Danish Privilege and Responsibility in the Work of Susanne Bier

Abstract

Meryl Shriver-Rice interprets Brothers, After the Wedding, and In a Better World in terms of the shared trope of the white male sojourner who travels from Denmark to locations that feature non-white, non-Western citizens. This chapter situates the Bier/Jensen trilogy within a wider trend of contemporary Scandinavian narratives of guilt. In assessing potential critiques of the trilogy on postcolonial grounds, Shriver-Rice argues that the “elsewheres” of these films do not ignore geographic location specifics and cultural contexts in order to assert a universalizing morality. Instead, the ethical trajectories of these films are not universal, and the idea that universalist ethics will inevitably fail takes precedence. Shriver-Rice argues that Bier’s drawing from non-industrialized non-Western space has more to do with speaking to the privileged-world guilt in the Danish viewer, and reminding him or her of the world at large beyond Western space.