A1 Vertaisarvioitu alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä lehdessä
A Better Hegemon? My Little Pony as a Pop Representation of Diplomacy in the Context of American Hegemony
Tekijät: Clerc Louis
Kustantaja: Brill Academic Publishers
Kustannuspaikka: Leiden
Julkaisuvuosi: 2023
Journal: Hague Journal of Diplomacy
eISSN: 1871-191X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/1871191x-bja10146
Verkko-osoite: https://doi.org/10.1163/1871191x-bja10146
Social imaginaries carried by the entertainment industry matter for understanding how the general public makes sense of complex social phenomena. Mass culture is a representation of pre-existing ideas on international politics, rooted in space and time, and a constitutive element of the social and political world. Mass entertainment, as well as massively popular forms of popular culture such as video games, are only now entering the field of vision of scholars interested in cultural representations of international relations. This article contributes to this trend by looking at visions of diplomacy present in a global mass entertainment franchise: Hasbro’s My Little Pony. Behind the lighter aspects of a show created for young children lies a fictional universe with elements of diplomacy and international relations. The article insists on the importance of visions of early 21st-century American unipolar order and a liberal view of international politics in the show’s world.