the role of Soviet academic visitors, approved and supervised by the KGB, in promoting the cultural products from the USA - mainly such visual media as films and television - in the USSR during the period of academic exchanges after 1959. During their visits to the United States, Soviet Americanists used their leisure time not only for sightseeing, visiting museums and shopping, but also for various forms of cultural entertainment, from watching films and television shows to visiting concerts of classical and popular music. These experiences eventually affected the recommenda-tions about American cultural products, which Soviet visitors submitted to the KGB and their supervisors after their return home. During the 1970s and the 1980s, Soviet admi-nistration benefited from such useful advice about American popular films and televi-sion programs, which could be promoted in the USSR. Even the KGB administration in the Soviet Union studied the lists of recommendations made by those scholars, and used them for promoting the "progressive, humanistic" American cultural products among local Communist and Komsomol leaders for the education of Soviet audience.

Ascertaining Social Fact

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-88
Author(s):  
Arunabh Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Correct Understanding ◽  
Technical Aid ◽  
Statistical Work

This chapter focuses on the theoretical and ideological justification of socialist statistical work. It also provides an assessment of Soviet technical aid and introduces the Soviet statistical experts who were instrumental in helping organize statistical activity in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The chapter first uncovers and understands the socialist critique of statistics and, second, analyzes the role of the Soviet statistical experts who spent time in China and who were instrumental in the rise of socialist statistics to a position of epistemological and administrative dominance. It provides a discussion of the 1950s (or, more accurately, the years after 1945) as a period when the imperative to ascertain social fact took on added urgency throughout the world. There existed, however, competing approaches to ascertaining social fact. The chapter thus moves on to the rise of socialist statistics, in particular its rise in the Soviet Union (USSR), and contrasts it with other approaches to statistics. It then explores the Soviet experts who spent extended periods of time in the PRC, examining the variety of ways—teaching, translation of textbooks, and consultation—by which their expertise was mobilized by the Chinese as it sought to disseminate a correct understanding and implementation of socialist statistics.

scholarly journals “Weather Girls” on the Big Screen: Stereotypes, Sex Appeal, and Science

2014 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nyssa Perryman ◽  
Sandra Theiss
Keyword(s):  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Public Response ◽  
The Public ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Cultural Media

Women currently in the broadcasting meteorology field have dealt with—and continue to deal with—restrictive stereotypes based on the public's perception of their physical appearance and intelligence, largely stemming from the “weather girl” stereotype developed in the 1950s. This sexist stereotype is best seen and often exaggerated in cinematic films and television shows; however, the public's ability to distinguish the truthful and fictitious aspects of these stereotypes is important because these stereotypes limit the level of trust established between female weathercasters and viewers while consequently impeding the public response to dangerous weather situations. This study will evaluate the origin of the weather girl stereotype associated with female broadcast meteorologists throughout history and use this information to further understand the representation of women weathercasters in several films and television episodes, in order to determine if the weather girl stereotype is further perpetrated in popular cultural media. The study found that these films and episodes actually serve to diminish the role of female weathercasters by reducing them to nothing more than a weather girl.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Watson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us South ◽  
The Us ◽  
Observation Program ◽  
The 1950S

The introduction summarizes the process of decolonization in the British and French Empires and the role of the United States. Anthropology became a more professionalized discipline, raising the barriers to interdisciplinary conversations between anthropologists and other intellectuals and making it less desirable for colonial intellectuals to choose anthropology, as a significant number had done earlier in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, exchanges continued between literature and anthropology. I argue that the literary-anthropological dynamics of the 1950s and 1960s were prefigured by three examples in the 1930s and 1940s: Zora Neale Hurston’s fieldwork among African Americans in the US South, Michel Leiris’s account of Marcel Griaule’s 1930s anthropological expedition from Dakar to Djibouti, and the establishment of the Mass-Observation program to document British everyday life. The introduction analyzes Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes tropiques as a key text in the flourishing of a new literary anthropology in the 1950s.

La Rafle du Vél d'Hiv à la télévision française (1957–1995)

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Brunetaux
Keyword(s):  
Television Shows ◽  
News Broadcasts ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Individual Memory ◽  
Tragic Event ◽  
The 1950S

Précis Depuis 1957, les émissions et journaux télévisés ainsi que les documentaires diffusés sur les chaînes et les radios publiques françaises sont devenus les relais de la mémoire du Vél d'Hiv en tentant, tant bien que mal, de mettre en images et en paroles cet événement-symbole de la Shoah en France. Le cadre temporel choisi pour notre étude marque l'évolution de cette médiatisation du Vél d'Hiv à la télévision et à la radio françaises bien avant la saturation mémorielle des années 2000. Dans le trop-plein d'images de ces vingt dernières années, il nous a semblé important et utile de revenir sur les programmes et segments télévisés d'avant 1995 trouvés dans les archives de l'INA car ils nous renseignent sur la manière de voir et d'entendre cet événement historique selon les époques. Since 1957 television shows and news broadcasts have become the vectors through which the Vél d'Hiv roundup has emerged and shaped the collective and individual memory of the Shoah in France. From the resistancialist narratives of the 1950s–1960s to the acknowledgment of France's responsibility in the Holocaust in 1995, the memory of this tragic event has left a lasting imprint on French television. A close analysis of the representation of the Vél d'Hiv roundup in news broadcasts and television shows in postwar France will illuminate the tensions and difficulties of dealing with the legacy of the Dark Years. It will also reevaluate the role of television in creating both a dynamic platform for debates and discussions about the Shoah and an interactive lieu de mémoire.

