The Diplomats’ New Groove

It’s close to midnight, the rock ‘n’ roll is loud, and Andreas Ekman, the very tall consul general of Sweden, is on the dance floor, towering over a 20-something crowd of actors, producers and Swedish expats in leather jackets and miniskirts.

Consul Anita Ekman, a career diplomat who also happens to be Andreas’ wife, is introducing a guest to Richard Ulsvengren, a member of a film directors’ collective that has just unveiled its directorial debut, “Chain of Fools,” at a Santa Monica “pre-premiere.”

Ulsvengren is explaining how the Traktor collective is more avant-garde than the Danish-born Dogma 95 film movement. Dogma films are signed by individual directors, but Traktor signs only the name of the collective.

Got that?

But his more-cutting-edge-than-thou rap fades in and out, eclipsed by the party’s soundtrack. Finally everyone just goes back to the dance floor.

This is diplomacy?

It is in Los Angeles. After all, this is the Left Coast, not Washington. Public life in this milieu is about black leather and Armani, not pinstripes. In this Hollywood-driven world, parties are business by other means.

And here in the world’s sixth largest economy--California--this is what it means to “promote the interests of Sweden.”

The methods employed might not be as obvious as in the signing of a trade accord over rubber chicken in a musty Washington ballroom. But here, this qualifies as foreign relations.

And the Ekmans are the latest players in a diplomatic world that is becoming deeply enmeshed in Los Angeles economic and cultural life.

For diplomats, this New Economy outpost is anything but a backwater. Dignitaries sent here can be as high-level as Kim Campbell, the former prime minister of Canada--California’s third largest foreign export market.

Most of the dinner parties and receptions of the consular universe are held behind closed doors. But as the economic importance of this crossroads between California and the world grows, the diplomatic profile in public life is growing. There are now 89 consulates in Los Angeles--from Mexico’s imposing headquarters off MacArthur Park to a string of foreign offices on the Westside--55 of them headed by career diplomats. Not a week goes by that a consulate does not sponsor a public film screening, art show or concert, all advertised on slick Web sites.

“There’s been a big growth,” said Ginger Bernard, deputy chief of protocol for Los Angeles County. “They’re very busy. The profile is high.”

There’s a serious subtext, of course. California is an important world trading partner--with annual foreign exports of more than $100 billion--and an even bigger market for the import of foreign products, according to Brian Bugsch, a state trade-policy analyst.

Paul Dimond, consul general of California’s largest foreign investor, Britain, has the same ranking, he says, as that of an ambassador to “a medium-size country of perhaps 50 million people.” With a staff of 44, responsibility for a large swath of the Southwest and Hawaii, and “an 80-hour work week,” Dimond says he sees his consulate as more of a mini-embassy, “and not so mini in our case.”

“It feels like running a medium-size embassy,” he said, in a clipped Oxford accent, as he reviewed plans to watch British films at the Sundance and Palm Springs film festivals.

Outgoing Consul General Jose Luis Bernal of Mexico says he is running Mexico’s second-largest diplomatic mission outside of Washington. The 65-person staff helps 150,000 compatriots a year with everything from immigration to legal assistance and oversees trade issues for Mexico, California’s leading export market.

For diplomats who have been posted to more stuffy, tradition-bound cities, Los Angeles is a breath of fresh air, a place where protocol is spelled with a small “p.”

Among the California notables who have lunched with the consular press officers’ organization have been State Librarian Kevin Starr, radio host Michael Jackson, and . . . porn king Larry Flynt.

Larry Flynt?!

“It was my predecessor’s idea,” explained French Vice Consul Yo-Jung Chen. “We just wanted to hear what he thought about the 1st Amendment.”

The Swedes are latecomers to this scene--their consulate had been an honorary posting for several years when the Ekmans arrived in 1998--but they already seem to have gone native. Last year, by their own account, the Ekmans threw 95 parties, dinners, cocktails and lunches.

Many of their soirees are such standard diplomatic fare as the reception for executives of Ericcson, the Swedish mobile-phone maker, which opened a factory in San Diego in 1998. Or the visit by Swedish legislators (more than half are women) who were concerned that increased immigration to Sweden has sparked xenophobia and wanted to take a firsthand look at California multiculturalism.

But the Ekmans’ acclimation to the flora and fauna of Los Angeles is most evident at such events as their Academy Awards party last year honoring Swedish film director Lasse Hallstrom and his wife, Lena Olin, for his Oscar nomination for “The Cider House Rules.”

Or the evening when Quincy Jones’ dreadlocked, young Swedish American son presented a Latina rap group, Vienna, at the Swedish residence overlooking the mist-filled Santa Monica Canyon, as his famous father strutted proudly through the party. The next act of the evening was the beautiful, young winner of Sweden’s Jenny Lind Award, who sang classical opera arias in a strapless satin ball gown.

It is this mixture of the profoundly Old World and the frankly modern that distinguishes life on the consular circuit. This is a world in which visits by the Japanese emperor mingle with concerts by contemporary Japanese singers. Where Nelson Mandela comes to talk sense to former gang members under the sanitizing auspices of the South African consulate.

