Hi, i’m writing an assignment for uni in my youth culture class about transmedial storytelling techniques of Skam! <3
I know many people (like me) love Skam and it’s remakes for their uniqueness and relatability, so i would be very thankful if some people who watched Skam or maybe engaged with the show on other platforms would help me out here and fill out my short survey. The questions deal with what the audience thinks about the format of the show/the show in general: :)
I have recently decided to rewatch SKAM (OG) again. After my experience in the YR fandom and all the indepth analysis everyone does. I am just thinking so much more about little different things I see happening in all the shows I watch.
I am wondering if anyone has any insight or analysis on Isak and Jonas. Specifically in relation to people calling Isak, the things he does or the things he likes gay, before he has come out.
In season one when Isak requests Jonas to play "I'm Yours", he comments that it is a "gay song". Then when Elias comes join them at the cabin he complains about sharing the room/bed with "the gay guy". Isak asks why everyone insists on calling him gay, to which Elias responds "because you are".
In season 3 the boys on many occasions call him out for how he is acting in regards to Emma, "what are you? Gay?"
Then in the scene where the boys are watching the girls dancing, and Isak makes a comment about the guy doing the audition being "so gay" Jonas looks appalled that Isak would even say such a thing.
Like was there off screen character growth from Jonas? He never defends Isak when others make comments about him, even made comments like this himself... Even when I first watched the series I remember being confused where Jonas's reaction came from.
I know back in that time it was just something people would say, "that's so gay", and Isaks comment was quite a bit harsher but still. It just seems like a 180 in Jonas's attitude to me. Maybe something is lost in translation? (English is the only language I am fluent in) Maybe it is just that simple difference in the harshness.
If anyone has thoughts I'd love to hear! Or, as this series is from years ago, if you know of any existing posts where someone has discussed these things please link them!
Not that anyone asked but I think Skam and some of its remakes are really well crafted shows, and I have a lot of thoughts about a lot of clips. So I’m going to go ahead and have a little rant about some of them and why I think they work so well. Might make a little series of this, but right now I want to talk about the final clip of episode 8 of Skam season 3 (in which Isak and Even go to a hotel), and why I think it’s one of the strongest clips in the whole show. Specifically, I’d like to unpack the metaphor of the elevator, and what it means for the season overall.
So let’s jump right in: this scene, and Isak and Even’s kiss in the elevator, has often been talked about as a metaphor for Even’s manic episode, which I think is incredibly interesting. However I’d like to propose the theory that it also represents a major turning point in Isak’s attitude towards his relationship with Even.
It’s important to note that this clip is the first time we see Isak and Even properly spend time together as a couple outside of the domestic, intimate space of their bedrooms/apartments. And Isak is very clearly made uncomfortable by this: we see him pull away when Even tries to kiss him in front of the café, for example, and he is awkward during the interaction with the receptionist to whom Even introduces him as his boyfriend.
This is very consistent with Isak’s behaviour throughout the season up to this point: when he is alone with Even he is more relaxed than we have ever seen him, but as soon as his relationship is taken into the public, he panics. We see this when he comes out to Jonas and doesn’t know how to respond to Jonas calling Even good looking, when he kicks out the boys at the end of episode 7 to be alone with Even, and in his visible awkwardness when Even first meets the boys at school, to name a few examples.
However something I noticed is that I can’t think of a single moment after episode 8 where we see this discomfort in Isak. Even when things are going badly and he thinks Even doesn’t love him, he’s very open with the boys about how upset he is, and after the O Helga Natt reunion we see him be much more open about and comfortable with his relationship.
It’s true that when he talks to his father on the phone in episode 9 he does try to lie by saying he was joking when he said he had a boyfriend, and although he admits it was real before hanging up he does maintain that he’s okay even though he’s not. But to me, his lie about being okay has less to do with his relationship with Even and more to do with the difficulty Isak experiences in letting his father in and being vulnerable. What matters is that he is unwilling to lie about having been in a relationship with Even.
