The nation as an imagined commodity: Branding ‘Melania’

Abstract

The article uses the case of Melania Trump, the former First Lady of the United States, to analyse the discursive strategies through which the print media in Slovenia represented ‘Melania’ as an ethnically born Slovenian on a national scale. The article also demonstrates how patriotism, based on the love and feelings of belonging to the Slovenian nation-state, was nationalized in the case of ‘Melania’. The main argument is that numerous and repetitive media representations of ‘Melania’ aggressively put nationalism in the commercial context, and consequently transformed the nation into a commodity and an object of trade which can be sold and of which the Slovenians can make a profit. Consequently, the Slovenian press coverage of Melania Trump created her as a national brand meant to perform on the local, national market when merging emotional attitudes with commercial allure. The article concludes with the discursive strategies such as representing ‘Melania’ as ‘ours’, as a tool to accelerate the country’s economic growth and as a branding strategy to sell the Slovenian landscape and culture and produce the Slovenian nation as an imagined commodity. Furthermore, such branding of the nation is directed towards domestic rather than international audiences.