BALTIC SCREEN MEDIA REVIEW 2014 / VOLUME 2 / ARTICLE Article Take Care of Your Scar(f), Lilya! De-stigmatizing the Image of the Post-Soviet Other in Nordic Cinema* TZVETOMILA PAULY, University of Helsinki, Finland; email:
[email protected] * An abridged version of the following text has been presented at the international conference , 12–13 December 2013, University of Helsinki, Finland. 36 DOI: 10.1515/bsmr-2015-0014 BALTIC SCREEN MEDIA REVIEW 2014 / VOLUME 2 / ARTICLE ABSTRACT The article discusses the cinematic representations of the post-Soviet individual in two internationally acclaimed Nordic fi lms, namely, Aki Kaurismäki’s Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana (Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana, Finland/Germany, 1994) and Lukas Moodysson’s Lilya 4-Ever (Lilja 4-ever, Sweden/Denmark, 2002). The guiding premise is that the fi lms represent cross-cultural inquiries on identity and otherness that refl ect and chal- lenge the (male) gaze of the West European North upon the (female) post-Soviet East soon after the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. The following comparative reading stems porary continental philosophy, especially from an observation of the cinematic in gender and postcolonial studies. A com- representations of identity and otherness, mon view expressed in this discussion has national and foreign, in two Nordic fi lms been that master dichotomies are operat- that met with the approval of critics as well ing in the cognition and representation of as audiences throughout Europe. The fi lms subjects and groups in Western civilization, are Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana (Pidä such as male and female, master and slave, huivista kiinni, Tatjana, Finland/Germany, national and foreign, we and they, western 1994) by Aki Kaurismäki and Lilya 4-Ever and eastern, etc.