Chuck Norris vs. communism

Alexandru Ionașcu

Summary

Here is a detailed summary of the article written by Alexandru Ionașcu about the documentary “Chuck Norris vs. communism” (2015), directed by Ilinca Călugăreanu:

Cultural Memory and the Connection to the Present

The author begins his analysis with a personal note, recalling the impact that iconic figures from action films, such as Chuck Norris (in Walker, Texas Ranger or Delta Force 2) and the sharp presence of actor Billy Drago, had on his generation of millennials. Although the author grew up in post-1990 capitalism, he uses this nostalgia as a bridge to explore the cultural experience of previous generations, who lived in the isolation of the final decade of Romanian communism.

The Phenomenon of Videotapes in 1980s Romania

Ilinca Călugăreanu’s documentary investigates how Romanians managed to consume Western culture during a period marked by extreme censorship and the nationalist ideology of protocronism. While the Ceaușescu regime imposed strict propaganda directives and cut scenes of food abundance from films, a clandestine phenomenon flourished on the black market: video cassettes.

Two central figures are the pillars of this documentary:

• Irina Margareta Nistor: The unmistakable voice of foreign cinema, who clandestinely translated and dubbed thousands of films brought from the West, offering Romanians an escape from the “gray” everyday life.
• Teodor Zamfir: An enigmatic figure and a successful black-market businessman who smuggled thousands of videotapes across the border, likely benefiting from a certain degree of leniency from the Securitate.

Impact on Society

Collective apartment viewings represented a “clandestine home cinema” that changed people’s perspectives. American films offered not only entertainment but also a window into a world of abundance, fashion, and freedom of movement. Beyond the action itself, viewers were fascinated by details such as foreign cars or skyscrapers, elements that served as a form of natural counter-propaganda against the stagnation in the country.

Criticism and Observations

Alexandru Ionașcu also offers a critical take on the documentary, noting that it does not deeply analyze the political messages of 1980s action films. These productions often promoted an idealized vision of neoliberal capitalism and elements of toxic masculinity.

However, the author highlights the irony of the situation at the time: even Securitate agents consumed these films, ignoring the overtly anti-communist content (such as Rambo destroying Soviet helicopters) for the sake of entertainment or for the financial gains derived from this trade.

Conclusions

The article concludes with a recognition of the cultural importance of Irina Margareta Nistor, whose passion for film became an inspiration. Although viewing habits have changed radically in the internet age, her “voice” remains a symbol of cultural resistance, permanently linking the image of Chuck Norris to the collective memory of Romanians who sought freedom in a living room, in front of a VCR.

Review

Ah, I remember it as if it were yesterday; I was in elementary school, the new millennium was approaching, and I watched the series Walker, Texas Ranger every day, and each time I was sure that Chuck Norris’s perseverance would save the day and those corrupt villains would be caught. Just as I still remember that evening when I watched with bated breath as Chuck Norris infiltrated the militarized hacienda of Latin America’s biggest drug lord to avenge his partner, who had been killed by Ramon Cota—the biggest drug lord in San Carlos, that is, all of Latin America.

I am, of course, referring to that Chuck Norris masterpiece called Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (1990), a film hated by critics of the time, but one that remained in the cultural memory of a film- and literature-loving student from Eastern Europe. Okay, I admit, in this film I was frightened by the cold and ruthless presence of Billy Drago, who for a long time was my archetype of how a villain should look, speak, and act—the quintessential antagonist for me—and even now I’m sad that cinema no longer produces actors with such a memorably sharp presence as Billy Drago. Years have passed; I finished middle school, cinema changed, I finished high school and Facebook wasn’t very widespread yet, I finished college, then my PhD, and the world changed even more—much more than anyone could have imagined back in the early 2000s. Not to mention someone who came of age during the final decade of Romanian communism. Yes, I know, authoritarian socialism. What I mean is that I am part of that generation of Romanian millennials who lived almost exclusively under post-1990 capitalism and had free access to all the mass culture produced in the last decade of the 20th century, predominantly in the American sphere. But how did previous generations live their cultural lives? What kind of films were popular in Romania in the ’80s, and how did people get to see them? Ilinca Călugăreanu’s documentary answers these questions.

Chuck Norris vs. Communism from 2015 is a curious project, something between interviews and reenactment, a suspenseful dramatization of events and people from the mid-1980s, with Irina Margareta Nistor in the spotlight. Our country’s most famous film critic is an almost mythical presence in Romanian cultural life, the face of cinema and the voice of foreign film, a graduate in literature and English who, officially, worked as an editor and translator at TVR (Romanian Television) before 1989. Unofficially, during the last 5–6 years of the dictatorship, she translated thousands of films brought in from the West and recorded on videotapes. The videotapes reached the general public; anyone who wanted to see a film produced in Western countries or the United States would get hold of the tape, gather a group of friends in a living room, and watch the film—a sort of clandestine “home cinema.”

