612101 research-article2016 POL0010.1177/0263395715612101PoliticsClapton and Shepherd Research Article Lessons from Westeros: Gender and power in Game of Thrones Politics 2017, Vol. 37(1) 5­–18 © The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0263395715612101 pol.sagepub.com William Clapton and Laura J Shepherd UNSW Australia Abstract People learn about global politics not (solely or even mostly) from conventional teaching in the discipline of International Relations (IR) but from popular culture. We use the television series Game of Thrones to expand upon this premise. We show how representations of the gendered foundations of political authority can be found in popular culture in ways that challenge the division of such knowledge in IR. Game of Thrones and other cultural texts potentially enable different ways of thinking about the world that subvert both the disciplinary mechanisms that divide up knowledge and the related marginalisation of various knowledge claims. Keywords Game of Thrones, global politics, IR theory, pedagogy, popular culture Received: 2 January 2015; revised version received: 9 June 2015; accepted: 15 June 2015 The distribution of power, the ever-present threat of conflict, claims to authority and vehement counter-claims, not to mention weapons of mass destruction (in the form of dragons): it is no wonder that those scholars of International Relations (IR) who turn periodically to popular culture for inspiration and vehicles for analysis have identified HBO’s hit television series Game of Thrones as a fruitful site of enquiry. There have been analytical investigations of whether we can ‘see’ IR theory in the show (Drezner, 2011, 2012, 2013; Saideman, 2013), for example, and, if we can, whether it unproblematically depicts logics of political realism (Carpenter, 2012); there has even been a call to investigate the ways in which ‘its fictional memes, concepts or allegories infuse or inform realworld politics, political phenomena or political debate’ (Carpenter, 2014). We agree that Game of Thrones deserves such careful analytical investigation. The themes and issues with which the series engages mean that the subject matter of the show and the subject matter of IR are closely related. As with any popular cultural phenomenon, it is interesting to explore not only the specific lessons that can be learned from interrogating the forms of representational practice it employs but also the more general possibilities that Corresponding author: Laura J Shepherd, School of Social Sciences, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia. Email: l.j.shepherd@unsw.edu.au 6 Politics 37(1) can engender new ways of thinking about popular culture, global politics and the discipline of IR. In this article, we use Game of Thrones as a vehicle to illustrate an argument about how we teach and learn about international relations.1 As students explore the worlds of both IR as a discipline and international relations as a field of political practice through the disciplinary texts we introduce, the knowledge about the world that they bring to the classroom is challenged. Because of the ways in which we organise and value knowledge in the discipline (in the scholarly sense of the word), the knowledge about the world that we glean from (among other sources) popular culture is often supplanted, unlearned, through the process of becoming ‘disciplined’ (in the Foucauldian sense of the word) as IR scholars. IR knowledge tends to be presented to disciplinary neophytes in neatly bounded sections, where each section has its own neatly bounded contribution to make to our understanding of the world; we argue that this disciplinary organisation can be unsettled by taking popular culture seriously as a form of IR knowledge. We develop this argument with reference to popular IR textbooks, and research on the ways in which the field is divided. In particular, we highlight the disciplinary positioning of feminist scholarship, and the marginalisation of feminist knowledge about power and authority. Furthermore, we draw on the scholarship of popular culture to argue that the difference in mode of engagement with popular cultural texts versus academic texts means that popular culture in the International Relations classroom or research agenda enables different ways of thinking about the world that subvert the disciplinary mechanisms which insist upon the dividing up of knowledge and concomitant marginalisation of various knowledge claims. Finally, we illustrate this argument by showing how Game of Thrones ‘knows’ the gendered nature of political authority in a way that emphasises connections between realpolitik and sexualised violence, between sovereign power and gendered subordination.2 Learning from Westeros may enable scholars and students of international relations to make different connections between political practices, to see the world differently and ultimately to produce different kinds of knowledge in and about I/international R/relations. International Relations as (a) discipline In order to understand how popular cultural texts can potentially be used to subvert disciplinary practices of knowledge production in IR, we first outline what we think it means to conceive of IR as a discipline. We also consider how we become ‘disciplined’ and with what implications for our scholarship and professional practice. Disciplines emerged in the late 19th century as mass education increased and academic skills and knowledges became increasingly specialised (Russell, 2002: 3). There are a number of ‘markers’ of a discipline – answers to the question of ‘how do we know one when we see one’ – including institutional form (Does the subject matter have its own school or department within the academy? Are there courses or programmes taught on the subject matter?), professional association (Has a community of scholars formed around the subject matter?) and contribution (Are there books and scholarly journals devoted to the publication of research on the subject matter?), although there is always a degree of ‘fuzziness’ in disciplinary boundaries (Becher and Trowler, 2001: 41; Waever, 2013: 309; see also Buzan and Little, 2001). IR is widely held to be ‘a discipline’; it has institutional form, a community of practice (actually many communities, as we discuss below) and a plethora of scholarly journals Clapton and Shepherd 7 and publishing outlets. There are also references to IR as a discipline in a great number of IR textbooks, which are often used to introduce new recruits to the form, content and conventions of the discipline itself (see, for example, Devetak, 2012; Smith, 2013; Smith et al., 2014: 3; Waever, 2013). Our interest here is in what kind of a discipline it is, and how it functions. Our contention is that the discipline is (still) both ‘divided’ (Kristensen, 2012: 33) and ‘dividing’ (cf. Holsti, 1985). Furthermore, in teaching about these divides, and perpetuating them ourselves in our scholarship and research practices, we not only foster the illusion that IR knowledge is neatly divisible but also perpetuate the idea that some knowledge is central while other knowledge is peripheral to understanding international relations, that is, the divides are not horizontal, but hierarchical (Kristensen, 2012: 47; Waever, 2013: 14). We both teach and research international relations as though knowledge about it can be contained within the dividing lines that structure and organise our discipline. Christine Sylvester (2007, 2010, 2013) refers to these divides as a ‘camp structure’ in IR; she goes on to explain that camp can ‘be a way of marking and performing difference or of seeing one’s favoured knowledge as complete in itself, even as it links to something larger’ (Sylvester, 2007: 556). Scholars and students occupy these camps, studying and working within them and rarely if ever venturing to the camps of the discipline’s many others. In his analysis of the social networks of IR scholarship (perhaps recognisable as camps by another name), Peter Kristensen (2012) bluntly concludes, ‘we are factionalized and neither read, cite, nor respect each other’ (p. 47). We teach these camps, and our disciplinary textbooks re-present them; textbooks provide overviews of issues and -isms (realism, liberalism and constructivism), reinforcing the idea that knowledge exists in these neatly bounded units. The most popular English-language IR textbooks in Europe and North America (as it has been well-established that International Relations is still an American social science; see Smith, 2000: 396) all present the discipline in terms of issues and -isms, some favouring the former and others the latter but with all providing chapter-specific coverage of particular issues in international relations and the various theoretical perspectives that we might use to make sense of those issues (Baylis et al., 2014; Dunne et al., 2013; Frieden et al., 2013; Goldstein and Pevehouse, 2012; Jackson and Sørensen, 2013; Mingst and Arreguín-Toft, 2014; Nau, 2015).3 As Smith (2013: 4) highlights, how textbooks represent the issues, concepts and theories of the discipline heavily influences how they are taught. It is difficult (although not impossible; see Edkins and Zehfuss, 2014) to teach IR without resorting to the issues and -isms framework. It is also difficult (although, again, not impossible) to resist the camp structure in our own scholarship and to recognise that, as a result of these divides, ‘much of contemporary international relations eludes IR’ as it happens in the spaces between camps, performed by people who do not feature in the conventional issues and -isms with which IR scholarship is concerned (Sylvester, 2007: 551). In the process of becoming disciplined in the Foucauldian sense of learning the rules and practices of the institution (Foucault, 1977 [1975]), IR scholars learn the disciplinary issues and -isms and learn to overlook the spaces between the neatly bounded packages of disciplinary knowledge, where the people and the connections between the issues (and even the -isms) reside. Feminist IR scholarship is, as Sylvester (2013) notes, an exception: feminists have ‘labored for 30 years to make sure that a variety of excluded or marginalized people are put into IR’s frame’ (p. 613). But feminist IR itself is treated as an -ism, where it is represented at all in the textbooks we use to teach our discipline. 