Suspend your disbelief and outrage

I am becoming increasingly aware of how possibly strange it is for me to be writing a blog in English that often takes up Swedish issues and fires retaliatory missiles at newspaper articles written in Swedish. Hopefully, though, I can explain enough of the article in question to give you an idea of what I’m ACTUALLY musing/ranting about, which is hopefully something interesting in a more general sense.

This is where we start: "Tingeling"-försoningsblommor från SVT

Now the explanation for people who are not fluent in the Swedish language or the Swedish culture.

Every year since 1955, a competition has been held called the Eurovision Song Contest. I have heard it compared to American Idol in people’s attempts to explain, but I don’t think that’s a fair comparison (and not just because I like Eurovision and don’t like Idol). Each country in (an ever-expanding definition of) Europe who wants to and who follows the rules* can send a song to compete in the contest. In a process that can only be called a whorish mutating of democracy**, viewers call in to vote for the song they like best (but are not allowed to vote for their own country). Whichever song gets the most votes wins, will most likely be played to death on the radio, and next year’s contest will be arranged by that country, bringing them no small amount of tourism, attention, and other positive revenue.

Of course, the countries that participate in ESC all have different strategies for choosing which song will be sent. It often starts with people sending recorded songs in to a committee to be judged. I heard a few years ago that only 11 songs came in to the committee in Moldova, and in many countries the committee just picks a song and gets ready to send it to the European contest. In Sweden, well over 3000 songs are sent in each year, often representing some of the most famous song-writers and artists in the country. These contributions are narrowed down to 32, and in “Melodifestivalen,” a series of televised semi-finals and second chances and finals competitions, a finalist is picked by a manner of telephone voting similar to that of the European final. These competitions, especially the final, have a large viewer base, and there’s always some sort of “intermission entertainment” to amuse us viewers while the voting is going on.

This year, the European final is being held in Moscow, since Russia’s song won last year’s competition. Because of this, the intermission entertainment in this year’s Melodifestivalen final was, shall we say, Russia-themed. Two fairly un-funny comedians, Pihlman and Pål, who bored me and others to death in all of the semi-final intermissions did a sketch where they were trying to “sell” some Russian mafia guys on performing their song “Tingeling.” The two eventually manage to convince them to perform the song on-stage in Stockholm at the Melodifestivalen final, at which point they cut away from the film and the live performance began.

The live performance was a blatant play on every possible stereotype that Swedes, and many others, have about Russian people. You don’t have to understand Swedish to get the idea, so if you’re able to, have a look at the video: Tingeling på ryska. Fast-forward to the stage performance, which comes after about 4 minutes and 25 seconds. You’ve got Slavic folk musicians, Red Army uniformed officers, slutty female eye-candy dancers (this was probably the most offensive to most Swedes), Russian nesting dolls, techno disco, an alto opera singer, those Cossack-type dancers, The Internationale, and even a “dancing bear”. “One more time for the Motherland!” says the singer towards the end.

Someone in our board-games-and-Melodifestival circle of friends had read the day before that DN’s ESC reporter thought it was the “worst intermission act I’ve ever seen in Melodifestivalen.” Since I’ve never been a fan of the judgement of the journalist in question, I wasn’t surprised when I thought the whole act was hilarious. Fredrik, and if I recall correctly another friend, agreed. In case it wasn’t clear enough that the act was meant as sarcasm, as irony, as a joke on the Swedish people and their stereotypes about Russia, it was made even clearer by the show’s host when she encouraged the public to change the channel right before the performance and said “Um… thanks… I suppose I should say…” when the act was over. It was, in other words, MEANT to be terrible, and that was the whole joke.

Obviously, neither Russia nor Sweden got the joke.

The Russian embassy is apparently in a huff. Their spokesman has said, “I find it hard to believe that Sweden would show such ignorance in their interpretation and image of Russia.” His sentiment is seemingly echoed throughout Sweden. A DJ from the radio station I listened to went to the Russian embassy and stood outside with a big sign reading "Forgive us!" and she's either a very good actress or she was actually very seriously upset. You can see in the comments after the linked story that people found the act to be “cultural racism” and “pure ignorance of real Russian culture” and simply “make me embarrassed to call myself Swedish.” Swedish television sent flowers and an apology to the embassy, but now seem to have taken it back, which is either a very good idea or simply very clumsy, I'm not sure.

