The Americans 6.05
Last day of the conference, still with minimal online time, a review.
Intended indoctrination of her daughter aside, Elizabeth isn’t wrong about the US presentation of WWII, especially in regards to the Soviet contribution. (This said, of course she doesn’t mention the preceding Hitler/Stalin pact.) One of the many things I remember startling me about my first visit to the US in the mid 80s was that in US history books, WWII doesn’t start with 1989, but solely when the US enters the war, and the Eastern front hardly happens at all. Meanwhile, it took German history books a while to get rid of any numbers of army whitewashing myths (though most of them were gone by the time I was a teenager), but one thing that certainly loomed large from the get go in the national consciousness was the importance of Russia when it came to WWII. I didn’t hear about D-Day (let alone all the enormous importance attached to it in Anglo-American histography) at all, but you can bet I heard about Stalingrad. And then some. Even at the time itself: there’s a reason why the White Rose leaflets bring it up. Even Goebbels couldn’t spin this one into something fitting Nazi propaganda. (Not for lack of trying. At first he went for the “fallen to the last man in defense of Germany” approach, but when it became clear that Paullus and the remaining army units had surrendered rather than being killed to the last man, it was time for any number of historical movies about Frederick the Great again, with emphasis on set backs and seemingly hopeless situations.)
But of course the mythic importance attached to “The Great Patriotic War” for the show’s characters, the way it’s so central to especially Elizabeth’s self understanding, also demonstrates how destructive fixation on history in rejection of the present can be. Elizabeth is haunted by the shame of her father NOT having been a heroic soldier in this central event to Russian self understanding, and her refusal to consider compromise, the insistence of regarding any current day conflict as the same zero sum game WWII was, thereby justifying any methods, is destructive to herself and others. (Draw your parallel to US and British use of WWII imagery and insistence on framing current day situations with it at your own leisure.). It blinds her.
Though note she’s not so blind as to not finally admit, even if it’s just as an side in an argument with Phililp, that contrary to all her fervent earlier declarations Paige really isn’t good at the whole spying gig. Paige continues to be embarrasingly, infuriatingly naive, whether it’s not getting that yes, of course you’d have sex for food if you’re starving, or eye-rolling at Elizabeth’s insistence on keeping a low profile, or trying to play the cool spy towards Philip, of all the people. Btw, Philip doesn’t verbally explode, as I last week assumed he might, but instead goes for swift and devastating physical demonstration of just how much of an amateur Paige still is. Sadly, it doesn’t sink in. L
Incidentally: this is all very human on Paige’s part - she’s lived a by and large charmed, privileged life, and this is the result - but that doesn’t make it less dangerous.
Meanwhile, Kimmie, who is in many ways Paige’s counterpart and opposite, having started out troubled and having become more mature and doing well, ends up in the metaphorical firing line after all when Elizabeth in her conviction that the US side has infiltrated the Russian negotiation team comes up with an overcomplicated scheme of “Jim” manipulating Kimmie to go from Greece to Bulgaria, resulting in a stint in prison and blackmail of Kimmie’s father. It would say it would never have worked in any case, except that arresting students and trying to use them as leverage wasn’t exactly unheard of as a tactic (though less with secret blackmail and more with open spy exchanging) in rl. Anyway, what I find most interesting here isn’t that Philip reaches his line in the sand at all in this episode (you could see this coming through the set up) but the particular point when he reaches it. Because after Kimmie declines Jim’s offer to visit her in Greece, his next move (and this is his, not Elizabeth’s, whose original suggestion simply had been the Greece visit), he seduces her. And that’s NOT when he reaches his line. This is the very thing he went out of his way to avoid two seasons earlier. Now granted, Kimmie is older by now, but I do suspect some of Philip’s anger at both Elizabeth and Paige feeds also into it, in addition to spy routine and self loathing. What eventually ends up making him decide to ditch the whole plan and warn Kimmie instead, or perhaps it’s better to say “what ends up being the trigger, not the underlying cause” is something else, to wit, Stan mentioning Gennardy and Sofia being killed by Russian assailant unknown with their little son in the next room, with Philip (correctly) guessing it had to have been Elizabeth.
