Popular culture has always been a useful indication into the views of voters, argues Jamilla Smith-Joseph.
Undoubtedly, Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) was one of the most monumental electoral decisions to be put to and decided by the public in the past century. As much as Brexit can be viewed as a flashpoint issue, or the culmination of rising populism among the British electorate during the 2010s, it had long been an issue in the British political right-wing. Since the 1980s, Euroscepticism had been brewing within the Conservative Party, with the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) forming out of this factionalism in 1993.
Yet the EU and our place in it was not as salient an issue for the general public – polling data suggests that the EU was not an issue concerning voters at this time. This makes trying to measure public sentiment on Europe very difficult. Instead, we can turn to popular culture as another tool for measuring the salience of this scepticism of the EU, contemporaneous to the emergence of Westminster Euroscepticism. An asset of pop culture analysis is that it offers a reflective insight into general sentiment at a particular period or moment in time.
While analysing popular culture may be a less precise method of analysing voters’ views than polling data, in many ways it is a more telling view. Any (popular) culture – such as art, writing, media, etc. – is not created in a vacuum; even if it is not overtly about politics, it is inherently influenced by contemporary events and moods, at least to some degree. Popular culture is also created for people to discuss, enjoy, consume and react to, meaning that it is both reflective of views and a tool for reflection: popular culture can change but also perpetuate political views and opinions.
Culture is also unique in that it can be indicative of the views of an ‘average’ British citizen, as well as the relevance of issues discussed in their daily lives. The range of responses from what a piece of culture can elicit are also useful when investigating the salience or relevance of an issue. Approaches such as polling will always be useful and necessary: but through understanding the links between culture and politics, nuances and new insights can be realised and studied.
Take Malcolm Bradbury’s “The Gravy Train”. “The Gravy Train” was released on Channel 4 in 1990, the same year that Margaret Thatcher resigned from office. Our main character is the idealistic, honest but naive German, Hans-Joachim Dorfmann, who arrives in Brussels to begin working in the European Commission, specifically in the agriculture department. Before long he is caught between power-hungry bureaucrats, corrupt businessmen and politicians, and criminal gangs in an olive-based conspiracy at the heart of the EEC.
Not only does Bradbury examine how Britain and the European project/its European neighbours politically mix (or rather, do not), but he critiques the bureaucracy and corruption of Brussels. His use of humour to satirise the EU symbolised the way many Brits viewed the EU at the time – and continued to, with the ability to cut EU ‘red tape’ a major argument put forward by the Leave campaign during the 2016 referendum. “The Gravy Train” is indicative of contemporaneous elite Euroscepticism: while in the early 1990s the EU was not seen as an issue within the general public, the programme gives us an idea of sentiment toward the institution.
“‘Allo ‘Allo” is cited as another comedy which speaks to the differences between Britain and Europe in the late 1980s and 90s: in this case, the Franco-British relationship during World War II, through the French resistance and British fugitives in German-occupied France. The British in the show are inherently reluctant for closer ties with Europe, thanks to continuing wartime sentiments of mistrust. This is something we see again and again in comedies of this period, from “Dad’s Army” to “Fawlty Towers”. Even now, we see Britons are more sceptical of the idea that other European countries are ‘allies’ than they are of Commonwealth countries or the US (with the caveat that much polling on this matter was conducted before the Trump-Zelenskyy spat in late February), particularly older voters, who came of age watching these programmes. Could these cultural outputs have influenced voters’ opinions on Europe – and later, the EU? Further research on these shows and their potential impact could illuminate on these questions in different ways to ‘standard’ polling and focus-group research.
There are still examples of contemporary popular culture, and comedy specifically, taking on the European issue. “Parlement” is 2020’s self-deprecating answer to “The Gravy Train“, a fittingly European co-production between France, Germany and Belgium*.* It has a similar premise to “The Gravy Train” in that the protagonist, in this case Samy, is naive to the politics of the EU, encouraging some of the comedic aspects. However, it differs in that Samy does not care for these politics, in stark contrast to the idealistic Dorfmann of “The Gravy Train”. Creator of “Parlement” Noé Debré, notes there has been a distinct lack of Brexit comedy, despite the British ability to do political comedy so well.
But the absence of this style of comedy could itself be an indicator of public opinion – with how divisive Brexit was and how raw it felt, perhaps it was too early for Britons to laugh at ourselves and our differences once again. Or is “Parlement” reflective of, or a response to, something else entirely: the simmering anti-EU sentiments spreading across other parts of Europe in recent years, particularly in France and Germany. This is further evidence of the potential of study into the crossover between popular culture and politics.
We can look to British culture to understand how the British public saw, and perhaps still sees, the EU as infringing upon their everyday. Comical European characters and satire on the shady deals taking place in world-class Brussels restaurants demonstrate the prevailing view of Europe at that time. But culture does not just, and can do far more than, reflect the political emotions and sentiments of a specific time: it can actively perpetuate existing power and political dynamics, making it integral to the study of politics and political behaviour.
By Jamilla Smith-Joseph, MA European and International Politics graduate from King’s College London