Iron Fisting
Iron Fisting is a comedy series that is being produced by actor Channing Tatum and his production company, Free Association, as a fake Romanian cop show from the 1980s. Billed as “the greatest 80’s Romanian cop show ever”, the comedy show, inspired by retro cop series including Miami Vice, follows two mismatched detectives in their attempt to protect Nicolae Ceaușescu’s socialist paradise from the evils of capitalism. The series will be dubbed in English, as a normal Romanian series would be, and will be shot, at least partially, in Constanta. The producers, who grew up in communist Bulgaria, have gathered information about the Balkans that is meant to be incorporated in the series. First, there was no access to U.S. shows in the 1980s. Coca-Cola, a quintessentially American product, was made available to the masses only on major holidays. Under the communist regime, Romania was a state ruled by the “People’s Militia” police force and the notorious secret police Securitate. [1] Below is a poster of the television series currently in production:
Although the television series has not yet reached the big screen, I would argue that it is worth looking at it as an important instance of representation of Romanians to the American public. First of all, its title is worthy of consideration because while it could have been chosen to resemble several American blockbuster titles for action movies, it could also be echoing Churchill’s 1946 prophetic speech in which he described the “Iron Curtain” that had fallen over Eastern Europe, separating the Soviet bloc from the Western countries. Moreover, the choice of genre in what concerns this series is potentially problematic, as it is meant to somehow trivialize Romanian people’s suffering under communism. Romania is thus, again reduced to being just another communist country, stuck in time, backwards and fit for the entertaining the American public.
