Film and European Identity: A German Case Study

Michael Meyen

Is there any connection between European films and European identity? Has being European
something to do with going to the cinema or with watching European movies on television? In this
chapter, I begin to answer these questions through a case study of a German focus group, and by
developing an appropriate theoretical and methodological framework. I should stress that the case
study itself is a very modest and exploratory piece of work. It is not the result of several years of
investigation. Nor is it a broad empirical study based on extensive transnational, European data. On
the contrary, it is nationally specific and demographically limited in several other ways as well.
Even so, it indicates directions for future and much broader, empirical studies, as well as providing
a research framework for considering the relationship between watching films and being European.
The comments made by the German focus group participants may lead us towards something that
goes beyond this particular national context. The chapter is in part a study of media effects, but it is
also in a sense a study of the effects of cultural policy, since it is implicitly about effects of
subsidizing and protecting European film industries. It is not however about the importance of
developing a film industry in Europe, but about effects on the level of ordinary European citizens
and their everyday life. Can we detect any important influences of film-watching on how people in
Europe look at Europe and other Europeans and their feelings towards being European? Are the
benefits on that level worth the efforts of politicians, the efforts of producers, and last but not least
the efforts of academics?

Media and social identity

Much has been written about mass media and social identity – defined here as a self-concept
affiliated to the idea of being part of a certain social group (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). There is for
instance the tradition of (mainly psychological) research on media preferences guided by social
identity (for an overview see Trepte, 2006, pp. 260-264). For example, the objective behind
impression management via media use as ‘the conscious or unconscious attempt to control images
that are projected in real or imagined social interactions’ (Schlenker, 1980, p. 6) is social
recognition. Getting approval and affection by others means to be part of a certain group. In this
 2

context, we could use symbols such as European films as a way of expressing our identification
with Europe or the European idea.
Personal taste in movies thus becomes a tool of distinction like any other act of
consumption, such as styles of dressing, musical preferences, newspaper subscriptions, haircuts and
other everyday practices (Bourdieu, 1984). Sometimes even reading a newspaper can be enough to
be different (Schönbach et al., 1999). It is not unlikely that the very same is true in terms of
choosing to watch European movies in certain social settings. While media use as a tool of
distinction is oriented outwardly, other strategies focus inwardly. The use of symbols to support a
certain self-definition, what various theorists have called ‘symbolic self-completion’ (Wicklund &
Gollwitzer, 1982; see also Richardson & Cialdini, 1981; Tedeschi et al., 1985), can help explain the
important role that the media play for migrants who are forced to negotiate the tensions that often
exist between their own national identities and the identity of those they encounter in host nations
(Morley, 2000; Hall & Gay 1996).
The sense of belonging to a particular group such as ‘the Europeans’ at the same time
separates one from other groups such as Americans, Asians and Africans (in-group vs. out-group,
Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Again, media offers, including both television and cinema, are seen as
powerful agents shaping our perceptions of others from very early on (Berry & Mitchell-Kernan,
1982). Applying Bandura’s (1977) social-cognitive learning theory, it can be presumed that social
stereotypes are at least partly the result of observations of media figures and respective model
constructions (Jeffres, 2011). Via mass media we learn not only about our own groups’ social
positions (Jandura & Meyen, 2010), but also how to recognize members of other social groups.
The cultivation approach, meanwhile, is based on the belief that media representations shape
their users’ world views, particularly when those representations are consistently communicated for
a long time (Gerbner & Gross, 1976). It is certainly no matter of chance that these ideas were well
received by gender studies (Gauntlett, 2008) and by new media researchers (Zhou, 2011), as well as
by intergroup communication scholars who have long recognized the mass media’s potential ‘to
influence a group’s perceptions of its own and other groups’ vitalities’: ‘Television has the ability to
tell stories about people, places, and ideas that we would otherwise be unable to experience’
(Abrams & Giles, 2007, pp. 120-121). Since fictional narratives are a major part of television
programmes, there is every reason to assume that this will also apply to European films.
In order to ascertain more precisely the impact of films on European identity, the present
article is grounded in Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory (Giddens, 1984), especially in his
 3

ideas of modernity and self-identity (Giddens, 1991). In this theory, the self is a reflexive project,
which consists in developing and sustaining coherent biographical narratives. Giddens also provides
some ideas close to those of researchers working on mass media and social identity, on how media
representations could both feed and fit into those biographical narratives.