8 Politics 37(1) The Globalization of World Politics is an exception (Baylis et al., 2014), as ‘gender in world politics’ is represented in this text as a structure, with reference to feminist theories rather than feminism (Tickner, 2014). Looking more specifically at how these textbooks treat and represent the concepts of power and authority, it is notable that many do not discuss the relationship between gender, power and authority at all. Mingst and Arreguín-Toft’s (2014) Essentials of International Relations, for example, does not provide any explicit coverage of the gendered aspects of political authority, except for a brief discussion of what amounts to essentialised differences between men and women that affect their political behaviour (pp. 195–196). Jackson and Sørensen’s (2013: 241–245) Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches provides a brief overview of feminist theories and their application within IR. They highlight the general feminist claim that we live in a gendered world and propose that a focus on gender can be employed to highlight significant aspects of various IR issues, but there is no explicit outline of the gendered constitution and reproduction of political authority and power. Furthermore, gender and feminism are packaged and presented together with post-structuralism and post-colonialism as part of a chapter on ‘post-positivist theories’ (notwithstanding that not all feminist theory is explicitly post-positivist), unlike other IR theories that are presented in their own discrete chapters. We suggest that this packaging in itself is an important example of the ways in which the discipline is presented to students – it constructs an image of a discipline constituted with a core of classical or traditional theories accompanied by a periphery of ‘post-positivist’ or ‘critical theories’ that Jackson and Sørensen (2013: 245) themselves note are still perceived by many within the discipline as existing at its margins. In a core-periphery model of disciplinary divides, feminist IR is pushed to the margins in most conventional accounts (Steans, 2003; Tickner, 2010; Zalewski, 2007), taught as a separate theory (or sometimes with gender framed as an ‘add-on’ issue to other issues; cf. Mingst and Arreguín-Toft, 2014) in a separate ‘week on gender’ (cf. Rowley and Shepherd, 2012) and referenced in scholarly work mostly by other feminist scholars (Sylvester, 2013: 614–615). Entrenching these divides as we perform our discipline – and are ourselves disciplined – leads us to overlook the many ways in which the stuff that we study manifests in the spaces between the ‘camps’ and how the camps are intrinsically interconnected. We focus below on gender and political authority to illustrate the connections and therefore the rather arbitrary nature of the divisions, to suggest that we can potentially learn from popular culture how to make those connections, subvert or dissolve those disciplinary divides, and ultimately do IR differently. Learning IR from popular culture Disciplinary investigations of global politics and popular culture have a rich and varied history (from Der Derian and Shapiro, 1989, to Sachleben, 2014, via, among many others, Grayson et al., 2009; Kiersey and Neumann, 2013; Nexon and Neumann, 2006; Shapiro, 2009, 2013; Shepherd, 2013; Weber, 1999, 2002, 2006, 2010; Weldes, 1999, 2003). We draw inspiration here from the question posed by Grayson et al. (2009), who want to see where we end up ‘conceptually and empirically in trying to make sense of contemporary IR’ (p. 158) when we take seriously the idea that popular culture is global politics and vice versa. On the basis of what follows in their article, we believe it is plausible to suggest that Grayson, Davies and Philpott meant to write ‘ir’, to signify ‘international relations’ as the practices of contemporary global politics, rather than ‘IR’, Clapton and Shepherd 9 which signifies the discipline, as the nine strands of the research agenda they map out in their article relate to practice rather than scholarship. We, however, wish to present an argument about IR itself: that interrogating popular culture as global politics can lead to the development of rich and nuanced insights about our worlds – we can learn a lot from popular culture – but such is the nature of our discipline that we generally unlearn what we glean from popular culture in order to make sense of global politics from within the discipline of IR. Michael Shapiro (2009) argues that ‘cinema … can be used to extend generosity and thus to challenge the episodes of the violence deployed in official war policy and other modes of coercion and abjection’ (p. 4). We extend this argument to all popular cultural texts, and propose that the study of popular culture enables the consideration of a broader range of possibilities, known in a broader range of ways, than are currently permitted in IR. This is not to say that popular cultural texts have an inherent criticality that renders them ‘better’ than IR texts. The opposite is often the case: Jutta Weldes (1999), for example, documented in her pathbreaking study how Star Trek (re)produces – and thus naturalises – elements of US foreign policy discourse that we might wish to challenge. We must be open, however, to the idea of popular culture challenging the organisation of IR discourse, and not dismiss these challenges on the basis of their assumed fictionality. ‘If we are to teach our students anything, then surely we must not only teach them to think in known theoretical forms, but also to move beyond those forms and to think about alternative possibilities’ (Hannah and Wilkinson, 2014; also see Ruane and James, 2012). As Cynthia Weber (1999) has noted, ‘the social, cultural and popular simultaneously enable and disable IR theory’ (p. 437). We interpret Weber’s argument to mean that IR knowledge practices (by which we mean claims made about, which are simultaneously constitutive of, the discipline’s core objects of study) cannot be contained either within traditional disciplinary artefacts (such as textbooks, academic journals and conference programmes) or the parameters of conventional disciplinary thought. It is also the case, however, that knowledge gleaned from ‘the social, cultural and popular’ is disabled by IR theory. This claim resonates with Roland Bleiker’s (1997) exhortation to ‘forget IR theory’, wherein he encourages critical scholars to engage in ‘theorizing world politics without being constrained by the agendas, issues and terminologies that are preset by orthodox debates’ (p. 58). We can watch The West Wing, or Star Trek, read To Kill a Mockingbird or George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (the book series from which Game of Thrones has been adapted) and learn about global politics from these texts: they (re)present ideas about power, legitimacy, authority, gender, race and belonging in sophisticated, varied ways. But when we engage as IR scholars with these ideas, we do not often bring that which we have learned from popular culture. We erase that knowledge in order to speak the language of disciplinary IR because ‘[p]opular culture is ostensibly everything that world politics is not: fiction, entertainment, amusement’ (Rowley, 2015: 361, emphasis in original). Popular culture may be ‘fiction, entertainment, amusement’, but it is also a source of knowledge about the world. We may expect different things from popular culture than we expect from academic work. It may be that we engage with popular culture primarily for entertainment and expect popular cultural texts to tell us ‘the whole story’ (see Shepherd, 2013 on the expectation of narrative closure in television series), while we tolerate academic texts parcelling out knowledge in bounded packages. But analysing popular culture, or entertainment media more broadly, takes us as scholars, among other things, to 10 Politics 37(1) the space between conscious analytical work and subconscious dreams. Engaging with … [these texts] … is not generally conceived of as an activity in the realm of the political, but … [they] have much to tell us about the creation and perpetuation of ideas and ideals about gender and violence (Shepherd, 2013: 12). Our conceptualisation of popular culture as representational practice aligns with that espoused by Rowley and Weldes (2012): ‘popular culture is the “real world,” providing us with meanings, including about world politics’ (p. 514, emphasis in original). We contend here that popular culture can teach us to make connections between gender and authority, and potentially other concepts and issues in world politics, in ways that subvert and challenge the division of knowledge as per disciplinary convention. Game of Thrones is a fruitful analytical vehicle for illustrating the broader argument that we offer. As we outline below, we can learn about the centrality of gender in the consolidation and exercise of political authority from Game of Thrones. The television show is widely critiqued for its gratuitous depictions of rape and sexualised violence and the link between gendered violence and political power is often explicit. In IR, however, political authority is often assumed to be entirely neutral, disembodied through the disciplinary preference for second and third image theorising (cf. Waltz, 1979). It is certainly not conventionally taught, or theorised, with reference to gender; many feminist scholars have pointed out the inadequacy of theorisations of the state and political authority that do not engage with gendered power (see, for example, Kantola and Dahl, 2005; Peterson, 1992; Shepherd, 2010). In addition to accounting in particular for the ways in which the discipline of IR encourages students and scholars not to see the co-articulation of gendered power relations and authority, while Game of Thrones is able to represent such imbrication quite effectively, this article also proposes that we generally stand to learn much from popular culture in drawing connections between elements, and recognising the complexity, of political life. Lessons from Westeros Game of Thrones is set primarily in Westeros, a territory divided between different ‘Houses’ that both serve as familial and political units and are the primary political and strategic actors in the realm. While the ‘King of the Seven Kingdoms’ sits at the apex of the political hierarchy in Westeros – ruling from the Iron Throne from which the show takes its name – the seven Houses, to varying degrees, wield significant power and influence. The show narrates a story of the political machinations and manoeuvrings between the main actors of the major Houses as they seek to gain control of the Iron Throne. The society of Westeros is feudal, misogynistic and patriarchal. The women of Westeros are frequently represented as objects to be used by men at will; it is the men who wield political authority. Despite the show’s representations of several strong female characters, such as Cersei Lannister or Catelyn Stark, women generally wield very little substantive authority in Westeros, something that has been widely critiqued by fan bloggers (see, for example, Ditum, 2012; Hodge, 2012; The Opinioness of the World, 2011). There is much debate over whether the show reifies or critiques problematic or oppressive gendered power relations. However, whether it is critiquing or reinforcing gendered relations of power and authority through its representations of key characters and their relationships, Game of Thrones is still providing us with gendered representations of power and authority that have generally remained unexamined in many popular IR textbooks. Clapton and Shepherd 11 Again, the representation of these concepts in disciplinary textbooks is usually genderblind, as discussed above. