It was a national obsession of borderline-insane magnitude.

August 6, 2017 5:22 AM

For 10 long years — all through the crime-ridden, chaotic 1990s, the early post-Soviet years of timelessness and hardship — life in large cities, small towns, industrial settlements, and snowbound villages across Russia’s 11 time zones would come to a standstill as the remarkably cheery sounds of Santa Barbara’s intro issued from millions of TV sets.

Mikhail Iossel explains how the relatively obscure American soap opera Santa Barbara has coloured Russian expectations of the US as well as Trump, recognisable a soap opera villain.
posted by MartinWisse (34 comments total)

I'm going to RTFA because I was obsessed with Santa Barbara. I watched the first episode when I was 8 and skipped school to watch the last episode live in HS. I wrote away to order the theme song from the last episode and could still sing it. I'm pretty sure MY expectations of Trump and everything else were formed by Santa Barbara.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:39 AM on August 6, 2017 [8 favorites]

After reading this I'd now like to own a t-shirt that says "Poshlost!" in big glittery gold letters.
posted by Construction Concern at 6:55 AM on August 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

As someone who works in that part of the world I echo this. When I lived in Santa Barbara and would go into the field, people would ask me about the characters constantly.
People also used to hook up TVs to car batteries to watch when the power was out.
posted by k8t at 7:00 AM on August 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

Oh man, I watched Santa Barbara with my grandma every day it was on when I was in Russia. We had neighbors with a mean dog who was named after one of the villains. It was such a big deal.
posted by prefpara at 7:06 AM on August 6, 2017 [5 favorites]

So a vast majority of the Russian populace learns the details of 'merican life from the cheesiest of the low end daytime soaps? What could possibly go wrong?
posted by sammyo at 7:15 AM on August 6, 2017 [8 favorites]

So a vast majority of the Russian populace learns the details of 'merican life from the cheesiest of the low end daytime soaps? What could possibly go wrong?

“Lenin failed to teach the Russian people socialism, but he succeeded in teaching them capitalism.”
posted by acb at 7:22 AM on August 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

Curious, I decided to check Netflix to see if I could watch some Russian tv. It turns out that I can! Silver Spoon (originally Mazhor). In the first episode, the camera lovingly caresses a bright yellow sports car for several minutes while the jackass driving it blows his dad off on the phone. Then we go to a bar where the street racer and his buddy do a shot then sniff each other's armpits? I'm totally gonna watch this show.

(Also, my brain just exploded because I just realized that A Martinez (the smexy Cruz Castillo) plays Jacob Nighthorse on Longmire.)
posted by xyzzy at 7:25 AM on August 6, 2017

I recall someone suggesting to me that by exporting American shows like Mission: Impossible, The Man From UNCLE and I Spy, the US was unintentionally admitting to the world, yep, we're pulling your strings. So when countries like Russia and Iran accuse the US of supporting subversive elements in their nations, that's where that comes from.
posted by SPrintF at 7:26 AM on August 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

sammyo: "So a vast majority of the Russian populace learns the details of 'merican life from the cheesiest of the low end daytime soaps? What could possibly go wrong?"

And yet they probably have a more realistic idea of American life than Americans (whose Media exposure to Russia is of villains and Rocky & Bullwinkle) have of Russia.
posted by Mitheral at 7:43 AM on August 6, 2017 [9 favorites]

There was a similar phenomenon in Romania, except with Dallas. Supposedly, Ceausescu meant to highlight the decadence of capitalism, but shockingly, Romanians watched it the same way Americans did. They liked watching the over the top drama and ogling the ridiculous wealth, and they envied it more than they reviled it.

