Introduction: Now and Then

Abstract

On March 10, 2012 Robert Hardman’s “How I See It” column for The Daily Mail purported to explore the resurgent division between the UK and Argentina over sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. As ever, the clue was in the title, “The Empire Strikes Back,” itself a striking glimpse of the intersection of popular culture and nation-state politics stirred by British tabloid press. Hardman’s inflammatory rhetoric decried those who, in his view, pander to suggestions that Britain is “behaving like the old imperial power it no longer is.” His hit list included a former Commonwealth president, the Argentinian government, and several celebrities: the US actor and director Sean Penn; a “misquoted” Roger Waters of the band Pink Floyd; and Morrissey, formerly front man of The Smiths who, while performing onstage in Argentina, allegedly declared that the Falkland islands belong “to you”—a statement, Hardman opined, designed to feed an Argentinian sense of outrage as “the plucky victim of British imperialism rather than the beaten bully boy of 1982.”¹