Master of Arts Thesis Euroculture
University of Deusto (Home) and Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (Host)
Images that travel
The 19
thEuropean Union Film Festival in India from the perspective of
branding and public diplomacy
Submitted by:
Flavia Curatolo
Student number home university: 99908670 Student number host university: S2699052 Flavia.Curatolo@yahoo.com/ +351969647991Supervised by:
Asier Altuna, Deusto Margriet van der Waal, Groningen
Place, date Bilbao, 3 August 2015
MA Programme Euroculture Declaration
I, Flavia Curatolo hereby declare that this thesis, entitled “Images that travel: The
19th European Union Film Festival in India from the perspective of branding and public diplomacy” submitted as partial requirement for the MA Programme
Euroculture, is my own original work and expressed in my own words. Any use made within this text of works of other authors in any form (e.g. ideas, figures, texts, tables, etc.) are properly acknowledged in the text as well as in the bibliography.
I hereby also acknowledge that I was informed about the regulations pertaining to the assessment of the MA thesis Euroculture and about the general completion rules for the Master of Arts Programme Euroculture.
Signed
Table of Contents
ABBREVIATIONS 6
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 7
Images and Identities 7
Globalization and media boom 8
Blurring of the lines 9
Viewers are not only consumers, they are also actors 12
Introduction to the case study 14
Purpose statement and research question 14
Rationale and Contribution to Research 14
Difficulties and limitations 14
Readings 17
Overview of the research and organization of the thesis 17
CHAPTER II: WINDOW SHOPPING CULTURE – FROM A “MICRO/
INDIVIDUAL” PERSPECTIVE TO A “MACRO/GENERAL” PERSPECTIVE 19
Images as creation of identities 19
Lenses and the blurring lines between the private and the public 19
Living in a media-world? Impact on the audience 20
Audiences as consumers; audience as an active force 22
Images as communications of identities in international relations? 23 The concepts belonging to diplomacy: in a constant re-conceptualization 23 Conceptualizing “branding” and “public diplomacy”: a starting point 24 A distinction between branding and public diplomacy as viewed through a constructivist lens 25
The American view versus the European view 25
The tools of public diplomacy or branding: How and to whom do “images” go to? 26
Images as communicators 26
Changes in relation to viewing the audiences 28
Globalization and communication 29
Film festivals: between market and culture 31
Film festival studies 31
Europe, the birthplace of film festivals 32
Culture and debate in film festivals 33
CHAPTER III: CASE STUDY – THE EU TOWARDS INDIA: IMAGES THAT
TRAVEL? 35
India in the new global environment 35
People-to-people strategy: Kinoteka: Academic audience 39
An introduction to the European Film Festival (EUFF) 40
Spreading the word about the EUFF: targeting a wider public 41
EU Delegation’s website, Facebook, and Twitter 41
National cultural institutions: participants and communicators 44
Primary participants and communicators 44
Media, and private European and Indian institutions 46
Empirical work 47
Main goals 47
Methodology 48
Results 49
Discussion 57
Insights from the survey 57
CHAPTER IV: NEW CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES 59
The scholars' recommendations 59
Heuristic value: public diplomacy at work 60
The global civil society 61
The UPO European Union: Opportunities for change 63
Final remarks: New avenues 66
BIBLIOGRAPHY 67
Acknowledgments
This thesis would not have been completed if not for generous and motivating people around me. I would like to thank my supervisors, Margriet van der Waal and Asier Altuna, which whom I shared from the outset many exchanges of ideas and long conversations. They have helped me structure and organize this work, and never given up on me during the entire research.
In no specific order of appreciation and gratitude, I would like to thank also: Deusto scholars which whom I have also maintained long and crucial conversations, in particular María Jesús Pando and Steffen Bay Rasmussen for advice in how to structure and use adequately the conceptual terms relevant to my study case; Ray Freddy Lara Pacheco at Universidad del País Vasco, who shared with me his views on branding and brands; Anupana Srinivasan, the associate course director of the creative documentaries course at the Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication in New Delhi, who kindly met with me after work hours to help me understand Indian perspectives; Dr. Samar Nakhate, former dean of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, for introducing me to India's complexity and cultural subtleties in the course of several meetings; the EU Delegation in India, especially Jennifer Boulle, personal assistant to the EU Ambassador, and Drishtirupa Das, information and communication officer, who helped me with crucial information and leaflets; my Indian friends in film institutes and other institutions of higher education, for interviews and insights into EU-India relations through films; and Paulo Barcelos of the Nova Universidade, my professor of politics of the European Union during my Erasmus year in Lisbon, who still after three years is someone I can always exchange ideas with.
I gratefully acknowledge the national cultural institutions of Germany, Portugal and France in India for helping me with queries about the EUFF, and all the Internet users who responded to my survey. And my friends and family wherever they are in the world, especially Mikhail and my bestest of friends Sandra, to whom I owe a lot. Last but not least I owe the coherence and finalization to my uncle José who spent long hours of his summer vacation correcting and analytically reviewing the style of this work. Without his patience, analytical eye and encouragements this work could not have been completed.
Abbreviations
EU European Union
EUFF European Union Film Festival
FTII Film and Television Institute of India NGO Non-government organization
Chapter I: Introduction
“Communication cannot make the European Union (EU) function better, nor solve its economic, social, political and environmental problems. However, it helps in raising awareness and mobilising people. Communication can be a leading tool for enhancing identity, integration, respect and democracy. Communication, in fact, in its Latin origin communicare, means to impart, share, or make something in common. Communication can create even emotions and attachments.”1
Images and Identities
I rarely identify as “European,” until I am outside of Europe, and to identify myself to a non-European. In Pune (India), I was often presumed to be German. This I attribute primarily to the fact that the vast majority of Europeans in Pune, were, indeed, German. This correlation of ‘visibility’ and ‘identity’ is critical to this study. Before I immersed myself in India’s reality, I was already acquainted with its hyperreality2 presented to me through feature films and documentary footage. Nevertheless, I realized that neither the Bollywood-style imagery nor the repetitive images of stark poverty associated with India accurately and/or adequately represented this country. And yet I have to admit that these images impacted my imagination, however naïve. Conversely, European movies, as presented to an Indian audience, give a glimpse of “European” life and times.