This means that the last time we see him be uncomfortable with being public about his relationship is in the interaction with the receptionist. So, what changed? This bit of dialogue with her may seem quite casual and random (and I read somewhere that part of the reason it was there was to give a shout-out to the Danish fans, which is amazing), but I think it’s actually absolutely crucial to the plot of the season. So far, the only people that Isak has been open to about his relationship have been people he was very close to (his friends, his parents, his flatmate…). These have all be positive, but all of the interactions he’s had with strangers (or people he wasn’t close to) on this subject have been awkward at best and incredibly distressing at worst. I’m thinking for example of his disastrous Grindr attempt, of the casual homophobic comments he’s heard throughout the seasons, of Vilde’s awkward (if well intentioned) ‘I love gays’ text, or even of Emma’s ‘it’s 2016 get out of the closet’ speech, among others.
This woman, then, is the very first stranger not only who Isak is open about his relationship to, but also who has a positive reaction. And not just positive: it’s completely casual. Isak needs this so much, at this point. He’s desperate to be with Even, and he’s out to everyone who matters to him, but when it comes to outsiders it’s been the source of a lot of distress. So this very normal, very casual interaction with this woman is a huge deal for him. And despite his slightly awkward attitude throughout this interaction, you can clearly see on his face the joy, giddiness and even the relief that being introduced as Even’s boyfriend (and this being met with “how nice”) brings him.
This interaction is so crucial, therefore, because at this point he’s still afraid of what his relationship with Even will mean for the outside world, and this interaction is what allows Isak to finally let go of that fear. He’s been getting closer, he’s been making efforts to be more open, but this is the confirmation he needed that, yes, he can be with Even and have a normal life (and we all know how much being normal is important to Isak).
So to me, the elevator scene marks a major turning point in Isak’s relationship to his relationship with Even. When you think about it, a hotel is simultaneously a public and a very intimate place. Therefore Isak and Even’s kiss in the glass elevator that is rising up to their hotel room is a beautiful visual metaphor for Isak’s acceptance of his relationship, and the passage/rise of it in his mind from something he feels the need to keep to the private sphere, into something that can be both public and private.
They are having an intimate moment, but unlike their other kisses (underwater, in Isak’s room, etc.) the glass wall of the elevator which permits this beautiful backdrop of the city is also a reminder of the outside world, a reminder that they are a part of that world, that their relationship and their intimacy have a place in it. The motion of the elevator is therefore a visual representation of the moment where in Isak’s mind his relationship with Even transitions from a ‘thing’ (he doesn’t seem to find a better word for it when he talks about it to his friends a few clips ago) and ascends into a proper relationship.
I think this transition is absolutely essential, at this point in the show. It serves to escalate the stakes of their relationship (and by extension of the story), and is what allows the impact of the heartbreaking scene we see at the end of the clip to be so much stronger. It’s one thing to be sad because the ‘thing’ you were starting to have with someone is complicated or even ending. It’s entirely something else to deal with (what you view as) the end of a real relationship. But this also means that after this heartbreak, where previously Isak would probably have given up, he is now more willing than ever to fight for his relationship.
This ties in nicely with something that @evakuality has gone into in her series of posts about the difference between Isak and Matteo, in which she unpicks Isak’s very passive approach to his relationship with Even. You can read this analysis here (and you definitely should if you haven’t already, it’s brilliant!) so I won’t go into it, but I will say that I think this scene marks the moment when Even stops being mythical and enchanting and instead their relationship becomes real, thus allowing Isak to be much more active in it. Again, this is essential to escalating the stakes of the season, because if Even had remained a mythical figure the heartbreak in this scene would have been redundant after the heartbreak pre-episode 7.
I also think that the image of the elevator being simultaneously representative of this shift for Isak and of Even’s manic episode is incredibly interesting, but I’m not going to go into this now as this post has already gotten very long. (Also just to be clear, the reason I’m not going into more detail about the manic episode metaphor is because I am no expert on mental illness and am not bipolar myself, and also because many people far more qualified than me have gone into detail about this aspect already.)
But there you have it, this is why in my opinion the elevator metaphor is one of the strongest in this show. Like I said, I may or may not make this into a series (do I miss writing essays? Quite possibly!), because there’s loads of scenes in Skam and in some of the remakes that I think have this kind of traction too. Not sure if I will, but I also wanted to talk about the build-up of tension throughout this clip, so if I do make a series of this I will probably talk about that too, in a later post!