Medievalism, Byzantinism, and Bulgarian Politics through the Archival Lens

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fani Gargova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Historical Collections ◽  
Archival Practice ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
Archival Practices ◽  
Source Materials

This chapter explores archival practices and the role of primary source materials in the history of research about the Bulgarian Middle Ages and their connection to nationalism. First, there is an overview on the value of archival descriptions in archival practice, which contribute to the discoverability, usability, accessibility, as well as integrity, of unique, historical collections to the researcher. Second, a case study about the connection of Bogdan Filov, Josef Strzygowski, and Thomas Whittemore is presented, and their investigation of Byzantine and Bulgarian medieval monuments is described in order to show how archival descriptions serve as preconditions for understanding, discovering, and accessing primary source material.

The Friendship Project: Socialist Internationalism in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s

Slavic Review ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 484-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Applebaum
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Consumer Goods ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Pen Pal ◽  
The 1950S

This article examines the evolution of socialist internationalism in the 1950s and 1960s through a case study of cultural relations between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. More broadly, it explores attempts by Soviet and eastern bloc officials to integrate their countries into a cohesive “socialist world” by constructing an extensive network of transnational, cultural, interpersonal, and commercial ties between their citizens. Accounts of Soviet-eastern bloc relations during this period tend to focus on the iconic crises in Poland and Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Yet in the realm of everyday life, the 1950s and 1960s were the apogee of Soviet-eastern European integration. I argue that in the case of Soviet-Czechoslovak relations, the new version of socialist internationalism that developed during these decades was successful in so far as it shaped the lives of ordinary citizens—through participation in friendship societies, pen-pal correspondences, and the consumption of each other's mass media and consumer goods. As these contacts brought the two countries closer, however, they inadvertently highlighted cultural and political discord between them, which ultimately helped undermine the very alliance they were designed to support.

Post-Vietnam Syndrome: Psychiatry, Anti-War Politics, and the Reconstitution of the Vietnam Veteran

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-219
Author(s):  
Lenny Grant
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
Rhetorical Ecology ◽  
Vietnam Syndrome ◽  
Source Materials

Using primary source materials from medical, government, and journalism archives, this study of public medical discourse reveals the role of argumentation in posi­tively shaping public perceptions of traumatized soldiers and locates the contem­porary origins of the trope of “soldier as psychological victim of war”—a perception that continues to inform public policy and medical research. Using Jasinski’s (1998) concepts of interior and exterior constitutive potential to analyze the public writ­ings, interviews, and Congressional testimony of VVAW-affiliated psychiatrists, the study finds that the radical psychiatrists’ interior (directed at veterans) and exte­rior (directed at public and medical institutions) rhetorics were (and arguably remain) mutually effective in creating an identity for veterans to occupy that exculpated them from their involvement in war, while allowing them to garner benefits for their ser­vice. The article concludes with two examples of the “veteran as psychological vic­tim of war” trope as it shapes the contemporary rhetorical ecology of former servicemembers.

Performing and Parading Gender in Guyane’s Carnival

2018 ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
Catriona MacLeod
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Cross Dressing

Guyane's carnival constitutes one of the most popular and publicised elements of the territory’s cultural identity. The carnival is home to several established ‘characters’ who represent different symbolic roles or incarnate various aspects of the territory’s history. This chapter will focus on two figures whose costumes and behaviours appear intended to challenge the traditional gender roles which still dominate everyday life in Guyane: the cross-dressing male (the travesti) who takes part regularly in street parades, and the female-incarnated Touloulou of the carnival’s masked balls. This chapter first considers the travesti, an apparently-paradoxical figure common to parades in other Caribbean and Latin American carnivals. It considers this practice in the specific context of the Guyane festivities, examining competing symbolic interpretations both of the travesti’s comic appearance and actions. The second half of the chapter considers the Touloulou, a carnival figure apparently native to Guyane itself and celebrated as the ‘queen’ of the festivities. It will consider the role of the Touloulou in the carnival of Guyane, interrogating particularly the popular interpretation that this figure constitutes an exceptionally independent and powerful role for Guianese women, representative of changing gender roles in the territory since the 1950s.

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