It might seem frivolous and ridiculous that movies, these moving images, could have such an impact. How could they possibly have the ability to “represent” someone, let alone a whole “culture” or “identity”? In fact, like all cultural productions, cinema can be understood at many different levels e.g. artistic, psychological, economic, commercial, political and diplomatic. In this work, I will explore how cinema is used as a tool to project European culture in India. I will analyze the use of cinema as a branding and public diplomacy instrument, with specific attention to the 2014 European
1 Valenti, Chiara, and Nesti, Giorgia, Public Communication in the European Union: History,
Perspectives and Challenges, Cambridge Scholars, 2010
2 Hyperreality is a complex concept, which comes from the ‘mimesis’ concept, as Matthew Potolsky in
Mimesis (the new critical Idiom), Routledge, 2006,154 explains. Hyperreality, defined through
Union Film Festival (EUFF), which is sponsored by the European Union and takes place every year in several major Indian cities. The EUFF is the only film festival
directly promoted and supported3 by the EU’s delegation in India.
Film festivals, and in fact every single film, potentially create a movie-scape4 acting on the mind of the viewers. I will introduce the EUFF as a case study to understand how new international transcultural actors such as the European Union present themselves to a foreign audience by expressing their internal diversity, in this case the intricacy of the different national cultures within the EU. I will pay attention to the context, the arena of international relations, in which the EU communicates along the newly defined concepts of branding and public diplomacy.
Globalization and media boom
In a globalized world, image and communication have become central tools of power, both in a bottom-up and a top-down perspective: from citizens to states, and vice-versa. This is illustrated by Arjun Appadurai’s concept of mediascapes, which he defined as:
“…closely related landscapes of images. Mediascapes refer both to the distribution of the electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information (…) which are now available to a growing number of private and public interests throughout the world, and to the images of the world created by these media. These images involve many complicated inflections, depending on their mode (documentary or entertainment), their hardware (electronic or preelectronic), their audiences (local, national, or transnational), and the interests of those who own and control them. What is most important about these mediascapes is that they provide (especially in their television, film, and cassette forms) large and complex repertoires of images, narratives, and ethnoscapes to viewers throughout the world, in which the world of commodities and the world of news and politics are profoundly mixed. (…) The lines between the realistic and the fictional landscapes they see are blurred (…)”5
3 European national film festivals do exist in India, organized by individual countries.
4 I borrow here from Arjun Appadurai’s language in Modernity at large, Public Worlds Volume 1, 1996,
37 “this extended terminological discussion of the five terms I have coined sets the basis for a tentative formulation about the conditions under which current global flows occur: they occur in and through the growing disjunctures among ethnoscapes, technoscapes, financescapes, mediascapes and ideoscapes.(…) have become central to the politics of global culture.”
In Appadurai’s vision, mediascapes are informed by the context where they are generated, and are imbued with the worldview and interests of the multiple authors who create them and the agents who control them. What Appadurai is arguing is that, increasingly, because of globalization, political, economical and media powers are intrinsically connected in mediascapes. In the communicational aspect of the EUFF, as we will see, we observe both branding and public diplomacy at play on the part of European Union’s delegation in India. We will review herein the institutional roots of EUFF as part of the cultural policies of the European Union Directorate General for Education and Culture.
Blurring of the lines
As seen above for media, the boundaries between marketing and intangibles (culture, art, values, even diversity itself) are being blurred to produce consumable goods. As Michael Sandel states, we are now living in a market society instead of just keeping the marketing in the economy, as he states:
“The difference is this: A market economy is a tool—a valuable and effective tool—for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor. It’s a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.”6
“Marketing”, therefore, now extends into realms where it was previously absent. The case in point is the connection between image and marketing, also known as branding.7.
How is branding carried out?
Why connect image and marketing? As we have argued, images hold a certain value and power in the perception of the viewer, and in the purpose of the producer. In addition, visual information has become over-abundant and comes through many channels, traditional and new, such as television, Internet (including mobile devices), cinema, printed media, and urban advertising. Consistent with Sandel’s view, Chiara Botticci and Benoît Challand put forward that images are not only everywhere, but that
6 Sandel, Michael, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, iBooks, 23
7 Branding will be understood as defined by Simon Anholt: “branding is the process of designing,
planning and communicating the name and the identity, in order to build or manage the reputation”. In
Competitive Identity, in The new brand management for Nations, Cities and Regions, Palgrave
this superabundance of images shapes the viewer’s perspective and constrains the viewer’s imagination: “Today, by way of contrast, rulers are constantly in front of us: their image dominates our screens, nourish, solicit and perhaps even saturate our imagination.”8 Far from being neutral, then, images have a marketing value in the eyes of the producer. Moreover, images acquire political power especially when they convey the representational quality of a public actor such as a government or an international actor such as the EU. Manuel Castells points to this phenomenon of politicizing images when stating that attributes traditionally associated with the domains of politics are now as well connected to images: “This crisis of legitimacy is deepened by the practice of media politics and the politics of scandal, while image-making substitutes for issue deliberation as the privileged mechanism to access power (Thompson 2000).” 9
This shift of power toward images in domains such as economics or politics is accompanied by a diversification of actors and their domain of influence. As Sandel argues about the shift of politics to other non-traditional domains, as an example of the new complexity in a world where barriers are being torn and new ones created: “What we are witnessing in the global age is not the end of politics but rather its migration elsewhere. . . . The structure of opportunities for political action is no longer defined by the national/international dualism but is now located in the “global” arena. Global politics have turned into global domestic politics, which rob national politics of their boundaries and foundations. (p. 249)”.10 The above entails that actors have to be responsive and adaptable to compete in this new environment.