May some of you are familiar with the two statues made by Michelangelo. And I refuse to believe that the name choice of both David and Matteo (played by an actor called Michelangelo) is "just coincidence".
Let's look into the symbolism of these two statues:
St. Matthew: The figure of St.Matthew is torqued around its central axis, a spasm of movement far different from the quite traditional pose of Michelangelo's David. Even in its unfinished state, Matthew's massive musculature suggests a deep reservoir of pent-up energy and divine inspiration.
But still there is something holding him back. Something hinders him from freely moving and acting independently.
Doesn't this remind us of Matteo? How his mental illness and his fear of being alone and rejected are holding him back? How he aspires to be free and himself, but simultaneously he doesn't know how to do that (yet) ? He's still in the making, he's not finished yet, kind of like a work in progress.
David: The David is the ultimate projection of heroic choice and heroic action. Michelangelo shows David not as a triumphant victor, but as a thinking, resolute being--the preconditions for victory. The sculpture was inspired by the story of the young shepherd boy who chose to fight a far stronger adversary in order to save his people from invasion. Wearing no armor, with a sling as his only weapon, David defeats Goliath using superior skill and courage.
Doesn't this remind us of David? David is the epitome of a brave and courageous man and he's already fought a whole battle on his own. David who's trans and who's chosen the difficult path of transitioning? Maybe because it wasn't a choice at all, often times as a trans person it's either fighting or killing yourself.
David has already won a battle. And he's winning again and again. Remember how often he said "I won" in the last few clips. But maybe he has to learn that life is not a thing you can win on your own. Life is so much more. It's companionship and sacrifice and loss. Sometimes you have to work as a team to reach victory at it's purest.
--
What do you think? It's possible that this doesn't mean anything. But it was still fun to work on this analysis.
Okay, I have been mulling over David’s comment ‘This is France in 2019. It’s not Disneyland. I’m not a liar’ for days now. I don’t actually want to bring up this now days-old discourse (which is ancient in Tumblr years) or like #DESTROY1!! David or anything - I only bring up Skam France for like two seconds at the end of this - however, this comment has birthed a tangential and persistent internal monologue... I am spiraling and would like to have a Very Long Ramble™ into the void that is Tumblr about verisimilitude, realist filmmaking, intertextuality, and Skam. So hi void, how it’s going?
Skam is an ambitious and creative project arguably seeking ‘realism’ through its material, film style and the mechanics of how it is consumed by its audience. And by realism, I mean the believability of its characters and events or verisimilitude. But is Skam actually a show of the realist tradition of filmmaking? Can we say that Skam is, in fact, a window to our own world?
The show’s material is built off of six months of research speaking to Norwegian teens, basing some of the characters and scenes off of these people and their stories. Julie’s directing style encouraged actors to improvise and to play around dialogue to make the scenes more natural/organic for these characters. Not all, but a significant portion of the soundtrack was implemented diegetically (music on the radio or playing at a party, the music stopping when a character pulls out their earbuds). Clips might start or end mid-conversation to evoke the sense that you are really dropping in at a random point in someone’s day. The incredible mise-en-scène enriched characterisation (oh man that toilet paper in the background). The settings are all real places (like Nissen, with actual students filtering in-and-out in the background). We get long, unedited shots of characters texting (editing their text, making typos) all to get the sense of being there with them in real-time.
And Skam’s use of real-time clips, social media profiles, and text-message screenshots certainly suggests an authenticity unavailable to film or episodic television. Not only can the audience accept the reality of the world presented through traditional techniques like editing, cinematography, dialogue, etc, but additionally through a uniquely immersive and interactive format. Like, these social media profiles literally exist next to our own, pop up on our feed, we can even comment on them!
As such, we can see how Skam intends to present a world that imitates reality and invites us to engage with its world as if it was our own.
