The image of the enemy and the metaphors of the cold war in the Soviet cinema tales and the US heroic comics (1960 - 1963)

Currently, the problem of the enemy representation in the youth subculture of the USSR and the USA is insufficiently investigated. This article relies on superhero comics and fairy tales, as well as the archival materials to explore how the Cuban Missile crisis was reflected in the cultural content created for children and young people. The author employs semiotic analytical tools and compares the imagery of Soviet film characters with the iconographic traditions of the United States-as reflected in comic books. The author reveals the relevance of the multi-frame composition in the nuclear catastrophe narratives in the “Marvel” comic books and4arge-format films (for example, “The Court of Madmen”). The author also provides analysis of the role historical characters (i.e., Nikita Khrushchev) in a fairy-tale discourse and a comparative analysis of the image of scientist between 1961 and 1963. This article introduces previously unexplored historical sources into the academic discourse, i.e., fairy tale scripts devoted to the Cold War, as well as production materials for fantasy films in the genre of a political pamphlet. Archival documents of the “Mosfilm,” “Lenfilm,” The Gorky Film Studio, and Goskino allowed the author to reconstruct the process of transformation of the screen canon of the American enemy into the cinematic images of the USSR approved by government authorities. The author concludes that the image of a scientist plays a key role in both film and comic book superhero tropes that revolve around the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both comic book texts (i.e., “Marvel”) and movie tales (i.e., “Cain 18,” “The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors”) reveal common motifs and narrative techniques.