The adaptability of actors in building and maintaining a favourable image projection is an important part of branding, as Anholt states:
“So all responsible governments, on behalf of their people, their institutions and their companies, need to discover what the world’s perception of their country is, and to develop a strategy for managing it. It is a key part of their job to try to build a reputation that is fair, true, powerful, attractive, genuinely useful to their economic, political and social aims, and which honestly reflects the spirit, the genius and the will of the people. This huge task has become one of the primary skills of government in the twenty-first century.”11
8 Bottici, Chiara, Challand, Benoît, The politics of Imagination, Birbeck Law Press, 2011, introduction, ii 9 Castells, Manuel, The New Public Sphere : Global civil society, communication networks and global
governance, Annals, AAPSS, March 2008, 85
In branding, the producers of images are mostly private entities, such as think tanks. However, think tanks act beyond their traditional areas of influence as a consequence of the images they produce, like a public sector actor. This is reflected in Anholt’s definition of his concept of competitive identity12 that he associated to brands and branding. For Anholt, in order to have a successful and fruitful branding, all the components of the actor, e.g. the different government agencies, must work in coordination to produce a consistent message/brand to be competitive:
“These days, there is more collaboration and integration between embassies, cultural bodies and trade and tourist offices: modern diplomats see promoting trade, tourism, investment and culture as an important part of their job. But countries generally get the biggest improvement in their overall reputation when all the main sectors of the country are aligned to a common strategy. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs may or may not be the right body to lead this process in every case but, whatever the administrative structure, it’s clear that all the major stakeholders of the country’s image need to be fully represented on it; and this full representation is, as I will explain later, one of the basic principles for building Competitive Identity.”13
Of note, non-political or directly affiliated media such as movies play here a powerful, influential role, because:
“One reason why culture works so well in building Competitive Identity for countries is that consumers aren’t as suspicious of it as they are of commercial messages. Even if it’s popular culture, it’s still art, or at least entertainment, so people relax their vigilance, and don’t look for hidden agendas. At least until recently, Hollywood movies could get away with some fairly explicit celebration of American values, and foreign audiences just sat back and enjoyed the show.
And cinema, music, art and literature are important because they add colour, detail and richness to people’s perception of the country, and help them to get to know the place almost as well as if they’d been there; better, in fact, because the picture that’s painted is often a little idealized, and all the more magical for being intangible and incomplete”.14
12 Anholt’s Competitive Identity is a concept which highlights the core importance of developing and
maintaining a “competitive” identity of public actors in the face of the new world order “Competitive Identity (or CI) is the term I use to describe the synthesis of brand management with public diplomacy and with trade, investment, tourism and export promotion. CI is a new model for enhanced national competitiveness in a global world, and one that is already beginning to pay dividends for a number of countries, cities and regions, both rich and poor.”. Anholt, Simon, op. cit., 3
It is clear, then, that cinema constitutes a valuable component of the diplomatic toolbox. The usage of cinema as a diplomatic tool is not a novelty, and there is a great precedent in the WWII films by Alexander Korda, Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell sponsored by the British Ministry of Information in aid of the war effort. The films had a political and diplomatic aim, especially toward the public opinion in the United States which were still neutral at the time, but they were successful in their own right, with spectacular cinematic work.15 "49th Parallel" (1941) won an Academy Award for best story and was nominated for best picture and best screenplay in 1943.16 In the words of the British Film Institute, “a success at home, the film became the biggest British hit to date in American cinemas”.17
Viewers are not only consumers, they are also actors
Anholt goes on to recommend that the promotion of investment and tourism by ministries of foreign affairs must be "as sophisticated as the most sophisticated commercial marketing, since both are competing for consumer mind-share in the same space.”18 (my emphasis). Therefore, as an actor in an interconnected, interdependent and fast-changing world, the EU's public diplomacy must engage not only with institutional bodies but also with a foreign public that are part of the civil global space. As explained by Anholt :
“This is not a question of governments “playing to the gallery” or a strategy for legitimizing state propaganda, just a growing acknowledgment of the influence of global public opinion and market forces on international affairs […] The common driver of all these changes is globalization: a series of regional marketplaces (and by marketplaces I mean not just markets for products or funds, but for ideas, for influence, for culture, for reputation, for trust and for attention), which is rapidly fusing into a single, global community. Here, only those global players – whether they are countries, cities, regions, corporations, organizations, religions, NGOs, charities, political parties or individuals – with the ability to approach a wide and diverse global marketplace with a clear, credible, appealing, distinctive and thoroughly planned vision, identity and strategy can compete.” 19
15 Aldgate, Anthony, and Richards, Jeffrey, Britain can take it: The British Cinema in second world war,
Second Edition, I. B. Tauris, London, (1986) 2007, 22
16 http://www.imdb.com/event/ev0000003/1943 (last accessed 07/07/2015) 17 http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/438312/ (last accessed 07/07/2015) 18 Ibid., 18
Public diplomacy is understood here as the projection toward the foreign public of media politics as understood by Manuel Castells: "In our society, politics is primarily media politics. The workings of the political system are staged for the media so as to obtain the support, or at least the lesser hostility, of citizens who become the consumers in the political market."20 Nonetheless, the emergence of the Internet, mobile communications and social media empowers Castells's civil global society to become active and not just passive consumers. A major difference, however, between branding and public diplomacy as a soft power tool appears to be that branding is directed to
consumers, whereas public diplomacy focuses on an active public. The
conceptualization and differentiation of both branding and public diplomacy (Figure 1) will be discussed further in my research on the EUFF case.
Figure 1. Visual summary of the concepts of branding and public
diplomacy in the perspective of the EU policy and the present work.
