Random thoughts.
Trying to calm down from the unfathomable stress earlier today. Not gonna talk about it right now though. Too much shit at once, that it's hard to collect myself and get a grip on it really.I need some distance. So therefore I am doing this rambling exercis, letting out some recent random thoughts about worldly and nonworldy nonsense. I guess this could be one of my few typical blof rants I guess.
Anyway, the other week while watching some random show on TV, the questions just popped into my dead in an instant. And since what I was watching was utterly broing I gave after and followed the weird path the tracks of my brain were taking me. The questions that popped? Well, a trivial thing like: "Why does swedish action movies just don't work? Why is there never any credibility to them?"
So I pondered a little while, in all meaningless. And somehow I do assume it must be a cultural thing. I mean American ones definitely do, british actionmovies work some of the times, sort of and so does Hong Kong, Korean and Japanese actionmovies to a large extent. But a swedish action movie? Everything to days date that is close to being a genuine swedish actionmovie is utter crap. Jan Guillous "Hamilton" maybe being closest. But after some thinking I really must admit that movie sucks too. Sure, Peter Stormare and Mark Hamill are always cool. But the movie itself is crap. Doesn't work. As soon as they talk swedish, it's ruined. Feeling and atmosphere is gone.
So is it that we swedes just don't think it works as fiction if they talk in swedish? Nah, that's silly, because just like the germans and a few other european countries we make a lot of semi-good thrillers, dramas and private eye/cop movies and tv-series. So reality and the language aren't the answer.
So what is? The theory that started to evolve in my head was hard to catch in the bginning, but once I got a form grip of it it started to make sense to my bored mind: Icons. Heroes. Swedes don't have any hero myths. We so totally lack idols and icons. We live in a socialist and protestant country where being overly spectacular or being an attentionmaker is looked upon as annoying and inappropriate. It's not something the average swede do. I mean for real, what are our national heroes? Karl the 12th? A selfcentered warmaker king with hubris that got shot in Norway from within his own lines due to getting to prophanic and holier-than-thou about his own prescence. Gustav Vasa? A fat, also selfcentered, manipulative bastard who managed to dupe the swedes into getting out of a healthy union with the other scandinavian countries? Spreading propagande lies about the then ruling danish king being a tyrant, although he wasn't? Burning the catholic collected wisdom and five hundred years of swedish culture. Yeah, we swedes got some really great heroes to look up to.
Just think about it. Where in the latest hundred years do most nations find their true heroes and morality icons? The second world war. Yeah we swedes did a pretty good job there. Staying passive, covering under our bedsheets like chickens. Our foremost warhero is Wallenberg, a good man who did a lot for freeing the minorities and jews from Hitlers grasp. But he was a politician and papershuffler. A bureaucrat. Nothing to build fancy warstories on. A good thriller or two maybe. No, it kinda explains itself. We swedes don't believe in swedish actionmovies, because we don't have it in our culture. We can't make them believable, because there is no idols to get inspirations from. Nothing to gather that buttkicking energy from, deep within our subconscious. No, we're sitting here with our bad cop movies and semi-good thrillers because the only suspense we swedes find in our own corner of the world is in myths about the russian mafia, drugdealing and conspiracy theories. The stuff that always been in our blood. Trade conflicts and bureaucratical manipulation.
My brain came to a halt here. Probably distracted by yet another uninspiring commercial. And now I have shared my utter wisdom of these thoughts with you guys. Hope I entertained at least someone. :)