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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

COMMENTS ON THE CONGRESSIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON AMERICAN FILM AND PUBLIC DIPLOMACY 11/14/2007
DEC 18, 2007 - 4:39PM PDT
Posted by Neal Rosendorf
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I would like to commend Congresswoman Diane Watson for organizing the Congressional Symposium on American Film and Public Diplomacy and her sponsorship of legislation that includes establishing the Johnny Grant Film Series featuring classic American cinema in U.S. embassies and missions overseas. I think it is a grand idea that allows us to tap into one of the United States' most significant contributions to culture over the past century as an element of public diplomacy outreach. I also think, parenthetically, that any effort that works to make our representative buildings around the world seem more accessible and friendly, instead of like fortresses of solitude, is a good thing. We shouldn't be embarrassed by Hollywood and its output. Many of the world's greatest and most beloved films were and are the product of the American motion picture industry. Writer/director Garson Kanin noted this relationship when he famously observed that "the trouble with movies as an art is that it's a business, and the trouble with movies as a business is that it's an art". Hollywood's extraordinary capacity to craft and distribute images of American (as well as other countries') society and lifestyles around the world imparts to the U.S. a unique degree of potential cultural and political influence. And of course, it doesn’t hurt a bit that film and TV exports are the second largest American export sector after aviation, and that Hollywood is the only U.S. industry that maintains a surplus trade balance with every country in the world. Hollywood's film and TV production, and more broadly the American entertainment industry, are among the most important elements of American "soft power," the power of persuasion and attraction, ideas and ideals, as opposed to "hard" or coercive power. The term soft power has become so ubiquitous that I think it is important to credit its inventor: the political scientist and sometime government official Joseph Nye, who was not coincidentally one of my mentors. One of my favorite quotes about Hollywood’s potential to influence hearts and minds comes from one of Hollywood’s biggest fans: Josef Stalin, who once said, "If I could control the medium of the American motion picture, I would need nothing else to convert the entire world to communism." To his disappointment, the Soviet dictator never did gain control, and he never did convert the world to communism. Another great admirer of Hollywood was Chinese President Jiang Zemin who lauded the virtues and profitability of the 1997 movie Titanic, a box office hit in China, declaring, "Let us not assume that we can’t learn from capitalism." These may seem like slightly queasy-making endorsements for the international outreach virtues of Hollywood, but autocratic figures like Stalin, Jiang, and the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, among others, who admired Hollywood and sought to emulate American film, harness it for their own uses, or were simply envious, were keenly attuned to power issues and assets, both soft and hard. It’s unsurprising that no other country has been able to duplicate, or even approach,…... FULL TEXT
 
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Mitchell Polman on December 20, 2007 @ 9:09 am:
Excellent point about diplomats not always knowing what will be popular overseas. I find it ironic that Rep. Waters doesn't want embassies to carry "Gone With the Wind". It 's broadcast on TV in Russia, Ukraine, and other countries constantly. Both the book and the movie are hugely popular with Russian women. It is simultaneously one film that embassies probably don't need to carry, but would probably also be in greatest demand.

Herodotus on August 18, 2009 @ 12:07 am:
I respectfully disagree with everything in your article, though I agree with most of it. Your article seems to take for granted that the majority of the world that has access to American embassies is of the mental caliber to understand that a truthful nation is a nation worth getting to know. In the meantime, your proposal to present the racist American vision to the rest of the world as a means of winning over these low-caliber minded individuals is akin to Leonidas writing a letter to Xerxes and proclaiming, ‘Why old boy, we do so dearly wish to make contact with you at Thermopylae in a most friendly fashion!’ What do you think would have happened? None of us would be here, that is certain! (No pun intended.)
And it certainly cannot just be me who sees that soft power is like soft ice cream: easily eaten, quickly forgotten. (And perhaps I am a tad unprofessional, but I liken soft ice cream to the impact of this article on my life.) Big stick diplomacy, that’s what I most fervently desire! If they can’t be cinema’ed into submission, then military action is a must!
I’m sure you will see the wisdom in my point of view, my friend. In the meantime, in the words of the great historian, "Force has no place where there is need of skill." (A small sidebar: That quote is from my namesake!)

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