Boundaries: Infiltrated Identities

Whereas Eastern noir narratives reproduce the ‘iron’ border and operate by means of clear-cut national identities, Chapter 2 reconsiders the hard border promulgated by the master narrative of the Cold War. Devoted to a set of films which address historical themes (late 20th-century and 21st-century productions looking back to the Cold War and earlier periods), the chapter focuses on spies and double agents, who by default operate by navigating across borders. The films analysed do not utilise typical spy film formulas and their protagonists are nowhere near the affirmative James Bondian narrative. The films re-examine a range of historical issues which during the Cold War qualified as inconvenient (and were therefore censored), often relating to the complicated past of the border regions (such as Finnmark) and involvement of Nordic citizens on the wrong side of the global conflict. Using the concept of infiltration, the analysis follows the spies that embody the discourses of boundary, ‘contaminating’ an assumed pure national community. These films (such as Jörn Donner’s The Interrogation or Knut Erik Jensen’s Ice Kiss) produce affective and relational spaces, alternatives to arbitrary maps, and highlight the protagonists’ entanglement in identities which might be defined as transnational.

Guilt and Shame in (Trans)national Spaces

While Chapter 3 analyses how the Baltic morphs from a border to a boundary, Chapter 4 concentrates on the less illustrious aspects of neighbourhood and movement of commodities across the Baltic. In the first part, two Swedish films are discussed (Lilya 4-ever by Lukas Moodysson and Buy Bye Beauty by Pål Hollender), which stage the Baltic as a moral and economic border/boundary, delving into sex-tourism and sex trafficking. The analysis follows the discourse of guilt which these two pictures epitomise, arguing that the ostensible ‘admission of guilt’ is rooted in narcissism. The second part of the chapter explores the narratives of shame – an emotion often confused with guilt – in a transnational, Nordic/Russian context. Relying on ethical-philosophical and psychological conceptualisations of guilt and shame, the chapter seeks to demonstrate that narratives of shame allow limits of the ‘self’ to be questioned to a greater extent than guilt does. This is particularly palpable in The 3 Rooms of Melancholia, a documentary by Pirjo Honkasalo. Using examples of other Nordic films, the chapter also shows that transnational shame is – more often than not – activated with respect to Russia, whereas the ‘weaker’ Baltic neighbours trigger guilt narratives.

The Baltic Boundary

This chapter focuses on the films whose plots are set in the period following the break-up of the Soviet Union and in which the Baltic Sea undergoes symbolic transformation from a metaphor of liminal space into a space which links the Nordic peripheries of Europe with neighbours on the opposite shores. Rather than being positioned as small nations facing a large and dangerous neighbour, the small Nordic countries now find themselves among equally small neighbours that have (re)emerged in the northern consciousness after the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. In these pictures (such as Aki Kaurismäki’s Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana), Baltic is an expanse of ambivalence, reflecting both fear of and fascination with the newly opened borders and increasing globalisation. Plots structured on the cognitive binary of centre/periphery are examined as baselines for narratives showing various forms of distant neighbourhood. Here, the Nordic subjects are often ousted from the centre position they previously adopted. Filmic devices serve to compress the space in order to accentuate contiguity rather than distance between the Nordic and the Eastern European coasts of the Baltic.

Embodying the Fear of Russia: The Militarised Body

Chapter 5 embarks on the analysis of one of the most widespread (stereotypical) tropes associated with Russia, in which the ‘Russia as a crime scene’ conception plays a potent part: that of the Russian soldier. The analyses are concerned with pictures which – not seeking to deny the militarisation of contemporary Russian society – look for historical foundations of the stereotype and examine the discursive and political mechanisms underlying the construction of militarised Russian bodies, both in terms of representation (through references to Nordic, notably Finnish, war films, as well as Soviet cinematic propaganda), and in the socio-cultural realities of contemporary Russia. Rysskräck (Swedish word for fear of Russia) is thus often deconstructed as a Nordic projection in which the Russian soldier is an entity contrasted with the peacefully-minded, unarmed, and innocent Nordic body. The concept of the disciplined (militarised) body enables one to diagnose representations of Russia as a society/nation of grand narratives, but the chapter also takes a look at films employing such strategies as humour, irony, sarcasm or deliberately de-politicised stance, thanks to which grand narratives can be circumvented.

