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“The Democracy Video Challenge:” the Rhetoric of Popular Culture in Public Diplomacy

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“The Democracy Video Challenge:” the Rhetoric of Popular Culture in Public Diplomacy “THE DEMOCRACY VIDEO CHALLENGE:” THE RHETORIC OF POPULAR CULTURE IN PUBLIC DIPLOMACY by Clay Forman Guinn A dissertation submitted to The Faculty of the Department of English, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Chair of Committee: Jennifer Wingard, PhD. Committee Member: Hosam Aboul-Ela, PhD. Committee Member: Paul Butler, PhD. Committee Member: Garth Jowett, PhD. University of Houston May 2020 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to my professors, particularly at the University of Houston. I have been lucky to have studied with Garth Jowett in many stages of my educational career -- first as an undergraduate, then as the chair of my master’s thesis committee. He is one of the first scholars who helped me intellectualize popular culture. Paul Butler was among my first teachers at the University of Houston, helping to shape me as a scholar and teacher. Hosam Aboul-Ela also helped refine my critical lens and was the first faculty member to wisely steer me to a study of rhetoric. Finally, Jen Wingard has been a mentor and friend for almost ten years. I could not have produced this dissertation without her dedication, intellect, and guidance. I have also had a tremendous amount of help from peers along the way. Early in the PhD process, I enjoyed the comradeship of Chris Larimore and Mark Sursavage. Brandon Hernsberger and Addie Tsai were generous colleagues at Houston Community College who helped talk me through the ABD process. Sara Cooper helped me work on early drafts. Before she became an esteemed colleague at St. John’s, Kristiane Stapleton graciously read early drafts and helped me organize my thoughts. Other colleagues in the SJS English Department, David Nathan, Rachel Weissenstein, and Warren Rawson have helped me think through my dissertation on many occasions. I am especially indebted to my friend Kiernan Matthews, who helped keep me accountable, twisting my arm for chapters at precisely the moments I needed arm twisting. Putnam Roberts and Gary Machicek have been great friends and invaluable listeners throughout this process, always thoughtful and encouraging. Most of all, my family, Kami, Mia, and Evie, have inspired me throughout this project. They have been patient and encouraging as I disappear into libraries for hours, only to emerge grouchy and tired. Mia’s intellectual curiosity and thirst for knowledge are a continuous inspiration, and I never doubt her sincere interest in what I am up to. Evie’s early enthusiasm for reading and learning are already on display, as is her intellectual honesty, a quality I try to carry with me in my scholarly life. Kami models love and focus and determination in everything she does. She has more integrity than anyone else I know, and I completed this project for her. Thank you Kami, for seeing me and us through this. ii ABSTRACT This dissertation analyzes the rhetorical changes in public diplomacy in the decades since the Cold War. Public diplomacy is the deployment of culture, a form of soft power, to shape public opinion overseas. In many ways, it has portrayed a consistent image of America in these decades: a multicultural meritocracy, where our strength is in our democratic values and the ability of anyone to contribute to society. However, public diplomacy has also changed in many ways in those decades, in particular its increased reliance on popular culture to reify that image of American multiculturalism and democratic values. My project contends that these shifts are largely due to the demands of globalization and neoliberalism, to a change in perceived external threats, and advances in information technology. Yet, as it responds to the demands of neoliberalism, public diplomacy of the past few decades also benefits American neoliberal empire. Increasingly, it advances America and its people as a brand, seeking to entice foreign publics into market-based relationships. It encourages its audience to buy into American ideas and economic structures. The first chapter will ground this dissertation in a series of intellectual conversations, examining rhetoric particular to American exceptionalism, cultural studies, postcolonialism, and neoliberalism. Then, I will chronicle these shifts in a series of case studies, focusing on the products of American public diplomacy -- including radio broadcasts, magazine articles, theatrical productions, and television commercials -- in the Cold War and continuing through today. Each chapter of this dissertation will examine texts from a particular era of public diplomacy -- the Cold War, the early War on Terror, Obama’s administration, and, finally, under Trump -- and describe the continuities and discontinuities of this particularly elusive form of rhetoric. