Europe on the Global Screen: Geopolitical Scotoma, Transnational Cinema of Memory and Hollywood’s Security Choices

Струков, Влад

doi:10.1057/978-1-349-95269-4_6

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 17 publications

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“…Like other forms of Danish programming, Ambassador is careful to present a ‘neatly packaged’ and ‘recognisable’ televisual idyll of Denmark (Stougaard-Nielsen, 2016: 6), where performances of hygge , pro-LGBTQ sentiment, and cool Nordicness are cast against impeccable aesthetics, dramatic landscapes, and iconic architecture. Moreover, in DR’s representation of Gifford as Scandinavian-smitten homo globalis and a body that evinces ‘encounter between sexuality and diplomatic history’ (Bradley, 2015: 61), there is a connived example of what Strukov (2018) terms ‘geopolitical scotoma’ at work, 9 wherein Danes are gazing at a ‘good American’ that both likes them and is like them . Moreover, as a gay man that embraces all the trappings of the ‘good life’ within the context of ‘sanitised homosexuality’, Gifford manifests both a form of homonationalism that privileges the ‘upward distribution of wealth’ (Schotten, 2016: 354) and the Obama administration’s promotion of LGBTQ ‘normalcy’ within a construct of ‘universal human rights’ (Weber, 2016: 21).…”

Section: Contextualisation In Lieu Of a Conclusionmentioning

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Televisual diplomacy: I am the Ambassador and Danish nation branding at home and abroad

Saunders

Vessels

2018

Politics

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In a time when the current US president came to office via a career in reality television, it seems unnecessary to argue that popular culture and International Relations intersect in meaningful and dramatic ways. Operating from this premise, mass-mediating the act of diplomacy via a television series presents a fecund object of analysis that questions many of the myths surrounding what we call the ‘diplomatic community’. Consequently, this article is interested in the geopolitical interposition of Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) via the popular culture form of reality television. We achieve this through a close reading of the DR series I am the Ambassador/Jeg er ambassadøren fra Amerika (2014–2016), ‘starring’ the real US ambassador to Denmark. We situate Ambassador within the evolving space of ‘new diplomacy’ through an evaluation of how it imagines, popularises, and expands ‘everyday’ sites of diplomacy via mass-mediation. However, as we argue, the series – when viewed holistically – says more about the Danish state and its people than it does about the role of the US ambassador, thus functioning as a tool of nation branding as much at home as abroad.

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