Giddens, self-identity, films and European identity

This is not the place to write a summary of Giddens’ theoretical approach. Especially his expression
‘duality of structure’ should be known far beyond social scientific research (Giddens, 1984). At a
very basic level, this expression means that all of us make structures such as Europe, the European
cinema or academia. At the very same time, we are constrained by those structures. I will not go
into the details of figure 1 (see below) or into the details of Giddens’ vocabulary yet. My point here
is that structuration theory is about the interconnections between globalizing influences on the one
hand and very individual dispositions and actions on the other. Therefore, that theory also provides
a conceptual framework for thinking about the interconnection between ‘Europe’ and European
films on the one hand and being European as part of European citizens’ self-identity on the other.
Figure 1 may serve to illustrate the interplay of agency and structure as suggested by Anthony
Giddens (1984). I use a general scheme developed by Franziska Weder (2008) and now linked to
the present article’s issue.
While the perceptions of Europe and the European idea as well as European films are
situated at the level of (rather stable) structures, being European is seen as part of the individuals’
practical consciousness that differs from our discursive consciousness. Internalized from the cradle
and organically integrated in daily life, practical consciousness is hardly verbally expressed.
However, as already mentioned, according to Giddens the self ‘has to be reflexively made’
(Giddens, 1991, p. 3). Self-Identity is not something that is just given or a collection of traits,
nothing that we simply possess. On the contrary, according to Giddens, our identity is to be found in
‘the capacity to keep a particular narrative going’ (p. 54). That means, we ‘must continually
integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing ‘story’ about the
self’ (p. 54). ‘Europe’ and even European movies certainly are such events in the external world
that we have to integrate in the individual stories about ourselves.
In Giddens’ theory, the reflexive project of the self is the major difference between
modernity and traditional societies. Modernity here is a buzzword for ‘disembedding mechanisms’
which play a particular role in Giddens’ construct of ideas. In his writings, he is constantly bringing
 4

up not just ‘institutional reflexivity’ and the ‘profound processes of the reorganisation of time and
space’ as ‘key aspects of modernity’s development’ (Giddens, 1991, p. 2) but also ‘the
disembedding of social institutions’ (p. 14) such as collective settings and authorities in kinship,
religion, and region. Here, the comparison between traditional and modern societies looks quite
simple: on the one hand ‘cultures, where things stayed more or less the same from generation to
generation on the level of collectivity’ and where even any identity change linked to transitions in
individuals’ lives ‘was clearly staked out’, and on the other hand settings where, by contrast, ‘the
altered self has to be explored and constructed as part of a reflexive process of connecting personal
and social change’ (p. 33). According to Giddens, ‘modernity is a post-traditional order, in which
the question, “How shall I live?” has to be answered in day-to-day-decisions about how to behave,
what to wear and what to eat – and many other things – as well as interpreted within the temporal
unfolding of self-identity’ (p. 14). To put it in a nutshell: ‘We have no choice but to choose’ (p. 81).
It’s easy to see how Europe and European films come in or, more generally, how media
offers come in. The first point is ‘the intrusion of distant events into everyday consciousness’
(Giddens, 1991, p. 27) – for example, the intrusion of other countries into everyday consciousness.
We get images from Spain, from Spanish people, and from family life abroad. Not all Germans
might have the chance to talk to Scandinavians but all of us know whodunits from Sweden and
Denmark. So, films form realities. Since media presentation takes the form of the juxtaposition of
stories and items which share nothing in common other than that they are ‘timely’ and
consequential’, Giddens used the term ‘collage effect’ describing one of the ‘basic features of
mediated experience’ (p. 26). His next point is quite obvious as well. In media representations, we
encounter routinely experiences ‘that might be rare in day-to-day life’ (p. 27). Those representations
not only form our perceptions of Spain, our perceptions of Scandinavia and so on, but also become
part of the puzzling diversity of options and possibilities we are encountered to. Why should we not
live like a Spanish extended family, for example? The prevalence of mediated experience
undoubtedly also influences pluralism of choice, in obvious and also in more subtle ways. With the
increasing globalisation of media, a multifarious number of milieux are, in principle, rendered
visible to anyone who cares to glean the relevant information (p. 84).
 5

