The Privileged Human: Global Inequity in Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier's De fem benspænd ("The Five Obstructions")

Abstract

The Scandinavian countries top international rankings measuring happiness, wealth, gender equality, class equality, social trust, and social mobility.1 The Nordic welfare model is based on core values of equal opportunity, social solidarity, and security for all. 2 After the Cold War, the Nordic welfare model appeared to many as the only viable alternative to free market capitalism; The Economist, for instance, published a leader in 2013 suggesting that the New Nordic Model is the Next Supermodel that others need to follow.3 The Scandinavians, then, seem to have succeeded in the proverbial pursuit of happiness that has been the goal of so many Western nations and their citizens. Yet, at the same time, globalization leads to an increasing awareness of those figuring on the bottom of the same rankings. Through media and immigration, the privileged Scandinavian is confronted with the suffering of others on a daily basis. These global Others suffer through poverty, war, trafficking, labor exploitation, etc. Witnessing this suffering and acknowledging the interconnectedness between one’s own privilege and the suffering of others – the child laborer sewing the shirts you buy cheaply, for instance – has brought about a social identity crisis pertaining to what Benedict Anderson calls “the goodness of nations”, especially in the Nordic nations.4 We find evidence of this crisis in narratives that raise ethical questions and aim at influencing the reader’s or viewer’s social conscience. In this article I posit the emergence of new, postnational, Scandinavian narratives of privilege and guilt. These are narratives that are marked by what I call ScanGuilt. They are narratives that explore the dark side of privilege and often work rhetorically and aesthetically by engaging and reevaluating cultural heritage – the Nordic classics – in an age of globalization. [...] Dette er et kapittel fra boken Perspectives on the Nordic, Lothe/Larsen (red.). © 2016 Novus forla