'Mediating' national anxieties via stereotyping the French ‘threatening Other’: Analysis of the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand media coverage

Abstract

In a globally interconnected world, countries are observed, rated, and put into competition with each other (Werron, 2014). One way countries can stand out in this global competition for attention and esteem is by hosting sport megaevents because the organising country becomes the center of attention of a worldwide audience during these highly mediated occasions. In this chapter, we analyse the 2011 men’s Rugby World Cup (RWC) hosted by New Zealand, which represented one such opportunity to showcase this small and remote country to the world, instil national pride, and bolster country identity. On world maps, New Zealand is traditionally placed at the bottom right at the edge of the world, sometimes cut in half, sometimes not even there. Therefore, many scholars have noted that geography – especially notions of center and periphery (Laponce, 1980) – combined with New Zealand’s small population, generates anxieties about New Zealand’s country identity and place in the world, and underlies its perpetual quest for self-definition (Bell, 1996; King, 1991; Williams, 1997),1 including the “fear that the center is somewhere else” (Perry, 1994, p. 77). Manifestations of this quest and its accompanying fear are evident in the recurrence of media messages that promote national pride, including New Zealand’s success on the world stage, through frequent evocations of the global uniqueness and magnificence of New Zealand’s nature and the country’s pure character, and the intense focus on international sporting success. These representations sit in Buhmann and Ingenhoff’s (2015) “aesthetic dimension” of country image, which “covers beliefs regarding the [a]esthetic qualities and the attractiveness of a country as a cultural and scenic place,” including “public culture, traditions, and territory” and the “functional dimension” that “covers beliefs regarding the competences and competitiveness of a country,” in this case in relation to its performance on the international sporting stage (p. 115). Thus, staging the RWC on home soil was a significant opportunity for New Zealand’s world-renowned men’s rugby team, the All Blacks, to demonstrate their supremacy on the world stage by winning the sport’s pinnacle event and enhance New Zealand’s country brand and reputation. Despite their overall dominance of world rugby and consistent number-one ranking,2 since hosting and winning the inaugural RWC in 1987 the team had failed to perform well at Rugby World Cups; its best outcome was reaching the final in 1995. Furthermore, by 2011, following two unexpected, and thus shocking, defeats against France in 1999 (semi-final) and 2007 (quarter-final), the French team had emerged as the All Blacks bête noire, a major threat to New Zealand’s success.