That movie gave me uncanny valley feeling all the time, they’ve managed to make some of the shots look very Soviet, but each and every social interaction felt so thickly American that it’s completely alien to anyone even from Western Europe, not even talking about ex-USSR.
Actually a feeling similar to looking at AI slop …
And the main characters’ personalities are all wrong. And the social dynamic leading up to the situation. And the bullshit component - American bullshit and Soviet bullshit are two completely different languages. You should compare something American on “real army life” to Russian movies like “Little green elephant” and “DMB”. The difference will be similarly radical, even bigger perhaps.
Looking at real tapes with Legasov talking to liquidators and such is eerie too, those moments with him saying with smiles that “like with everything, it might be good in smaller amounts”. But it’s entirely different.
I actually didn’t get very far at all into it. It made me too anxious and depressed. What you’re saying is totally valid though. People that speak different languages literally have different sets of emotions and different emotional expressions for emotions of the same name.
Eg., I’ve never experienced saudade (Portuguese, I think), It doesn’t really exist in English speaking countries.
That’s prosody and emotional language. Actually imitating these is what American movies often try to do, even if sometimes for comedy component and not well.
(And don’t ask me about imitating music, one would think music theory is something movie composers all study, yet they usually don’t bother to even look up some basics, like modes commonly used in Russian music, and the resulting soundtracks sound like some sound salad.)
These actually express the same set of feelings all humans have, not really different between Japanese, Somalian and Russian people. Except, of course, for semantic connections and references.
What I’m talking about is level above, of what’s being said in said languages.
When an American is bullshitting his superiors, he’s telling them different things than a Russian when bullshitting his own superiors. When an American is making a presentation to persuade someone of something, he’s also using different means. When an American boss is talking to people below him in hierarchy, he’s also using different means. American bosses derive their social authority through different means than Russian bosses. American prestige and Russian prestige are different. American and Russian perceptions of what looks strong are different. And some of these things are opposites, say, in American perception simplifying the matter at hand for easier comprehension by the listener is a sign of professionalism, in Russian perception it’s as if you were asking to be treated as a clown.
They show Soviet ministries’ officials as some “politicians” or “golden boys” doing their own thing and either oblivious to the matter at hand or treating it as outside their responsibility to understand, even if understanding. But that’s clearly American dynamic. First, in general narrower expertise is more normal for Americans and wider expertise is more normal for ex-Soviet people, culturally, and an ex-Soviet man would at least pretend to have knowledge of everything close to their job. Second, Soviet ministries’ officials would make careers in the areas of economy their ministries were responsible for, or, in other words, the ministry was the area of economy. A Soviet ministry official wouldn’t ask a professor about details of the task at hand, it would be the other way around, the former would be the one having more practice, and the latter would provide theory. The “politician” or the “golden boy” types wouldn’t be anywhere near ministries, they would be diplomats or somewhere in some party things or even special services or journalism. And, of course, by the time someone became a ministry official, they’d be far older than that guy in a suit in the movie. Third, the portrayal of Legasov is almost a caricature for ex-Soviet people, they portrayed him kinda similar to Sakharov, but Sakharov behaved still stronger and simpler, first, and Sakharov had made that funny bomb before becoming a dissident, second, to make that image respectable. Real-life Legasov behaved, well, like a normal Soviet man. And he wasn’t a dissenter.
There are many such things, if they had just looked at some footage with the people the characters were meant to portray, or followed real events more closely, they’d have a good shot for free, without understanding such nuance. But they decided to make up a plot with some message, around just a few events, and that plot turned out something completely American.
Interesting. Thanks, and I definitely take your point, though I don’t know much about Russia or Russians aside from a “history of Russia and China” class in college.
Also TIL prosody 😁.
We’re talking about different things.
You’re talking about social dynamics, and what I’m talking about is more general than that.
There’s a certain range of emotions and certain root emotions that are common to everyone but there’s also a great deal of variation between people that speak different languages.
The language you grow up with shapes how you think at a very low level. How you process information, how you see the world.
For example, I read about a study, presumably about Mandarin, that explained an interesting difference between how Chinese people and English speaking people themselves in the future.
In Mandarin, the language sort of forces you to see your future self as self-same to your current self and this causes Chinese people to be much much better about saving money for the future. On the other hand the English language causes one to think of the future self as a different person and it makes it more difficult to identify that future self as truly you.
I tried to find the article for you but couldn’t. The concept is called self-continuity.
Another place I’ve seen this present is in software design, oddly. I used a tool at a previous job that was largely developed by people that didn’t have English as a first language. It had a very clear logic to it and made sense, but everything was put together in ways that were initially counterintuitive.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
That movie gave me uncanny valley feeling all the time, they’ve managed to make some of the shots look very Soviet, but each and every social interaction felt so thickly American that it’s completely alien to anyone even from Western Europe, not even talking about ex-USSR.