There's a sort of documentary about this called Hotel Dallas that I really enjoyed. (It's sort of like My Winnipeg and David Byrne's True Stories, so not a documentary, really, but it gives you the gist, and that's where I heard about it.)
posted by ernielundquist at 8:04 AM on August 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

That was a great piece; thanks for posting it (and mentioning the author's name)! To this day I've never seen an episode or heard an American talking about it, but yeah, it's a big thing to Russians. In the late '90s, when I had a brief sort-of-relationship with a Russian woman, she practically exploded when I mentioned my family lived in Santa Barbara. "Santa Barbara!! Oh my god!!! Is it like the show??" I had no idea what she was talking about, and she couldn't believe it when I told her I'd never heard of it.

A couple of quotes, followed by explanatory clips:

For 10 long years — all through the crime-ridden, chaotic 1990s, the early post-Soviet years of timelessness and hardship — life in large cities, small towns, industrial settlements, and snowbound villages across Russia’s 11 time zones would come to a standstill as the remarkably cheery sounds of Santa Barbara’s intro issued from millions of TV sets.

The intro.

“Goodbye, America, oh / where I will never be,” Vyacheslav Butusov still crooned from time to time on TV.

The song.
posted by languagehat at 8:45 AM on August 6, 2017 [4 favorites]

Of a similar vein Amazon Prime has a Romainian Buddy Detective propaganda show featuring voiceovers by Nick Offerman and Channing Tatum and other celebs called Comrade Detective that is weird kind of wonderful.
posted by srboisvert at 8:50 AM on August 6, 2017 [5 favorites]

Wow. I thought I had never heard of this show until I checked the Wikipedia article and vaguely remembered the logo as something I would see while trying to find out if there were any cartoons on. Apparently one critic called it "the worst program on television... maybe ever," which was a pretty strong statement in a time with Hee-Haw fresh in memory. It never ceases to fascinate me when something considered dull or obscure where it's made becomes an enormous hit in another country.

As a kid, I was taught a lot about the USSR - they hate God, church is illegal, they teach kids to tell on their parents if they do anything the government doesn't like - that wasn't true, or at least had only been true in Stalinist times. I was grown before I realized that the Soviet world also had had a pop culture and cinema, and even (after a fashion) Nintendo. There should have been more cultural exchange than American TV for the Bolshoi Ballet.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:17 AM on August 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

I always knew some of the stuff peddled about USSR was probably BS because Americans believed a lot of the same things about life in Germany (which I knew was exaggerated and wrong because I'd lived there). U.S. cultural imports still dominate the pop culture there, too, or did about ten years ago when I still had opportunity to visit.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:20 AM on August 6, 2017

Bum bah dum bahhhhhhhh
Bum bah dum buh bahhhh
posted by infinitewindow at 9:38 AM on August 6, 2017

Is it bad that this makes me really, really proud to be an American? Thank you to all the Cold Warriors who made sure that their system failed, not ours, and that they were left pining after our unattainable standard of living, not the other way around.
posted by officer_fred at 11:04 AM on August 6, 2017

A Kenyan coworker of mine also grew up watching this. I'd never heard of it until I mentioned that my wife is from Santa Barbara.
posted by TrialByMedia at 11:19 AM on August 6, 2017

The part about people naming their pets after characters made me think of Putin's dog, who was named (oddly imo, which is why I remembered) Connie. Being more of a Dallas watcher in my childhood years, I've never seen Santa Barbara, and wondered if Putin might have been one of the fans of the show. I tried to find out who she was named after, and while I'm not sure if it's really known, there are rumors that she was named after Condeleeza Rice. I find that unlikely though, given Connie the dog was born in 1999.

We may never know, but I am going to choose to believe there was a Santa Barbara character that existed who left enough of an impact on Putin that he eventually named his dog after her. Given that one of his current dogs is named BUFFY, I don't think it's that much of a stretch.
posted by triggerfinger at 12:43 PM on August 6, 2017

I have never heard of Santa Barbara. Hee-Haw had pretty good music though. My mom was a stay at home one, but she almost never watched TV at all, so when I went away to university, I found the groups of people gathered around TVs in lounge rooms watching soaps during the day very weird.
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:19 PM on August 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Oh man, Eden and Cruz were my LIFE in the late 80s. The show had a number of long-haired blonde actresses playing various parts, because apparently the show kept themselves abreast of who was out there in case they needed to replace Marcy Walker as Eden, and some of them made it onto the show in a different role. Robin Wright of Princess Bride fame was one of them, cast as Eden's little sister Kelly.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 1:24 PM on August 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

Oh my god, I'm sad I came so late to this because I lived in Alaska (I could NOT see Russia from my house) and adored every single second of Santa Barbara.