20 Castells, Manuel, Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society, International
Introduction to the case study
Today, we live in a highly mediatized world, transitioning rapidly from a free market economy to a market society where the usage and impact of images have become prominent. As argued, images become political tools and I thought it relevant to analyze, from the dual perspective of branding and public diplomacy, the European Union Film Festival organized every year since 1995 in India by the EU Delegation in Delhi. This subject is at the crossroads of my interests in culture and EU policy. Much of the relevant research and field work was carried out during my stay in India as an exchange student at the University of Pune, between August and November 2014.
Purpose statement and research question
From the outset, I wished to address how a transcultural and transnational organization such as the EU communicates to a foreign public. My main question is:
How does the European Union Film Festival (EUFF), which is organized by the European Delegation in Delhi, showcase movies as a communicational tool in the context of public diplomacy and branding? This led, in turn, to researching what kind
of contemporary diplomacy the EU’s delegation in Delhi effectively formulates, and the way current European directives shape the EU Delegation’s communicational work in India. I considered this from the point of view of two distinct tendencies emerging in current international diplomacy: the first is market-based and represented by branding; the second is ideal based and represented by public diplomacy. A subsidiary question is whether the EU is working towards becoming a recognized global cultural actor.
Rationale and Contribution to Research
Difficulties and limitations“In the worst-case scenario, when a researcher question cannot even be pursued through systematic comparisons, the social scientist may be forced to resort to the case-study or historiographic method, which lies at the bottom of the naturalist’s hierarchy of methods. Naturalist social science is expected to employ this method only when faced with a yawning paucity of data.”21
21 Knutsen, Torbjørn L., and Moses, Jonathon, Ways of knowing: competing methodologies in social and
To investigate how branding and public diplomacy are woven into the showcasing of European cinema at the EUFF, I first sought to understand the environment that inspired the EU Delegation in India to organize this event and present it to an Indian audience. This was the first focus of my study. Inspired by the new “anthropocene”22 concept in geology, I sought to understand the Western (specifically, European) environment explaining the initiative for the festival.
In researching the EUFF in India as a study case, the major limitation I met was the scarcity of information. The EU Delegation in India did not keep records of attendance of the EUFF, and I was able to find very little relevant information online (i.e. at the EU Delegation website and in social media). The level of response to my enquiries to national cultural institutions was low overall, even though I received useful input from German, French and Portuguese institutions. I was not able to attend the EUFF myself since I was back in Europe by then. Lastly, I found it difficult to obtain data directly from the EU Delegation in India in response to my requests. I was told eventually, during a conversation with an EU official in India in October 2014, that the information I requested was confidential, and instructed not to take notes nor quote their words. The exception to this rule was any information provided directly by the EU ambassador, but I was not successful in meeting or entering into electronic communication with him.
I decided then to build a body of “empirical” data to further my research work, and I designed a survey of the attendees of the EUFF. Since good quantitative data was not available, I decided to focus on qualitative aspects: the communicational way in which the EUFF was organized, the nature of the cultural actors involved, and the environment where most of the relevant communication takes place, which is internet-based. This was my idiographic study. I acknowledge that the way I have approached and developed is partly subjective, because I operated a selection from among different potential avenues of study and data collection. Of course, the study was limited also by what was possible and practical.
The European Union Film Festival is the only pan-European film festival
22 The ‘Anthropocene’ concept focuses on the way that geology is affected by human behavior and
vice-versa, as seen in Palsson, Gisli, Reconceptualizing the “Anthropos” in the Anthropocene : Integrating the
social sciences and humanities in global environmental change research, Environmental science &
directly promoted and supported23 by the EU’s delegation in India. As explained by Eva Nowak24 when dealing with the EU two distinct tendencies seem to appear, which date
from the creation of the EU: the political and economical focus. This is also reflected in the media politics in its communicational aspect:
“Obviously, much can be said, researched and analyzed with regard to European media policy. Scholarly work conducted so far teaches us that there is in fact no clearly defined field of European media policy; no single competent authority responsible for it; no single law with which European media sectors need to comply; no unified actor interests; and no shared objective underlying European media policy. In fact, it would be more accurate to talk of European media policies”25 (my emphasis)
The only clear assumption is that media politics is torn between two tendencies, the economic and the ideological/political:
“Another reason seems to be that some scholars regard an economic approach to media as somewhat controversial in itself. This applies both to the scientific methodology of economics as to the societal phenomena studied by economics – that is, the economy or the market. It is well known that the term ‘culture industry’ was originally introduced as a pejorative term (see, e.g., Hesmondhalgh, 2007).”26
Bearing that in mind, my strategy to collect tangible data was the semi-experimental-statistics-comparative approach. This was done to try and understand the milieu in which the communicational strategy under study was developed. As the Internet is the only channel used by the EU Delegation in India to communicate about cultural events because of budget limitations, I investigated online sources of information and made use of online tools. I compared statistics that other sources had gathered and tried to produce my own. One of my first concerns in using the statistical method was the sampling error, as well as developing a good strategy for sample selection relying on
23 Other European, national film festivals do exist in India, organized by individual countries. 24 Nowak, Eva, Between Economic Objectives and Public Remit: Positive and Negative Integration in
European Media Policy, Palgrave Macmillian, 2014 Nowak here explains the integration of EU’s media
policies which are divided between two tendencies: the neoliberal and the ideological/political.
25 Donders, Karen, Loisen, Jan, and Pauwels, Caroline, European Media Policy as a Complex Maze of
Actors, Regulatory Instruments and Interests , The Palgrave Handbook of European Media Policy,
Palgrave Macmillian, 2014, 5
26 Pieter Ballon in Loisen, Jan, Pauwels, Caroline, and Donders, Karen, Old and New issues in Media
social media, both as a tool and a test of the EU success in communicating about the EUFF through the internet.
