Tsirk ("The Circus") was overwhelmingly successful as propaganda, precisely because the freedom celebrated in wartime and post-WW2 America did indeed correlate with the overwhelming rejection (freely exercised by a majority through democratic means such as free speech and elections) by "white" America of equality with Black people - especially of intermarriage and interracial sexual relations, as depicted in the film. Civil Rights and the repeal of Jim Crow came only in the 1960s.
My mother, for whom a certain idea of "England" took the place of God and for whom traditional England could do no wrong, thought of that England as somehow naturally having already done the work that Socialism still needed to do for the Continent AND America, which (when they were not Communist) were somehow "Right Wing" (she always said the phrase slowly and ponderously). She thought it obvious that the Conservatives were the party of the essence of England, and said that it would never have occurred to her to consider them a "Right Wing" party - they were completely incomparable to Gaullists, Christian Democrats, US Republicans, etc., all of whom were just reactionary poltroons at whose expense to make heavy-handed humour over their brutality and stupidity.
And she LOVED "Shiroká straná moyá rodnáya"!
Charles Polák
mailto:charles.polak_at_bbc.co.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-117826871-3499287_at_list.cornell.edu [mailto:bounce-117826871-3499287_at_list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of lapidotm_at_inter.net.il
Sent: 4 September 2014 15:45
To: HARDY BREIER
Cc: CZERNOWITZ-L
Subject: תשובה: [Cz-L] Wide is my homeland
The Soviets brought this film to Czernowitz - I recall seeing it (the Circus) at the cinema in the Rathausgasse in 1944 - the propaganda purpose of it was to demonstrate that Negroes (the Hero in the Circus) have equal rights in the SSSR, and that there is no discrimination against minorities, contrary to the USA.
Only problem - there were no Negroes in the SSSR (as we therefore, and for many other reasons, rightly called it in Yiddish:
Siz nisht gewein, Siz nishtoo, S'vet nisht sein, un Red dir nisht ein
in plain English - It wasn' so, It isn't so, It will not be so, and don't Let yourself believe it)
Remember?
Yet, luckily for us few survivors of the Raomnian and German rule - It was, and from Stalingrad on it they saved us
Regards
Mordecai
----- הודעה מקורית -----
מאת: HARDY BREIER <HARDY3_at_BEZEQINT.NET>
תאריך: Thursday, September 4, 2014 14:49
נושא: [Cz-L] Wide is my homeland
אל: CZERNOWITZ-L <Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu>
> http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/edwardturj/50951281/241054/241054_original.jpg
>
> Wide and large is the land I come frum,
> It has many fields and hills and lakes,
> I know no other of such land where ,
> The man can breath so unobstructed !
>
> Dunayevsky song Ircus, Orlova:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FkIKzrA3Pw
>
> Hardy
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Received on 2014-09-14 13:29:31
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