A typical week might find Anita Ekman calling people to get nominations for Sweden’s annual “rock ‘n’ roll Nobel,” the Polar Music Prize, awarded to performers including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Isaac Stern and Ray Charles. Or gearing up for a yearlong round of Los Angeles festivities to coincide with Sweden’s stewardship of the rotating presidency of the European Union during the first half of 2001.

The festivities will include displays of Swedish telecommunications and film, a special exhibit on modern design in the Ikeacracy, celebrations for the Nobel Prize centennial celebration, and yes, there will be ABBA, or at least some founding members of the group, appearing during a Los Angeles run of a London musical, “Mama Mia!,” that pays tribute to their hits.

“Basically,” Anita concluded, it will be “partying all the time.”

*

In Los Angeles, Andreas said, “You can mix the traditional expressions of the culture with the more modern ones, the old with the new. It’s good fun.”

Evidently.

No wonder the Swedish ambassador to the United States, Jan Eliasson, admitted to being just a little envious of the Ekmans’ California posting at a candle-lit dinner party of arts administrators and millionaire philanthropists at the Swedish residence, where most high-level entertaining takes place.

Eliasson was explaining Sweden’s take on “people-to-people diplomacy,” telling dinner guests how in the post-Cold War world, global cooperation must be fostered not just at the conference table, but in the real world.

In the midst of Eliasson’s monologue, he drifted off the script into an anecdote about the time, when he was a young man, he first came to Los Angeles, rented a convertible and sped up the rugged coast, playing Mozart on his car stereo. His voice trailed off and his eyes grew distant at the memory . . . but as a former United Nations undersecretary general, the California post is a bit below his rank.

Leading a toast (“Skol!”), Andreas Ekman explained that Eliasson and his wife, Kerstin, were “doing an Ekman” in Washington. That was a reference to a diplomatic post accommodating the careers of husband and wife--a complicated feat for any couple, and one, for the Ekmans, that makes Los Angeles a pot of gold at the end of assignments in which they sometimes found themselves a world apart.

The Ekmans’ unique partnership began at their first diplomatic posting, at the London Embassy.

After the two married, they had joint postings in Tanzania and Tokyo. Then Andreas was assigned to head the Baltics desk in Stockholm as the Soviet bloc crumbled, while Anita was sent as cultural attache to the New York consulate.

Anita returned to Stockholm three years later--but Andreas was posted to the Swedish Embassy in Washington, D.C. She did a stint as a press attache in Bonn before rejoining her husband and two children in Washington.

That’s when they started thinking about California. During a round of budget cuts to make way for emerging Eastern European states, the Los Angeles post had been reduced to the status of honorary consulate.

“Several of us thought that was a very bad idea,” Andreas said. “We’re all moving into the digital world today. If you look at the new economy, California is the closest to the Swedish experience.”

Not to mention the need to foster opportunities for the growing Swedish entertainment industry.

“They are very complementary economies,” he said. “It was a realization that we needed eyes and ears in California.”

But when the Ekmans first arrived in 1998, Anita said, “we didn’t even have so much as a Rolodex. We had to start pretty much from scratch.”

What they did have were relationships with Swedes who were well-connected in Hollywood and the music industry.

One helpful compatriot was rock videographer Jonas Akerlund, who has made videos for such artists as Madonna, Smashing Pumpkins, and U2. When his Madonna video “Ray of Light” was nominated for his Grammy in 1999, the Swedish consulate threw him a party. He brought influential friends to the Ekmans’ parties and escorted the Swedish trade minister, Leif Pagrotsky, during a fall 1998 visit to Los Angeles.

“He’s proud of the Swedish directors and actors in Hollywood,” Akerlund said of Ekman. “He sees us as a very important part of the Swedish hype.”

The Ekmans also leaned on the Swedish American community in California, drawing to their dinner-party scene such well-connected guests as South Coast Plaza managing partner Henry Segerstrom, a philanthropist who donated $40 million to the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

“Traditionally, diplomacy has been government to government,” Andreas said. “Now it’s also about people, opening doors to business and economic contacts between people. We can create meeting places where people can find business opportunities.”

Consular affairs, such as a recent party for Swedish film legend Liv Ullman, might not always appear to be strictly business.

Many of the guests were there to meet Ullman after the premiere of a film she had directed, “Faithless.” But the top Warner Bros. executives mingling in the crowd were good contacts in any language.

The film explores a love triangle turned tragic, with multilayered marital infidelities, coerced sex, and a father encouraging his daughter to take a fatal handful of sleeping pills with him. Ullman cheerfully told everyone that the story, adapted from a script by Swedish cinema icon Ingmar Bergman, was based partly on the real-life woes of people involved with the film.

Well, it was the Swedes, after all, who virtually invented the depressing movie genre--and turned it into a major export product. And exports--of culture, products and talent--are what this scene is all about.

“It’s a freer, more open atmosphere here,” Anita Ekman said. “It’s not stuffy, it’s not choreographed. It’s all about your creativity, your energy and your message. Everybody seems like a pioneer. And if you’re a pioneer, you’re not bogged down by old ritual systems.”