Another method I used was the critical discourse analysis (CDA), which focuses not only on the data collected itself, in my case, academic, European directives and surveys, but also on “social practice” as it assumed that the environment in which the data was collected would also be relevant. I analyzed different sources and tried to understand the reason behind the production of the EUFF event. My work was organized around the notion of connecting cinematic images to identities as communicational devices, and why cinema is important to the EU Delegation in India.
Readings
Researching the relevant literature was an essential part of this work, specifically about branding and public diplomacy, cinema and film festivals, as the nomothetic part of my study. Among the wide variety of published sources, I tried to focus on the specifics of my case study, which involved considering the EU as an external cultural actor using film festivals as a communicational tool aimed at a third-part audience. Available data on this topic was very limited, especially within the theoretical framework of communicational strategies of public diplomacy or branding. To my knowledge, there have been no previous studies of this subject from the point of view of branding to public diplomacy of the EU in India. In addition, I regarded this subject through a cultural lens, which specifically considered how branding and public diplomacy create a portrait of the EU as a cultural actor. I paid attention also to the concept of civil global society, to see if the European delegation in India was implicitly taking into account the civil global society in organizing the EUFF.
Overview of the research and organization of the thesis
Chapter II: Window shopping culture – from a “micro/
individual” perspective to a “macro/general” perspective
“In a society dominated by the production and consumption of images, no part of life can remain immune from the invasion of spectacle.”
Christopher Lasch27
Images as creation of identities
Lenses and the blurring lines between the private and the public
Why does the EU link visibility with its identity? Why does the EU Delegation choose film festivals as a means to display its identity? What does the usage of film festivals portray? These are some question I would like to address.
Joanne Finkelstein reports that it was the spread of movies, especially the zoom-in mode created zoom-in the 1950’s, that impacted the connection that we had between images and ourselves:
“The growth of the entertainment industries during the twentieth century brought a new emphasis to appearance. The emerging technical capacities of the cinematic camera (...) had the effects of rearranging time and space and blurring distinctions between the interior and exterior, the private and the public. The close-up camera shot (…) coincided with the growing interest in popular psychology and the ‘psy’ industries (…) Through the close-up, thoughts are made visible. These fine facial movements caught by the close-up camera shot suggest authenticity, as if the realm of meaning behind the visible social surface is indeed the real world.”28
What Finkelstein is articulating is that through the introduction of cinema the lines between reality and the imitation of reality have disappeared. Indeed, she recalls one of the first movies ever shot by the Lumière brothers in 1895, “Arrival of a train in
the station” and its impact on the public at the time: it had created hysteria: “The
unexpectedness of the on-rushing image was such that people fled in fright as if a real train were actually speeding towards them. So immediate were the visual impressions
27 Quoted by Garoian, Charles R., and Gaudelius, Yvonne M., Spectacle Pedagogy, Art, Politics and
Visual Culture, State University of New York Press, 2008, 23
28 Finkelstein Joanne, The art of self invention Image and Identity in Popular visual culture, I.B Tauris,
that it was difficult to remember the train was not present”, and she adds that the confounding of reality and the re-creation of reality has made “the technical and aesthetic realm of art, design and representation all the more important.”29 Reciprocally,
the part of ourselves that is on display grows ever more important, and the boundaries between private life and public life become increasingly blurred. Can this explain the reason behind the usage of image as a means to communicate identity by the EU? Does the EU really rely on images to display its identity? What kind of identity is communicated by the images”– and what kind of images are being used? Why are the images of movies used and are these considered a suitable communication tool by the EU Delegation in India? These are some questions I would like to further explore in this work.
Living in a media-world? Impact on the audience
In the contemporary world we live surrounded by media and, in particular, images in our everyday environment have exploded. This may be the reason behind the importance accorded to media as a channel for communicating. In fact, a 2014 paper by the European Commission emphasizes that more attention should be given to the production and distribution of European films, and states that “The digital revolution offers more possibilities and flexibility for distribution and is having a fundamental impact on audience behaviour.”30 One of the reasons cited by the Commission is that Europe's film heritage draws worldwide praise. Heritage is deeply connected to identity, and this can help bridge the differences between European peoples: “The audiovisual sector has substantial cultural, social and economic significance. It shapes identities, projects values and can be a driver of European integration by contributing to our shared European identity. The sector contributes to growth and jobs in Europe and is a driver for innovation.”31 The Commission, however, adds a qualification: "While
Europe is good at producing a high number of diverse feature films, most European films do not reach all their potential audience in Europe and even less so in the global market”.32 Therefore, we must consider this potential audience worldwide: who will
29 Ibid.
30 European Union. European Commission, European film in the digital era – Bridging cultural diversity
and competitiveness, Brussels, Final Communication 272, 2014, 2
watch these films? What effect can European films have on audiences? How can they, in the Commission's words, build bridges?
