Why Skam means a lot to me
Skam is over. It has been a journey, an adventure. This is one of the most ambivalent feelings I have experienced in my years on this planet. I’m so thankful for everything. I’m so thankful that I discovered Skam 10 months ago and got to experience all these things. However, I’m also incredibly sad and it leaves a terrible void in my heart knowing that the last clip ever now has been released.
It sounds weird but the release of season 3 is already an incredibly nostalgic feeling to me. Back then what feels like a hundred years ago, I didn’t know what this series would do to me, would mean to me. For the course of season 3, I dedicated my life to the show. All week I would spend an unhealthy amount of time doing Skam related stuff on the internet. By the end of the week, I would re-watch the clips in the full episode in an almost religious way. I would turn off my phone, dim all lights except a couple of candles and then watch the episode on the big screen with all my focus.
Because of this I almost got annoyed by how my friends watched the show. They would watch an episode in the middle of being on their phone, while eating, doing other stuff, or right before going to work etc. This was so far from how I watched the show myself. I needed several hours afterwards to process and discuss the episode online.
I think that this is related to how I felt (feel) deeply connected to Isak. I felt like I was Isak and that I could acquaint with his problems on a deeper level. So when my friends watched the show in a more superficial and entertaining manner (which is probably perfectly normal) I would get annoyed because I felt like it was my life and my problems. And by that, it felt like they didn’t care about my life or my problems, which probably isn’t true. I felt like everything was directed at me. I took it personally.
Days went by with endless updates of the website hoping for an update. I used hours discussing and reading discussions in the Danish fan group “Kosegruppa DK”. I read analyses, theories, recaps, articles. I watched the news in Norwegian, I watched other tv shows from Norway. The real-time aspect made it real for me. I had to live Isak’s life as well as my own. I have felt hopeless, happy, relieved, hurt, angry, sad, in love. I had never been this paralysed by a tv-show before. A tv-show which paused my real life. Some people would probably suggest that I needed help when I say that nothing, nothing in my own life was more important to me than Skam was in the autumn of 2016. I spent time learning Norwegian, despite it being mutually intelligible with Danish, my native language. I listened to Norwegian radio, to train my understanding of spoken Norwegian. I read random news articles out loud to train speaking Norwegian. I borrowed a 600-page book about Norway and Denmark’s common past in history. I even looked up how to move to Norway and the requirements to obtain citizenship for citizens from the other Scandinavian countries.
That is, I have been planning and living a life that wasn’t my own. Skam has made me realise a lot of things and has made me learn a lot about other people. I don’t think that any tv-show ever will be able to make me philosophise and think about my own life, and what is wrong about it, in the same way Skam has. This is, of course, being emphasised when I see the characters’ relationships. I know that I never will experience that type of love you do when you are a teenager. Time has simply gone by. I know that I won’t experience the freedom and unity of living with my friends in a commune. Both because of being too old, but also because I’m not even entirely sure that I have any friends that would want to do it with me. I know that I won’t experience having been growing up in a capital city with everything that comes with it. And lastly, I know that I won’t ever get a life where school is just a side-issue and the friends, drama, parties, and problems are the main focus. These are things that remind me of how my own life is and why I would rather have another, why I want to escape sometimes.
Of course, it’s not healthy to live in a parallel universe but Skam has relieved some of the pain of living, in a way that no other thing ever has, whatsoever. And when you get updates every single day during the season, then it’s just even easier to live through someone else. I feel like I probably wasn’t suitable to watch Skam in real-time, especially in season three, because of the fact that I invested myself so deeply. I adopted the show and integrated it in my own life in a way that made me mentally exhausted. The thing is that Skam’s realtime concept mimics the same brain functions that are responsible for the development of mental disorders such as anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression occurs when the individual speculates for several hours each day for months. It’s not the negative thoughts themselves that create depression. It’s all the hours of handling and speculating about them that does. And this is exactly what the realtime experience of Skam recreated. Each day you spend hours thinking about the characters, discussing them online, reading about them, thinking about them etc. I spent at least 6 hours a day thinking about Skam which evidently made my mood drop, because all that thinking made me hate my own life.