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Theoretical Foundations of this Project 20 A. American Empire and the Myth of American Exceptionalism 21 B. How Culture and Language Enable American Empire 25 C. How Public Diplomacy Produces a Particular Knowledge 30 D. How Public Diplomacy Serves the Goals of Neoliberalism 36 Chapter 2: Public Diplomacy in the Cold War 44 Reconciling Public Diplomacy Programs with American Ideals 45 Case Study: International Radio News Broadcasting 48 Case Study: International Radio Music Broadcasting 54 Case Study: Encounter Magazine 56 Case Study: The Middlebrow Efforts of American Public Diplomacy 66 Chapter 3: Public Diplomacy in the Early War on Terror 72 Charlotte Beers and the SVI 76 Case Study: SVI Commercials 79 Case Study: Hi International 85 Case Study: Writers on America 95 Case Study: Broadcast Media 100 Chapter 4: Obama Era Public Diplomacy, the Smith-Mundt Act, and Neoliberalism 107 Case Study: The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act and Domestic Propaganda 109 Case Study: Public Diplomacy 2.0 and the Democracy Video Challenge 119 Case Study: Layalina and “Private” Public Diplomacy 124 Case Study: Let Girls Learn 126 Conclusion: Trump and Moving Forward 132 Case Study: Fake Social Media Accounts to Monitor Potential Immigrants 136 Case Study: Bracamontes Video Shared Over Social Media 138 Case Study: North Korea Summit Movie Trailer 144 Conclusion 153 Bibliography 157 iv Introduction America, like all twenty-first century nations, is not just a place, but an idea. Those ideas of twenty-first century nationhood are not fixed and only exist if they are continuously reified. As in all twenty-first century nations, especially relatively young ones, it has been important throughout its history for America to define its national character, to reconcile and explain what America “means.” That question -- how America imagines itself -- is not a small one. On the contrary, that narrative will dictate how America is expected and allowed (both from within and without) to act in all of its transnational activities. It has sweeping consequences for when and how America goes to war, buys and sells products, reshapes otherwise sovereign governments, rescues those in conflict, exploits those with resources, and destroys those who oppose it. As I will explain, this dissertation will analyze the rhetoric of that American self-definition through its public diplomacy. First, it is important to explore the peculiar nature of American self-understanding and how it manifests itself in certain forms of transnational discourse. America as an Exceptional Imagined Community This struggle for American self-definition is visible as early as John Winthrop’s Puritanical vision in “A Model of Christian Charity,” where he anticipated that this country would be a “city upon a hill.” Those attempts at definition of the American character have never been settled. In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson describes a nation as a ​ ​ particular “imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and 1 sovereign” (6). For Anderson, culture is integral in forming that idea of nationhood: “Nationality, or, as one might prefer to put it in view of that world's multiple significations, nation-ness, as well as nationalism, are cultural artifacts of a particular kind” (4). In his Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Raymond Williams discusses the ​ slipperiness of the term “culture” and describes the tension among a series of understandings of the term. Throughout this dissertation, I will make use of Williams’s differentiation between the “material production” of fields like cultural anthropology and the “signifying or symbolic systems” of fields like cultural studies1 (91). In this context, the term “culture” describes the abstract symbolic processes by which groups of people communicate a shared understanding. However, often when used as a modifying adjective (“cultural artifacts”) or a modified noun (“popular culture”), culture can also be understood as a discrete product (such as a magazine), one that creates a shared understanding of culture. That is, culture is both a process and a product. American culture, our set of collective understandings or myths, highlights values such abstractions as democracy, liberty, and freedom2. That abstract culture is reified through discourse3 (the way we both discuss and recreate about our culture in speeches and documents) and through more tangible cultural products such as music, films, and publications, what we refer to as “popular culture.” 1 That is, the academic study of culture according to the complex definition here. Cultural studies pays particular attention to the ways that culture - through ideology, discourse, and material output, for example - creates and sustains power. 2 For more context for these terms, see the discussion of ideographs, below. 3 I am relying on Foucault’s conception of discourse here, as described in Archaeology of Knowledge, noting ​ ​ that we must “no longer [treat] discourses as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things.” (54) 2 What we collectively understand as American culture informs our national identity.
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