The Soviet Leaders as the 'Dark Twins' of the US Presidents in the Cold War Discourse of American Popular Music

• In Event: The Soviet Union as an Оbject of the U.S. Сold War Mission: Real Politics and Imaginary Reality

Abstract

Popular music, along with other genres of popular culture, plays a crucial role in shaping the self-identity of American society. One of the ways of this process is to oppose oneself to the constitutive Other, which was the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Turning to mass consciousness, the authors operated with the dichotomies of Good and Evil, freedom and despotism. This made it possible to formulate a simple and understandable picture of the world, one of the elements of which was the confrontation between the political leaders of the two countries as the personification of the struggle between light and darkness principles. In this discourse the Soviet leaders acted as “dark twins” of American presidents.

Author

• Aleksandr O