But now it’s over. And as much as I adore all of the seasons, I will particularly miss Isak. I’m already tearing up just by the thought of having to let you go. When I realise you aren’t even real it causes me to shed actual tears. You feel so real and the boundaries of what is real and what is not have partially been erased. I believed every word you spoke, every face expressed, every feeling felt. I have laughed at every joke cracked and cried whenever things were too much. I feel like I’m saying goodbye to something important, something with great meaning, something real. It has been one hell of a ride and I’m beyond thankful for getting to follow you on this amazing journey. You have gone from a young insecure boy with incipient feelings that you didn’t know how to express and a difficult situation at home that you didn’t know how to handle, to a strong, clever, and brave young man that is capable of facing challenges as well as loving and be loved. You went from backstabbing your friends out of desperation and despair to someone who is there and stands up for their friends. We have had the delicate honour of following you through some of the most important moments of your life. The moments where you realised who you are. When you dared to be you and dared to be loved. When Even saved you and you saved him back. And all of this has been the most beautiful story ever told. Season three provoked feelings that I never thought I was capable of feeling from a TV show. It was a magical period of time now stored safely in the lands of nostalgia. You have meant more to me than most actual human beings in the real world do. I’m certain that there are next to no other fictional 18-year-old boys who has meant this much to the world. You will always have a special place in my heart and live on there for many years to come. I will love you. As a little brother. As a good friend. As someone I used to be. As who I am. Thank you Isak, you are absolutely beautiful. And thank you Julie Andem for creating an alternative and better world. Thank you for creating a world that I have been able to live in for the past 10 months and escape to when the real world became a little too much. The autumn of 2016 will forever be nostalgic and a sad yet happy memory of something incredible.
The endings of season 3 and 4 respectively are masterpieces.
For some reason, I didn’t have the highest expectations to the ending of season three, but the final week was beautiful and beyond satisfying. Isak and Even were together and were pretty public about it already back then. Sonja and Emma had accepted how things were. As this was before season four I also took note of the fact that Sana gave Isak a Christmas present. This was such a good parallel to the first couple of episodes in season three and showed what kind of friendship they had developed and symbolically the friendship between religions. Magnus and Vilde hooked up which we had been rooting for and provided some nice comic relief. If you think back, the whole of season three was unique in how little all of the other characters were involved. For the same reason, it was such a weird yet welcome feeling to finally see the girl group united again.
This also applies to the end. The conversation between Isak and Eva. This might be one of my favourite things. I personally had hoped for just this to happen and when I saw Eva sit down next to Isak I screamed. Remember how we hadn’t seen Eva for so long at that time. This scene just made a complete circle of Isak and Eva’s friendship to me and was so important and beautiful. It completed Isak’s transformation. That’s why I was glad that Eva got to accompany Isak in finishing his season, even though many argued that it should be Even. But the vulnerable and beautiful parallel to season one was just too important. And last but now least we got the words “Alt er love” that reminded us how Isak and Even got each other in the end. When you look back this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but we have to remember how many of us were dissolved from the angst and we needed this as a reassurance that everything was going to be okay. This is why I love the ending of season three. It is happy, but not excessively happy in the Hollywood way. No loose ends.
The ending of season four is for what it is, brilliantly solved by Julie Andem. I’m incredibly thankful for getting all these tiny little clips from all the other characters. It is, of course, bittersweet because we all wanted to see most of them in their own seasons. But sometimes you just have to stop while the going is good. I was devastated when I watched Vilde’s clip. The things she has to do with the finances, the medicine and so on is beyond what anyone should have to do while growing up and it tears my heart out. Not least when I think about what a beautiful season this could have become. Chris(tina)’s clip also surprised me. The comic relief was to be expected however this also showed us another side of her. The serious side of not feeling good enough around your friends, but also pressure around money. If we fast forward to the very final clip, I immediately started crying when Chris reached out to Vilde which I didn’t expect. Back to the week, I loved Even’s clip as well for obvious reasons. His story could be told so beautifully. We finally got to see that “everything isn’t always love” in the form of slurs which I think is important.
“Kjære Sana”. This clip was just the essence of Skam. I think it was evident that nobody had the point of view, which really emphasised that the ending was near. My emotions already messed with my tear ducts when I saw the Oslo cinematography and the beautiful soundtrack. I love that Julie Andem included meta comments about Even working at kaffebrenneriet, she included stuff from a fan fiction, she included comments from different fan groups. William was smiling, Isak and Even were cute and looked like husbands, Sana looked gorgeous, there was soundtrack from season one, Eva and Jonas might end up together and the clip was released at the IRL time of sunset in Oslo.
The fact that Jonas ended Skam, just pleases my brain in all ways imaginable. The circle is ultimately completed. He began Skam with a speech and ended it with one as well. As he spoke we switched to see a screen being filmed. We switched to our point of view. It was just so beautiful and his voice is perfect for emphasising the main points about how everything is not always what it seems. People and things change. Sometimes you have to feel what is right for you. People fight battles you know nothing about. Life is now. But what is most important is love.
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