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, represents the consolidation, exercise of and challenges to political power and authority as fundamentally gendered activities. The first scene we examine (from episode 1.07) takes place in the tent of Khal Drogo, the leader of the Dothraki, a warrior tribe who reside in Essos, the lands east of Westeros. Drogo is enraged after an assassination attempt is made against his pregnant wife, Daenerys Targaryen, daughter of a slain former King of the Seven Kingdoms. Drogo initially promises the Iron Throne to his unborn son. It is notable that Drogo offers the Throne to his son, not Daenerys who, as the last surviving Targaryen, has a claim to her father’s former throne; Drogo ignores the possibility that Daenerys might have her own strategic and political goals and refuses to recognise any claim she might have to the throne. Instead, he will give his son ‘the chair that his mother’s father sat on’. After promising to wage war upon Westeros, Drogo launches into an aggressive tirade, promising bloodshed in response to the threat to his wife’s life and the challenge to his authority. ‘I will kill the men in iron suits and tear down their stone houses! I will rape their women, take their children as slaves and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak’. On one hand, war is represented as the exclusive province of men: Drogo will kill the men in their iron suits on the battlefield. Men are visible here as political actors: they participate in wars, make strategic and political decisions and exercise authority. By contrast, women are depicted as sexual objects and mothers to children. In Drogo’s speech, the rape of women is regarded as a naturalised and normal consequence of war and conquest. For Dothraki warriors, the rape of women is a right, their reward for fighting well (see episode 1.08). Here, we can see the representation of sexualised violence reproducing a particular type of political identity: the masculinity of the warrior is reinforced through his violations of feminised bodies (see Bracewell, 2000; Hansen, 2001). The social and political organisation of the Dothraki tribes (like the Seven Kingdoms) is inherently patriarchal, predicated on a rigid hierarchy of men as agential subjects and women as subordinate objects, which is continually reproduced through societal customs and political conventions. Drogo’s exercise of political authority is founded on gendered power. In order to understand this scene as viewers, we need to know gender; the scene makes little sense without an appreciation or at least an awareness of gendered norms, logics and dynamics and their importance to the way in which Drogo exercises authority and how he responds to the attempt on Daenerys’ life.4 This scene provides a perspective on the gendered dimensions of the exercise of power and political authority that generally is not captured within the major IR textbooks. The representations of gendered power dynamics offered in this scene (and the show more broadly) are usually obscured in the conventional IR textbook and classroom, despite a significant feminist literature that has highlighted the gendered dynamics of the constitution, exercise and reproduction of state authority, for example (see Elshtain, 1987; Enloe, 2000 [1989]: 5–7; Hooper, 2001). Drogo’s tirade here lays bare the gendered foundations of political authority in ways that are generally not captured in conventional accounts of international relations, which again may focus on both the material and social constitution of political authority and authority relationships, but often rarely do so with regard to gender in a manner that is as explicit and stark as it is in Drogo’s tirade. For example, both Nau (2015: 38–39) and Frieden et al. (2013: 44–45) present state authority and sovereignty in entirely neutral terms, reflecting little on the ways in which state authority is constituted, practised and reproduced. 12 Politics 37(1) Game of Thrones offers more than the relatively simple depictions of gendered and masculinised authority discussed above. It also offers a more complex representation of the gendered nature of political authority through the narrative arc of Daenerys, who is widowed after Drogo dies from an infected wound. What is most interesting about Daenerys’ ‘rise to power’ is that it simultaneously challenges traditional conventions in the show that people in positions of authority exclusively ought to be men and reinforces the fundamentally gendered nature of political authority and its exercise. Daenerys, like Cersei Lannister or Catelyn Stark, is represented as a strong female character with agency. Yet, the representation of these characters as agentic and purposeful actors occurs within the broader patriarchal social and political context within which women in the world of Game of Thrones exist. That is to say, the mere fact of women exercising political authority and leadership does not by itself challenge gender hierarchies on the show. We focus on Daenerys here, rather than Catelyn or Cersei, because Catelyn and Cersei are portrayed from the outset as strong characters that are well-versed in particular types of political authority and strategy; Daenerys begins the show as a young and relatively timid woman, harassed by her brother and ill-equipped for her subsequent marriage to Khal Drogo and exposure to the violent Dothraki Horde. The development of her character as she grows to become an assertive ‘Khaleesi’ (Queen) of the Dothraki before becoming the ‘Mother of Dragons’ and a ruler in her own right thus presents an interesting narrative arc through which we can interrogate how Daenerys grows as a person and ruler and how her political authority is gendered. In short, Daenerys’ arc through until the end of season 4 provides a more complete set of representations of the constitution, practice and reproduction of political authority by a female character than that which is offered in the arcs of either Cersei or Catelyn, neither of whom exercise political authority as the leader of a community in the way that Daenerys does. In general, however, Daenerys’ ‘rise to power’ can be read as a reinforcement of prevailing gender hierarchies and the gendered foundations of political authority in Westeros and Essos, particularly with regard to the fundamentally masculinised traits she must exhibit in order to maintain it. The masculinity of the state and its representatives is neither accidental nor incidental but fundamental to the gendered nature of power. The idea that ‘[g]endered and sexualized images of the state and the state’s envoys are not incidental, they are the logics that organize international relations and without which such relations would break down’ is core to feminist scholarship in IR (Shepherd, 2010: 2185, emphasis added) but does not much feature in the analyses of power and authority provided by other ‘camps’. Daenerys endures extreme duress and abuse, including being sexually harassed by her brother and raped by her husband in the initial stages of their marriage (both depicted in episode 1.01). After literally ‘coming out of the fire’ in episode 1.10 following the death of Drogo, Daenerys obtains three baby dragons which, when fully grown, effectively come to represent Game of Thrones’ equivalent of nuclear weapons. Her power is linked to her control over these dragons in explicitly gendered terms, as she becomes known as ‘Mother of Dragons’. Daenerys’ authority and power are largely predicated on her possession of, and willingness and capacity to use, overwhelming force, which cannot be matched by her competitors for the Iron Throne. Without the dragons, she would not command the ‘Unsullied’, an army of slaves who Daenerys is able to purchase (and subsequently free) through an ostensible trade for one of her dragons, and would not have been able to serve as the ruling authority in Meeren until the end of season 5, when she was forced to flee. Clapton and Shepherd 13 Daenerys must therefore suffer sexual abuse before she can become a leader, and her leadership itself is largely based on her possession of dragons (despite using them sparingly and chaining them underground at the end of season 4) rather than any substantial subversion of prevailing gender hierarchies. Although she is labelled ‘Mother of Dragons’, with the suggestion of maternal and nurturing qualities, the show’s representations of how Daenerys exercises and maintains her authority can be seen to also reinforce both patriarchal hierarchies and gendered forms of authority. Specifically, it is only through her internalisation of masculinised characteristics or qualities that Daenerys can come to realise her ‘destiny’ as a political ruler. Carpenter (2012) argues that Daenerys strategically embodies patriarchal gender archetypes for as long as it takes to gain enough authority and legitimacy to begin to subvert them, but her actual ability to do so is extremely limited by the rigidly and violently patriarchal culture of the Dothraki and other social and political groups. Confidence, ferocity, aggressiveness and a capacity and willingness to use force are key masculinised traits employed by Daenerys as she develops as a leader, both during her time with the Dothraki in season 1 and afterwards through to the conclusion of season 5, the most recent at the time of writing. Indeed, we suggest that it is precisely Daenerys’ internalisation of masculinised features that characterises her development as a ruler and wielder of authority. That is, the development of Daenerys’ authority and her growth as a ruler and leader both depend on her internalisation and exhibition of masculinised traits. Despite the show’s clear representation of Daenerys as a caring ruler who seeks to deliver justice for her subjects (see episode 4.04), she does not accomplish much with regard to subverting the gendered hierarchies and other forms of oppression and marginalisation that create these injustices in the first place. She effectively becomes a part of the system of patriarchy and gendered authority that exists in the world of Game of Thrones. This system is also manifest in the characterisation and representation of King Joffrey Baratheon of the Seven Kingdoms. Joffrey is shown to be a cruel boy before his ascension to the Iron Throne, and this worsens once he is King. His abuse of Sansa Stark is a clear example of