Rocky vs. Soviet Union

This photo is from the moive Rocky IV, which came out in 1985 during the peak of the cold war. The movie is about Rocky a fictional American boxer who is the world champ. During this movie the Soviet Union has a boxer who claims he is the best in the world and better then every American. Rocky's good friend Apollo challenges the Russian to a charity fight and is beat to death during the fight. After the fight, the Soviet' s challenge Rocky to a fight against the Russian on Christmas in Russia. Rocky trains hard and goes to Russia and beats the mighty Russain and everyone is happy and the movie ends. This movie came out, while we had tensions with the Soviet Union and communism during the Cold War. I chose to do a media portfolio on this because this relates to the segment we did on the Japanesse, how they were viewed as evil in the eyes of Americans.

This item relates to the comic covers we looked at a few weeks ago in class. The comic covers all had similar themes. They had a Strong brave American who was viewed as the hero, and the small, evil, savage like Japanesse, who posed as the villian in the comics. All the comics were put out to make the Japanesse look like bad guys. This is similar because the movie made all the soviets look evil from the Soviet leaders, to the soviet boxer. The Soviet boxer was made to look like a big monster with no heart. They made him look evil, by killing a good American hero at a boxing charity event that didn't mean anything. Rocky was viewed as a fictional boxing hero in America at this time. He was viewed as the good hard working hero in this movie. When training for the fight they had gave rocky no equipment and had him trian with whatever he could find and made his training look really hard. They made he Russian look like he trained hard as well, but they gave him all the latest equipment and also gave him steriods. The fight took place in Russia and Rocky was the heavy underdog. The Russians were booing Rocky until the end, where he beat the invincible Russian. Every cheered for him including the Russians and he was the hero. This movie was put out during the cold war becuase the government wanted to get the message out that the Soviets were evil. Rocky movies were very popular so this was a good way to show the public that. Like the comic books The American came out as the hero who saved the day against the mighty Russian instead of the Jappanesse.

In my opinion, I think this movie did a good job of making the soviet union look evil. It was kinda like the Miricle on Ice, where the American hockey team was a huge underdog to the Russians and came out victorious at the end. When i first saw this movie as a little kid it did make me think that Russians were evil because i didn't know any better. Russians are no longer viewed as evil in America and that is because the Soviet Union ended in 1991.