Figure 1: Agency and structure according to Giddens (Weder, 2008, p. 348)

Structure: „Europe“, European films …

Rules Resources

Reproduction / Modification Constraints / Possibilities

time

Practical consciousness
Agency: “Being European”

As already outlined, with reference to Bourdieu (1984) and impression management literature, films
are means of self-display as well. Using a notion of Giddens, watching European films could be a
‘lifestyle’ choice. ‘A lifestyle can be defined as a more or less integrated set of practices which an
individual embraces, not only because such practices fulfil utilitarian needs, but because they give
material form to a particular narrative of self-identity’ (Giddens, 1991, p. 81). Last but not least,
media such as films or soap operas offer ‘mixtures of contingency, reflexivity, and fate’ and,
therefore, suggest ‘models for the construction of narratives of the self: The form is what matters
rather than the content’ (p. 199).
It’s easy to notice the differences between Giddens and other (classic) identity theories.
Going with Giddens, for example it’s not necessary to ask for an ‘identity crises’ (Erikson, 1950), to
distinguish between I and me (Mead, 1934) or between social and collective identity. It’s not even
necessary to consider whether there might be something like a European identity or which
conditions must be met for the existence of such an identity. It’s enough to ask for the very own
biographic narratives of Europeans since all of us have to integrate the structure Europe in the
stories about ourselves. Let us consider just two more points in Giddens’ self-identity theory in
order to prepare the following case study on both Europe’s place in educated Germans’ self identity
 6

and the effects of going to the cinema on being European. The first one is from social identity
theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986). Tajfel (1981), which mention three components of group
membership: cognitive, evaluative, and emotional components. Giddens doesn’t use that vocabulary
but he certainly agreed that ‘the learning of what is not me’ would be ‘the origin of self-identity’
(Giddens, 1991, p. 42). According to Tajfel, and obviously important in the case of the European
Union, the awareness of belonging is first and emotions are second.
The second amendment is a kind of mixture of Giddens and the literature on the factors,
which could influence Europe’s place in a biographic narrative (Cederman, 2001; Bruter, 2005;
http://www.euroidentities.org). Since the reflexive project of the self is a product of modernity,
there should be less reflexive work in traditional settings – in settings with strong local, religious or
family authorities. Of course, the setting also shapes dispositions and experiences such as
- education, language skills and status,
- social capital, work abroad or travelling, and
- tensions between national and European identity.
Encounters with European and non-European cultures should be even more important than films.
Additionally, we didn’t need the financial crisis in order to know that some countries are more in
favour of the European idea than others. Any study on the connection between European films and
European identity should include the various milieus indicated by this list of the most influencing
factors when we define Europe as part of our life narrative.

Research design: exploring European identities

The decision to employ a qualitative approach is based on the nature of the research question and
the theoretical background of this study. Qualitative methods are superior to standardized
quantitative methods when investigating the relevance that users attach to Europe, the European
idea and European movies, because of their focus on ‘the context, the setting and the subjects’
frame of reference’ (Marshall & Rossman, 1989, p. 46). Using these methods, respondents are able
to speak freely about their everyday life, their needs and usage patterns. Although Giddens’
approach to self-identity requires a detailed insight into the experiences of European citizens and
largely necessitates a qualitative research approach, his writings are not particularly helpful in
designing such a study.
One methodological choice worth considering was individual in-depth interviews. Why not
just ask people for their very own narratives? But the idea didn’t work out due to the fact that in
 7