this. Taking place in episode 2.04, this scene opens on Sansa, betrothed to King Joffrey, knelt on the floor of Joffrey’s court chamber at the point of a cross-bow held by Joffrey himself. When Joffrey says to her, ‘You are here to answer for your brother’s latest treason’, Sansa effectively becomes the medium for Joffrey’s message to her brother, Robb Stark, at that stage still a contender for the Iron Throne. Joffrey orchestrates her punishment from a raised dais, commanding his soldier to ‘leave her face’ because he ‘likes her pretty’. This reinforces Sansa’s object value to Joffrey, rather than her value as a fellow human being. Once the soldier has begun beating Sansa as punishment for the imagined transgressions of her brother, Joffrey is quick to sexualise the violence, reminding the audience of Sansa’s (female) body and its potential utility in reproducing Joffrey’s authority. ‘My lady is over-dressed’, he states. ‘Unburden her’. It is at this point, when the soldier tears Sansa’s clothes from her body, that Joffrey rises from the throne, and urges the soldier to continue: ‘If we want Robb Stark to hear us we’re going to have to speak louder’. With Joffrey’s emphasis on the final word of this sentence, the soldier draws his sword, presumably to cut Sansa’s clothes from her body completely as she cowers at his feet with her underwear showing. Sansa is saved from public nudity – and therefore public humiliation – by Joffrey’s uncle, Tyrion Lannister. Even as Tyrion intervenes to protect Sansa, he too diminishes her agency. His appeal to Joffrey is framed through the logic of Sansa’s position reflecting on Joffrey himself: ‘She is to be your Queen. Have you no regard for her honour?’ Thus, we still see Sansa solely 14 Politics 37(1) as an adjunct to a powerful man, and see her subordination as a way of establishing that man’s political authority. While Tyrion challenges Joffrey’s authority, it soon becomes clear that Tyrion is not motivated by any general concern about Joffrey’s violence against Sansa. The scene that follows Joffrey’s abuse of Sansa shows Tyrion discussing Joffrey’s violence with Bronn, a sellsword (mercenary) he employs. Here, Tyrion asks, ‘Do you think dipping his wick will cure what ails him?’, clearly indicating that he sees a connection between sex, and Joffrey’s dysfunctional exercise of authority. The phrasing of ‘dipping his wick’ is coarse and perhaps deliberately dehumanising: it certainly does not represent sex as a mutually rewarding act between consenting parties. Bronn responds, ‘... the boy’s at that age, and he’s got nothing to do all day but pick wings off flies. Couldn’t hurt to get some of the poison out’. This exchange not only demonstrates that Tyrion and Bronn do not support Joffrey’s claim to being a legitimate ruler but also likens Joffrey’s abuse of Sansa to ‘pick[ing] the wings off flies’, further dehumanising and devaluing Sansa. The next scene graphically depicts what Bronn had in mind when he talks of ‘get[ting] some of the poison out’. This scene takes place in Joffrey’s chambers and involves his violent abuse of two prostitutes sent by Tyrion as a ‘name day present’. Joffrey confirms with the women that they were sent by his uncle, which in turn confirms to the audience that they represent to him his uncle, a rather negative association. Joffrey does not allow either woman to touch him, again reinforcing the idea that women are not to be engaged with as humans but merely used to reproduce authority. Presenting one of the women with a belt, Joffrey orders her to beat her friend: ‘Use this … harder … I said, harder’. The camera moves to an extreme close-up of Joffrey grabbing the face of the woman doing the beating, as he demands she make more effort: ‘He [Tyrion] would want me to get my money’s worth’. Again, this reminds the viewer that Joffrey’s violation of these women is directly related to the recent confrontation he had with his uncle and that he is in fact using these women – abusing these women – to get revenge for the slight he perceived when Tyrion openly challenged his authority in court, reinforcing the reproduction of political authority through gendered violence. Joffrey’s extreme attempts to assert and reinforce his authority through gendered and sexualised forms of violence against women ultimately serve to erode his authority and legitimacy, reinforcing instead the idea that his behaviour is aberrant, that he himself is an unpleasant and unfit ruler. On one hand, the scene that depicts Joffrey forcing prostitutes to torture one another in such an obscene fashion could be hailed as evidence of the show’s gratuitous representations of sexualised violence, or its willingness to ‘revel’ in such appalling acts of degradation and misogyny (see Henderson, 2014). On the other, Joffrey’s delegitimisation as a ruler is achieved in part precisely because of his use of explicitly gendered forms of violence, suggesting that here is a depiction and a critique of not only the use of gendered violence to substantiate and reinforce the exercise of political authority but more generally also gendered violence and misogyny themselves. Conclusion Whichever position one takes on the show’s merits and its depictions of gendered violence, authority and power, the point remains that Game of Thrones provides us with representations of the fundamental function of gendered logics in the processes by which authority and power are constituted, performed and reproduced. The importance of Game of Thrones and popular culture in general for students and scholars of IR lies precisely in Clapton and Shepherd 15 their provision of different representations of the very things that we as IR scholars wish to understand and explore, knowledge that we are compelled to unlearn and supplant in order to participate within a discipline in which knowledge is often presented in neat packages, distinctions and divisions which privilege particular voices and perspectives while marginalising others. The representations of the international that popular culture provides can either challenge or support conventional understandings or interpretations. Often, many popular cultural texts do both. Indeed, while we have highlighted Game of Thrones’ representations of the gendered foundations of political authority, others have deployed Game of Thrones to support more conventional accounts of IR (Drezner, 2011; Rosenberg, 2011a, 2011b). The multiple and varied representations available with popular cultural texts is precisely what encourages us as IR scholars and educators to turn to popular culture: these texts can shed light on that which has previously been marginalised or hidden, including those things that we in the discipline often take for granted. Gender, as a category of analysis, but more specifically as a relation of power, has not featured prominently in the analyses and critiques of many accounts of power and authority that remain influential in IR, both in research and in teaching, despite the existence of extensive feminist engagement with such conventional accounts. Yet, the relationship between gender and power is clearly represented in a show such as Game of Thrones. Within the discipline, the way we learn about world politics has served to exclude from sustained consideration the views, perspectives and representations of those individuals and groups that fall between the spaces of the neat ordering of IR theories and concepts, save for some critical perspectives that generally continue to reside at the ‘margins’ of the discipline. We argue that these disciplinary conventions are fundamentally unsatisfactory, that we need to ‘open up’ and unsettle the disciplinary divisions that inform our research and teaching. Using popular culture in our teaching and research, we can illuminate different representations; produce different forms of knowledge about the issues, actors, events and theories that we seek to understand and explain; and recognise different claims to knowledge in the academic study of IR. We can stop requiring students to leave what they know about the international from popular culture and other sites of analysis that remain marginalised in the discipline ‘at the door’, and together learn new ways of seeing world politics, across the largely arbitrary disciplinary divides and in the spaces between. By exploring Game of Thrones, we have highlighted representations of power and authority that are very different from those commonly found in conventional disciplinary texts. In accepting Game of Thrones, and popular cultural texts more broadly, as sites of legitimate knowledge about international relations, we potentially open the discipline to much more holistic, much more nuanced and ultimately much more diverse forms of knowledge about the international. Perhaps popular culture – in our classrooms, in our scholarship, in the ‘knowledge economy’ of IR – will enable different ways of thinking, where conventional kinds of disciplinary engagement have not been able to transcend or unsettle the disciplinary boundaries that organise how we (think we) know what we (think we) know about international relations. Acknowledgements An earlier version of this article was presented in 2013 at a seminar hosted by the Globalisation and Governance Network in the School of Social Sciences at UNSW Australia (the University of New South Wales). We would like to thank all of the participants for their constructive engagement and feedback on the article. We would also like to thank several anonymous reviewers for their feedback on various iterations of the article, which has 16 Politics 37(1) greatly strengthened and improved it. Mistakes and omissions remain our own. Finally, special thanks are due to Cait Hamilton for her assistance with the preparation of the article. Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. We follow convention and use upper case initial letters (‘International Relations’) to discuss the academic study of the practices of global politics, which we refer to using lower case initial letters (‘international relations’). Our use of Game of Thrones is explicitly limited to the television show and we do not engage with the books from the Song of Ice and Fire series from which the show is adapted. We accept and recognise the multivocality of the Game of Thrones franchise, but it is beyond the scope of this article to engage in comparisons of the ways in which the books and television show, respectively, represent and portray the gendered foundations of political authority. Although there are no specific data available on the use of IR textbooks, we selected a sample based on the Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk bestseller and relevance lists for IR textbooks. Although only a crude reflection of the actual use and popularity of particular textbooks, it provides an indicative measure of which textbooks students are using and reading. Where possible, we have consulted the current editions of the textbooks discussed. We recognise that there are also orientalist dynamics at play in the representations of Drogo, the Dothraki and other peoples not from Westeros in Game of Thrones. 