Borders: Russia and Eastern Europe as a Crime Scene

The first chapter is concerned with the cinematic narratives of Eastern noir, which adopt a border discourse and imagine Russia (and thereby often Eastern Europe) as a crime scene. In these crime narratives, Russia is essentialised as a crime scene, where the traces of crime comprise evidence of an omnipresent evil emanating from the centre of power. The chapter argues moreover that whereas Russia serves as the ‘great Other’, in whose gaze the small nations from the Nordic region are controlled and overseen, Eastern Europeans function merely as unfamiliar, rather than threatening, ‘others’. By juxtaposing diversity of genres, including popular Nordic action films (Orion’s Belt and Born American), two documentaries and a television series (Occupied), the chapter shows that the hegemonic Eastern noir narrative, although persistent in mainstream cinema, functions across various modes of cinematic expression. The analyses corroborate the fact that border discourse affords the viewers a sense of safety in the increasingly globalised reality.

Beyond Eastern Noir: Toward a New (Cinematic) Space

The afterword discusses the Finnish film Sauna which, albeit utilising conventions of the horror genre, makes a powerful breach in the border discourse and disturbs easy dichotomies. The film combines a popular format potentially appealing to a wide audience and complex philosophical content which approaches ‘border’ in a manner typical of weak (rather than dominant) narratives. As such, it represents a rare example of amalgamating various registers, thereby harbouring a potential to transform broader cultural imagination. Both thematically and aesthetically, Sauna makes us rethink the means available for engaging one’s own national, regional and transnational (hi)stories. A similar qualification applies to the films analysed throughout this book, offering a valuable testing ground for what has been defined as boundary discourses, and reaching beyond the paradigm of the Eastern noir.

Polish Spectres in our House: Revisiting the Nordic Metaphor of the Home

This chapter looks at films revolving around Polish migrations to Scandinavian countries (Norway, Denmark, Sweden) after 2004 (Poland’s accession to the European Union). It utilises the concept of spectral agency (theorised by Esther Peeren) – that is, the agency of the dispossessed, the marginalised (the ‘living ghosts’), and those made socially invisible by ongoing spectralising processes, most prominently the processes of neoliberal globalisation. The analysis focuses on how Polish guest/ghost workers (or the notorious spectre of the ‘Polish plumber’), cleaning and repairing Scandinavian houses, contribute to reimagining the most ubiquitous political metaphor encapsulating the Scandinavian welfare state – the people’s home (Swedish folkhem). Looking at the Scandinavian people’s ‘home’ from the ghosts’ perspective helps to expose the borders (or walls) implicit in this metaphor, opening up the potential for a reimagining of both the political metaphor and the social reality it reflects and shapes. Although recent films present a particularly unflattering judgement on the capability of Scandinavians to reimagine their home(s), the Polish ‘living ghosts’ are represented as powerful – though not idealised – figures, resisting spectralisation through their capability to produce a qualitative change in the (discourse of the) home.

The Iron Curtain Effect: Nordic Eastern Noir

The introduction looks at the importance of geopolitical borders for Nordic cinematic constructions of the neighbouring countries that lay behind the Iron Curtain. Offering an overview of rich depictions of Russia and Eastern Europe from the silent film era to the end of the Cold War, the chapter traces anti-Russian and anti-Soviet sentiment in early Nordic films. The chapter elaborates on the definition of Eastern noir, within the discourse of which Russia is constructed as a crime scene and Russians (Soviets) as threatening the existence of the Nordic subjects. It draws an important distinction between representations of Russia and the other eastern neighbours in Nordic cinemas. Eastern noir is considered in relation to the currently much discussed genre of Nordic noir. The introduction also elaborates on the conceptual frame of border/boundary underlying the book’s main argument, and discusses the research scope and structure of the book.