Parody, popular culture and the politics of statecraft : analysing the intersection of international relations and parodic humour

Abstract

This dissertation studies professionally produced political humour in world politics and its effects on politics. It shows that humorous communication related to popular culture is a viable part of state actors´ public communication and, thereby, of International Relations. The results of the study indicate that parody as a specific humour style is among the most popular forms of humour used by state actors. It will likely be applied at times when it intuitively seems to be least appropriate: during high crisis and uncertainty or to deal with personal weaknesses of policymakers. It is surprising that play and fun on such high levels of politics are employed and observable in addressing even sensitive topics. The dissertation analyses popular culture that provides the main sources and reference points for parody. Therefore, it is a central pillar for the theoretical understanding of the shift towards humour in public diplomacy. My research interest is motivated by this tension among powerful state actors in the serious environment of crisis-ridden international politics versus the seemingly unserious use of parodic humour and its supposedly unpredictable consequences. The project is about what strategic humour as a form of communication does to politics and political communication. Furthermore, there is an interest in how state actors use a type of communication that can easily lead to misunderstandings or might not be taken seriously. Of further interest are state actors´ strategies regarding specific styles and content of humorous products and questions about the producers of state actors´ humorous public diplomacy campaigns. Throughout the project, the use of humour by state actors is seen as a strategic element in the spheres of world politics. This means using conscious planning of humorous texts to exercise political power. The aim is to find out how this is executed. The central contributions are bringing the insights about what humour does politically a step further and explaining how it is designed and how state actors are employing it in their communication. The dissertation shows how humour is used every day and in online communication, a setting in which professional and context sensitive humour deals with provocative aspects in the form of parody. This type of strategic political humour is about imitating famous narratives and stories from popular culture. Following poststructuralist understandings of causality, the dissertation contributes four main political effects of strategic humour to the research on humour in political science and specifically International Relations (IR). In the poststructuralist logic, there are no causal effects existent, as there is only a discursive realm and no objective reality that exists independently of language and discourse. The dissertations´ findings about the use of parody are the possible effects of these eloquent, funny performances. Among the uncovered effects are a distraction from sensitive political issues as well as the camouflage of certain topics. This staging of politics as a permanent entertaining spectacle has led to problematic indifferences of the audience towards serious political issues. The four main effects are the following: - Humour being used very strategically shows its centrality as an integral part of modern politics. This use of humour is not a completely new dimension of politics but is increasingly perceived as a trend in political communication and public diplomacy. Humour is thereby expanding the language of politics and is bringing entertainment and play into the serious realm of politics. There is a humour- immanent logic of expansion that is observable and visible in language. The expanded language of politics enables a broader sphere of legitimate political communication. Taboos can be circumvented, and political responsibilities can be shifted. - Today’s political state humour is proficiently produced and characterised by a high degree of professionality and an exactly calculated degree of provocation for specific political means. Parody´s suitability for provocation ensures enormous amounts of attention. The recent professionalism in audio-visual and official state sponsored humour is new. Strange analogies and provocative references can be combined with strategies for defence. The humour aspect makes it harder to criticise messages that ambiguously move between threat and joke. - Humour camouflages certain issues, like violence, and proves to be a distraction from political conflicts by strategically leading attention away from central topics towards side topics and performances. This is a further understudied effect of its professionalisation. Parody´s distraction of attention from relevant issues has problematic sides effects, such as a reduced interest in political issues and a preference for entertainment. The contradiction of image, sound and text supports this camouflaging of certain aspects of the communication. - Humour protects and isolates political actors from the critique of adversaries. State actors take advantage of an adequate deployment of humour because they are perceived as authentic and very approachable through a feeling of closeness, and they can easily defend themselves. Political actors can achieve a sort of isolation against critique through less critical consumers and a degree of levity. Humour often provides a way out of difficult situations. All of the exploratory cases that are used are concerned with the use of parodic humour in European democratic societies at different levels of world politics. In accordance with poststructuralist principles, the differentiation between the domestic and the international is seen as a social construct. Consequentially, the dissertation analyses governments/heads of state, state institutions and individual people in political leadership positions, and it thereby makes significant contributions to the field of humour studies in IR by dealing with core issues and debates in the discipline. All of these are related to popular culture, like strategies of legitimation, public diplomacy, (ontological) security and populist communication. These are part of public relations and public diplomacy in which humour plays a strategic role. To understand the recent shift towards humour in public diplomacy, this dissertation critically examines British and Swedish humorous military recruitment videos, the German government´s humorous COVID-19 crisis communication as well as conservative and populist forms of humour in political communication. In particular, my focus in this dissertation presents new findings on the intertextual qualities of parody. Parody is increasingly perceived as entertaining communication with a high recognition factor that honours the original text it is imitating. The recently changing spirit and character of parody enables amusement and attention instead of critique. Actors establish connections to everyday life and thereby appear as reasonable instead of political through parodic humour. Often, parodic humour enables state actors to be part of popular culture through the imitation of well-known narratives. Highly professional humour enables defending political actors and their actions to be viewed as legitimate. As part of public diplomacy, parodic humour helps to influence different and new audiences via social media. Through parody and its memetic and, thereby, participatory structure, strategic humour can help make political content a part of people´s social lives. Adding to the research on anxiety management and ontological security, the dissertation finds that professionally planned and produced humorous campaigns contribute to the normalisation of security practices. As a strategy in anxiety management, parody strengthens stable self-identities and enables ontological security, a stable form of self-identity. The enjoyability of humour is connected to a feeling of security, for example, to temporal distance or well-known narratives. The noticeable connections between populist communication and humour are highlighted. Parodic humour raises the attractiveness of the mainstream, and actors can present themselves as part of the people and the mainstream. Through imitation, both parody and populist communication deal with the already known. Suitably, the perception of power structures can be affected through humorous communication that matters for populism. Political humour has the potential to contribute to strategies of legitimation through eye-level communication and its use of everyday culture as part of politics. Additionally, there is a methodological development of discourse analytical approaches, specifically through advancing narrative analysis for dealing with humorous narratives and to design a modified version of the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA). The DHA suggests an easily adjustable approach for the study of humour and, specifically, parody. The benefits of this approach compared to other research strategies are highlighted and meaningful possibilities for connecting narrative analysis and the DHA are explained.