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She has published widely on the themes of gender and security and is author/editor of five books, including Gender Matters in Global Politics (2nd edn, Routledge, 2015) and Gender, Violence and Popular Culture: Telling Stories (Routledge, 2013). Copyright of Politics is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. How (Fictional) Politicians Persuade and Manipulate Their Viewers? The Case of House of Cards Preliminary communication _ DOI 10.22522/cmr20170224 _ received on 18 June 2017 UDK 65.012.12:7.097(05 _ 32-057.34:654.197(05) Irena Sever Globan Catholic University of Croatia, Department of Communication, Croatia. Email: irena.sever@unicath.hr (corresponding author) Marko Ezgeta Croatia. Email: m.ezgeta1@gmail.com Abstract In times of increasing individualism when many traditional socialization institutions lose their primary role and influence, television series characters have become new role models that people can identify with. Modern television production is inclined to portray protagonists as antiheroes because viewers are more engaged and intrigued by them compared to the traditional protagonists. Series often break the so-called “fourth wall” in a way of transcending boundaries between virtual and real life, talking directly to the viewers, thus creating parasocial interaction. According to the transportation theory of persuasion, the greater the emotional bond with the characters, the higher the possibility for the viewers to “transport” within the narrative. This phenomenon can be particularly noticed in the political drama House of Cards, where the Machiavellian politician Frank Underwood persuades both characters in the story and the viewers in order to achieve some of his personal goals. The aim of this paper is to highlight the methods of persuasion and manipulation used by the protagonist in order to recognize how he wants to persuade us and recognize what his underlying goals are. Keywords: television series, persuasion, transportation theory, political drama, House of Cards 74 COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT REVIEW, 2 (2017) 2 PRELIMINARY COMMUNICATION 1. Introduction Television series are media forms whose narration attracts increasing media audience attention as they have almost reached the quality of film production in the aspects of content and style, especially those produced in North America. It is not without reason that Italian television critic, Aldo Grasso (2007, p. 5), said that television has never been as lively, intelligent or rich as it is today. From the very beginning, in addition to providing the viewer a sense of enjoyment and an escape into the world of entertainment and fantasy, the television series tried to provoke an interest for current political and social themes and problems (Esquenazi, 2010). In this context, it is important to be reminded of Rod Serling’s anthology series, The Twilight Zone (1959–1964), through which the author talked about numerous current political and social themes, such as the Cold War, human identity, alienation in the modern world, racism, new technologies and the crisis of democracy. Television stories influence social norms and form political opinions offering models for shaping personal and social identity to the recipients. According to those models, we often define what it means to be successful or unsuccessful, good or bad, masculine or feminine. Horace Newcomb (1988, p. 88) claims that television series are the central storytelling system that serves the function of myths and fairy tales that were previously narrated by the street bards. The average person watches more television series in one weekend than a person who lived only a few decades ago did within a lifetime (O’Connor, 1989). That fact calls for a serious study of the television series phenomena. Jean-Pierre Esquenazi (2009) considers that the audience expects that television series paraphrase the real world more than any other genre. With the help of fictional worlds and narratives, they evoke a real world, thus it is important that the series is in line with contemporary life and for the plot and the characters to show current events contributing to the bond of television and the present moment. In that way, the series follows changes in our reality, including ones considering political realities. Therefore, analysing a television series means trying to understand what the topics deal with in a given period of time, how they are related to the real social situation and even who are the heroes that are presented to the viewers as role models. Television allows society to become aware of its own problems, crises, beliefs and habits offering to an individual a variety of interpretive keys for a specific action (Fiske, Hartley, 1978, p. 89). That is why television is not defined HOW (FICTIONAL) POLITICIANS PERSUADE AND MANIPULATE THEIR VIEWERS? THE CASE OF HOUSE OF CARDS IRENA SEVER GLOBAN, MARKO EZGETA 75 solely as a “reflection of reality”, but also as an “example” of how things are and how to behave. The so-called “duplicate of reality” that television sets and transforms through its serial characters is capable of modifying the socio-cultural system (Casetti, Di Chio, 2001, p. 267), both to bring hope to the world and to take it away. In times of increasing relativism and individualism in which many traditional institutions of socialization are losing their primary role and influence, many television series characters become our new “media friends” and role models we can identify with (Buonanno, 2006, pp. 101–105). The heroes of these series mirror the socio-cultural reality and changes, but they are also often offered as models for imitating and shaping a new worldview. Lately, we are noticing the trend of modern television production using protagonists that are antiheroes, but the viewers nevertheless like them and empathize with them. Some of the recent villain protagonists that we “love to hate” are Dr House, Dexter, Walter White, Hannibal, Tony Soprano, Don Draper or Frank Underwood. Characters, such as the boss of a Mafia clan, a terminally ill high school chemistry teacher, a marketing guru who faked his entire life, a peevish doctor who excessively uses drugs, a serial killer who “only” eliminates the killers or unscrupulous politicians, attract viewers from all over the world. It seems like the modern viewer gets more thrills and enjoyment out of the stories about criminals and villains as opposed to the classical hero stories. In this sense, Bruce McKeown et al. (2015, pp. 152–154) explored the relationship of the viewers with the main characters of the crime drama Breaking Bad. Although the respondents knew the story of Walter White, they stated how they continued to support his actions, despite their awareness of the criminality and immorality of his actions.1 The question that arises is whether the new (anti)protagonists can influence the viewers to sympathize with crime and, consequently, the concept of moral relativism? Another characteristic of a modern television series is that the characters often break the so-called “fourth wall” in a way of transcending boundaries between virtual and real life talking directly to the viewers, thus creating parasocial interaction and tighter bonds 1 Cynthia Hoffner and Martha Buchanan (2005, p. 342) tried to answer the question of what it is that mostly affects the identification with television characters and came to the conclusion that children and adolescents identify more with characters that they consider similar to themselves, i.e. that are the same gender and share the same attitudes. Male respondents thus identified with male characters that are portrayed as intelligent, successful, but also violent, while women identified more with successful, physically attractive, intelligent female characters as the female characters that were respected by other characters of a certain television series. 76 COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT REVIEW, 2 (2017) 2 PRELIMINARY COMMUNICATION with them. This phenomenon can be particularly noticed in the political drama House of Cards where the Machiavellian and unscrupulous politician Frank Underwood persuades and manipulates, not only other characters in the story, but also the viewers in order to achieve some of his personal goals: to climb up the top of a political ladder and to stay at that position as long as possible, taking any means necessary. Thus, he puts an end to the portrayal of positive politician protagonists who were the main characters of former television series and tried to make a world a better place by fighting against crime and corruption and convince its faithful audience that it is worthwhile to fight for ideals and the common good. We can reasonably ask the question of political and ethical values that a character such as Frank Underwood promotes through the series, during these times of severe political crises around the world. In order to detect the new paradigm of the portrayed politicians and politics within the television series programme one must include the methods of persuasion, manipulation and propaganda that are used. This paper will provide the results of a content analysis of certain episodes during the four seasons of the series in order to recognize what a fictional politician such as Frank Underwood wants us to be persuaded into. 2. Political Drama and the House of Cards The fundamental determinant of a political drama is that the plot revolves around high politics and the characters are active protagonists on the political scene. The Script Lab (2016) states that the protagonist in this genre is usually in conflict with a corrupt political system while the stories are based on the events in the real world and often explore conspiracy theories. Some of the most prominent examples of political dramas in history are Tanner ‘88 (1988) and The West Wing (1999–2006). Although this genre has never been as popular as criminal, medical or legal television series, the recent trend of ever increasing interest in political drama has been growing, and in the first half of this decade some of the most watched series of this genre attracted millions of fans [e.g. Scandal (2012–), Borgen (2010–2013), The Good Wife (2012–2016), Political Animals (2012–), Veep (2012–), The Newsroom (2012–2014), and House of Cards (2013–)]. Since we were wondering how modern political series portray politicians and what the nature HOW (FICTIONAL) POLITICIANS PERSUADE AND MANIPULATE THEIR VIEWERS? THE CASE OF HOUSE