Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema

6 Facing the queer migrant in Nordic Noir Louise Wallenberg While Nordic Noir – at times referred to as Scandinavian Noir – has become an internationally powerful and evocative concept or phenomenon that encompasses literature, film and television, its existence is rather recent, at least as a definable, critical concept. 1 Before international audiences and critics ‘discovered’ that there was a specific regional aesthetics and mode of narration attached to the crime novels (and later, televised series) coming out of the Nordic countries, it was not considered as anything other than just ordinary Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish or Icelandic crime 2 – at least by the Nordics themselves.3 And while ‘Nordic’ and ‘Scandinavian’ – as geographical and cultural categorisations and labels – in most international discourse are used indiscriminately, it should be pointed out that they do differ in terms of geography and in terms of inclusion: while ‘Nordic’ as a geographical label encompasses all five countries, ‘Scandinavian’ encompasses only three of them: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. 4 Yet while Nor- dic and Scandinavian differ from one another – the former being more inclusive than the latter – they are, of course, intimately related, not least because they share a long, and at times complicated, history.5 Linguisti- cally, the Scandinavian languages are closely related – especially in writ- ten form – and culturally, all five Nordic countries share many traits and traditions. Further, these countries share a similar political history, with a strong Social Democratic (or at least liberal) governance starting in the early twentieth century, a governance mostly characterised by the will to create a modern, equal society informed by an inclusive welfare system. As we have reached the new millennium, these welfare states are slowly being dismantled, due much to the fervent attacks (and apparent mesmerism) coming from nationalist, popularist and far-rightist ends. There is, however, one more aspect that unites the two concepts ‘Nordic’ and ‘Scandinavian’: both refuse any national claims. In this chapter on Nordic Noir, I will concentrate on one Nordic country in particular: Sweden. I will investigate how characters who are queer and either asylum seeking refugees, (im)migrants, or in other ways ethnically different, are currently being represented and negotiated in contemporary ‘Swedish’ Noir. The characters I will be focusing on can all be described 88 Louise Wallenberg as Scandinavian or Nordic others – taken that the Nordic countries for a long time remained ethnically homogenous.6 While the productions exam- ined may be labelled ‘Swedish’, it is important to point out that they are to some extent also ‘transnational’. Following Elke Weissmann, I use transnational rather than ‘global’ (an all-too-inclusive term), since transnational ‘emphasise[s] the intersection and interconnections between the national and the global, and indeed the co-existence of homogenisation and heter- ogenisation’ ( Weissmann 2018 : 121). 7 The transnational – especially in relation to Nordic Noir – may also propose a narrower position that regards a ‘phenomenon as an issue involving two or more countries and not a global, worldwide view’ ( T oft Hansen et al. 201 8 : 9). This is often the case with Nordic Noir productions – as with most Euronoir productions. Most Nor- dic Noir, from the ‘Wallander-films’ (1995–2013) to the ‘Martin Beck-films’ (1997–2018), Bron I–IV/ The Bridge I–IV (2011–18) and Midnattssol/ Midnight Sun (2016), are transnational co-productions that on a narrative level serve to negotiate and identify cross-national and cross-cultural reali- ties and geopolitics.8 In fact, the transnational aspect of Scandinavian (and Nordic) cinema has a long history: from the very breakthrough of cinema in the Nordic region in the late nineteenth century, it has relied on joint efforts in terms of both financing and artistic creativity. As Anne Bachmann has shown, it was very common in the early twentieth century for Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian film workers to collaborate; hence the silent cinema of the North was indeed Scandinavian (see Bachmann 2013 ). The focus here is on three recent television dramas that have been both marketed and perceived as part of Nordic Noir, and all of which were partly made for the Swedish public broadcasting network (Sverige Televi- sion (SVT)): Bron IV (2018), a series which, like its predecessors Bron I–III (2011–2015), was produced for both the SVT and the Danish equivalent, the Danish Public Broadcasting network (DR); Innan vi dr /Before We Die ( 2 01 7 , SVT); and Midnattssol /Midnight Sun (2016, SVT and Canal+). All three include characters that are queer and migrant – hence, characters that are positioned as ‘other’ (even when they are ‘inside’). But, as is so often the case with Nordic Noir and with crime fiction in general, otherness is plural- istic. It is not only the queer migrant