Europe, national identity and European films don’t have prominent places in our narratives. In other
words: Since these issues are deeply embedded in practical consciousness, talking about it is not as
easy as it seems to be. What, for example, would a German student answer to the question, ‘What
comes first to your mind when thinking about Europe?’ asked by a student interviewer with the very
same social and educational background?
Focus group interviews therefore seemed the better choice. The key advantage of this method
is that participants stimulate and encourage one another (Meyen et al., 2011, pp. 60-62). While it
would be very difficult talking about a concrete issue such as Europe and European films in a
personal interview one hour or even longer, this was absolutely no problem in groups of five or six
interviewees.
In the end, we undertook three focus groups in Munich, and this pilot study worked very well,
although it has to be admitted that the demographic circumstances of the groups were quite specific.
The interviewees were recruited by Anna Kümpel (a female master student) according to a quota
derived from the above mentioned list of dispositions ad experiences which could influence
Europe’s place in a biographic narrative. Anna Kümpel was supported by gatekeepers to a school
class, a student group and an enterprise and was not allowed to know the persons to be interviewed.
This recruiting procedure ensured that the interviewees were ready to participate and increased their
commitment to the project. Altogether, 17 participants took part in the three focus groups:
 16 Germans and one Bulgarian,
 4 male and 13 female,
 5 pupils (aged 16 to 17), 5 students (in their early 20s), and 7 employees (30 years and
older).

The 17 interviewees were mostly well-educated, middle-class Germans interested in European

films; all of them lived in Munich; only two were older than 40; all of them travelled a lot outside
Germany, and some had even worked or studied abroad. But even if the empirical basis is very
limited, we can still glean some useful first results from this pilot study. In any case, focus groups
cannot deliver representative results and cannot answer the question of how commonly a specific
pattern is represented in the population, but they can at least reveal and explain typical patterns. The
main advantage of such a sample is that it made it possible to work with participants who are really
interested in films. All of the interviewees could talk about films, although even these well-educated
 8

Germans, who claimed to be interested in European cinema, found it difficult to name many films
or directors.
The focus group discussions were managed by Anna Kümpel again (a well-trained and
experienced host) and structured by a guideline that defined the topics to be addressed and provided
flexibility for the respondents to focus on certain aspects of their self-identities as well as particular
experiences with particular European countries or movies. The guideline included questions such
as:
 What comes to your mind first when thinking about Europe?
 What should a television documentary about Europe include?
 Are you happy to be described as European?
 Think of your favourite European country. Is there a film that would help to make you
understand that country or the people living there?
 Do European films actually still differ from Hollywood?
There were also two creative exercises in each focus group. First, the groups had to imagine they
were a television production company and make a documentary on Europe. And secondly, the
interviewees had to choose a card with the name of a European country (from a choice of six with
two blanket cards). Those cards were just the starting point to talk about a certain country and films
coming from there. Therefore the participants could talk about their favourite films. In other words:
We didn’t suggest any films but listened to the groups. The range was from Monty Python for the
UK to the first Stieg Larsson films for Sweden to Louis de Funès for France.
The data analysis is at the core of qualitative research, a “challenging task” (Creswell, 2007,
p. 147) and the most criticised step in that research tradition for being overly subjective. The
process of analyzing and interpreting qualitative data should therefore be thoroughly documented
and disclosed, especially as there exists no standardized analysis strategy (Creswell, 2007); on the
contrary, the analytical methods will vary according to the theoretical context. Here, we follow a
theory-driven approach that is different from any classical grounded theory and from hermeneutics.
The procedure could best be described as a ‘theoretical coding’, using the theoretical concepts
outlined above to interpret the qualitative data (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). The analysis of the
qualitative data included six stages: (1) data management, (2) close reading, (3) describing and
condensing the meanings, (4) classifying by coding the statements, (5) interpreting by
contextualising the statements and (6) representing the data (Creswell, 2007, pp. 156-157).
 9

