Rememberment, Chapter XXV: American Heroes

Spider-Man was still my favourite comic book hero, but the X-Men (and particularly Wolverine) were right up there. In fact, as long as it was a Marvel comic it was almost certainly great. As for cartoons on TV, there was no question that Disney was the best, although I wouldn't mind getting the occasional dose of Bugs Bunny or some other Warner Brothers classics.


Whenever we went out to rent a movie, it was nearly 100% certain that it was going to be an action flick starring Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris or maybe even Burt Reynolds. It was the same with television shows. The biggest music stars and most video games were also American. For a pre-teen living in the 80s, there was no question where all the good stuff came from.


It still wasn't okay to speak ill of the Soviet Union in the Finnish media, but all the kids knew that they were the bad guys.


Thanks to this guy, we also knew exactly how they should be dealt with.
Along with their evil Vietnamese henchmen, of course.


The Cold War was on and it wasn't hard to pick a side. The other gave us Indiana Jones, Rock 'n' Roll and Coca Cola, and from the other we got matryoshka dolls and generational trauma.

I think that for many people of my generation, it's still as simple as that.

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