I also loved Passions, so maybe I just had a thing for interloper soaps. I wonder if there's a nation out there which judged and knew us through the lens of THAT show...
posted by taterpie at 1:32 PM on August 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

It never ceases to fascinate me when something considered dull or obscure where it's made becomes an enormous hit in another country.

Is there an easy American example of this?
posted by Going To Maine at 1:50 PM on August 6, 2017

(Stella Artois, I suppose.)
posted by Going To Maine at 1:52 PM on August 6, 2017

I once read that Monty Python is not such a huge deal in Britain. They're popular, of course, but don't have the same cult following as in America. I can't quantify this, of course.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:53 PM on August 6, 2017

I just remembered: when I last went to Ireland, around 2000, Budweiser was considered a fashionable drink. It was imported, I guess. Hopefully this was a short-lived fad.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:55 PM on August 6, 2017

Americans (whose Media exposure to Russia is of villains and Rocky & Bullwinkle)
Just for the record, Paul Frees and June Foray were specifically instructed to make the characters Boris and Natasha sound "Eastern European, Not Russian" because Pottsylvania was supposed to be a tiny country somewhere in the region. In fact, their boss, Fearless Leader, had a much more distinct German accent. Considering both actors' skill in dialects and impressions, it was their biggest career failures.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:14 PM on August 6, 2017

Re: Budweiser, I've heard there's a symmetry there with Stella Artois' reputation in the U.S. versus Europe. I guess there's just a premium on the exotic.
posted by traveler_ at 7:08 PM on August 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

oneswellfoop: "Just for the record, Paul Frees and June Foray were specifically instructed to make the characters Boris and Natasha sound "Eastern European, Not Russian" because Pottsylvania was supposed to be a tiny country somewhere in the region. "

I didn't know that but it makes my point even more; ask 100 Americans what R&B's nationality is and I bet the vast majority will say Russian/Soviet.
posted by Mitheral at 10:22 PM on August 6, 2017

Whut? Putin is a fan of Buffy? I don't think my brain can make sense of that sentence.
posted by jojo and the benjamins at 11:10 PM on August 6, 2017

No, Monty Python is huge in the UK.

Maybe Benny Hill? I've mostly only heard about it when people are saying how big it is/was in the US compared to here in the UK.
posted by Helga-woo at 12:16 AM on August 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

That was a fascinating article. "Posh lust" seems to be something that springs up in many different places around the world when some social or economic shift brings a formerly impoverished class into riches.
posted by Kevin Street at 2:01 AM on August 7, 2017

No, Monty Python is huge in the UK.

Came to echo this. It's perhaps because it's more kind of mainstream in the UK, so you don't get people staking geek cred on being into it or whatever. Everyone knows it, perhaps fewer people are fanatical about it.
posted by Dysk at 4:09 AM on August 7, 2017

Santa Barbara was definitely a show I watched fairly frequently as a child during the limited hours of broadcast TV and the corresponding limited no. of 'broadcast in English language without needing to find the synccast on the radio' shows in South Africa in the mid-80s to early 90s. I had completely forgotten the theme tune but now it is right back in my head, as the most persistent earworm.
posted by halcyonday at 7:13 AM on August 7, 2017

I also loved Passions, so maybe I just had a thing for interloper soaps. I wonder if there's a nation out there which judged and knew us through the lens of THAT show...

This would explain so much. That show was batshit off-the-rails.
posted by ApathyGirl at 12:32 PM on August 7, 2017