Performative histories, foundational fictions Anu Koivunen Finnish Literature Society · Helsinki : gender and sexuality in Niskavuori films
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Abstract
With these eloquent words, 1ordic 1ational Cinemas (1998) introduces the
series of seven Niskavuori films (1938–1984) to an international readership.
The quoted paragraphs – and the mere presence of these filmsin this particular
context of packaging national cinemas into comparable products – suggest
that the films in question enjoy a special status in their country of origin.
What is more, the book’s description summarizes what in the Finnish context
can be termed as the common sense of the Niskavuori films, pulling together
several threads of their long-standing and continuing reception. First, the
quote frames the films as anchored “in reality” as it connects them with the
biography of the female playwright Hella Wuolijoki on whose five plays (1936–1953) the films are based.2 Wuolijoki’s persona, her family history,
and political activism have always loomed large in public discourses around
Niskavuori plays and films. In this quote, the biography islinked to a specific
place and region, Häme (Tavastlandia), which is both the region where
Hella Wuolijoki had relatives through her marriage, the narrative landscape
of the Niskavuori family, and in the nationalist imaginings, a privileged
locus of Finnishness since the early 19th century. Second, the quote frames
the Nis kavuori films in terms of gender history, anchoring them firmly in a
woman-centred and feminist point of view. In implying a parallel between the
fictional world and the history of Finnish women, itreiterates another common
narrative offered since the 1930s, women shouldering the household burden
while men worked (in forestry, on the railroad and in log floating companies)
or waged wars. An emphasis on the distinctive “power” and “strength” of
Finnish women is an inherent feature of this reading. The source of this
narrative – and, by implication, also the origin of a specific gender discourse
featuring “strong women” and “weak men” – is located within a past, pre-
modern, agrarian world. Third, the quote employs mythological language
and folkloric notions of genesis in characterizing the Niskavuori women as
“born out of the earth of Tavastlandia” or as “rooted in the earth”. Through
these expressions, the quote enacts a reading of the films and characters as
place- and soil-bound; it suggests that the representations be seen as more
“authentic” or “essential”, as less mediated or fabricated than some other
representations. In addition, this reading evokes a folkloric narration. It
establishes links to national mythology (the Kalevala as the Finnish “national
epic”) and, hence, implies that the story of the Niskavuori family not only
retrieves the linear time of history, but also a mythical timelessness of
repetition and monumentality. Indeed, the matrons of the Niskavuori farm
are recurrently termed “monumental” and described through metaphors of
trees and stones. Fourth, the quote places the Niskavuori films within the
framework of melodrama and, thus, reiterates earlier readings of the Nis ka-
vuo ri saga in terms of affective impact, as well as recent readings of Niska-
vuori in terms of soap opera narration. Interestingly, there is no contradiction
between the “realist” content (Niskavuori as history) and the melodramatic
narration. In this reading, on the contrary, the melodramatic mode, i.e., the
manner in which strong emotions are concealed yet visible as traces in camera
movements (“scant retorts”) or “skilful mimicry” [sic] appears as an essential
counterpart to the history as it is articulated in Niskavuori films. Indeed, the
melodramatic mode is a key element in this image of a Finnish mentality.
Fifth and lastly, as the quote does not differentiate between the Niskavuori
plays and Niskavuori films, but speaks of them as one, the films are framed
as inherently intertextual or, rather, intermedial. In this respect, the quote also
reiterates earlier readings.
Palabras clave
Anu Koivunen Finnish Literature Society; Niskavuori FilmsCreative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Link to resource
https://www.genderopen.de/bitstream/handle/25595/435/Koivunen_2003_Performative%20Histories%20Foundational%20Fictions.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=yCollections
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