The Nordic Model of Whiteness and Exceptionalism: Representation of Otherness in Some Nordic Film and Television
Keywords:
Nordic whiteness,
Nordic exceptionalism,
colorblind society,
racial identity,
internal and external Otherness,
Nordic film and television
Abstract
Race is a controversial question in the Global North, especially in those environments that consider themselves to be colorblind, while in fact they are predominantly white. This seems to be particularly the case in the Nordic countries, where the concepts of equality and egality are central to the mutual feeling of identity and where the racial discourse is marked by the prohibition of racial discrimination. By reducing the category of race to something fictive, one cannot address it openly in the contemporary Nordic societies. Therefore, this paper deals with the representation of Otherness – external and internal – in the Nordic film and television. As the paper focuses on the closely related notions of Nordic whiteness and Nordic exceptionalism, it is based on the categorial apparatus of postcolonial studies. The main hypothesis is that the widely spread positive hetero image of the Nordic region as socially open, tolerant and free, is undermined by the media representation of the identity of Other, where the prejudices, racism and paternalism towards the non-white population (and especially the non-white immigration) are being disclosed. The aim of the paper is to reveal how film and television, as potential correctives of the existing stereotypes, can reflect the ever changing political, cultural and social circumstances and by that, how (and whether) this image of Otherness necessarily corresponds to the narrative of exceptionalism and whiteness of the Nordic region.
Nordic exceptionalism, together with Nordic whiteness as the integral part of the broader feeling of the Nordic identity, has become a part of the common political discourse and an object of discussion within the field of popular culture, literature and film. Still, the sense of one own’s exceptionalism has become a subject of critical debate, a myth to be debunked, as the phenomena such as the escalation of ethnic violence have marked the recent years in the Nordic societies. This development of the social, cultural and political circumstances has been reflected in the contemporary Nordic media production (film and television) and continues to be analyzed. The image of the Nordics, as being inherently white and homogenous, has thus been exposed as artificial and constructed.
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References
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Filmografija / Filmography
1864, 2014. Season 1, Episode 3, October 19, 2014, DR. Directed and written by Ole Bornedal.
Borgen, 2010. Season 1, Episode 4, „Hundrede dage“, October 17, 2010, DR. Directed by Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, and written by Adam Price.
Brødre. 2004. Directed by Sussane Bier. Copenhagen: Nordisk Film.
Brothers. 2009. Directed by Jim Sheridan. Vancouver: Lionsgate.
Den eneste ene. 1999. Directed by Sussane Bier. Aalborg: Sandrew Metronome.
Efter brylluppet. 2006. Directed by Susanne Bier. Copenhagen: Nordisk Film.
Gå med fred Jamil. 2008. Directed by Omar Shargawi. Hvidovre: Zentropa.
Hævnen. 2010. Directed by Susanne Bier. New York City: Sony Pictures Classics.
I Kina spiser de hunde. 1999. Directed by Lasse Spang Olsen. London/Philadelphia: TLA Releasing.
Le Harve. 2011. Directed by Aki Kaurismaki. Vaasa: Future Film Distribution.
Ofelaš. 1987. Directed by Nils Gaup. Boca Raton: Carolco Pictures.
Out of Africa. 1985. Directed by Sydney Pollack. Universal City: Universal Pictures.
Play. 2011. Directed by Ruben Östlund. Gothenburg: Plattform Produktion.
Pusher. 1996. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Hilversum: RCV Film Distribution.
Tala! Det är så mörkt. 1993. Directed by Suzanne Osten. New York City: First Run Features.
The Night Manager. Season 1, February 2016, BBC. Directed by Susanne Bier, and written by David Farr.
Äta sova dö. 2012. Directed by Gabriella Pichler. Stockholm: Triart Film AB.
Ahmed, Sara. 2007. „A Phenomenology of Whiteness“. Feminist Theory 8 (149): 149-168. DOI: 10.1177/1464700107078139
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis and London: Minnesota University Press.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Christensen, Cato. 2015. „Sami Shamanism and Indigenous Film: The Case of Pathfinder“. In Nordic Neoshamanisms, edited by Siv Ellen Kraft, Trude Fonneland, James R. Lewis, 175-190. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff. 2012. Theory from the South. Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa. London: Paradigm Publishers.
