Remember J. R. Ewing? Southfork? Miss Ellie? We are at the 30th anniversary of “Dallas.” According to this article, How ‘Dallas’ Won the Cold War, the show with its evil oil tycoons and cutthroat capitalism, helped win the hearts and minds of the proletariat in communist countries. It happened along the lines of this priceless anecdote:
Joseph Stalin is said to have screened the 1940 movie “The Grapes of Wrath” in the Soviet Union to showcase the depredations of life under capitalism. Russian audiences watched the final scenes of the Okies’ westward trek aboard overladen, broken-down jalopies — and marveled that in the United States, even poor people had cars. “Dallas” functioned similarly.
Communist officials reasoned that the depradations of J. R. would teach their people the evils of capitalism. But, instead, Iron Curtain viewers saw the swimming pools, Cadillacs, and blockbuster business deals and lusted after them and the economic system that, for better and worse, made them possible.
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And remember how Dallas was looked down upon as trash TV? Even though it was #1 season after season? Which certainly doesn’t prevent it from having been trash–I can’t remember if it was or wasn’t. But how innocent it looks compared to what’s trash TV nowadays.
So what happens when we export Friends, Seinfeld, and America’s Next Top Model? The Apprentice, The Hills, and Clean House?*
Will they presume how shallow, mean-spirited, unreligious, glamor-absorbed, materialistic, competitive, and downright filthy we are?
The possibilites are endless!
*I am not, for the record, relegating these programs to trash TV. But I’m not-not so relegating either.
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