The Gosling Doctrine: How One Canadian Became the World’s Last Functioning Multilateral Institution

Ryan Gosling, the Canadian export who looks like a boy-band hologram left in the sun just long enough to gain existential dread, has become the planet’s universal reflection surface: every nation now projects its own neuroses onto that eerily symmetrical face. From Lagos cineplexes to a repurposed Siberian gulag that now streams Netflix originals, Gosling is less a person than a multilateral treaty on desire, melancholy, and the price of moisturized masculinity.

Consider the Japanese phenomenon of “Gosling-san,” a meme in which salary men Photoshop themselves into Drive stills, replacing the scorpion jacket with a Uniqlo windbreaker and the getaway car with a hilariously over-packed rush-hour train. The caption, roughly translated: “I too am wordless, haunted, and unpaid for overtime.” Meanwhile in Brazil, evangelical pastors warn that La La Land is a gateway to jazz-based Satanism; congregants nod solemnly while secretly humming “City of Stars” on the bus home. The Church of Gosling is global, schismatic, and tax-exempt.

Europeans, ever eager to turn art into policy, have weaponized the Gosling brand. The French culture ministry briefly floated a “Gosling Clause” that would subsidize any film featuring a man who looks sad while holding a cigarette—an economic stimulus that collapsed when Macron realized half of France already qualifies. The Swedes, never to be outdone, commissioned a study on whether repeated viewings of Blade Runner 2049 could replace six months of therapy. Early results show a 12 percent spike in ennui, but therapists report a 30 percent drop in small talk, so Stockholm counts it as net progress.

Across the Indian subcontinent, Gosling’s glow-up has reached mythical status. Mumbai bootleg DVDs label him “The Thinking Woman’s Hrithik,” while Delhi dating apps auto-suggest the opening line: “If Ryan Gosling were reincarnated as a Delhi boy, he’d still live with his parents.” In Pakistan, a TikTok star lip-syncs Drive lines in Urdu; the comments oscillate between marriage proposals and polite death threats—standard engagement metrics south of the Khyber Pass.

Africa, often written off by Western pop-culture export reports, has quietly built an entire cottage industry around Gosling reaction GIFs. Nairobi tech bros use them to defuse awkward Slack messages; Lagos wedding DJs drop a slowed-down “I’m Just Ken” remix to empty the dance floor so guests can refill their champagne flutes and gossip about inflation. Even the Central African Republic—where cinema infrastructure is literally a white sheet nailed to a mango tree—manages nightly screenings via a diesel generator and a USB stick smuggled in by a peacekeeper with questionable priorities.

But let’s not kid ourselves: Gosling’s international omnipresence is less about the man and more about what he allows us to avoid. While glaciers commit suicide in real time and supply chains snap like cheap guitar strings, we can all agree—regardless of passport—that it’s comforting to watch a white man in a satin scorpion jacket stare meaningfully at Los Angeles neon. His silence is our lingua franca; his jawline, a non-violent border wall. In that sense, Gosling is the last functional multilateral institution: he distracts equally, disappoints softly, and never asks for reparations.

So here we are, a planet of 8.1 billion souls, united by the fantasy that somewhere, a softly lit Canadian is as lost as we are, but with better skin. If that isn’t globalization’s end-state, I don’t know what is. And if the oceans rise faster than expected, at least we’ll have waterproof phones to rewatch The Notebook one last time. Humanity may drown, but it will drown swooning.