OF CARDS IRENA SEVER GLOBAN, MARKO EZGETA 77 of their politics is, we have decided to analyse one of the most popular North American political television series, House of Cards, which captivated a global audience. It is noticed that the protagonists use numerous methods of persuasion, manipulation and propaganda, taking any means necessary in order to achieve their goals, making their communication a negative communication process. It seems as if the creators of the series want us to believe that democracy is actually a farce and that the citizens are only visibly free electors who vote for the politicians who will represent them and fight for a common good. House of Cards started broadcasting in 2013 and it is produced by the increasingly popular Internet television network – Netflix. The author of the series is Beau Willimon, to whom this is the first television project. As of 2016, four seasons of the series have been broadcast, i.e. 52 episodes overall. It is a political drama adapted from Michel Dobbs’ book, House of Cards, which was screened for the first time in the form of a mini-series made by BBC television. When it comes to aesthetics, this modern television series does not fall behind cinemaproduced motion pictures and one of the reasons for this is that the cast and the crew of the series is mainly made out of people who previously worked in the film industry. In fact, the creator Beau Willimon is one of the screenwriters of the political drama film The Ides of March for which he was nominated for an Academy award. The main protagonists are played by well-known movie actors such as Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey and Golden Globe winner Robin Wright. The contemporary political drama of House of Cards tells a story about the crisis and the unscrupulousness of the democratic political system of the “most democratic” country in the world, the United States of America, and the process of rising to the top of the political system. The protagonists are politicians who use all legitimate and illegitimate methods to achieve this goal, manipulating and assuring everyone around them that what they do is good and necessary; for them as politicians, for the citizens of the USA and, ultimately, for the world. The main protagonist of the series is Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), an American politician who was supposed to be nominated for the function of the US Secretary of State, but the newly elected president changed his mind at the last second. Resenting this unjust decision, along with his wife Claire (Robin Wright), he constructs a diabolical plan to rise to the most important political role in the country, the President. Frank Underwood does not fight a corrupt political system, as is usually the case in conventional political dramas. On the contrary, he makes the system even more corrupt. Throughout the four seasons, 78 COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT REVIEW, 2 (2017) 2 PRELIMINARY COMMUNICATION we follow Frank’s Machiavellian climb up the political ladder: from the position of a party whip in the United States House of Representatives, to the position of vice president of the United States, and ultimately to the President. Through his political ascension, we also follow the changes in Frank’s behaviour and how his actions affect his life, the life of the people around him, but also the American people in general, i.e. – how his actions affect the political system of the Western world. The protagonists of this series are, therefore, anti-heroes who often try to justify their immoral decisions. Their acts are the direct consequence of the unfortunate life circumstances in which they were growing up or they live in. This is a well-known idea that Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762/2008, p. 34) presented in his capital work The Social Contract. He claimed that the will (volonté générale) of man is always good and serves the progress of society and that people are essentially not evil. However, if they are often deceived by other members of society, then their will may be malicious. 2.1. Breaking of the “Fourth Wall” and Parasocial Interaction It is not unusual to see the breaking of the “fourth theatrical wall” in today’s films and television series. This occurs when characters turns to the camera, look directly at it, and address the viewers themselves. The French encyclopaedist, Denis Diderot, who have obliged the theatre and, implicitly, film and television, wrote about the breaking of the “fourth wall” in the 18th century because of his efforts to change the traditional theatre of the time directly through the creation of the concept of the “fourth theatrical wall” (Stevenson, 1995, pp. 4–5). In House of Cards, Frank Underwood directly addresses viewers and informs them of his actions, through the use of meta-references, thus creating deeper relationship with the viewers.2 An interesting example of the use of meta-references is the last scene of the first episode of the second season (Franklin, 2014) in which Frank looks at the camera and raises the question: “Did you think I’d forgotten you? Perhaps you’d hoped I had.” He, then, commented on the reasons why he killed journalist Zoe Barnes and said to the audience: 2 Philip J. Auter and Donald M. Davis (1991) conducted research whether the viewers of humorous television series are more engaged if the characters break the “fourth theatrical wall”. Their research showed that the audience feels more connected with the content of the humorous series and experience the humor more intense. HOW (FICTIONAL) POLITICIANS PERSUADE AND MANIPULATE THEIR VIEWERS? THE CASE OF HOUSE OF CARDS IRENA SEVER GLOBAN, MARKO EZGETA 79 “Welcome back.” At that moment, he leaves the scene and the camera slowly comes down to the suit cuffs he had previously received. His initials, namely, letters F and U, are written on them. It can be assumed that this greeting is not his last, given that the viewers from the English-speaking world are very aware of the hidden meaning of the letters F and U. Even though Frank Underwood is the only character who uses meta-reference throughout the seasons of this television series, we see a change in the last scene of the last aired, 52nd episode (Verbruggen, 2016). Taking into consideration the plot of the series and Frank’s understanding that, without Claire, it is impossible for him to succeed in politics, we are witnessing her breaking the “fourth wall”. While the two protagonists are not completely equal as Frank is the only one who talks to the viewers saying the hard words: “We don’t submit to terror. We make the terror.” Claire, non-verbally, supports him in what he says. The next moment they exchange glances and both look at the camera and in that way she confirms that she is aware that they are being watched. Such addressing to the viewers contributes to the formation of a parasocial interaction between media consumers and media protagonists, the phenomenon that Donald Horton and Richard Wohl (1956, p. 215) wrote about in the fifties of the 20th century. Parasocial interaction deals with the feelings of the consumers of the media content who create an illusion that they are in a genuine social interaction with media characters (Horton, Strauss, 1957; Hartmann, Goldhoorn, 2011; Dibble et al., 2016). The medial mediator always takes on the role of the sender of the message and the consumer is considered the receiver. Nevertheless, the receiver experiences the encounter as immediate, personal and feels that the communication is symmetrical (as cited in Hartmann, 2016, pp. 131–132). Parasocial relationships that are created between media characters and the public can be manifested in different forms, from extreme adoration, romantic feelings and friendly admiration to intolerance towards the characters we do not like. In that way, parasocial relationships are characterized as ordinary social relationships between people (Branch et al., 2013; Lakey et al., 2014). Moreover, the greater exposure to media content and the characters, the stronger the relationship with the audience will be. (Bond, Calvert, 2014; Schiappa et al., 2007). It is interesting to point out research by Keren Eyal and Jonathan Cohen (2006) that showed how the undesirable break up in parasocial relationship can create a sense of sadness and abandonment, just as breaks up in real relationships (as cited in Hartmann, 2016). 80 COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT REVIEW, 2 (2017) 2 PRELIMINARY COMMUNICATION The Internet and the social networks contribute to the creation of parasocial relationships between the characters of a certain television series and their viewers. Modern media allows fans to be more engaged and to influence directly the content of television series. The communication with the fans on the official House of Cards Facebook page is as if the characters of the series truly exist in our world and Frank Underwood is the current President of the United States. More than two million people follow the content of this site and many who comment directly address the characters as their (virtual) friends. 2.2. Persuasion, Manipulation and Propaganda in House of Cards Persuasion, manipulation and propaganda are nearly synonymous; the only differentiation is in the intention of the communication process (whether is it positive or negative to the recipient of the message) or if the messages are aimed towards an individual or a group of people. Thus, Richard M. Perloff (2002, p. 34) defines persuasion or manipulation as “a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behaviour regarding an issue through the transmission of a message, in an atmosphere of free choice”. Rom Harré (1985, pp. 126-127) differentiates manipulation from persuasion according to the fact that a person who is manipulated is not aware of the influence that is exerted upon him, making it a negative communication process. While successful persuasion can benefit both the recipient and the sender of the message, the goal of manipulative messages is to solely benefit the sender of the message. Those are the facts that represent the ethical and moral problems of undesired influence on the attitudes and behaviour of another person when it comes to manipulation. John Stuart Mill stated that the power, in this context the power of speech, can be used legitimately against another person only in the event of the potential damage that an individual might make to himself or to members of society. In the end, this would mean that the goal still justifies the means, not always and everywhere, but only in the specific circumstances in which, between the two evils, the one that is causing less harm should be chosen. A term often associated with persuasion and manipulation is propaganda. Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson (1992, p. 8) define propaganda as “the communication of a point of HOW (FICTIONAL) POLITICIANS PERSUADE AND MANIPULATE THEIR VIEWERS? THE CASE OF HOUSE OF CARDS IRENA SEVER GLOBAN, MARKO EZGETA 81 view with the ultimate goal of having the recipient of the appeal come to ‘voluntarily’ accept this position as if it were his or her own”. Explaining propaganda, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman (1988, p. 2) emphasize the importance of mass media and state that today’s mass media outlets have an important function for powerful groups, such as global corporations. The term they have coined – “manufacturing consent” – comes from several filters that affect the formation of a message that is propagated using mass media. The size, ownership and drive for profit of mass media institutions, the sourcing of mass media news or negative responses to a media statement or program affect the design and dissemination of a propaganda message that ultimately affects the political economy of society; on the other hand, Edward Bernays (1928, p. 20) considered propaganda not necessarily a negative term. As he states, it depends on the context and the truth of the information being promoted. There are many theories of persuasion studied by social psychology, and for the purpose of this research, we have decided for one of the most reputable, i.e. transportation theory, which analyses persuasion in media narratives. Namely, Melanie Green and Timothy Brock (2000, p. 701) argue that consumers of media content are, to a greater extent, exposed to public narrative than public advocacy. That is the reason their work focuses on research of public narratives, more precisely the one in novels, magazines, music or television. Their fundamental research question is the extent to which a media user will transport to the narrative world and connect with characters from the fictional world. To explain their theory, they refer to the idea of a mental process that at the same time combines the attention, the imagination and the feelings, so the authors refer to the feeling of “losing within the story”. Chun-Ting Hsu, Marcus Conrad and Arthur Jacobs (2014, p. 1359) used the Harry Potter books as examples to prove that narratives that contain an amplified emotional context affect the empathy of the reader, resulting in stronger brain activity. Authors have confirmed in the study that emotional content, particularly a negative or exciting one, activates affectionate empathy and recipients of communication messages make it easier to engage in content, thus creating a special reading experience. According to Green and Brock (2000, p. 702), consumers of media content, when immersed in the narrative world, lose contact with reality both physically and mentally. The experiments of these authors (2000, p. 719) have proved that people are more inclined to transport into a narrative if they consume fictitious highly produced content versus the realistic ones. The research 82 COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT REVIEW, 2 (2017) 2 PRELIMINARY COMMUNICATION conducted by Tom Van Laer et al. (2014, pp. 797-802) shows that transportation into a narrative can cause cognitive responses such as change of thinking, mode of action and attitudes of a recipient. The authors emphasized that the degree of empathy depends on the identification with the character of the fictitious narrative and that emotional element allows for the transition to a fictional narrative. It is noticed that the creation of special, almost friendly, relations between the characters of the television series and the viewer can directly influence that, what they see and hear in television series, is taken for granted, without much critical reflection. 2.3. Methods of Persuasion, Manipulation and Propaganda Communication science is familiar with numerous persuasion methods3 and for the purposes of this research we have selected 27 of them. Most of them are taken from the publication Persuasive Language in Media Texts by Iris Breuer and Melanie Napthine (2008, pp. 75–78). In the following paragraphs, a short explanation of all the methods taken by the named authors will be explained. Analogy is a method of persuasion in which a certain thing or situation is compared with another, and the effect of the method is to explain a complex point in more familiar terms. Anecdote is interpreted as a short, personal story that is often entertaining or comical and as it is being presumed the story is true, it carries the weight of credibility with the consumer of the message. Appeal to family values is based on the idea that the traditional family arrangements are the best for the individual and the society itself. Its effect is to cause the reader to agree with this idea and to recognize any different family arrangements as the one that might hurt the essence of the society. Appeal to the law and a sense of justice speaks to the belief that we are all equal in front of justice and that we all deserve the same treatment. The effects that this method might cause are creating the idea that punishment should fit the crime and increasing anger if the injustice is noticed. For this research, this method is extended to an appeal to the law, especially laws of the country and the consequences if those laws were to be broken. Appeal to hip-pocket nerve is associated with the human need for a sense of financial security. This method encourages 3 Since the methods of persuasion, manipulation and propaganda do not differ, in parts of the text where only the persuasion method is mentioned, it is referred to as persuasion, manipulation and propaganda. HOW (FICTIONAL) POLITICIANS PERSUADE AND MANIPULATE THEIR VIEWERS? THE CASE OF HOUSE OF CARDS IRENA SEVER GLOBAN, MARKO EZGETA 83 strong emotions, for example rage if a person feels financially exploited. A recipient of a message may also feel vulnerable to those who create financial policies. Appeal to selfinterest presumes that someone’s personal interest should be placed ahead of the interests of others; this method often creates a division of people into “us” and “them” and stimulates the creation of feelings that the interests of others are competitive to our own and thus endangered by them. Appeal to patriotism relies on the national pride and loyalty of the people, the recipient of the message gets the feeling that he is not loyal to his own country unless he agrees with the sender of the message. The use of this method invokes the powerful emotions of pride, guilt, loyalty and even anger or fear. Appeal to group loyalty exploits the human need for a sense of belonging. Using this method, feelings of guilt, responsibility, fear and sentimentality are exerted by the recipient of the message. It assures people that the group depends on their support; it often comes with the method of usage of inclusive language. Appeal to tradition and custom puts a high value to history and to someone’s background. It presumes that moving away from tradition and customs can be damaging to the society. The effect of this method is encouraging the recipient of the message to resist changes and create feelings of retention of past values that are often romanticized. In the absence of logical arguments some try to appeal to emotions; the sender of a message inclines to control the emotions of the recipient and often generates a sense of guilt, insecurity and need for a change. The response to the message is, therefore, quite emotional, rather than rational. Evidence is the following method of persuasion, manipulation, and propaganda explained by Breuer and Napthine and this method includes facts, information or opinions of experts that can be used selectively in order to further reinforce the arguments. Usually, the source is relevant and it offers the sender of the message the possibility of greater credibility. Generalization is presenting the facts in a way that suggests that something is true for most people just because it is sometimes true. In this method, an appeal is made to certain stereotypes, prejudices and already acquired attitudes. Connotation is characterized by emotional connection with the meaning of the word. The persuader often uses synonyms for certain words to which positive or negative connotations were added. To detect this method it is important to know the communication of the group since the same term for two different groups can have a completely different meaning, no matter the fact the same words might be used. Attack on a personal level is used to discredit the opponent and it 84 COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT REVIEW, 2 (2017) 2 PRELIMINARY COMMUNICATION includes a personal way of thinking about the character of an individual. The use of this method draws the attention away from the relevant topics and arguments, and with the observer of the communication, creates a feeling of distrust towards the person and claims of the person to whom the attacks are directed. Repetitions relate to repetition of words, phrases, sentences or ideas in order to emphasize the message. This method is suitable for directing attention and achieving a clear memorization of the message. Overstatement means using a linguistic figure of hyperbole to exaggerate the true situation. This method is used for intimidation, dramatization or even for humorous purposes. Rhetorical questions are questions in which the answer is usually known. When using this method, the recipient of the message is placed in the position of agreeing with the sender of the message as it is assumed that the response is already known. The use of clichés, or too many used phrases that are known to most, serves to transfer meaning and the point of communication in a fast and efficient way (most people understand them) and create a sense of understanding. The usage of inclusive language refers to the use of words like “we” or “together”, which include a person in a certain group. Using this method creates a sense of communion, belonging and responsibility. Other used methods in this research were taken by various authors and were added to the research. Appeal to fear and insecurity is based on the assumption that the worst outcome of the situation is possible and real. Bennett (2012) emphasizes the human need to undertake preventive measures to avoid the worst outcome. Thus, this persuasion method must be recognized and responded according to probability, rather than a possibility. Humour as a method of persuasion, manipulation and propaganda is used in a variety of ways: using puns, sarcasm, irony, telling jokes, etc. Carmen Moran (1996) states that the use of humour in persuasion has an emotional impact on the audience, and serves as a method of relaxation of the recipient of the message (as cited in Rod Martin, 2007, p. 137). Language style can also be a method of persuasion, manipulation