IR & Culture

Extras

The interplay between cultural-artistic expressions and International Relations is rarely taken in consideration and examined; and most people do not even think about it. Still, it is way deeper than it may appear at first; and it reveals much about how a certain issue or actor is perceived, and this in turn deeply influences how we react to it.

As a matter of fact, IR essentially examines the relations of actors at the international level. Now, every relation involves a mutual interaction, which also means a reciprocal definition between the involved agents. According to the Constructivist school of IR, the way states (and other actors) define themselves and their peers shapes their mutual perception and determines the type of interaction they have.

This is why the cultural dimension of IR is so important: thanks to their immediateness and easy access, artistic expressions like novels, movies, paintings, songs, etc. can deeply influence our perception on a certain issue, state, or epoch. This is also due its very nature, art can deliver a specific message in a direct way, immortalize or denounce an event, create a myth, shape our conception of a historical moment or statesman. In other words, it is capable of building our collective memory; and this has a tremendous influence on how people and states interact with each other and react to a given event. Again, this also explains the prominent role played by art in propaganda, education, nation-building, soft power, and so on.

This fundamental link between IR and cultural-artistic expression has always existed: just think of how any civilization has defined itself as opposed to "barbarians" portrayed as uncivilized people; or the use of art to celebrate the state, an institution, a political leader or a victory on the battlefield. But today, as we live in the Information Age marked by the diffusion of a globalized 'pop culture' in a context where politics are heavily mediatized and virtually everything is politicized, the art-politics-culture interplay has become particularly important.

As such, understanding how a given artistic expression form influences our mindframe, affects our perception and contributes in shaping the political narrative become more important than ever.

I was introduced to this particular yet very interesting aspect of IR thanks to the Seminar on International Relations: Cultural Issues that I attended as part of my Master's degree at Université Catholique de Louvain. This page takes inspiration from that course and continues along its line. I was really fascinated by this topic and now I cannot stop myself from "analyzing" in my mind any IR-related movie / novel that I watch / read.

Reaganism in Tony Scott's "Top Gun"

Tony Scott's Top Gun is surely one of the most iconic movies of the 80s. But apart from its spectacular air combat scenes and its amazing soundtrack, the film is also a cultural representation of the American values during the Reagan Era.

In this paper published by the CECRI (Centre d'étude des crises et des conflits internationaux - Centre for the Study of Crises and International Conflicts) of Université Catholique de Louvain, which I originally wrote in the context of a seminar on International Relations: Cultural issues that I followed during my Master's programme, I analyse how Top Gun is an excellent example of how a film can be a powerful mean to portray political values.

If you are interested in reading, this is the direct link.

Photo credit: F-14_16b, AereiMilitari.org, published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0).