Cultural Relations Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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In terms of foreign relations and policies, cultural relations exist at various levels. Cultural relations can be set between a given government and its artists, writers, and producers. Cultural relations can exist within the private sector; between countries; ministries between universities in different countries; or involve states, nongovernmental organizations and institutions like the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a promoter and facilitator of cultural endeavor s. Cultural relations may include the arts and artists, producers and distributors, but also museums and donors.

Over the past twenty years, the balance of cultural relations has been faced with the issue of diversity of cultural expressions, which seeks to promote—in a single place—a broader horizon of artists and works from various cultural backgrounds and countries. Since the 1990s, diversity of cultural expressions has become a significant issue for many states where the cultural landscape is heavily influenced by a significant proportion of products (movies, popular music, magazines, television programs) from the United States, in particular, through the phenomenon of cultural dumping. The commerce of culture is not like others because art and culture cannot be reduced only to mere merchandise. In 2005, UNESCO approved a Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in recognition of the importance of cultural diversity around the world.

The basic notion of cultural relations as a dialogue of cultures can take many forms of expression, sometimes unsuspected or unpredictable. The Olympic Games with official ceremonies and national anthems, an exhibition about a foreign country in a national museum, the world tour of the Red Army Choir, and the banning of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses are all examples of cultural relations that simultaneously carry, at an international level, a strong political dimension within the expressions of art and culture. Here, culture is understood as the expression of a nation’s specificity and uniqueness through its art, language, literature, history, symbols, and traditions.

Scholars in political science and international relations have mixed perspectives about cultural relations: Some academics in North America often neglect these aspects as being outside of their discipline, while others, especially in Europe, would likely consider cultural relations as a core, although overlooked, part of their field.

The relationship between power—that is, the governments—and artists, has sometimes been in conflict. In the former Soviet Union, Josef Stalin persecuted composer Dimitri Shostakovich (1906–1975), who had a love-hate relationship with the dictator. Incidentally, the genius composer once dedicated his Tenth Symphony as a musical tribute to the life of Stalin. Also in the former Soviet Union, abstract artists like Kazimir Malevich were rejected by the regime during the 1930s because their art was too far from the official social realist trend. During the same period, expressionist painters like Max Beckmann also faced banning from the 1930s and were forced into exile from Nazi Germany.

The Hollywood Film Industry

The Hollywood film industry should is more than just a sector of the cultural industries; it ranks among the three most important exporters of the United States. Scholars like Thomas Guback, Manjunath Pendakur, Ian Jarvie, Toby Miller, John Trumpbour, and Janet Wasko have demonstrated that the Hollywood movie industry operates as an oligarchy, which explains why U.S. movies dominate the most lucrative markets (movie theatres, DVD rentals) in North America and in many countries, even though the United States is not the biggest film producer in terms of quantity (India produces a far greater number of feature films each year). The U.S. movie industry is political and linked with the highest power: Through the decades, the U.S. government has sometimes imposed boycotts of countries, such as England in 1949, which did not want to fully cooperate in terms of opening their markets to Hollywood movies.

Movies themselves can have a highly political content, especially documentaries. Some directors, like Leni Riefenstahl, used film to glorify Nazism and Hitler in her famous documentary Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens, 1935). But on the other hand, contemporary filmmakers like Australian Dennis O’Rourke (Half Life, 1985) and Peter Watkins (The Journey, 1987) masterfully demonstrated how politics, culture, and the media can hide the maneuvers of the most powerful leaders even when the media do provide news stories, which are often revealed to be uninformative. However, these important political documentaries about international issues are often available only through alternative networks and are hard to find in stores. For example, in the documentary Half Life, O’Rourke provides an impressive amount of archival footage about the side effects of the secret U.S. nuclear testing made in the Pacific Ocean during the 1950s, where hundreds of islanders were exposed to radioactivity without being protected or treated.

