Jonathan Groff: The Soft-Power Superstar America Never Sanctioned

Jonathan Groff: The Unlikely Global Export America Never Put on a Tariff List

PARIS—While Washington and Beijing slug it out over semiconductors and soybeans, another U.S. product is slipping through every customs checkpoint unmolested: Jonathan Groff. Yes, the man who once asked the world if it wanted to build a snowman has quietly become the West’s soft-power equivalent of fentanyl—irresistible, slightly addictive, and impossible to interdict.

From the West End to the West Bank (where bootleg Hamilton audio circulates like samizdat), Groff’s voice—equal parts choirboy and chainsaw—has become the sonic wallpaper of a planet that can’t decide if it’s ascending or circling the drain. In Seoul karaoke booths, tipsy salary men scream “You’ll Be Back” with the same fervor they once reserved for “Gangnam Style.” In Berlin techno clubs, DJs drop the “Mindhunter” monologue over four-on-the-floor beats, because nothing says hedonism like a dramatized account of 1970s serial killers. Even the Vatican’s own choir is rumored to have rehearsed a Gregorian arrangement of “Left Behind,” presumably for those Sundays when damnation feels more topical than redemption.

The international Groff economy runs on irony. Japan sells limited-edition King George III Nendoroids—tiny plastic despots with interchangeable sneers—while Argentina imports bootleg Groff prayer candles that promise, in comic sans Spanish, “to illuminate your existential dread.” TikTok, the world’s most efficient anxiety distributor, has reduced his entire oeuvre to a 12-second loop of him spitting the word “awesome” in “Hamilton,” a clip now used to soundtrack everything from Ukrainian battlefield drone footage to Nigerian cooking tutorials. The algorithm has spoken: humanity prefers its history lessons at 1.5× speed with a side of jazz hands.

Meanwhile, the man himself remains endearingly unbothered, floating above the geopolitical fray like a well-moisturized Zelig. When asked by a Brazilian reporter whether he feels responsible for global cultural homogenization, Groff replied, “I just wanted to sing,” which is exactly what a sleeper agent for the monoculture would say before activating protocol Frozen 3: Let It Glop. His Instagram, a masterclass in aggressively wholesome content—sunrise hikes, green-juice smiles, the occasional rescue dog—plays like NATO propaganda for the serotonin-deficient. Somewhere in Moscow, a Kremlin intern is Photoshopping a shirtless Putin hugging Olaf, just to keep pace.

The darker joke, of course, is that Groff’s brand of earnest theatricality is thriving precisely because sincerity is now contraband. In an era when every diplomat’s tweet reads like a ransom note and every climate summit ends with a non-binding group hug, Groff’s unapologetic belting sounds almost subversive—like finding a fresh flower in a mass grave. Europeans, still hungover from a decade of austerity musicals about tuberculosis, have crowned him the anti-Brecht: no alienation, just full-throated participation in whatever emotional Ponzi scheme he’s selling. Even the French, who traditionally regard enthusiasm as a neurological disorder, gave him a standing ovation at the 2022 César Awards, possibly because they mistook “Sweeney Todd” for a documentary about barber-surgeon supply chains.

What does it mean that a gay kid from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has become the lingua franca of a planet on fire? Perhaps only that the apocalypse will be choreographed. When the last glacier calves into TikTok-ready chunks, you can bet someone will overlay Groff’s “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” on the livestream, because irony is the final coping mechanism we haven’t monetized twice.

For now, Groff keeps touring, a one-man trade surplus in an otherwise deficit-ridden culture. And somewhere in a refugee camp, a teenager who’s never seen snow is humming “For the First Time in Forever,” imagining a world where doors open rather than close. If that’s colonialism, it’s at least in a major key—proof that even in the twilight of American empire, the loudest export is still a four-octave hope, tax-free and thoroughly auto-tuned.