Cooper, Frederick. 2005. „Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History“. In Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, edited by Ania Loomba et al, 401-422. Durham and London: Duke University.
Daković, Nevena. 2009. „Edward Said“. U Figure u pokretu: Savremena Zapadna estetika, filozofija i teorija umetnosti, uredili Miško Šuvaković i Aleš Erjavec, 564-585. Beograd: Atoča.
DuBois, Thomas. 2000. „Folklore, Boundaries and Audience in The Pathfinder“. In Sami Folkloristics, edited by Juha Pentikäinen, 255-276. Turku: Abo Akademi.
Dyer, Richard. 2002. White. London and New York: Routledge.
Gay Pearson, Wendy. 2015. „’Once Upon a Time in a Land Far, Far Away’. Representations of the Pre-Colonial World in Atanarjuat, Ofelaš, and 10 Canoes“. In Reverse Shots: Indigenous Film and Media in an International Context, edsited by Wendy Gay Pearson and Susan Knabe, 143-172. Ontario: WLU Press.
Hedling, Erik. 2015. „The Battle of Dybbøl Revisited: The Danish Press Reception of the TV-series 1864“. Kosmorama 261. https://www.kosmorama.org/kosmorama/artikler/battle-dybbol-revisited-danish-press-reception-tv-series-1864 [13.08.2019.]
Kjældgaard, Lasse Horne. 2009. „En af de farligste bøger, der nogen sinde er skrevet om Afrika? Karen Blixen og kolonialismen“. Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek 30 (2): 111-136. Dostupno na: https://rjh.ub.rug.nl/tvs/article/view/10782/8353 [05.09.2019]
Hübinette, Tobias and Catrin Lundström. 2011. „White melancholia: Mourning the loss of 'Good old Sweden'“. Eurozine 6. https://www.eurozine.com/white-melancholia/ [15.08.2019.]
Hübinette, Tobias. 2016. „Racial Stereotypes and Swedish Antiracism: A Swedish Crisis of Multiculturalism?“. In Crisis in the Nordic Nations and Beyond. At the Intersection of Environment, Finance and Multiculturalism, edited by Kristín Loftsdóttir and Lars Jensen, 69-86. Farnham: Ashgate.
Hübinette, Tobias and Carina Tigervall. 2016. „When Racism Becomes Individualised: Experiences of Racialisation among Adult Adoptees and Adoptive Parents of Sweden“. In Complying with Colonialism. Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region, edited by Diana Mulinari et al, 119-136. London and New York: Routledge.
Kværndrup, Sigurd et al. 1981. ”Besættelse, øst eller vest, velfærdsstat, ufolkelig litteratur”. In Samlerens antologi af nordisk litteratur. Bind 10. Periode 1960-1973, edited by Sigurd Kværndrup et al, 11-54. København: Samlerens forlag.
Loftsdóttir, Kristín and Lars Jensen. 2014. Introduction to Crisis in the Nordic Nations and Beyond. At the Intersection of Environment, Finance and Multiculturalism, eds. Kristín Loftsdóttir and Lars Jensen, 1-9. Farnham: Ashgate.
Loftsdóttir, Kristín and Lars Jensen. 2016. „Introduction to Nordic Exceptionalism and the Nordic ’Others’“. In Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region. Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities, edited by Kristín Loftsdóttir and Lars Jensen, 1-13. Abingdon: Routledge.
Lundström, Catrin and Benjamin Teitelbaum. 2017. „Nordic Whiteness: An Introduction“. Scandinavian Studies 89 (2): 151-158. DOI: 10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0151.
Moffat, Kate. 2016. „From imperfect strangers to new citizens. Screening race and ethnicity in Nordic film history“. Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 6 (3): 225-223. https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca.6.3.225_1
Moffat, Kate. 2018. „Race, Ethnicity and Gang Violence: Exploring Multicultural Tensions in Contemporary Danish Cinema“. Scandinavian-Canadian studies / Études scandinaves au Canada no. 25, 136-153.