Actually a feeling similar to looking at AI slop …
And the main characters’ personalities are all wrong. And the social dynamic leading up to the situation. And the bullshit component - American bullshit and Soviet bullshit are two completely different languages. You should compare something American on “real army life” to Russian movies like “Little green elephant” and “DMB”. The difference will be similarly radical, even bigger perhaps.
Looking at real tapes with Legasov talking to liquidators and such is eerie too, those moments with him saying with smiles that “like with everything, it might be good in smaller amounts”. But it’s entirely different.
Quexotic@infosec.pub 1 day ago
I actually didn’t get very far at all into it. It made me too anxious and depressed. What you’re saying is totally valid though. People that speak different languages literally have different sets of emotions and different emotional expressions for emotions of the same name.
Eg., I’ve never experienced saudade (Portuguese, I think), It doesn’t really exist in English speaking countries.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 22 hours ago
That’s prosody and emotional language. Actually imitating these is what American movies often try to do, even if sometimes for comedy component and not well.
(And don’t ask me about imitating music, one would think music theory is something movie composers all study, yet they usually don’t bother to even look up some basics, like modes commonly used in Russian music, and the resulting soundtracks sound like some sound salad.)
These actually express the same set of feelings all humans have, not really different between Japanese, Somalian and Russian people. Except, of course, for semantic connections and references.
What I’m talking about is level above, of what’s being said in said languages.
When an American is bullshitting his superiors, he’s telling them different things than a Russian when bullshitting his own superiors. When an American is making a presentation to persuade someone of something, he’s also using different means. When an American boss is talking to people below him in hierarchy, he’s also using different means. American bosses derive their social authority through different means than Russian bosses. American prestige and Russian prestige are different. American and Russian perceptions of what looks strong are different. And some of these things are opposites, say, in American perception simplifying the matter at hand for easier comprehension by the listener is a sign of professionalism, in Russian perception it’s as if you were asking to be treated as a clown.
They show Soviet ministries’ officials as some “politicians” or “golden boys” doing their own thing and either oblivious to the matter at hand or treating it as outside their responsibility to understand, even if understanding. But that’s clearly American dynamic. First, in general narrower expertise is more normal for Americans and wider expertise is more normal for ex-Soviet people, culturally, and an ex-Soviet man would at least pretend to have knowledge of everything close to their job. Second, Soviet ministries’ officials would make careers in the areas of economy their ministries were responsible for, or, in other words, the ministry was the area of economy. A Soviet ministry official wouldn’t ask a professor about details of the task at hand, it would be the other way around, the former would be the one having more practice, and the latter would provide theory. The “politician” or the “golden boy” types wouldn’t be anywhere near ministries, they would be diplomats or somewhere in some party things or even special services or journalism. And, of course, by the time someone became a ministry official, they’d be far older than that guy in a suit in the movie. Third, the portrayal of Legasov is almost a caricature for ex-Soviet people, they portrayed him kinda similar to Sakharov, but Sakharov behaved still stronger and simpler, first, and Sakharov had made that funny bomb before becoming a dissident, second, to make that image respectable. Real-life Legasov behaved, well, like a normal Soviet man. And he wasn’t a dissenter.
There are many such things, if they had just looked at some footage with the people the characters were meant to portray, or followed real events more closely, they’d have a good shot for free, without understanding such nuance. But they decided to make up a plot with some message, around just a few events, and that plot turned out something completely American.
Quexotic@infosec.pub 20 hours ago
Interesting. Thanks, and I definitely take your point, though I don’t know much about Russia or Russians aside from a “history of Russia and China” class in college.
Also TIL prosody 😁.
We’re talking about different things.
You’re talking about social dynamics, and what I’m talking about is more general than that.
There’s a certain range of emotions and certain root emotions that are common to everyone but there’s also a great deal of variation between people that speak different languages.
The language you grow up with shapes how you think at a very low level. How you process information, how you see the world.
For example, I read about a study, presumably about Mandarin, that explained an interesting difference between how Chinese people and English speaking people themselves in the future.
In Mandarin, the language sort of forces you to see your future self as self-same to your current self and this causes Chinese people to be much much better about saving money for the future. On the other hand the English language causes one to think of the future self as a different person and it makes it more difficult to identify that future self as truly you.
I tried to find the article for you but couldn’t. The concept is called self-continuity.
Another place I’ve seen this present is in software design, oddly. I used a tool at a previous job that was largely developed by people that didn’t have English as a first language. It had a very clear logic to it and made sense, but everything was put together in ways that were initially counterintuitive.
Anyway, I was more or less “squirreling”.