The Use of Cinema in State Reputation Management

This bachelor's thesis examines the use of cinematography as a tool for managing a state's reputation and projecting soft power in the international arena. Through a qualitative content analysis of selected scenes from Top Gun: Maverick (2022), it investigates how Hollywood productions with military themes represent the U.S. armed forces and how these representations relate to Joseph S. Nye's concept of soft power. The theoretical framework combines Nye's notion of soft power with concepts of cultural diplomacy and the militarization of popular culture. The analysis is structured around five thematic categories: representation of the U.S. military, construction of heroism and individualism, patriotism and national identity, construction of the enemy and the legitimacy of the mission, and the aestheticization of military power. The findings suggest that the film does not operate only through the positive presentation of attractive values, as Nye's model would predict, but through the systematic removal of conditions under which the viewer might adopt a critical stance. This overarching mechanism is termed the resistance elimination mechanism. The thesis also documents the institutional cooperation between the U.S. Navy and the film's production, which, as evidenced by documents obtained through FOIA requests, demonstrably shaped the resulting cinematic representation.