First, the group interviews had to be recorded and transcribed. Before reading any of the
transcripts, the theoretical assumptions were revisited. Notes were taken during the close reading
stage. In the third stage, the statements were condensed by paraphrasing (Kvale & Brinkmann,
2009, p. 206). The coding process used in stage four is clearly key to the analysis of the data, and
both concept-driven (films and self-identity) and data-driven codes (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009)
were used to ensure the openness of the process. Through this process, a portrait of each participant
was developed, using the theoretical categories and paying special attention to silences,
contradictions, double entendres, metaphors and social desirability (Creswell, 2007). The given
statements were then contextualized based on the biographical context of the interviewees. Each
transcript was analyzed by both the interviewer and me and subsequently discussed, producing a
shared interpretation that augments the intersubjective testability and therefore the validity of the
results (Flick, 2009). Finally, the different portraits were compared looking for similarities and
differences concerning the place of Europe in the self-identity of well-educated Germans and the
effects of going to the cinema on being European.

Results
The results of this pilot study of the relationship between watching movies and European identity
are organized under eight headings, the first four covering the experience of being European and the
second four the experience of engaging with European films. The first two theses are hardly
surprising: German Europeans are very certain of who they are even though they don’t think about
it on a daily basis.
 Thesis 1: For the (German) interviewees, Europe is as everyday as life itself. In other words:
Europe doesn’t have continuously to be revised in the ongoing stories about the self.
 Thesis 2: First of all, Europe is wealthy and secure in a broad sense. As a consequence,
Europeans are calm and cool. Additionally, Europe is associated with history, culture,
democracy and the separation of state and religion. Part of being European is the knowledge
of the heterogeneity of European countries and people.

Before presenting some quotes from the focus group supporting the first two theses, I would like to
underline again that all of my interviewees were relatively young and relatively well off. Even at
age 17 or 22 they travel the world. All of them are well aware of global problems. They talk rather
casually about warlords and banlieux, and about friends and relatives all over the world, as if this
came perfectly naturally to them:
 10

- Just thinking of other continents, Europe is very functional. We don’t have so many
problems. We live peacefully with one another, and we can travel the continent (Clarissa,
17).
- A European passport is like a safe home. Talking to people who don’t have one, you
realise it’s a luxury, too. And what about us? We don’t even realize that kind of luxury”
(Nicole, 22, whose mother, coming from South Africa, had to fight for a European
passport).
- I’m glad I live in Europe. The social security system, the human rights. Fortunately, we
don’t have any warlords that kill all of us with no reason (Sophie, 17).
- For me, Europe is tradition. History as well. Very different cultures. Really different
cultures. That’s true for other continents as well but not at the same level (Andrea, with 29
older than the other three girls).

It might be surprising that the youngest participants seemed to have the most emotional ties to
Europe since these participants promote a better understanding of each other’s lifestyle. Some of
them even like the European symbols such as the European flag or the European anthem (thesis 4).

 Thesis 3: The interviewees found it easy to name certain features of different European
nations. For example, Germans are seen as accurate and performance-related but not very
relaxed and rather reserved.

 Thesis 4: While the older generations have rather cognitive ties to Europe, the younger ones
are a step closer to feeling European. For them, Europe is not just a political process but a
way of living. Pupils as well as students benefit from Europe. That’s why they pay back
with emotions.

The older men in particular talked about Europe in a very technical way, almost like politicians.
Thesis 4 is related to Tajfel’s components of group membership, and there are no doubt a lot more
differentiations that could be made, not just between young and old but between nations or milieus.
In comparison, the images of other nations seem to be quite consistent (thesis 3). In all three groups,
we encountered the very same vocabulary, which is why no quotations are provided, just some
images of the German self-identity.
What does all this mean for European films? Again, I have four theses. The first two are
about the distinction between European films and other productions, especially from Hollywood or
from India. Thesis five also links to the question of European identity:

 Thesis 5: On the one hand, European films are seen as very heterogeneous, but on the other
hand they are distinct from any other productions. Therefore, films are mirrors and motors
of European identity.
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 Thesis 6: For the interviewees, the outstanding features of European films are lack of action,
lack of expensive special effects and lack of big stars, along with a focus on problems and
complex stories.