Here, a little context is needed. After 1980, the regime led by Nicolae Ceaușescu increasingly isolated itself from the rest of the world and promoted a nationalist ideology called protocronism, according to which Romanians were supposedly the first to invent technologies or create cultural movements. Now society was increasingly under surveillance, and the authorities insisted that the artistic community—writers, directors, and actors—conform to propaganda directives. In this climate of surveillance and suspicion, a clandestine market developed for videotapes featuring Western or Hollywood films, which were banned from cinemas due to their content. Thus, on videotapes, families could watch action films such as the Missing in Action series starring Chuck Norris or the Rambo trilogy starring Sylvester Stallone—films that, due to their overtly anti-communist content, could never have been screened in a cinema in a country behind the Iron Curtain.

In the documentary, we meet Teodor Zamfir, a figure as fascinating as he is unknown to the general public and anyone else who hasn’t seen this documentary. Teodor Zamfir is not an obscure film critic or actor, but the man who, during that period, smuggled thousands of videotapes of Western films, regularly crossing the border into Hungary to supply Romanians with Chuck Norris’s masterpieces, and the one who hired Irina Margareta Nistor to clandestinely translate and dub the films he brought back. Amid an atmosphere of mystery and danger at every turn, we see a blonde woman walking through the deserted streets at night and entering a house where she meets this Teodor Zamfir, on whose walls we see posters of Stanley Kubrick’s *The Shining*.

Teodor Zamfir managed to cross the border with hundreds of videotapes by bribing border guards, and it seems he had connections with the Securitate; only that way could he operate without worry, and he had even amassed significant sums of money—far more than what the average worker in Romania earned in the 1980s. In essence, he had become a sort of businessman in the absence of capitalism, or a successful black-market operator capitalizing on Romanians’ need to know what was happening abroad, beyond the borders of a country where everything was stagnating. Not only was Romanian society stagnating at the time, but official censorship had reached such an absurd level that censors cut scenes from films where too much food appeared, since it was common knowledge that the West could not possibly be a land of plenty. And to the aid of Romanians who wanted to see how people lived in the decadent West came a businessman with artistic sensibilities and a translator passionate about films.

What exactly did Romanians want to learn about the outside world, about the West and American society? Well, pretty much everything. As one of the interviewees puts it, American films watched clandestinely by groups of friends and entire families “changed your perspective on life; you grew through films, freshness, and novelty—the fact that you saw everything from clothes to attitudes and gestures—it was a life unfolding right there on the screen.” Foreign cars, fashion, skyscrapers, the streets—everything represented an escape from a reality that was supposed to represent the best of all possible worlds, but no longer matched the aspirations of people who had already reached the stage of urban modernity by the end of the last century. Perhaps Romanians wanted to travel more, try different clothes, drive different cars, but the American films they watched on videotapes contained their own counter-propaganda.

One of the journalists interviewed in this documentary—a well-known radio personality whose name I always forget—says that action movies were paramount, and that children growing up in the final decade of Ceaușescu’s regime imitated martial arts scenes from Chuck Norris films, for example; and here, too, one can level a criticism at Ilinca Călugăreanu’s documentary. She doesn’t question the narratives of those American action films from the ’80s at all, and I’m not just referring to martial arts. I’m referring to what those films promoted—namely, a right-wing vision that leaves no room for debate and, in turn, idealizes a capitalist space that had already entered the neoliberal era and was already rife with inequalities, as we can see in They Live (1988), John Carpenter’s iconic sci-fi film centered on a greedy economic elite, behind which hides an alien species attempting to take over the planet through subliminal messages. In fact, in 1980s action films, one can observe the first examples of what we would now call toxic masculinity.

Of course, Irina Margareta Nistor had no way of knowing how these cultural phenomena—which were just beginning at the time—would evolve; she just wanted to watch movies, as she says at the end of the documentary. She wasn’t afraid of being arrested by the secret police because the film was like a drug, as she puts it herself; it was her escape from the grayness of a socialism in which few still believed. Even the secret police enjoyed American action movies, so they too overlooked details that shouldn’t have been pleasant at all, such as Chuck Norris mowing down an entire battalion of Vietnamese communists with a submachine gun, or Rambo blowing up Soviet assault helicopters in Afghanistan. Beyond entertainment, the Securitate and Romanian communist officials reaped the full benefits of the profits from this clandestine trade in videotapes, as the documentary informs us. Or perhaps the Securitate knew that the dinosaurs had been eyeing Chuck Norris sideways, and we all know what happened to the dinosaurs.

I myself have never seen a videotape; I don’t know what a video looks like, but I’m not interested in that—I’m a man of the internet, video games, and social media— but I appreciate Irina Margareta Nistor’s passion for movies—a passion that might as well be a drug; this was her chance to watch movies, an inspiration for all of us. Some of the films Irina Margareta Nistor secretly dubbed are completely unknown today; I think only the most die-hard cinephile has ever heard of titles like Death Cruise or Rough Cut. Irina Margareta Nistor is the voice Romanians associate with American films; her clean translations, free of any obscenity, have entered the cultural memory of Romanians. Irina Margareta Nistor is the cinephile who first dubbed Chuck Norris’s films, and Chuck Norris is the only person in history to have counted to infinity. Twice.

Photo: The film’s poster (source: Alexandru Ionașcu)

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