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Special Issue Articles

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2021): Im/Mobilities in American Culture

'The Beast from the East': Mental Dis/Ability and the Fears of Post-Socialist Mobility in North American Popular Culture

Submitted
April 25, 2019
Published
2021-12-29

Abstract

This article analyzes characters in North American popular culture who migrated from the post-socialist world to the United States and other western countries. It focuses on the Anglo-Ukrainian clone Helena in the television show Orphan Black (Space/BBC America, 2013-2017), the Russian girl Esther in the horror movie Orphan (2009), and the psychopathic Russian assassin Villanelle in the television show Killing Eve (BBC America, 2018-2022). All these fictional characters are orphans. Moreover, they all share the same pathology: a mental disorder or disability that predestines them to become ruthless killers. I argue that the fictional killers embody North American fears surrounding the mobility of the Cold War Other in the aftermath of the fall of the so-called Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

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