{"title":"Racial impersonation: Others in Finnish visual culture","authors":"Andrew Nestingen","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00091_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00091_1","url":null,"abstract":"The article sketches an overview of the impersonation of Black and Sámi Others in Finnish cinema and visual culture. How and why have Finnish cultural producers used blackface performance or ‘fake’ Sámi garments in their films? By connecting several historically and aesthetically disparate texts, the article makes evident an underpinning structure of racial Othering. The structure is obscured, however, by commentators who argue such Other performance is innocent and not intended to ridicule or harm. This defence maintains that it is White Finns’s power to define what counts as racism. By combining analysis of disparate examples of racial impersonation in cinema and cultural texts with critiques and defences of it, the article traces how structural racism is maintained. Study of cinema history contributes to understanding the history of structural racism.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43278795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Challenging time, age and power relations: The child figure in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata","authors":"Malena Janson","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00090_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00090_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article is an interdisciplinary study of the figure of the child in Ingmar Bergman’s Höstsonaten (Autumn Sonata) (1978), using theoretical perspectives from childhood studies within a cinema studies framing. By analysing the shifting roles of mother and daughter in this seldom-discussed film, the article demonstrates the on-screen child figure’s capacity to challenge society’s deep-rooted ideas of ‘child’ and ‘adult’, respectively, thereby exposing the inconstant nature of age categories. Drawing on contemporary childhood studies, I argue, using Autumn Sonata as an example, that the child figure in cinema bears a subversive potential for questioning power relations between generations as well as defying a chrononormative notion of time and age. This reading contributes to a deepened awareness of the function of the on-screen child figure, not least transferable to Bergman’s cinematic work. It also sheds light on the mutable connections between fictional children and central conceptions of childhood in contemporary society.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42720904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Concerning Violence: Fanon, Africa and temporality","authors":"Thomas Austin","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00085_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00085_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the political significance of temporal structures in Om våld (Concerning Violence) (), a documentary that takes its title from the chapter of the same name in Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. The film comprises archive footage shot by Swedish television crews in Africa between the mid-1960s and 1987. It pairs images with extracts from Fanon’s book, read by singer and activist Lauryn Hill. This assemblage both celebrates African campaigns of liberation and complicates the claim to be ‘here and now’ embedded in archival material by overlaying it with a retrospective (often melancholic) vantage point, that of a postcolonial moment. On occasion, Concerning Violence comes close to reproducing a temporal framing that consigns Black Africans to the symbolic immobility critiqued by Fanon and, more recently, Achille Mbembe. How does the film endeavour to avoid this? How successful is it in arguing for the enduring relevance of Fanon’s thought?","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49631295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"History as embodied encounter: Queer pleasures and temporal drag in Benjamin Christensen’s Witchcraft Through the Ages","authors":"Amanda Doxtater","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00093_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00093_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article enlists Elizabeth Freeman’s Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (2010) to read temporal dissidence and embodied pleasures in Benjamin Christensen’s Witchcraft Through the Ages through a queer studies lens, as temporal drag and erotohistoriography. This reading opens up a feminist-adjacent queering of Nordic auteur cinema.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135194523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Heroines of Norwegian silent cinema: Nordic femininity and conventions of cinematic whiteness","authors":"Anne Marit Myrstad","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00094_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00094_1","url":null,"abstract":"Framed within studies of whiteness in film, this article investigates the positioning and performance of the female lead in Norwegian silent cinema. Richard Dyer’s arguments on the importance of staging, not least lighting, of the Hollywood heroine to convey ethereal and moral aspects of ‘superior’ whiteness, are central to the analysis. The question is how the heroines are positioned as white: aesthetically, narratively and intersectionally in regard to class, gender and ethnicity. Complex or unstable class and ethnicity performances in the 1910s give way to a more indisputably white heroine in the late 1920s. In conclusion, the analysis supports the claim that whiteness encompasses most of the heroines, if not always according to the conventions of lighting.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":"283 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135194522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In Focus Introduction: Cross-dressing and queer representations on Nordic screens","authors":"Helle Kannik Haastrup","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00096_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00096_2","url":null,"abstract":"This introduction to the In Focus section ‘Cross-dressing and queer representations on Nordic screens’ provides background and context for the contributions.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135194267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Compound and ambiguous meanings in Danish cross-dressing comedies","authors":"Niels Henrik Hartvigson","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00092_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00092_1","url":null,"abstract":"Focusing on two Danish cross-dressing comedies, Min Kone er Husar! (‘My wife is a hussar!’) (1935) and Solstik (‘Sunstroke’) (1953), the article investigates various strategies for playing with and challenging sexual identity and gender to create compound and ambiguous meanings. In view of the comedy genre’s self-conscious openness to performance and intertextuality, the meaning of the main character’s cross-dressing on a plot level may be modified or contradicted by the actor’s star persona. That supporting characters may be transgressive in their own right points to the pervasiveness of sexuality and gender play in cross-dressing comedies. Fictional settings underscore this perception; they are not mere backdrops, but seem to actively invite identity play and rule bending.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135194521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Finnish film and TV industry in the COVID-19 crisis","authors":"Jose Cañas-Bajo, Heidi Rintala, Ilkka Matila","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00080_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00080_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the challenges confronted by Finnish production companies as a consequence of the COVID-19 health crisis. We report on the decisions and strategies on the part of producers attempting to overcome the crisis and the production overcost, including shooting practices, teamwork and market relations. We collected quantitative responses to a detailed questionnaire and conducted in-depth interviews with producers to add a nuanced qualitative perspective. Despite the many uncertainties and difficulties associated with increased costs, human resources and complex shooting practices, the respondents showed flexibility in adjusting to the crisis and foresaw some positive trends for the future.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":"281 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From television genre to film genre: Finnish Schlager music on small and big screens","authors":"Heidi Keinonen","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00081_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00081_1","url":null,"abstract":"Schlager shows were one of the main attractions on early Finnish television. Featuring a popular music genre, the shows were soon followed by a wave of Schlager films. In this article, I discuss Schlager film as an intermedial genre that sheds light on the early forms of cooperation between television, film and record industries. Focusing on the Schlager film Hit parade (1959), I suggest that while television was often seen merely as a competitor of the film industry, contributing to the crisis of Finnish film production, the relation between the two was more ambiguous than that: the case of Hit parade indicates that the film industry was also interested in the potential provided by the new medium.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Television theatre as a mode of production: Adapting The Word for Finnish television in 1962","authors":"Jukka Kortti","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00082_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00082_1","url":null,"abstract":"The focus in this article is on the role of television theatre in the early years of television broadcasting in Finland. The production context in which Kaj Munk’s play Ordet ( The Word ) (1932) – best known from Carl Th. Dreyer’s internationally renowned film classic of the same title – was adapted for transmission via Finland’s Swedish-language television theatre serves as an example. The teleplay (1962) was directed by Tom Segerberg.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}