Museums And Memorials

Museums are not just houses for exhibitions about old objects and the past; in their narratives on history, these institutions acknowledge and interpret how past events, including conflicts and wars, should be understood now and tomorrow. Since any museum’s mission is to educate citizens and visitors (in addition to preserving its collections), a country’s history museum can be a challenging place to highlight and explain both sides of sensitive issues such as colonialism, slavery, ethnic tensions, and warfare. Hence, visitors can visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, in Hiroshima; the Maison desesclaves (House of the Slaves) on the Gorée Island in Senegal; and the recent Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius, Lithuania. All of these sites serve as tangible proof of the human rights violations that occurred there. The transition from one political regime to another can be told by museums as well, as Steven Dubin explained in his analysis of the South African museums that dealt with colonialism and apartheid.

As French historian Pierre Nora has demonstrated, even places can have a history, even if a place’s specific story is not always obvious; for instance, the location where President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, or the site of a battle. The history of these places and events can be remembered and commemorated by memorials. Similar to a paraphrase, a memorial seems to say in symbolic terms: “something important happened here, even though you cannot tell or see any trace anymore.” Sites of former concentration camps in Germany, Poland, and central Europe are notable examples; regardless of whether or not the original buildings remain intact, people ought to know that a significant part of world history has occurred there. For newcomers and younger observers, testimonies are just words; buildings and historical places are tangible. In his book Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities, Paul Williams analyzes the processes and uses of memorializing through the years. Today, a fundamental question remains for museums who own objects that are not tolerated anymore. How should the artifacts that were used to legitimate an oppressive system be displayed? Giant portraits of former dictators or symbols of a previous colonial presence can become disturbing exhibits for a new generation of visitors. Should these works be retired and hidden? Depending on their policies, institutions answer in various ways.

Peace Parks

Borders are sometimes seen as zones appropriate for cultural relations, as international frontiers can create special forums of exchange between countries. There are times, however, that frontiers are so imbued with conflict that the only possible use is a demilitarized zone, and sometimes a peace park. Such peace a park exists, for example, between the North and South Korea, which used to be considered a no-man’s-land. Peace parks can exist either between “good neighbors” or between states in conflict; they are built by two countries (or sometimes more) that agree to dedicate a region to a common cause, in many cases in order to protect first the environment and wildlife, but sometimes to avoid unwanted uses.

Cultures Confirm Differences

In an era of new technologies, globalization, and the Internet, individuals can be in touch with others in just a few seconds, despite the distance between them. But as French sociologist Dominique Wolton demonstrated, this illusion of proximity should not hide the barriers created by the sometimes deep differences between people, that vary significantly from one culture to another, one country to another, or one continent to another. These sorts of differences can be seen, for example, when American businesspersons go abroad and experience different corporate cultures, rules of hospitality, and etiquette.

In the twenty-first century, cultural relations are not exclusively handled by political leaders and policy makers, as proven by the emergence of celebrity diplomacy, whenever rock stars and actors use their image to promote what they consider to be worthwhile causes, as did John Lennon (1940–1980) for peace during the late 1960s and 1970s. Some artists were even recognized as diplomats. In Europe, popular singers like Nana Mouskouri and Salvatore Adamo were nominated as ambassadors of good will for the United Nation’s Children’s Fund. In 2009, Armenia named popular French singer Charles Aznavour as its ambassador to Switzerland.

Diplomacy schools are no longer the only road to becoming a world-class diplomat because some celebrities have gained levels of respect and credibility, not only in their country, but also from an international audience. Moreover, celebrities can sometimes attract awareness from the media for overlooked issues, thereby providing the issue with increased public exposure. This can often take the form of popular artists meeting with notable advocates or important political figures like Nelson Mandela, for example. For many observers unaware of current politics and international relations, these types of meetings are perhaps their only encounter with political and human rights issues.

Bibliography:

Dubin, Steven C. Transforming Museums: Mounting Queen Victoria in a Democratic South Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Kim, Ke Chung. “Preserving Korea’s Demilitarized Corridor for Conservation: A Green Approach to Conflict Resolution.” In Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution, edited by Saleem H. Ali, 239–260. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007.
Marshall, P. David, ed. The Celebrity Culture Reader. London: Routledge, 2006.
Miller,Toby, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, Richard Maxwell, and Ting Wang. Global Hollywood 2. London: British Film Institute, 2005.
Nora, Pierre, ed. Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Trumpbour, John. Selling Hollywood to the World: U.S. and European Struggles for Mastery of the Global Film Industry, 1920–1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Williams, Paul. Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities. Oxford: Berg, 2007.