Heavens. Long explanation over, waxing about people’s ability to think in layers begins.

I’m fond of actor and comedian Denis Leary. Currently he stars in a television series called “Rescue Me.” I’ve never seen the show, but I recall when there was an outrage over one episode of the show. In it, Leary’s character rapes his ex-wife. I say rape, because I believe that that’s the proper label for what occurred in the scene in question, though I know that there are many people who would NOT consider it rape. Many people believe that being married, or having been married to or intimate with a person, or perhaps other circumstances that add subtlety to the scene, do not qualify it as rape, whereas others of us recognize that the mere fact that a person says no is all that matters.

Because of these very heated points of contention in what does or does not constitute rape, I can understand why some activists might have had a knee-jerk reaction when seeing the scene. They imagine that, since the main character of the show is using physical force to have intercourse with his ex-wife when she fairly clearly isn’t consenting, that the show is therefore condoning this action and/or perpetrating the myth that a woman simply can’t say no once she’s married, or any other similar claim that, no matter how outrageous, an unfortunately large number of people seem to believe.

But I contend that to blow up in outrage over a scene like this and for those reasons is actually rather childish, in a way that makes me both despair of and understand why American movies are often so very void of any shred of nuance. People are apparently unable to distance themselves from the idea that main character = good guy and therefore main character’s actions = actions endorsed/encouraged by the media’s creators.

If you watch the movie Leaving Las Vegas, do you feel that Nicolas Cage is encouraging you to become an alcoholic and actually attempt to drink yourself to death? Or that the inclusion of Elizabeth Shue’s character is the producers’ way of telling us that prostitution is A.O.K.? Do we see the series “Dexter” as a rubber stamp of approval for serial homicide, or “The Sopranos” as an endorsement of mafia life? What is the difference between our ability to distance ourselves from these flawed characters and from Leary’s character in “Rescue Me”? My theory is that these other shows and characters make more of an effort to rub our faces in how flawed or criminals or pathetic the main characters are – an unnatural attempt. We need to constantly be reminded that so-and-so isn’t a perfect person and that he does bad, naughty things that we shouldn’t do in order for someone, somewhere to not get pissed off about how the show or movie is saying it’s okay to kill-maim-rape-drink-steal-etc. In most cases we can’t even rest unless this flawed person get their come-uppance in some obvious blaze of fanfare at the end. So the problem people have with “Rescue Me” is, sadly, that it’s too realistic; it allowed for a person to have bad sides and good sides without something separating them, Sesame Street style, FOR us, and without the episode ending with him getting corn-holed in a prison cell or something similar.

I believe Leary’s response to the outrage was something similar; something about how TV and films have to be able to show people who might exist in the real world without pretending that everyone who does something bad always gets punished and without pretending that firefighters can’t be rapists (which is actually a backlash for the idea that rape isn’t just something done by strangers in back alleys!).

But unfortunately, all you have to do is look at the majority of American TV and films to see that we’re not adult enough to handle anything between superhero and supervillian, and we’re woefully unable to see the occurance of an event on screen as anything other than a thumbs-up to said event in real life.

I say American TV and films, but not because I think they’re alone in having this problem. Whereas the strategy of an American film might be to make sure a character who is a rapist is positively vulgar in every other possible aspect, the strategy of, say, a Swedish film would be to avoid the topic altogether as to not have to make the judgement call between what’s realistic and what’s right.

You may feel that I digress. Perhaps a bit. But not as far as it may seem.

I believe it’s the same inability to separate the “main character” or the producer or presenter of a program or an idea from the actual endorsement of that idea that causes people to soil their panties over the “cultural racism” that was the now-famous Tingeling sketch. Most people are apparently unable to see the irony. But even those that do have claimed that that’s no excuse; that it’s still racist and unfair to display stereotypes even when we’re making it perfectly clear that they ARE stereotypes and that we’re actually making fun of ourselves for having them. I also believe that it’s deeply hypocritical for Swedes to get a bug up their ass about this “cultural racism”.

