Mediaboss Marketing

Chuck Norris counted to infinity twice. Death once had a near-Chuck Norris experience. Chuck Norris defeated Communism in Eastern Europe.

One of the above statements actually contains a grain of truth, according to the rousing doc Chuck Norris Vs. Communism, which explains how life in gray, drab, Communist Romania was changed by the arrival of blurry videotapes of movies like Missing in Action and Lone Wolf McQuade.

Norriss cheap action flicks, along with many other Hollywood movies, were forbidden by law and impossible to come by except in bootlegged versions. Someone with a VCR which cost as much as a car would show the movies and invite paying neighbors to drop by. They did so, entranced. Some of those Romanians, interviewed on camera in a film that relies heavily on docudrama reenactments of the Communist era, say these movies changed their outlook on life, that they provided a window into the West from which we could see what the free world was like.

The films were more effective than CIA propaganda. At times the Romanians were so agog at the fashion, the cars or simply background shots of well-stocked store shelves or gleaming skyscrapers that they lost the plot of the movie. Amusing details help flesh out the story: All the movies were dubbed into Romanian by the same overworked, moonlighting government bureaucrat, Irina Nistor a mousy-voiced woman who had qualms about swearing and would substitute mild imprecations even when dubbing a movie like, say, Scarface. For a fee she requested an amount that would buy a genuine Austrian chocolate bar. Her boss the importer who brought the films across the border at great personal risk said hed double that.

Sure to delight those who unabashedly love cheesy 80s action films, this charming doc by Ilinca Calugareanu illustrates how American values light the path to freedom: We strike a match and the illumination is bright enough to bedazzle Bucharest. Who can doubt the force and reach of our culture when even our lowbrow efforts make a genuine difference in the lives of the oppressed?

Read the original post:
How Chuck Norris defeated Communism