According to Nicholas J. Cull, public diplomacy is ‘an international actor’s attempt to conduct foreign policy by engaging with a foreign public’ and covers five activities: Listening, Advocacy, Cultural diplomacy, Exchange, International news broadcasting (Osgood and Ethridge, 2010: 258). However, for him, ‘films’ are difficult to put into one of these categories, although they are a tool used by governments to conduct public diplomacy.
Talking about this is all the more relevant in regards to United States of America. United States not only has its glittery Hollywood, but seem to have known for long the importance of the image! Moreover, as Cull explains it, films figured in American public diplomacy during the First World War (Ibid.: 259), with the aim to promote their foreign policy, their own views on the international happenings of the war and different political games, as well as, as an ultimate goal, for the promotion of their own way of life. Indeed, during the period of the two Great Wars, the role of US films was very much of advocacy to Western Europe, as well as the ‘newly liberated countries’ (Ibid.); they would show their life style in different formats (from people living in the countryside, to immigrants arriving in urban areas and how to integrate) (Ibid).
For instance, the Committee on Public Information during the First World War, with its particular function of promoting the American involvement into the war to its own citizen, they also realised different films which first audience was that of overseas, in order to depict to the foreign public the US involvement in the war; Cull talks about Pershing's Crusaders and America’s War (Ibid.).
Nowadays, such methods are still used, and it is very much interesting. There have been movies on past wars, such as Apocalypse Now (1979) depicting the Vietnam War, or more recent one about the latest Iraq War in The Hurt Locker. However, those which are even more interesting are the movies relating the situation of the United States post-9/11. For instance, all those movies about terrorism, infiltrated CIA agents in terrorist cells, or movies that could be ethically controversial with the morality of the movie being ‘it is worth to kill one person in order to save thousands’ are very interesting. For instance, the movie Rendition (2008) depicts exactly that situation. Moreover, those like Five Fingers (2006) or Unthinkable (2010) too. Those movies seem very much to put the United States into a victim position... since they depict a threatened country by a global force which the government does not seem to clearly know how to tackle and fights against... However, what those movies also show, is that force and the nation always come first (be it depicted as a negative American image like in Rendition, or on the contrary, like in the two last movies mentioned).
Moreover, the fact that the American are depicted as always being the ones attacked (a tourist couple being shot in Babel (2005) or the US President being attacked during a public apparition in Spain in Vantage Point (2008)), poses an implied justification for any attack from their government in order to protect their citizen.
However, what I have found even more interesting is that ‘saviour’ image that the United States has... In my opinion, it has to do with two things: firstly, that image of the ‘US saviour’ has to do with the end of the Second World War as a whole: the European liberator and the introduction of the ‘generous’ Marshall Plan (Ibid.: 260) towards Europe, showing to the world their power. Therefore, when an asteroid will potentially strike the Earth and wipe out any form of life, this will happen in the US (victim position of the natural catastrophe), which then shows a heroic image of them when they manage to divert its movement axis by drilling it (Armageddon (1998)).
I will not even mention the position in which those movies put people from the Muslim world, with a very specific physical aspect, clothes and behaviour. However, in Five Fingers, the turnaround of the situation is very interesting (even though it shows at the same time that the United States are even more in danger since the ‘enemy’ is not that identifiable anymore... since the terrorist in that movie, in the end, is Ryan Philipp, blond actor having the role of a Dutch, and not Lauren Fishburne appearing as the ‘terrorist stereotype’).
As a conclusion, one can say that films are very much used to promote a government’s foreign policy... Be it funded, subsidised or promoted by the government – like during the two Great Wars in the United States with the Committee on Public Information for instance, as well as with Nazi and Communist propaganda movies promoting their lifestyle and telling lies about the enemy – or not, with Hollywood movies.
This topic seems to present a similar dilemma as ‘citizen diplomacy’: can ‘citizen diplomacy’ or ‘public diplomacy’ through films and movies be called that only when there is a government involvement? As I have already argued regarding citizen diplomacy, I do not think it is the case, and in my opinion, in this particular case of movies and films, through the movies took as examples, I have definitely shown that it is not the case.
Morality: enjoy movies, but as everything, 'don't buy it without thinking twice about it'.
Osgood, K.A., and Etheridge, B.C. (eds.), 2010. The United States and public diplomacy : new directions in cultural and international history. Brill: Leiden. Available online: http://www.londonmet.eblib.com/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=635073&
