[zrn900]

> There’s an argument to be made that Hollywood is the best propaganda machine in the world at fostering putative or aspirational American ideals if not the reality on the ground

Indeed. The circulation of video tapes in the early to late 80s USSR, US movies et al, seem to have created a major false perception: People thought that Americans lived like how the rich in Manhattan live. Even in the late 2000s, there were Russian journalists (local) who did not believe that there were homeless in New York, for example.