Garoian and Gaudelius go to the extremity of arguing that the spectator of the images becomes the image, and mention
“...our propensity to conceptualize and represent the reality of cultural life in images as a disposition that is epistemologically grounded. For Boulding (1961), beginning with the invention of writing to contemporary forms of imaging, the dynamics of a society is predicated on the assumption that “the image [as a ‘dissociated transcript’] not only makes society, society continually remakes the image.”33
Finkelstein agrees with this view when she states that movies build stereotypes, which become accepted by the viewer who will internalize them and reproduce them, especially in mass media:
“ The business of the mass media is to promulgate ways of seeing and to train audiences to read images and representations in predictable ways. In mainstream film, for example, codes are repeated to the point where they seem natural; (...) Slowly these associations are standardized and audiences become complicit in maintaining them. Film works by using stereotypes.”34
If we follow this reasoning then we may begin to understand society's obsession with image, the growing importance of an individual's outward image, and why we have objectified our society and become compliant as commented by Garoian and Gaudelius:
“Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1990) explains that such objectification of everyday life “constitutes the social world as a spectacle offered to an observer who takes up a ‘point of view’ on the action and who, putting into the object the principles of his relation to the object, proceeds as if it were intended solely for knowledge and as if all the interactions within it were purely symbolic exchanges.”35
Nonetheless, we can ask ourselves whether it is actually true that the audience is only a passive consumer of the content and messages conveyed by the images they see. The emotional connection to an image or ideas can be traced to McCormick’s idea of “cultural citizenship” in the European context. In Cultural citizenship, political
33 Garoian, Charles R., and Gaudelius, Yvonne M., Spectacle Pedagogy, Art, Politics and Visual Culture,
State University of New York Press, 2008, 26
34 Finkelstein, Joanne, The art of self invention Image and Identity in Popular visual culture, I.B Tauris,
2007,6
belonging, and the European Union36 he gives the example of protests in Europe
against the Iraq war. Having lived through two world wars, the majority of the peoples of Europe saw their opposition to war and support for peace as part of their identity. More recently, we see an illustration of identity also in the “Je suis Charlie” demonstrations and relevant expressions of public opinion in France and elsewhere in the EU, with citizens voicing support “against violence” and for “freedom of speech”. Among institutions, politicians, and individual citizens, sharing the “Je suis Charlie” logo and slogan was important to the collective feeling in support of freedom of speech and condemnation of unjust violence.37 How does this apply to the subject in point, the
EU Delegation's effort of visibility and organization of film festivals? I tried to understand how cinema at the EUFF might connect European images to an European identity, and whether there was a match between this strategy and the intended audience in India. Most importantly, was this audience only a passive consumer?
Audiences as consumers; audience as an active force
Garoian and Gaudelius extend their analysis to the realm of politics, depicting
the world we live in as a “live show” and pointing out that the image promoted by higher institutions is being consumed by the spectator:
“Political historian Timothy Mitchell (1998) claims that this dominant order of criticality represents the “world-as-exhibition” where citizens are “continually pressed into service as [complacent] spectators” (p. 298).”38
An example of this could be the Kony 2012 campaign launched by an NGO,
Invisible children in 201239, using a web-based film which portrayed indicted war criminal Joseph Kony and his cruelty towards children in Central Africa who were being forced into prostitution and military service. The video was very heartfelt and engaging, and benefited from Hollywood style, high production value. Campaign supporters were moved to spread the message and donate to the NGO. The film was viewed by millions online, but the campaign and film eventually drew severe criticisms (from institutions such as the government of Uganda, but also individuals) of misdirection, partisanship and failure to report on key relevant facts. This example
36 McCormick, John, Cultural citizenship, political belonging, and the European Union, Cuadernos
Europeos de Deusto, 48. Bilbao, University of Deusto, 2013
37
http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2015/01/07/je-suis-charlie-origine-createur-joachim-roncin-slogan-logo-solidarite-charlie-hebdo_n_6431084.html
38 Garoian, C. R., and Gaudelius M.Y. op. cit., 28
shows that while the audience does comply as a consumer, it can also be an active force and, as in this case, initiate a backlash. 40
As global audiences are diverse and can not be assumed to be passive consumers, and because the EU itself is diverse, the aim of effectively projecting the EU’s identity through films may be an over-ambitious endeavor; the message may be literally lost in translation or, worse, elicit negative criticism if not properly tailored.
I was interested to learn how the EU Delegation handled these constraints, and whether it fostered reflection among the audience by organizing debates after film viewings. This can help clarify film messages and put them in context, but also make a positive impact through the EU opening itself to the local population. This, then, becomes a two-way process and not only a producer-consumer relationship. We will argue this point with examples further into this work.
And lastly, is this consumer–producer dialectics the basis of branding? And is it reflected in international relations?
Images as communications of identities in international relations?
The concepts belonging to diplomacy: in a constant re-conceptualizationIn the realm of international relations, nation branding has become a term and concept à la mode, seemingly replacing public diplomacy. This evolution of concepts has been debated,41 and the debate on distinguishing or assimilating place/nation
branding and public diplomacy is still ongoing. This is mainly because branding and public diplomacy do not have a single, established definition, but several. Indeed, many
researchers have tried to define and conceptualize branding and public diplomacy, but this depends heavily on the particular diplomatic context and point of view of the researchers and practitioners42. This last point is argued by Jan Melissen in The New
Public Diplomacy: Soft power in international relations, where he discusses the
evolution over time of the actual application of public diplomacy, and links historical change in international relations to the evolving conceptualization of public diplomacy:
40 Curtis, Polly, and McCarthy, Tom, Kony 2012, what is the real story?
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2012/mar/08/kony-2012-what-s-the-story (2012),2014 (last accessed May 2015)
41 http://www.diplomatmagazine.nl/2013/11/03/indias-cultural-diplomacy-globalised-world/. 42 I focus below on relevant scholarship and points of view on branding and public diplomacy that I
“In the context of broader changes in diplomatic practice and that public diplomacy can at least partly be seen as a symptom of change in the conduct of international relations.”43
Moreover, Steffen Bay Rasmussen points out that
“A key characteristic of diplomacy is its management of change in international relations, and in this respect, innovations in diplomatic practice have always characterised diplomacy (Melissen, 1999, p. xix). Public diplomacy could thus be understood as a development in diplomatic practices that accompanies and reflects the transformation of the states and forms of communicating amongst them generally.”44
Therefore, in speaking about diplomacy and its tools such as branding or public
diplomacy, the perspective of the author and his/her own understanding of these
concepts has to be taken into account. It is the ever-changing globalized arena itself that fosters an ‘unstable’ ground in the definition of the concepts.
Conceptualizing “branding” and “public diplomacy”: a starting point
The “classical” or “mainstream” concept of public diplomacy, and subsidiary concepts, all came from soft power as conceptualized by Joseph Nye:
“What is soft power? It is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. When our policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of others, our soft power is enhanced.”45
Soft power is also called the third power, after economic and military power.
