Nordic Genre Film Gustafsson, Tommy; Kääpä, Pietari; Hakola, Outi ...
05/2015
eBook, Book
A transnational comparative approach to contemporary popular Nordic genre film. Nordic Genre Film offers a transnational approach to studying contemporary genre production in Nordic cinema. It ...discusses a range of internationally renowned examples, from Nordic noir such as the television show The Bridge and films like Insomnia to high concept 'video generation' productions such as Iron Sky . Other contributions focus on road movies, the horror film, autobiographical films, historical epics and pornography. These are contextualized by discussion of their position in their respective national film and media histories as well as their influence on other Nordic countries and beyond. By highlighting similarities and differences between the countries, the book combines industrial perspectives and in depth discussion of specific films, while also offering historical perspectives on each genre as comes to production, distribution and reception of popular contemporary genre film.
Swedish children's films frequently deal with issues of nation and ethnicity, specifically with "Swedishness". This may be most obvious in films based on the works of Astrid Lindgren, which abound ...with nostalgic images of the national culture and landscape. However, films about contemporary Sweden, such as Kidzin da Hood (Förortsungar, 2006) address these issues too. Kidz in da Hood is about children in the ethnically diverse suburbs of Stockholm and it tells the story of a young fugitive, Amina, who is cared for by a young bohemian musician. It is, interestingly, a remake of one of the first Swedish children's films, Guttersnipes (Rännstensungar, 1944). In this article I argue that Kidzin da Hood is a contradictory piece, in the sense that it both celebrates and disavows "Swedishness", as it substitutes the class conflict of Guttersnipes for ethnic conflict.
Swedish children's films frequently deal with issues of nation and ethnicity, specifically with “Swedishness”. This may be most obvious in films based on the works of Astrid Lindgren, which abound ...with nostalgic images of the national culture and landscape. However, films about contemporary Sweden, such as Kidz in da Hood (Förortsungar, 2006) address these issues too. Kidz in da Hood is about children in the ethnically diverse suburbs of Stockholm and it tells the story of a young fugitive, Amina, who is cared for by a young bohemian musician. It is, interestingly, a remake of one of the first Swedish children's films, Guttersnipes (Rännstensungar, 1944). In this article I argue that Kidz in da Hood is a contradictory piece, in the sense that it both celebrates and disavows “Swedishness”, as it substitutes the class conict of Guttersnipes for ethnic conflict.
As a global TV franchise, The Tunnel is pure gold: there's a US–Mexican version already screening and there are frontiers all over the world with tension and history dotted across the boundary. The ...South Korea–North Korea would be ace.Keith Watson (2012)INTRODUCTION: NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A ‘POSTNATIONAL’ WORLDIn a globalised world, the notions of neatly defined, homogeneous ethnies or national identities are difficult to sustain, especially if they are construed as organic features of social organisation and historical development. Instead, the present moment is characterised by hybridisation, multiculturalism and all manners of transnational movement, flux and entanglement. It has even been argued that we are now situated in a postnational condition, where the construction of supranationals, such as the European Union, and the transnational, ‘deregulated’, cross-border movement of capital, cultures and people is indicative of a decline of nations and traditional concepts of the national as key factors (Ezra and Rowden 2006: 1f.; see also Habermas 2001). Although the relation between the ‘transnational’ and the ‘postnational’ is not absolutely clear in this line of argument, the terms can be understood as connoting progressive stages in the decline of the national in the face of the challenges of globalisation (for example in Kaapa 2011: 14ff.). However, in the postnational condition more traditional or conservative ways of imagining the nation and national community simply will not make sense (Hedetoft and Hjort 2002). Modernist theories of nationalism hold that feelings of national belonging and community are constructed (‘imagined’) and sustained through mediated social communication (Deutsch 1966: 96–8 and 188; Gellner 1983: 127; Anderson 1991: 122). One implication of this for the contemporary postnational condition seems to be that national community remains a potent fiction; whereas postnational flux is the reality this fiction tries to disavow.Indeed, on a political level, nations, conceptions of national specificity and nationalisms are still very real, and loom large in the mobilisation of various groups (conceived as, precisely, national, or ethnic, religious or otherwise designated) for political action (Juergensmeyer 2002: 3–8). Current development in Europe and elsewhere makes this abundantly clear.
