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Queer Norwegian Cinema Doesn't Exist

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Queer Norwegian Cinema Doesn't Exist Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education Queer Norwegian Cinema Doesn’t Exist An explanatory critique of Norsk filmhistorie: spillefilmen 1911-2011 __ Jennifer Britt Lundberg Hansen MDV-3950 Master’s thesis in Media and Documentation Science, June 2020 Table of Contents 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background ............................................................................................................. 2 1.2 Research object – thesis statement ........................................................................... 3 1.3 Previous research..................................................................................................... 4 1.4 Reading guide ......................................................................................................... 5 2 Queer theory .................................................................................................................. 7 2.1 Queer cinema .......................................................................................................... 8 2.2 Queer Norwegian cinema ........................................................................................ 9 3 Research design ........................................................................................................... 11 3.1 Media of cultural memory ..................................................................................... 12 3.2 Research questions ................................................................................................ 13 3.3 Data collection and analysis................................................................................... 13 4 Norsk filmhistorie (2011) as a medium of cultural memory .......................................... 17 4.1 Norsk filmhistorie: spillefilmen 1911-2011 ............................................................ 17 4.1.1 NFH and its limitations .................................................................................. 19 4.1.2 NFH and its major themes .............................................................................. 20 4.1.3 NFH and its Images ........................................................................................ 22 4.1.4 NFH and its Producers.................................................................................... 25 4.2 Rhetorical strategies .............................................................................................. 26 4.3 Representations ..................................................................................................... 31 4.4 Media network ...................................................................................................... 38 5 Queer reading .............................................................................................................. 43 5.1 Cecilia (1954) ....................................................................................................... 44 5.2 Fjols til fjells (1957) .............................................................................................. 48 5.3 Is-slottet (1987) ..................................................................................................... 53 6 Wam and Vennerød: how queer Norwegian cinema has been marginalized.................. 55 6.1 Categories ............................................................................................................. 60 6.2 Lasse & Geir (1976) .............................................................................................. 62 6.3 Hvem har bestemt?! (1978) ................................................................................... 66 6.4 Åpen framtid (1983) .............................................................................................. 68 6.5 Drømmeslottet (1986) ............................................................................................ 70 6.6 Adjø solidaritet (1985)........................................................................................... 72 6.7 Svartere enn natten (1979) .................................................................................... 75 6.8 Wam og Vennerød................................................................................................. 76 6.9 Excluded films ...................................................................................................... 80 7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 85 7.1 Research questions ................................................................................................ 85 7.2 Significance........................................................................................................... 87 7.3 Limitations and further research ............................................................................ 88 Works cited ......................................................................................................................... 89 Filmography ........................................................................................................................ 93 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I must say thanks to my supervisor Holger Pötzsch for sifting through all of my ramblings and for giving me much appreciated advice. Thank you for teaching me how to apply my critical and skeptical thinking into academic writing. Thanks to Monica Grini for convincing me to write in English, doing otherwise would have been ten times more difficult. Also, for giving me excellent constructive feedback. Thanks to Geir Grenersen and everyone at the media and documentation science department, I am grateful for your feedback as well. I must also say thank you to the people that contribute to queer research, you are important. This thesis is dedicated to the inspirational Jessica Flatequal, who taught me how to fight for justice and fairness for all marginalized people. We are all changemakers. Rest in power, Jess. Jennifer Britt Lundberg Hansen Tromsø, June 2020 1 Introduction On august 22, 2018, Katja Eyde Jacobsen published an article for the internet film magazine Montages which was supposed to be a review for the book Blant hodejegere og nazizombier. Generasjonen som gjenreiste norsk film (2017) by Kjetil Lismoen: Jeg har lyst til å lese om norsk film og om 90-tallet og alt som skjedde da, med oss og med verden. I boka leser jeg om regissørene Holst, Sletaune og Skjoldbjærg, og bølgen Norwave som skylte innover Cannes-festivalen i 1997. Om generasjonen som gjenreiste norsk film. Jeg husker noen av filmene som ganske fine og sikkert proffere enn mye som ble laget før dem. Det var stas at Norge laget film som ble sett i Amerika. Jeg leser at filmene vant publikum tilbake, om priser og publikumstall. Det står ingenting om hva som skjedde i verden, i Norge og rundt oss på denne tiden. Jeg lurer på hvordan en bok skrevet om film fra slutten av 1930-tallet hadde fremstått uten kontekst, hvordan den hadde vært å lese. Jacobsen criticized the author of the book for excluding women from the Norwegian film history discourse. Her expectations were a Norwegian film history book. Lismoen responded in Montages the next day, explaining how that wasn’t the purpose of the book, it was merely a personal anecdote of his experience in the film industry. However, he agrees that he has been selective in his choices, but his intentions weren’t what Jacobsen was expecting: Beklageligvis oppfatter noen boken som en akademisk oppsummering og et forsøk på en kanonisering av mannlige filmskapere fra de siste 50 årene – i hvert fall får man inntrykk av det gjennom Jacobsens innlegg. Denne utbredte misforståelsen om at jeg har skrevet et offisielt verk “på vegne av norsk film”, som er ment å oppsummere norsk filmhistorie i et halvt århundre, har ført til mange underlige reaksjoner. Lismoen argued that Jacobsen misunderstood the book, expecting it to be a comprehensive historical presentation of Norwegian film. Page 1 of 95 1.1 Background The Montages article gave me the idea of researching how gender and sexuality are discussed in literature about Norwegian film history. The project took a queer perspective because of a previous curiosity in finding Norwegian queer films. In 2011, I took a course that combined Scandinavian studies and gender studies: studies in Scandinavian films with topics of gender and sexuality. In this class, I noticed there were a lot of Swedish films. Thanks to the films of Ingmar Bergman and Lukas Moodyson in particular. Norwegian film history seemed to be more marginalized in comparison to Swedish and Danish film history. Do Norwegian filmmakers shy away from the topic? What does the literature say? How can someone interested in film history find out which films there are with queer topics? To begin with, I attempted to outline queer representations in Norwegian films by reading literature on Norwegian film history. I found little information there and had to look elsewhere for help. I attempted to find information by looking through queer cinema books, asking people and watching Norwegian films. My original plan was then to watch as many Norwegian movies as I could. I started to take notes on the films I watched, taking notice of images or dialogue that stood out. It was mostly small remarks here and there which would hardly make for a whole research project. Also, I discovered that Norwegian films
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