Nye furter explains this concept of third power:
“I first developed the concept of soft power; in Bound to Lead, a book I published in 1990 that disputed the then-prevalent view that America was in decline. I pointed out that the United States was the strongest nation not only in military and economic power, but also in a third dimension that I called soft power.”46
This third dimension of power is also a concept linked to public diplomacy. Nye devotes the entire chapter 4 of his book Soft Power: The means to succeed in world
43 Melissen, Jan, The Diplomacy:Soft power in international relations, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005,9 44 Rasmussen, Steffen Bay, The conceptual field of contemporary public diplomacy, Comillas Journal of
International Relations n1, 2014, 30
politics to soft power from the perspective of public diplomacy. He explains how
countries have used soft power as a tool of public diplomacy in the past, e.g. France building on its national prestige to become the arbiter for the practice of diplomacy in 19th century Europe. Further to Nye's definition, Steffen Bay Rasmussen discussed that some authors view public diplomacy as part of “soft power” whereas others view it as a tool for “soft power”:
“Some scholars explicitly define public diplomacy in soft power terms, whereas Melissen sees public diplomacy as a key instrument of soft power. The linkage is not without problems, though. Hocking highlights the paradox of associating soft power with public diplomacy, arguing that if attraction really worked, there would be no need for public diplomacy.”47
So what exactly differentiates “branding” from “public diplomacy”?
A distinction between branding and public diplomacy as viewed
through a constructivist lens
The American view versus the European view
In Nation Branding: Toward an Agenda for Critical Research, Nadia Kaneva discusses current views of public diplomacy and nation branding as either separate or assimilable concepts:
“The similarities and differences between conceptualizations of public
diplomacy and nation branding, as well as their potential convergence or
divergence in praxis, have drawn significant attention from scholars in this category (e.g., Anholt, 2006b; Szondi, 2008; Zaharna, 2008). There are two broad positions on the matter: one sees them as distinct but related to each other (e.g., Gilboa, 2008; Szondi, 2008); the second, more controversial position views them as essentially the same, suggesting a spill-over of the technical-economic approach into the political approach (e.g., Anholt, 2007; van Ham, 2001b). The first view is discussed in most detail by Szondi (2008), who comes up with four models of the way nation branding and public diplomacy intersect. He acknowledges, but ultimately rejects, a fifth model that views the two as equivalent.”48
In addition, the “Anglo-Saxon” conceptualization is historically related to American
47 Rasmussen, Steffen Bay, Discourse Analysis of EU public Diplomacy Messages and Practices,
Discussion Papers in Diplomacy, 2009, 4
48 Kaneva, Nadia, Nation Branding: Toward an Agenda for Critical Research, International Journal of
public diplomacy, and influenced by the notions of “soft power” and “noopolitik”49. This view emphasizes the “reputation” aspect of public diplomacy. In Kaneva's words:
“As Gilboa (2001, p. 2) summarizes, “it is a nation or leader’s image and control of information flows, and not just their military and economic power, that help determine their status in the international community.” 50
Conversely, the European perspective arises from a rupture from a history of intra-European wars. In the current context of intra-European integration, branding appears as the natural evolution of public diplomacy, away from dangerous nationalism and better suited to generating a collective image.51 The Anglo-Saxon and European points of view may well converge into branding as the advanced form of public diplomacy. Importantly, Kaneva argues that ‘image prevalence’, the fact that we have moved into a world where images are ubiquitous, drives in practice the transformation of public
diplomacy into branding.
Public diplomacy and branding differ as to how and whom: how image communication is carried out, and who the recipient is of this communication. As discussed by Kaneva and by Rasmussen, a further conceptual difference is that branding projects images in a neo-liberal market environment, but public diplomacy deals with images in a constructivist environment, where image is connected to identities. This means that the image has to influence and yet leave space for contestation. In this respect, Rasmussen recalls the constructivist tenet that a message is subjected to interpretation by its recipient, while Kaneva highlights the “non-essentialist” nature of identities. In summary, the international arena is viewed either as a “market”, which would explain the branding approach, or as a “constructivist” space, the realm of public diplomacy.
The tools of public diplomacy or branding: How and to whom do
“images” go to?
Images as communicators
Image-using strategies such as public diplomacy or branding can be understood as a means to communicate messages endowing the actor with pre-eminence or status in
49 As defined in Arquilla, John, and Ronfeldt, David, The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward an American
Information Strategy, RAND, 1999, x: "Noopolitik is foreign-policy behavior for the information age that
emphasizes the primacy of ideas, values, norms, laws, and ethics—it would work through "soft power" rather than "hard power.""
the eyes of others. The goal is to gain influence and/or persuade other actors of the capabilities of the issuing actor. Public diplomacy /branding legitimize the position of the actor but have also active components of persuasion and attraction. This attraction operates through images supporting values. In the words of Jian Wang:
“The U.S. government has reaffirmed its commitment to Public Diplomacy, historically defined as “a government’s process of communicating with foreign publics in an attempt to bring about understanding for its nation’s ideas and ideals, its institutions and culture, as well as its national goals and current policies” (…)”52
This is also conceptualized by Rasmussen:
“the most adequate definition of diplomacy for an analysis of the public diplomacy modality is that of Der Derian (1987), which sees diplomacy in more ample terms as “the mediation among estranged peoples organized into states that interact in a system” (p. 43). Whereas this definition is rather far from those of classical approaches to diplomacy (Der Derian, 2009, pp. 196-197) it has the virtue of stressing the social aspects of diplomacy, mainly the identity of the actors involved and how the relationship between them is ultimately a question of identification processes. This is a vital point of focus, since public diplomacy is in large part about influencing the estranged other and its perception of both itself and one self, as well as its perception of other events and phenomena.”53
Awareness of the way an image is received by a foreign audience lies at the root of the distinction between branding and public diplomacy. As Rasmussen points out, branding is more holistic and more ambitious than public diplomacy because not only does it aim to define a whole nation but its aims are also very specific with regard to the receiver:
“This is basically because nation branding is considered to be based on mobilising and coordinating the communication of an entire society, whereas public diplomacy is seen as restricted to the activities of state officials. Still, and assuming that the activities of actors other than state officials are either included or excluded in both concepts, it could be argued that nation branding is merely the part of public diplomacy that attacks the self-image as an element in foreign political discourses, whereas public
52 Wang, Jian, Telling the American story to the world: The purpose of U.S. public diplomacy in
historical perspective, Public Relations Review 33 (2007) 21-30
diplomacy remains a larger phenomenon seeking also to influence foreign publics in other ways.”54
In light of these conceptualizations of branding and public diplomacy, we can propose a preliminary analysis of the case under study. The EUFF can be understood as a branding operation in that it extends outside the official apparatus of the EU Delegation though the use of printed and electronic media, including the internet and social networks; it is carried out under leitmotifs expressing values and ideals (unity in diversity, the EU integrational model); it is placed under a dominant theme (e.g. "Voices of youth" in the 2014 edition); it makes use of diversified venues such as local theatres and malls; and lastly, it is carried out in partnership with a variety of public and private institutional partners, whether European or Indian.
