„Vin americanii!” Mituri americane în dialog cu modernitatea românească
“The Americans are coming!” American Myths in Dialogue with the Romanian Modernity

Summary/Abstract: The present paper aims to discuss the reactivation of some myths of American origin inside the Romanian Post-Communist cultural reality. The image of the saviour coming from across the Atlantic Ocean, expected in the late 40’s of the last century for balancing the influence of Russian Communism, was strongly altered first by the illusions of this expectation themselves and, second, by the Romanian nationalist Communist propaganda. During Cold War, a double language contributed to strongly idealising the American cultural space: on the one hand, the representation of USA in the official speech as a capitalist jungle, on the other hand, the developing in underground of a veritable black market dominated by products of American subculture (cigarettes, alcohol, movies, American books s.o). How exactly this ambiguous attitude is reflected in the Romanian collective mentality is one of the questions which the present paper aims to give an answer to. One of the two major Romanian political projects in Post-Communism is in direct relation, in a way, to this type of mythology. If the EU reactivated the old Romanian cultural dilemma East vs. West, joining NATO was an opportunity to speak openly about the sinuous relation in the Romanian imaginary among the different images of the Americans.

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