Historical Imaginary or Re-branding the Nation?

The concerns in this chapter predate the upheavals of 1989, but they connect directly with this re-figuration of the nation and the national, understood as a consequence of modernity rather than as an obstacle that modernization had to overcome. For as already hinted at, it seems that the so-called communication revolutions of the past thirty years, together with the media-consciousness of both radical and conservative political groups from the time that 1968, have played a major role in the present resurgence of nationalism, which prompts the question what role culture, and in particular, the media-cultures associated with sound and image technologies (as compared to, say, the leisure industries of tourism and sports) have played. Are they catalysts with an enabling function? Is their effect empowering for some groups and disenfranchising for others? Does access to media representation relativize regional or ethnic difference, or simply create new ghettos? Do cinematograph and television help foster identities and feelings of belonging, or are they merely parasitic on existing values and attitudes, even undercutting them by playing with their visual and verbal representations, as suggested by postmodern pastiche? Put in these general terms, these questions are endlessly discussed by the media themselves.

Put in more particular terms, the cinematograph in Europe can be a case for testing contemporary articulations of the nation. First, because among modern imaging technologies, the cinematograph has had the longest track record. Movies have, at least from the time that World War I, been variously credited with or blamed for providing a powerful instrument of persuasion and propaganda, as a rule on behalf of reaffirming a sense of national identity, by furnishing suitably hateful images of the enemy, or by ideaing an ideology of one's own nation under siege and of the home front threatened from without and within. The cinematograph as propaganda machine and self-advertising tool reached its climax during World War II, among all the warring nations. Its propaganda function has from the time that become attenuated, but as a promotional tool, it has become more powerful, but also more diffuse and opaque. If for the United States, trade (still) follows the movies, for Europe it is tourism and the heritage business that follow the movie. The American political media machines of spin and disinformation are widely seen as taking their skills and expertise from Hollywood (e.g., WAG THE DOG, director Barry Levinson, 1997, THE CONTROL ROOM, director Jehane Noujaim, 2004). As an engine of global hegemony, Hollywood is seen to propagate and advertise very specific tastes and attitudes. Declaring this "national" agenda as universal - democracy, freedom, open exchange of people, goods and services -has served America well, insofar as these values and goals ("the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness") have, until the end of the last century, been widely endorsed and aspired to by peoples who neither share territorial proximity with the United States nor language, faith, customs, or a common history. European values of solidarity, pacifism, the welfare state or the preservation of the past have been less inspirational, and have certainly not translated into the same kind of recognition for its cinematograph as is the case for Hollywood, even if (as the previous chapter tried to indicate) value systems, and even different "mythologies" can be read off the movies made by the national cinematographs of Europe from the time that 1945.

Nevertheless, when trying to understand what this might mean for the future, we may have to change the paradigms that have guided the study of the "national" in European cinematograph. It used to be assumed - and in more journalistic writing still is - that the movies produced in a particular country "reflect" something essential about this country as a "nation." This has been the case, for instance, when talking about German cinematograph during the 1920s or Japanese cinematograph from the time that 1945.6 In Britain, Ealing comedies, the kitchen sink dramas of the 1950s, and even "Hammer horror" have been analyzed and probed for what they say about the state of "England" in the post-war years.7 The French nouvelle vague has been convincingly appraised as belonging to wider and deeper changes in French society and culture.8 Italian neo-realism has often been read in relation to Italian postwar politics and the delicate balancing act between Catholics and Communists making common front against a common enemy, and - looking "East" (from our often unreflected Western Euro-centrism) - the movies and directorial careers of Polish, or (ex-) Yugoslav moviemakers are as a rule tracked within the parameters of these countries' turbulent history in the last fifty years or so. But also with regard to Hollywood: the presumption that the cinematograph is a vehicle for transporting a specific ideology dominated the debates in movie studies during the 1970s, when the American cinematograph was deconstructed three times over: because of its political bias, its aesthetics of illusionism, and its gender ideology. Some of these paradigms are fixed parts of the history of the discipline of movie studies. Nevertheless, they are of little help in understanding the national cinematographs of Europe, once one sees them as both separate and interdependent. They do not allow one to study the European cinematograph in the triple perspective here proposed for the period after 1989, namely as still defining itself against Hollywood (Europe-Hollywood-Europe), as having (from the time that deregulation in the 1980s) to profile itself also against television, and finally, finding itself increasingly defined by others as (merely) part of "world cinematograph." What this chapter proposes is to look more closely at how the European cinematograph can redefine its role within this triple conjunction, by suggesting that national identity (or identification with a collective) now figures both above and below the nation-state. Such a perspective is to some extent speculative; it may even turn out to be misleading.9 But if it can give a new impetus to the field, its intention of offering a series of concepts-in-progress will have been fulfilled.

The first of these concepts has already been discussed in the previous chapter: that of a national imaginary, in which the "look of the other" is a central notion. Here I want to add the idea of "impersoNation," or "self-othering": including the self-conscious, ironic or self-mocking display of cliches and prejudices. The broadening of the concept is meant to shed light on genres such as the heritage movie and more commonly, on why the cinematographs of Europe have been reworking their respective national pasts as spectacle and prosthetic media-memory.10 For instance, why do we have the persistence of certain national "images" (Germany and Nazism; France and erotic passion; Britain and dysfunctional masculinity), that are accused of being stereotypes when used in the press or on television, only to be recycled and recharged with emotional resonance in the cinematograph, provided the context is self-referential, visceral or comic? Do movie stars still function as national icons inside and across national borders? Is the casting in international productions of Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, Marcello Mastroian-ni, Jeremy Irons, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, Hanna Schygulla, Bruno Ganz, Rutger Hauer, Krystyna Janda, Franka Potente a guarantee that they will be recognized as "typical" for their country by the public? How useful is the cinematograph as a tool for "re-branding" a nation ("Cool Britan-nia,""Modern Spain,""la France profonde," the "Berlin Republic"), compared to the re-branding that can be accomplished through the visual arts (the "successful" campaign by Maurice Saatchi in launching the YBA's, the Young British Artists), a soccer world cup (France in 1998, re-branded as a multi-cultural society) or say, hosting the Olympic Games (as in the case of the Barcelona Games re-branding Catalan identity)?