If the sketch begins with a scene involving a mafia boss, does that really mean we're saying ALL Russians are mobsters? Or is the only way to not be racist to pretend that there's no mafia in Russia? Seriously? So just like with the episode of "Rescue Me," what occurs in real life and being honest about it is not quite as important as trying not to mention it or trying to make it a bit prettier.

I suppose you might say that it's one thing in a drama and another thing when we're using it for comedy and joking. I'm not convinced. If I were to say, in a serious discussion, "There are a lot of alcoholics in Russia," which is statistically true (5% of the population drinks an average of 27 liters of pure alcohol a year), you don't think I would get a new one ripped for me and be accused of utilizing stereotypes? (Note that the alcohol stereotype was not used in the Tingeling sketch, which seems like an excellent judgement call.) But the thing is -- and now I'm getting ahead of myself in my argument -- it's apparently fine to state in a debate article in a Swedish newspaper that "tens of millions of Americans are high school drop-outs and illiterates" without anyone getting pissed off, despite the fact that it's at best a twisted version of the truth.***

One commenter asks if the assertion that Tingeling was okay doesn’t mean that we can go ahead and tongue-in-cheek freely about Swedish stereotypes about Jews or Gypsies. My answer to that is, according to a little sampling, both yes and no.

A few years ago, the host of Melodifestivalen dressed up as a Native American – leather, beads, huge feathered headdress, and a stereotypical deep-voiced grunting language that was translated by the other host. And lest I forget to mention it, he was wearing leather chaps and no pants. If Jon Stewart had done so at the Oscars, I believe an outraged walk-out would have occurred. But there was no outrage over Henrik Schyffert’s Native American. SVT certainly didn't send flowers and an apology to the American embassy. Bare-assed grunting Cherokee is apparently okay with the Swedish people.

There used to be a cat food commercial that ran here in which a Japanese or other similarly far east woman brought home food for her cat. The food had Chinese lettering and a picture of a cat on it and, with full-on Manga-style facial expression and cutesy Japanese accent, the girl proudly stated that she’d brought home yummy food for Fluffy. Her live-in Swedish boyfriend cringed at the idea of giving their cat this clearly inferior product, and instead fed the critter Whiskas or Friskies or whatever instead. This commercial ran for quite a while, and I never got an inkling that anyone but me found it offensive.

So how come bare-assed Cherokee and the “don’t you know that Chinese people EAT cats!” Manga-girl commercial are okay in Sweden but did not sit well with me? Because Native Americans and far-east Asians are too far away for Swedes to give a damn about. There are none of the former and virtually none of the latter here. I, on the other hand, grew up in a culture that contained and was acutely aware of both Native Americans and Asian immigrants. I’m not claiming that Americans are more cultural sensitive than Swedes, but rather that we all become acutely aware of offending a certain group if that group is right around the corner and has stood up for itself before we learned to join in and stand up for them, too.

But what about when Swedes ruthlessly make fun of Norwegians on television? Or Danes? Or of actual Swedes with funny dialects? You bet your ass that that’s okay, too. And I feel that, if you’ve read my blog up to this point, you don’t need me to go on a tirade right now about how very accepted it is to make fun of Americans. And not just make fun of us, but to use cultural stereotypes about us in actual serious situations. It is considered perfectly acceptable for a Swede to make a general statement about how Americans are and how that relates to why Swedish health care or education or parenting style or literature or whatever the hell else is better, and no one else involved in the debate seems to have a hard time accepting it as fact, because they’ve grown up with the same stereotypes. None of them seems to reflect on the fact that the country with the world’s third largest land area and third largest population, almost entirely made up of people whose families have been in the country for a number of generations that can be counted on one hand since immigrating from all possible corners of the earth is probably the last culture that you can make sweeping generalizations about just because you heard once from your big brother that…

But now I seem to digress again. And yet, again, I don’t really. Why is it okay to rip on Norwegians and Danes and Skåningar and Dalmän and Americans, often right to their faces and without remorse? Just as Native Americans and Chinese are too far away to require sensitivity from the Swedish people, Norwegians and Danes are too close. Americans are also too close, not by virtue of geography, but by virtue of the fact that Swedes, like many others, have developed a sense of entitlement and ownership of American culture, so the same thing that allows them to make ignorant generalizations about Americans is what allows them to do it without remorse.