Conversely, the EUFF can be understood as public diplomacy. In 2004, India became one of the EU’s strategic partners. The Joint Action Plan signed by the partners formulates the need for
"...a conscious effort on both sides to inform each other's public opinion. Both societies are evolving rapidly and there is a constant need to update the media image on both sides."55
Inasmuch as the festival puts into effect this formal agreement, it can be considered as part of the EU's public diplomacy. In addition, a delegate from an EU member state or the EU ambassador is present at each film screening, and interacts with the audience during a post-screening debate, which provides keys to the interpretation of the films in their national context; films from the diversity of EU member states are presented in the original language so that the intrinsic complexity of the EU is not simplified (as it would be in branding) but is instead embraced and on display to the foreign audience.
Changes in relation to viewing the audiences
The association between image and identity, with consequences in the political world, has been discussed above (section Images as creation of identities). It has gained such prevalence in our society that it can be observed also in the realm of international relations. This is the reason why the EU Delegation in India, as an international actor, has to use its visibility to demonstrate its identity. We can ask ourselves, however, what
54 Rasmussen, Steffen Bay, op. cit. 2014, 33
55 The India-EU strategic partnership joint action plan,
is the nature of visibility and identity in the context of film festivals, and what impact on the foreign public the EUFF is achieving.
Between “new” and “old” public diplomacy, change also arises in the relationship between institutions and civil society, according to Melissen:
“In a broader historical perspective it may even be ventured that – for better or for worse – the practice of foreign ministries and embassies in engaging with civil society groups and individuals abroad demonstrates that the evolution of diplomatic representation has reached a new stage” 56
This constitutes a turning point for diplomacy: what other (Third) audiences think about a country has become important in a globalized, interconnected world where everything has a “ripple effect”. As Steffen Bay Rasmussen says about public
diplomacy and the importance of shaping third audience opinion:
“Every state government and every other international actor must define its interests and foreign policy strategy within the enabling and constraining context of global public opinion (…) Political influence in global politics is therefore increasingly a matter of being able to shape how foreign publics define the meaning of facts, interpret events and perceive other actors in the international system. In a global political struggle for the legitimacy of
actions, the framing of events becomes as important as the ability to shape reality on the ground.”57 (My emphasis.)
Films potentially "shape how foreign publics define the meaning of facts, interpret events and perceive other actors in the international system", to borrow Rasmussen's words. This is linked to the value of images as communicators of identity, as we have discussed earlier. In accordance with the tenets of branding, however, the format (in our case, film festivals) must be adapted to both content and the target audience.
Globalization and communication
Globalization pushes the choice between branding and public diplomacy into a new context. Despite the weakening of the idea of nation as a result of globalization, proponents of nation branding like Wally Olins point out the persistence of strong competition between nations, and Olins adds that "in a globalized world (...) the need
56 Melissen, Jan, op. cit., 9
for people to project an image of who they are (...) gets more and more powerful". 58
Proponents of public diplomacy, for their part, criticise a ‘loss of diversity and unilateral vision’ in nation branding with regard to identity and culture. Branding relies on simplicity for clear-cut efficiency. Conversely, the constructivist approach of public
diplomacy may seem less immediately comprehensible, since it takes into account many
factors beside efficiency. For example, regarding identity and media in foreign exposure, Kaneva argues that it is important to keep in mind the non-essentialist nature of identity:
“[Recent studies involving cultural approaches] see national identity as a dynamic struggle and negotiation, shaped by various local and extra-local agents, over collective and individual meanings. Put differently, they are interested in examining the implications of nation branding for the politics
of identity and the ways in which “nation branding promotes a particular
organization of power, knowledge and exchange in the articulation of collective identity” (Aronczyk, 2008, p. 46).14”59
These questions on branding and public diplomacy arise in the conceptual field, but what about the praxis? Strategies under the public diplomacy label seemingly become all-inclusive, as Rasmussen articulates:
“McClellan (2004) writes about “the strategic planning and execution (...) by an advocate country (...),” (pp. 23-24), which seems to suggest that it is government officials that engage in public diplomacy, whereas Davis Cross (2013) expands the concept to include people-to-people relations thereby making the number and types of people involved in public diplomacy “virtually limitless” (p. 4).”60
In effect, today's public diplomacy not only addresses a wider public but is carried out by a wider range of actors promoting some “identity” or “image”. Another point to make regards the need for a “listening” attitude beyond the mere exposure of one's image, as a means to engage with a target audience. Rasmussen explains this two-way communication process:
58 IE University, Nation Branding guru Wally Olins speaks at IE,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJU6-RIdXWs, published 22 June 2012 (last accessed 20/05/2015)
59 Kaneva, Nadia, op. cit., 127
