Intermedial Representation of Russian Character in American Cinema: Portraits of Men and Women

This study aims to identify and describe the structural components involved in the representation of Russian male and female characters in American films, taking into account the intermedial nature of cinematic works — specifically their verbal (speech) and visual (video) elements within the narrative structure. The analysis is based on a corpus of 24 films produced from the mid-1980s to 2021, all of which are connected to Russia and feature characters associated with the country. The analysis was conducted in two stages: (1) a corpus-based examination of English-language subtitles to identify concordances containing the root -russ-; (2) a qualitative analysis of the visual content corresponding to the identified concordances using subtitle timecodes. The results indicate that the construction of the Russian character involves several components: verbal (Russian spoken and written dialogue, voiceovers, isolated words in Russian, tattoos in Russian), visual (stereotypical elements of Russianness such as fur, vodka, samovar, accordion, military uniforms, Soviet symbols, the color red, etc.), and narrative (the conflict between Russians and Americans, their unity only against a common enemy; nuclear military conflict, espionage intrigues, secret agents and government structures, criminal organizations).