So you have direct racism – that is, remorselessly using our stereotypes as if they were true – towards Indians, Asians, Scandinavians and Americans – and that’s okay. What is it that makes this at best INDIRECT racism – exploring and admitting our own stereotypes about a people – so much more wrong when applied to Russians? Do they belong in the same no-man’s land in the middle with Jews and Arabs and Bosnians and others that we feel are not distant enough and yet not close enough to us to make fun of? If that’s the case, then I’m still skeptical, since I’m pretty sure exploiting stereotypes of Spaniards and Italians and Germans is also well on this side of acceptable in this country, and you have to wonder if we all have a list somewhere in the subconscious part of our brains that lists which groups are okay to splash stereotypes on and which are off-limits.

The thing is, if you’ve read this far, you might think that I think that this is an all or nothing proposition. You may think that I believe all cultures should be open to ridicule and joking. Or you may think that I believe you shouldn’t make fun of any culture at all if you feel it’s not okay to make fun of a certain, specific culture. But the thing is, I don’t actually think that’s true. I accept the fact that we find it okay to rip on Norwegians in this country but that we don’t think it’s okay to joke about stereotypes about Jews. I even think it's okay to joke about Americans -- we often deserve it -- as long as people might try to stop their crappy habit of wildly generalizing about us even in serious and important discussions and debates. But this is because, just like in judging characters in movies and books or judging an individual for who he is rather than what country he came from, I believe there has to be nuance in everything. What upsets me is not the fact that cultural stereotypes for the sake of jokes are acceptable in some situations and not in others, but rather, the self-righteousness of people who seem to think that it's all black and white AND that they themselves are paragons of virtue in regards to never, ever being racist, when in fact they bear on their shoulders racism so deeply rooted that they do not recognize it as such. And some of which is much more insidious than just thinking the idea of the Russian mafia singing a song called “Tingeling” is entertaining.

And if you look at a lot of the bits that went into Tingeling, tell me, which parts actually WERE offensive and which parts simply are, well, Russian? Can a coherent argument be made for what went over the line? Were the big dancing Russian nesting dolls racist because they were, well, dancing? Or the Russian folk musicians because they were probably Swedish and not Russian? To insert an obscure Larry Wilmore joke here, I expect all the outraged people to soon progress to talking in a maskedly condescending tone about how beautiful Russian children are.

At the end of the day, I just think that society’s definition of what is racist and what is not is about as solid as whether low-riders or boot cuts are in this season. Being pissed off about how your license money (that you pay in order to have independent television free of political influence, ha!) is going to this horribly insensitive travesty of prejudice is mostly about you making sure everyone else hears you being outraged and notices that you’re playing by the rules du jour.

For those of you who can read Swedish and would enjoy a much more articulate and organized musing about what is racism and what is not, have a look at the third installment in Maciej Zaremba’s “I väntan på Sverige”: Vilse i mångfalden.

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*Georgia's intended entry for this year has been disqualified, as it was called "We Don't Want to Put In" and was obviously a political dig, with Russia as the host country to boot. Lebanon was interested in competing a few years ago, but was rejected because they said they would skip over the Israeli entry in their broadcast of the program.

**Aside from the obvious bits about how pay-per-call telephone voting is not exactly fair and balanced, you have the fact that, say, Monaco (36,000 inhabitants!) contributes just as many points to the final tally as Russia. I chuckled one year when the woman giving the Russian points said something like "Hi, this is Russia's 100 million people calling to give the votes to all you who consider yourselves Europe!" The fact that most countries, especially the eastern ones, tend to vote for the neighbors seems to bother everyone but does not strike me as odd -- it's not strange that they would like similar music or would have heard those songs more often and had a chance to get used to them etc. And when Greece chooses to do their song IN Greek, well, is it any wonder that Cyprus is more likely to vote for them than any other country?

***The article, about how the Swedish job market is being filled up by low-paying, "demeaning" jobs, was on DN.se 5 years ago. I wrote a short essay on it for my Swedish class. It can no longer be found on their website.