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- Gustafsson, Tommy, 1969-
(författare)
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A New Perspective on Americanisation : Interactions Between Sweden and America in Swedish Silent Film Culture in the 1920s
- 2005
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Ingår i: Nordic Association for American Studies Conference, Växjö, 26-29/5 2005.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is an established notion that the silent movies were more international in their character than sound films. The arrival of talkies set up language barriers that often turned into national boundaries for smaller countries like Sweden. However, before this happened the international interaction between mainly European countries and America was vivid, exchanging directors, actors, and importing and exporting movies. For a short period (1917-1923) Sweden was among the leading countries that exported its movies to about 50 different countries – something that certainly sparked a national pride. However, during the same period the Hollywood film industry became world leading in the film market. Sweden, like most other European countries, had a condemning attitude towards the growing “Americanization” of the consumer and entertainment culture, mainly manifested in the thousands of imported films that the audience enjoyed in Swedish movie theatres. On reading overviews of Swedish film history it seems apparent that it was this Americanization that “destroyed” the national Swedish cinema, a belief that has lived on since some Swedish film critics saw it as a betrayal of the national glory when Swedish filmmakers sometimes turned to Hollywood films for inspiration. This paper will discuss this Americanization in a new light by doing a closer examination of some of these movies, excluded from the canon and therefore forgotten, and the material surrounding them. This will reveal that the vital exchange continued, although on a different level. Furthermore, a closer look at the Swedish film and entertainment culture of the 20s shows that the condemnation of the Americanization is not as single-minded as one first might expect. It is true that some saw it as something all bad which undermined the traditional society, but many others, particularly among the young, saw it as something new and good. The Swedish filmmakers were of course aware of this contemporary turbulence surrounding the film and consumer culture and they also put it into use in their films, using intertextual reference to Hollywood films that the Swedish audience knew well. And in the process they did not make American copies but distinct Swedish films with American allusions
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- Gustafsson, Tommy, 1969-
(författare)
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En fiende till civilisationen : manlighet, genusrelationer, sexualitet och rasstereotyper i svensk filmkultur under 1920-talet
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The setting for this study is Swedish film culture of the 1920s, which has been studied with a focus on representations of masculinity and gender relations according to four themes: 1) children and youth 2) fatherhood and love 3) sexuality and popularity 4) ethnicity and racial stereotyping. The rise of new consumer culture in the first decades of the 20th century created turmoil between traditional and modern values, not least when it came to conceptions of gender. Studies on masculinity have often directed its efforts towards writing a history of ideals, bound by the concept of hegemonic masculinity; a concept that exclude women as insignificant for the social construction of masculinity. One ambition with this thesis has been to counter the long-lasting concept of hegemonic masculinity, and in the process, try to build a bridge between men and women studies. One other ambition has been question the canonisation of the “Golden Age” of Swedish silent filmmaking by introducing the concept of “the pluralism of film”, and by using a vast material including: Swedish feature films, reviews, articles from fan magazines and trade paper, screen plays, censorship cards, official reports, etc; thereby circumventing the concept of film as “art” in order to focus on film as representation in a more reliably way. One conclusion is the revelation of the diversity that surrounds social constructions of masculinity and gender relations in both film culture and society. In addition, Swedish film of the 20s hardly contained any male characters that upheld the hegemonic ideal, giving way to a more prominent presence of strong female characters, often in the shape of the New Woman. Women did as well have a great influence on the formation of masculinity. However, a notion of a Swedish normative masculinity became visible when contrasted with numerous racial stereotypes, such as malicious representations of Black people and Travellers. The emphasis on gender relations, rather than on ideals, has also contributed to a wider understanding of gender, where criteria such as generation, class, ethnicity and sexuality ought to be included. When it comes to the canonisation of the “Golden Age”, a strong notion exists about the integrated use of nature in film narratives as being a Swedish national trait, when in fact this could be linked only to a few films. If one would point out a trait that permeates Swedish film of the 1920s, it would not be the use of nature, but instead the flagrant racism and xenophobia.
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- Gustafsson, Tommy, 1969-
(författare)
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Filmen som historisk källa : Historiografi, pluralism och representativitet
- 2006
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Ingår i: Historisk Tidskrift. - Stockholm : Historiska föreningen. - 0345-469X .- 2002-4827. ; 126:3, s. 471-490
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article discusses why films have not been used more than they have as historical sources and argues that films ought to be used more by historians. Principally, historians can use film in three basic ways, all of which give access to information about the period when it was produced. First, films can with caution be used for information about the persons, objects and events depicted in documentary films. Historians’ preference for the written word has though largely excluded the use of motion pictures. Attempts to use documentaries as historical sources fell victim to the criterions of source criticism, which declared all films to be false because they are manipulated through use of cuts and voice-overs etc. Second, films can be used as a source for time-bound audiovisual configurations of historical events and historical individuals: Recently historical didactics have taken an interest in films due to the insight that audiovisual historical writing is dominates the dispersion of views of the past among the general population. The audiovisual writing of history thus becomes important because regardless of whether or not it is false it contributes to the formation of a historical consciousness among the public. Finally, films can be used as a source for time-bound conceptions concerning, for example, gender, class, race and age in feature and documentary films. Because films are produced for a mass audience, are made by many people, and are expensive to make, there arise the phenomenon of the films pluralism. This pluralism gives considerable weight to the value of motion pictures as historical source material. Since a film is a collective effort that has to reach as many people as possible in order to turn a profit, it has to keep very close to its own time preferences, which, in turn, makes the motion picture inclusive by nature. Furthermore, through motion picture’s close connection to realism, the human raw material – the actors – will function as representations of a range of different conceptions concerning gender, race and class, and its mutual relations. Obviously, there are also exceptions to this pluralism. For this reason, the scholar must learn to “read” the films in relation to both the social and medial context in order not to misinterpret them.
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