For Andrea, 29, Europe is about different cultures. For her (representing the opinions of most of the
focus groups’ participants) European films from different countries are very different too but
distinct from any other productions as well. The following quotations emphasise the lack of money
for European films and the outstanding plots, as well as a kind of self-criticism or self-irony to
illustrate that thesis:

The Europeans don’t have so many special effects since they cannot compete with
Hollywood. It’s just the money. But Europeans do exciting stories. It’s based on our culture.
Americans just don’t have Paris on a daily basis (Martin, 36).
To put it rather tritely, Europeans work on other films. It’s just the plots. Hollywood has
good plots too but with a lot of varnish (Claudia, 50).
European films are more realistic, in general. When Hollywood produces a remake, it looks
quite different (Clarissa, 17).
For me, there is a large measure of self-criticism in European films. Sometimes, these films
even make a fool of our nations (Simone, 17).

Since there were no real differences between the interviewees on this matter, this seems to be the
overall image of European films, at least among well-educated Germans. The two final theses are
more risky, especially at a time when the European idea is being contested in more challenging
ways than ever before. These two theses should therefore be read as a tentative interpretation, as
indeed is the case with all qualitative empirical research.
 Thesis 7: The features of European films are linked to a meta-message: ‘We Europeans’ are
self-confident and cool. So, we can afford to have problems with no happy end. In other
words: While Americans need a dream factory, Europeans are living their dream.

 Thesis 8: Featuring the national habitus as well as everyday life, European films strengthen
the images of other European nations and enable appreciation of other Europeans – even
though most of the interviewees found it difficult to name a lot of titles or recall the details
of plots.

The concept of meta-message is an idea taken from cultivation research (Gerbner & Gross, 1976),
and indicates an over-arching level of meaning beyond any concrete content. In our case, the meta-
message of European movies might be self-confidence and coolness. So, Europeans can afford to
have problems with no happy end. However, European films feature the national habitus as well as
everyday life, so we are able to learn something about other European nations by watching certain
 12

films. Thesis 8 is more concrete. Some of the following quotes almost sound like clichés but maybe
that is the way we actually think about other nations:

I love whodunits from Scandinavia. The people there are very cold and reserved. Everything
seems extremely alien and sinister. I really do wonder, is this reality? I’ve never been there
(Andrea, 29).
I guess it is. Finnish films are rather melancholic and spooky as well. It’s because of the
long darkness (Martin, 36, right after Andrea admitted that she had never been to
Scandinavia).
I would recommend these whodunits. In the end, you know how they are (Claudia, 50,
taking whodunits as reality).
Amélie. Welcome to the Sticks. That’s France. Very creative, with substance. And they don’t
forget the audience. Their attitudes towards life are just different from ours. The French are
precise as well but more charming and a little bit sloppy. I like those attitudes (Alexander,
43).

What this modest case study suggests is that European movies strengthen both the sense of self-
confidence and self-awareness among Europeans and our images of other European nations. The
quoted examples are about Scandinavia and France but one could easily add images of Greek
families, Italian mamas or British humour. It would be interesting to learn about film audiences in
these countries as well – maybe using the theoretical and methodological framework developed
here – to find out how those audiences engage with European films. Listening to the interviewees,
however, their attitudes and perceptions make it clear that (European) films or indeed any other
media products are rarely the only source of knowledge about other Europeans and European
countries. Books and other print sources and to a large degree personal experience on holidays or
through private contacts and networks are also important elements in forming our social and
cultural identity. It comes as no surprise to learn that personal experiences are much more important
than films in terms of establishing the place of Europe in narratives of self-identity, as the different
attitudes of young and old Germans testify.

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