I don’t think it’s just about the “protecting children” factor, though it’s that as well. It’s about what they represent, Kimmie and the young Russian boy who got just orphaned (and remember, both Mischa and Nadeshda were half-orphans, too) and Paige - a chance for a better future, unless they get as warped by exactly the same treatment and trauma that deformed the previous generation. To quote a cliché, at some point you have to become the change you’re hoping for.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1281824.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Intended indoctrination of her daughter aside, Elizabeth isn’t wrong about the US presentation of WWII, especially in regards to the Soviet contribution. (This said, of course she doesn’t mention the preceding Hitler/Stalin pact.) One of the many things I remember startling me about my first visit to the US in the mid 80s was that in US history books, WWII doesn’t start with 1989, but solely when the US enters the war, and the Eastern front hardly happens at all. Meanwhile, it took German history books a while to get rid of any numbers of army whitewashing myths (though most of them were gone by the time I was a teenager), but one thing that certainly loomed large from the get go in the national consciousness was the importance of Russia when it came to WWII. I didn’t hear about D-Day (let alone all the enormous importance attached to it in Anglo-American histography) at all, but you can bet I heard about Stalingrad. And then some. Even at the time itself: there’s a reason why the White Rose leaflets bring it up. Even Goebbels couldn’t spin this one into something fitting Nazi propaganda. (Not for lack of trying. At first he went for the “fallen to the last man in defense of Germany” approach, but when it became clear that Paullus and the remaining army units had surrendered rather than being killed to the last man, it was time for any number of historical movies about Frederick the Great again, with emphasis on set backs and seemingly hopeless situations.)
But of course the mythic importance attached to “The Great Patriotic War” for the show’s characters, the way it’s so central to especially Elizabeth’s self understanding, also demonstrates how destructive fixation on history in rejection of the present can be. Elizabeth is haunted by the shame of her father NOT having been a heroic soldier in this central event to Russian self understanding, and her refusal to consider compromise, the insistence of regarding any current day conflict as the same zero sum game WWII was, thereby justifying any methods, is destructive to herself and others. (Draw your parallel to US and British use of WWII imagery and insistence on framing current day situations with it at your own leisure.). It blinds her.
Though note she’s not so blind as to not finally admit, even if it’s just as an side in an argument with Phililp, that contrary to all her fervent earlier declarations Paige really isn’t good at the whole spying gig. Paige continues to be embarrasingly, infuriatingly naive, whether it’s not getting that yes, of course you’d have sex for food if you’re starving, or eye-rolling at Elizabeth’s insistence on keeping a low profile, or trying to play the cool spy towards Philip, of all the people. Btw, Philip doesn’t verbally explode, as I last week assumed he might, but instead goes for swift and devastating physical demonstration of just how much of an amateur Paige still is. Sadly, it doesn’t sink in. L
Incidentally: this is all very human on Paige’s part - she’s lived a by and large charmed, privileged life, and this is the result - but that doesn’t make it less dangerous.
Meanwhile, Kimmie, who is in many ways Paige’s counterpart and opposite, having started out troubled and having become more mature and doing well, ends up in the metaphorical firing line after all when Elizabeth in her conviction that the US side has infiltrated the Russian negotiation team comes up with an overcomplicated scheme of “Jim” manipulating Kimmie to go from Greece to Bulgaria, resulting in a stint in prison and blackmail of Kimmie’s father. It would say it would never have worked in any case, except that arresting students and trying to use them as leverage wasn’t exactly unheard of as a tactic (though less with secret blackmail and more with open spy exchanging) in rl. Anyway, what I find most interesting here isn’t that Philip reaches his line in the sand at all in this episode (you could see this coming through the set up) but the particular point when he reaches it. Because after Kimmie declines Jim’s offer to visit her in Greece, his next move (and this is his, not Elizabeth’s, whose original suggestion simply had been the Greece visit), he seduces her. And that’s NOT when he reaches his line. This is the very thing he went out of his way to avoid two seasons earlier. Now granted, Kimmie is older by now, but I do suspect some of Philip’s anger at both Elizabeth and Paige feeds also into it, in addition to spy routine and self loathing. What eventually ends up making him decide to ditch the whole plan and warn Kimmie instead, or perhaps it’s better to say “what ends up being the trigger, not the underlying cause” is something else, to wit, Stan mentioning Gennardy and Sofia being killed by Russian assailant unknown with their little son in the next room, with Philip (correctly) guessing it had to have been Elizabeth.
I don’t think it’s just about the “protecting children” factor, though it’s that as well. It’s about what they represent, Kimmie and the young Russian boy who got just orphaned (and remember, both Mischa and Nadeshda were half-orphans, too) and Paige - a chance for a better future, unless they get as warped by exactly the same treatment and trauma that deformed the previous generation. To quote a cliché, at some point you have to become the change you’re hoping for.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1281824.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.