and propaganda. Formal style (Saylor Foundation, 2014) can help the sender to persuade, and also create an illusion that the sender is more educated than he/she might be. The characters of the colloquial style (informal, everyday style) can show the person more positively, while the jargon gives the sender the ability to present himself as an expert in a certain field. Furthermore, the authors Cory Scherer and Brad Sagarin (2006, p. 143) conducted research in which it was proven that the use of curses at the beginning or at the end of speech is positively manifested in HOW (FICTIONAL) POLITICIANS PERSUADE AND MANIPULATE THEIR VIEWERS? THE CASE OF HOUSE OF CARDS IRENA SEVER GLOBAN, MARKO EZGETA 85 accepting the attitudes of the speech, which makes the usage of curse words a strong method of persuasion. Paralanguage refers to the height of the tones, the length of accent, the pause, the speed, the errors and other, numerous, elements in the communication. Using these elements, one is able to persuade someone into believing something is or is not true. Martin Remland (1993, p. 7) uses an example of an attorney in the courtroom and his use of non-verbal communication and paralanguage; he writes that moderate speed, speech quality and self-confident tone assist in delivering a persuasive speech. Praise on a personal level is at contrary to the attacks on a personal level and it is based on the human need for confirmation that something is done well. By using this method, the interlocutors’ virtues can be emphasized; complimenting the physical appearance, the way of thinking or work. The suggestive use of clothing and colours assume that in different cultures, different colours or clothes are appropriate for same events. Clothing of certain colours can affect the perception of a person’s credibility, for example in one culture a certain colour can be predominantly seen on a woman and almost never on a man. The usage of the exclusive language was added to this paper as the opposite method of the one that emphasizes the use of the inclusive language. Exclusive language refers to the use of words like “those”, “others”, “different”, helping to exclude a person from a group or a community, while the division and difference between “us” and “them” is achieved (Saylor Foundation, 2014). The research also included methods of using statements, praise on a personal level, and suggestive use of clothing and colours which were added while thinking about the context of the television series, moreover that this is a political drama and that some of the examples of the above stated methods might be used within a series. The statements refer to the quotation of well-known people (especially those deceased) or experts. As with the method of evidence, a person will more likely believe in something if it comes from a relevant source. This method is similar to the mentioned method, but it was extracted in order to distinguish the paraphrases used within the communication from the direct quotation used in order to persuade. Praise on a personal level is at contrary to the attacks on a personal level and it is based on the human need for confirmation that something is done well. By using this method, the interlocutors’ virtues can be emphasized, for example by complimenting the physical appearance, the way of thinking or someone’s work. The suggestive use of clothing and colours assume that, in different cultures, different colours or clothes are appropriate for the same events. Clothing of certain colours can affect the perception of a 86 COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT REVIEW, 2 (2017) 2 PRELIMINARY COMMUNICATION person’s credibility, for example in one culture a certain colour can be predominantly seen on a woman and almost never on a man. This method was added thinking about the set of a series, which is placed in a political environment that is very strict when it comes to the protocol, more precisely, the usage of clothes. As it is previously stated, our goal is to explore whether the methods of persuasion, manipulation and propaganda in the political drama House of Cards appear, especially when the main character breaks the “fourth theatrical wall”, to see if Frank Underwood is trying to persuade and manipulate viewers in order to justify his means. By “drawing” the viewers into the narrative by addressing them directly and describing the situation, the transportation theory of persuasion could gain a new dimension – one in which fictitious characters “enter” the actual world of viewers (as oppose of the spectators “entering” the fictional world of the characters), adapting viewers to their ambitions and, finally, exploiting fictional power in the real world. In the following paragraphs, a short explanation of all the methods will be explained. 3. Research 3.1. Methodology Persuasion, manipulation and propaganda dominate political life. The job of politicians is to persuade colleagues and opponents, to propose ideas and ideals to the people who elect them for political functions. The past, as well as the present, have shown that politicians do not quail even when they consciously manipulate the electorate. In order to answer the question whether the characters of the political drama House of Cards use methods of persuasion, manipulation and propaganda and if they do, which one, it was decided to subject to content analysis a number of sequences of this television series which display the ruthlessness of the political system in a democratic country in crisis. According to Vesna Lamza Posavec (2011, p. 105), content analysis is “the process of studying and analysing verbal or nonverbal materials, which is used to perceive its properties and messages”. Lamza Posavec writes about two types of content analysis: qualitative and quantitative. This paper will, mostly, use the quantitative method of content analysis for which the author states that “it can be applied to different types and means of social HOW (FICTIONAL) POLITICIANS PERSUADE AND MANIPULATE THEIR VIEWERS? THE CASE OF HOUSE OF CARDS IRENA SEVER GLOBAN, MARKO EZGETA 87 communication: books, newspapers, songs, films, television and radio shows, web content, letters, legal regulations and laws, lyrics, artwork, etc.” Since this article analyses the text of a television series, it is important to note that the term “text” can have ambiguous meaning. James Drisko and Tina Maschi (2015, p. 7) explain the use of the term “text” in the content analysis and write that under the term “text” some consider only what we read, while others see “text” as what is being conveyed by an informational message. For researchers, the “text” refers to the concept of communication media that can be stored in various ways, including e.g. texts, sound recordings, television formats and movies and, due to the development of social media, electronic data. The authors warn that some information might be lost when transcribing speech, statements, or movie dialogues, as the paralingual elements cannot be detected in the process. The unit of analysis of this work is a scene in which method(s) of persuasion, manipulation or propaganda is used and the scenes will be included in the analytical matrix that was created for the purpose of the research. The analytical matrix consists of ten research questions related to: the gender of the screenwriter of the episode, the use of the methods of persuasion, manipulation or propaganda, the gender and social status of the character who uses it and whether there are methods used while the protagonist addresses the viewers (usage of meta-reference). This matrix will not only provide information on whether the methods of persuasion are used in the series, but also the characteristics of the communication and communicators. The research will also show if one of the methods is used more in one gender than the other and also whether the characters that are persuading rely more on that kind of communication based on their social status. The gathered data will, thus, represent qualitative results of the research. For this research, an equiprobability systematic sampling method was used, where the unit is selected by random number or a random number generator (Dumičić, Cvetkovič, 2007, p. 317). Out of the 52 episodes, the decision was made to analyse one quarter of them, more precisely, thirteen episodes. The random number table between the first, the second and the third episodes was used in order to define the starting episode. Thus, the survey sample consists of episodes: 1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, 29, 33, 37, 41, 45 and 49. 88 COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT REVIEW, 2 (2017) 2 PRELIMINARY COMMUNICATION 3.2. Research Results The following pages of this paper will present the research results that will be displayed using tables and charts. Following each table and a chart there will be an interpretation of the results given, but also the data that are not provided in the tables. Moreover, most often used methods by the gender of the persuader and by the social ranking will be presented and some of them will be explained by giving an example from the television series. Table 1. Usage of the persuasion, manipulation and propaganda methods in House of Cards Methods used Analogy Anecdote Appeal to emotions Appeal to family values Appeal to fear and insecurity Appeal to group loyalty Appeal to hip-pocket nerve Appeal to patriotism Appeal to self-interest Appeal to the law and a sense of justice Appeal to tradition and customs Attack on a personal level Clichés Connotation Evidence Generalization Humour Language style Overstatement Paralanguage Praise on a personal level Repetition Rhetorical question Statements Suggestive use of clothing and colours The usage of exclusive language The usage of inclusive language Total HOW (FICTIONAL) POLITICIANS PERSUADE AND MANIPULATE THEIR VIEWERS? THE CASE OF HOUSE OF CARDS IRENA SEVER GLOBAN, MARKO EZGETA N 16 5 16 6 32 12 2 8 7 10 2 60 6 0 8 2 7 7 1 7 25 2 3 9 2 4 21 280 Percentage of the total number of methods used 5.7 1.8 5.7 2.1 11.4 4.3 0,7 2.9 2.5 3.6 0.7 21.4 2.1 0 2.9 0.7 2.5 2.5 0.4 2.5 8.9 0.7 1.1 3.2 0.7 1.4 7.5 100 89 From Table 1 it is apparent that, in the 13 analysed episodes of the political drama House of Cards, the use of methods of persuasion, manipulation and propaganda was noticed 280 times, which tells us that the characters of this political drama use the above-mentioned methods quite often. The most commonly used method is the attack on a personal level that appeared in the analysed scenes 60 times or 21.4% of all the used methods. The second most commonly used method is the appeal to fear and insecurity, shown in 32 scenes, or 11.4% of all cases. The third most frequent method is the praise on a personal level and it w...
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