that constitutes the ‘other’ in relation to the supposedly ‘non-other’, that is, the ‘normative’ (culturally and ethnically) insider – so do a variety of characters. Queerness in combination with ethnic ‘otherness’ makes queer migrants still more ‘other’, yet in all three dramas the most ‘other’ is presented in a complex manner that refuses sim- plistic stereotyping. He (in all three productions the queer migrant is male) is portrayed as a multifaceted person with whom we are invited to feel strongly for or even identify with. Hence, the queer migrant is facing us as spectators, calling out for an affective engagement.9 My aim in what follows is first to explore the tradition of Nordic Noir (and its deviances) and its relation to the current migrant crisis, then to examine the representation of the ‘queer migrant’ in the three productions. It Facing the queer migrant in Nordic Noir 89 should be noted that while the Nordic countries are close culturally, geo- graphically, and linguistically (to a certain extent), their immigration politics and handling of immigrants and refugees have differed – and to some extent still differ – from each other. Their respective welcoming of migrants contra their sturdy immigration restriction has fluctuated over the years, but what unites them today is the perceived threat that migrants and (im)migration are posing to the status quo of the Nordic region. The predominant mode of Nordic politics, as in other parts of the Western world, appears today to be one of fear: fear of the ‘other’, the Non-Western, an ‘other’ who – the more popular discourses declare – is bringing illegality, criminality, and terrorism. Even in Sweden, often hailed as the most progressive of the Nordic countries (adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples became law in 2003, insemina- tion rights for lesbians were legalised in 2005, and same-sex marriage law was passed in 2009), there has been severe criticism of how the Migration Agency has handled a string of cases of queer asylum seekers in the country, most notably from voices in the LGBTIQ+ community. 10 While representations of vulnerable (im)migrants and refugees have popu- lated Nordic Noir for some time (like those of violent and criminal immigrants), the genre has seen very few queer characters. Hence, queer hacker Lisbeth Salander in crime novelist Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy constitutes a most welcome exception, as do the two teenage lovers in the Nor- wegian Noir series Øyevitne /Eyewitness (2014, NRK). As for queer visual representation in general, Nordic film and television fiction is inclusive to some extent, although statistics show that queer representations on screen are still embarrassingly sparse.11 In the case of documentaries dealing with queer and trans-related experiences and stories in Nordic media, most of which are broadcast on television, the number of representations has most certainly been higher (see Wallenberg 2015 ). Nordic deviations At the centre of Scandinavian Noir, as of Nordic Noir, is often a lonesome, melancholic, and troubled male police detective struggling to keep his per- sonal life together while fighting crimes in a welfare society that is becoming increasingly tainted by social problems.12 At the root of this societal change is the fact that common solidarity is no longer a given – in tandem with the social safety net becoming more and more weakened. In many ways, the policeman with whom the readers are positioned to sympathise (although he may not be that easily likeable) is both the interpreter and the bearer of a cultural anxiety, or anxieties, that extends far beyond himself (see Robinson 2014 ). This makes Nordic Noir a realist genre: it is close to existent societal problems and tries both to represent and comment on them. A second characteristic is the sombre setting: most of these novels unfold in milieus that are dark, uninviting, and cold, and the colour saturation tends to draw towards blues, browns, and greys. Hence, the famous Nordic light – which is 90 Louise Wallenberg never-ending during the summer months – is exchanged here for a Novem- ber darkness that is constant. While these are characteristics that have come to define Scandinavian (and Nordic) Noir, there is one more ‘trait’ that demands to be brought up: the genre’s willingness to play with – and extend – its format, making Nor- dic Noir constantly flexible and malleable ( Forshaw 2012 : 3). In this way, it refuses any homogenising classification: there are differences in gender, in the profession of the crime-solving character, in the setting, and in the amount of realism. Hence, the genre welcomes deviances, and few Nordic Noir productions fall unproblematically under the qualifications laid out previously. This is true for the three chosen television series under discussion: while all are classic police dramas and point to larger social and cultural anxieties, only two of them make some use of a grey, rainy and somber setting: Innan vi dr and Bron IV .

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