Mulinari, Diana et al. 2016. „Introduction: Postcolonialism and the Nordic Models of Gender and Welfare“. In Complying with Colonialism. Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region, edited by Diana Mulinari et al., 1-18. London and New York: Routledge.
Petterson, Christina. 2016. „Colonialism, Racism and Exceptionalism“. In Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region. Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities, edited by Kristín Loftsdóttir and Lars Jensen, 29-42. Abingdon: Routledge.
Rajić, Ljubiša. 2008. Skandinavska knjiga u prevodu na srpskohrvatski jezik. Monografije i brošure. Građa za bibliografiju. Beograd: Službeni glasnik.
Said, Edward. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books.
Said, Edward. 2003. Orientalism, London: Penguin Books.
Sjö, Sofia. 2013. „Go with Peace Jamil - Affirmation and Challenge of the Image of the Muslim Man“. Journal of Religion & Film, 17 (2). Dostupno na: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol17/iss2/8 [07.09.2019]
Spivak, Gayatri. 1994. „Can the Subaltern Speak“. In Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, edited by Laura Chrisman and Patrick Williams, 66-111, New York: Columbia University Press. Dostupno na: http://abahlali.org/files/Can_the_subaltern_speak.pdf [01.09.2019]
Stubberud, Elisabeth and Priscilla Ringrose. 2014. „Speaking images, race-less words: Play and the absence of race in contemporary Scandinavia“. Journal of Scandinavian Cinema no. 4, 61–76. DOI: 10.1386/jsca.4.1.61_1
Volquardsen, Ebbe. 2014. „Scandinavia and ’the Land of UnSwedish Freedom’: Jonathan Frazer, Susanne Bier and Self-conceptions of Exceptionalism in Crisis“. In Crisis in the Nordic Nations and Beyond. At the Intersection of Environment, Finance and Multiculturalism, edited by Kristín Loftsdóttir and Lars Jensen, 31-50, Farnham: Ashgate.
Westerståhl Stenport, Anna. 2016. „Nordic Remakes in Hollywood“. In A Companion to Nordic Cinema, edited by Mette Hjort and Ursula Lindqvist, 436-456. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI: 10.1002/9781118475300.ch20
Filmografija / Filmography
1864, 2014. Season 1, Episode 3, October 19, 2014, DR. Directed and written by Ole Bornedal.
Borgen, 2010. Season 1, Episode 4, „Hundrede dage“, October 17, 2010, DR. Directed by Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, and written by Adam Price.
Brødre. 2004. Directed by Sussane Bier. Copenhagen: Nordisk Film.
Brothers. 2009. Directed by Jim Sheridan. Vancouver: Lionsgate.
Den eneste ene. 1999. Directed by Sussane Bier. Aalborg: Sandrew Metronome.
Efter brylluppet. 2006. Directed by Susanne Bier. Copenhagen: Nordisk Film.
Gå med fred Jamil. 2008. Directed by Omar Shargawi. Hvidovre: Zentropa.
Hævnen. 2010. Directed by Susanne Bier. New York City: Sony Pictures Classics.
I Kina spiser de hunde. 1999. Directed by Lasse Spang Olsen. London/Philadelphia: TLA Releasing.
Le Harve. 2011. Directed by Aki Kaurismaki. Vaasa: Future Film Distribution.
Ofelaš. 1987. Directed by Nils Gaup. Boca Raton: Carolco Pictures.
Out of Africa. 1985. Directed by Sydney Pollack. Universal City: Universal Pictures.
Play. 2011. Directed by Ruben Östlund. Gothenburg: Plattform Produktion.
Pusher. 1996. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Hilversum: RCV Film Distribution.
Tala! Det är så mörkt. 1993. Directed by Suzanne Osten. New York City: First Run Features.
The Night Manager. Season 1, February 2016, BBC. Directed by Susanne Bier, and written by David Farr.
Äta sova dö. 2012. Directed by Gabriella Pichler. Stockholm: Triart Film AB.
Published
2020-01-05
How to Cite
Radulović, Ružica. 2020. “The Nordic Model of Whiteness and Exceptionalism: Representation of Otherness in Some Nordic Film and Television”. Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology 14 (4), 1247–1269. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.21301/eap.v14i4.9.
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