This week, the wheel of history turns full circle as President Macron (another French leader with imperial ambitions) flies to the Gulf to open Louvre Abu Dhabi and, two centuries on, now offers up France’s cultural treasures for display and study. While Napoleon’s invasion was hard power, Macron’s visit is all about the long-term insinuation of soft power. Yet it signals a hard truth: if Brexit Britain is going to find its feet as a global player, we need to be thinking about similarly ambitious displays of cultural bravado.
No, we don’t need to go and build some museum to Britishness in a sodding desert.
Seriously.
A Gladrag hack accepts Brexit!!!!
And thinks a useless fucking museum is the key to future prosperity.
Trade being beneath his dignity no doubt.
WTF are the French going to put in their silly circus anyway? The average of rich Saudi culture makes deep-fried Mars Bars look sophisticated.
“we need to be thinking about similarly ambitious displays of cultural bravado.”
Clearly she’s never heard of The British Council.
Mr Ecks; it’s probably full of white flags.
I bet this same grauniad hack would be stamping her little feet if the government commissioned another Royal Yacht Britannia to sail round projecting soft power and providing “similarly ambitious displays of cultural bravado” to desert despots.
Trissy is just jealous of whichever Frog is getting paid $500k a year tax-free to manage this white elephant. It will get about 10 visitors a year.
That said, if Abu Dhabi is paying the bills* then it’s a great deal for France. I do like the building too.
*I know an architect who works in the UAE; actually paying your bills to foreign companies is considered optional by Emiratis.
DMcD: 10+
Surely, as head of the V & A, Tristan Hunt knows about this:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-museums-deal-with-abudhabi-becomes-history-08d0cpfqv
Hunt is engaging in special pleading for the museum he heads.
It would actually be an extremely productive exercise. To send a few luvvies to discover first hand what life in a (relatively moderate) rop country is like.
Prince Someone, William I think, is visiting a British university in Malaysia this week.
I think that speaks a certain confidence. And unlike an art gallery, teaching Grievance Studies to Malays may pay.
The Hon. Tristram confuses the Red Sea with the Persian Gulf.
He must realise that the editorial position of the Graun is that if Britain does something it’s evil colonialism, but if any other country in the world does the same, it’s a cultural triumph.
Mind you, for them, begging trumps everything as a form of income generation.
Yes, because when Napoleon did it, owning roomfulls of paintings and statues mattered. It was the pinnacle of culture.
Today, it’s going and seeing Gravity in IMAX 3D. The main reason that people go to art galleries is to show off that they went to an art gallery to their friends. It’s signalling their middle-class credentials. It’s why galleries had to unban selfie sticks after trying to ban them. And if you ever go into a gallery, almost no-one is looking at the paintings. They just want it recorded that they were there.
“culture wielded global power”
Nah. Ships of the line wielded global power.
the long-term insinuation of soft power
Lol. When we do it it is cultural imperialism. When the French do it, it is wonderful..
In fact this illustrates a common theme among the Guardianista class – their abject fawning over everything French; what in us would be a terrible trait is a French foible, or even admirable. Which is ironic, because most of the fuckers couldn’t speak a word of French if their cupcakes depended on it.
if Brexit Britain is going to find its feet as a global player, we need to be thinking about similarly ambitious displays of cultural bravado.
Harry Ramsdens Dubai
The Elgin Marbles are a display of British cultural bravado.
As far as soft power goes, the UK seems to be doing all right, if these rankings mean anything (which I doubt):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power
“because most of the fuckers couldn’t speak a word of French if their cupcakes depended on it.”
And haven’t a clue about french culture. Because like the UK, the artsy fartsy stuff is a very thin icing on a very mixed cake. French culture is to be found in its poor inner cities, their rings of suburbs & agricultural communes raced by on the péage without a glance. It cannot be glimpsed from a café on Rue des Halles or from a badly converted farmhouse on the Dordoigne.
It would actually be an extremely productive exercise. To send a few luvvies to discover first hand what life in a (relatively moderate) rop country is like.
It would make no difference.
A middle-class lefty former colleague lives in Abu Dhabi and her views remain as wet and pathetic as ever. Plus she likes the cash and hypocrisy has never been a problem with her ilk.
I suspect the Malays may be more interested in real subjects. Note the subjects listed on the first few universities that come up when googling British university Malaysia:
https://www.southampton.ac.uk/my/index.page
https://www.hw.ac.uk/malaysia.htm
@TomJ
That Soton is on that list and is promoting it’s engineering faculty doesn’t surprise me. Engineering was ~25% of the university back when I was there and ~10% of my electronic engineering class then were Malay. They excelled at the theoretical side but were average when it came to the practical work.
“were average when it came to the practical work”: do you mean ‘average’ literally, or in the sports commentators’ sense? That is, lousy.
Theophrastus,
“As far as soft power goes, the UK seems to be doing all right, if these rankings mean anything (which I doubt):”
Soft power is a world of hippy bullshit. It suits the politicians who of course, want these hard-to-measure jobs in places like the British Council. None of it works. No-one cares in other countries. You get people to do things by offering them money to do something, or by putting a gun to their heads.
The things in that “soft power” ranking can all be dismissed. Architecture and Olympic medals? So, how did Brazil and East Germany do in the 70s? How’s the economy of Bilbao?
The pope visiting Poland? That made fuck all difference. Frankly, I doubt Solidarity made much difference either, considering that was nearly a decade before. Poland stopped being communist because the Russians gave up on communism and the Eastern Bloc.
Britain displays soft power all over the world: our cultural output, from the Beatles to the Spice Girls, Monty Python to Mr Bean, Saville Row to Topshop, M&S to Fish and Chips and thousands of other examples.
What Tris wants is money for his mates.
Lefties hate their own countries. If Dipstick Hunt were French, he’d hate France.
Nothing says “Tribune of the People” quite like taking money from working people and spending it on shit art galleries for Arabs.
Because, Rob, British Culture is damn hard to give away, let alone flog to anyone. Meanwhile the culture of the Brits sells like hotcakes the world over.
@’John Square, November 5, 2017 at 4:06 pm
When measured by eg “Rank Spice Girls 1-10” then yes.
However, as I discovered when living in Sweden & Spice Girls on radio, shop music etc too much, most <30 believed they were American [ffs baby's dress was a Union flag]. Further questions revealed Beetles and virtually all pop, Bond, BT etc were also American.
Are the various Guggenheim museums in, say, Venice, Bilbao, Lisbon doing a better job of projecting soft US power than Euro Disney and cartoon network? How’s Bilbao these days?
Bloke on M4 – “Soft power is a world of hippy bullshit.”
I would like to agree, but I don’t. I can’t really. I have been to lots of places all over the world where the locals have treated me much better than the treat the locals. Usually to the cries of “Margaret Thatcher, what a woman” or “What is going on with Man United?”
Soft power really does exist. And Britain has a lot of it.
BiS: …on the Dordoigne
You take the trouble to put an acute accent on péage and then let yourself down (twice) like this?