But then is its goal, like that of traditional realist works, to present the truth? To create an accurate snapshot of the lives of Norwegian teens? Well, kind of? I mean, surely it is fairly representative/realistic given what I discussed above - though I’m not a Norwegian teen nor ever have been (I mean I have met Norwegian teens before, is that the same thing?) - but what I think is important is that we are certainly expected to believe that we are being presented with our own reality in this fiction regardless of whether or not we actually are. And from that, we can surmise the more lofty goals the show has.
Skam wants you to be immersed in the reality of its world, assume it to be a part of our own, all so that it can lie to you and subvert expectations, in order to ask you these questions (among others): What is the truth? What - or who - is authentic? What personas do we create? How do we lie to ourselves and others? Can there be multiple truths - i.e. perspectives - that co-exist or is there one universal truth - a definitive right and wrong? What is the relationship between identity and individuality? How do we stereotype others or limit ourselves because of the internalisation of these stereotypes? How does popular media and social media influence our actions, our perceptions of ourselves, and of others?
Let me explain what I mean in reference to that last italicised question. Take, for example, one of the central conflicts of the first season: Eva and Ingrid’s relationship. The way that the story is framed and unfolds is a commentary on, and indictment of, the tropes of teenage girls in other shows and films. It sets itself up with a familiar premise: our protagonist, Eva, is a sympathetic character who isn’t part of the popular group and is seeking connection. Ingrid is so obviously played up as the mean girl, she’s introduced in a slow-mo surrounded by other pretty girls with pop music in the background as she glares as Eva (really every manner in which mean girls are depicted on screen is used here). But then it’s eventually revealed that their relationship is more complicated? Jonas and Eva got together behind Ingrid’s back, her actions are arguably warranted. As such, I would argue that Skam isn’t presenting a reflection of our own reality, but a reflection of the media we consume. We so easily agree with Eva’s point of view, perhaps because we have internalised the idea of petty teenage girls. But by the last episode, all of the girls are humanised and complex people with insecurities who make mistakes. The various conversations between Eva and other girls in the last leg of the season give us a glimpse of how we may become better people, to learn to apologise to others and forgive ourselves when we fail. To resist viewing others in a binary fashion.
Even when it’s not necessarily presenting a reflection of popular media, it still plays with our idea of reality by constantly warping perspectives, twisting our expectations of how characters will act in order to confront why we have these expectations at all. Characters initially presented in a stereotypical, trope-ish manner always have more depth! And many of these characters’ core conflicts are them fighting against their own internalised stereotypes born from media and ~society~!
As such, the show does not have black and white villains (okay maybe Niko bleh). Only misunderstandings, miscommunications, insecurities, and the like. When it comes to moral conflicts, Skam is trying to say: this character’s perspective may be true, but hey so may this other character’s conflicting perspective. In the way that we perceive others, it asks us to question what we think we know about people, plays on these stereotypes to deconstruct them.
(I mean the theme of the show doesn’t get more obvious than Noora’s quote taped to her wall: “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be Kind. Always”)
In a lecture Julie and Mari gave discussing the thought and process behind Skam, they noted how many people they spoke to struggled with the impulse to be perfect, to get the best grades, be perceived in a certain manner by peers, and so on. Mari recalled one person specifically who joked about how the person they were on social media was themselves, only a more perfect version. With that framing in mind, they didn’t create Skam to necessarily show the truth™, but rather democratise truth. Give voice to truths less often heard and understand. Reflect voices uncommonly presented fairly on screen (just think of my babes Sana and Even). Tear down simplistic and reductive notions of the way we are and offer some of the myriads of ways we can be.
This isn’t done 100% perfectly all the time; Julie’s own messy perspective often bleeds into the characters, sometimes giving the show a more righteous (and flawed) tone. Isak’s speech to Sana in season 4 is a great example of this. Or the way that lesbians are played as a joke rather than given their own voice. Just as the show itself reveals the various complicated perspectives people hold and shines a light on harmful media tropes, it also reveals Julie’s for better or for worse.
So beyond the above just being interesting (in my opinion), what’s my point here? I guess I am arguing that when we step away from framing our analysis of Skam away from judgments about how realistic it is, we can start to ask some other more introspective and complex questions it offers on morality, biases, ideologies and the like. Which so many people are doing! I guess I just wanted to vocalise this (idk I have been writing this for awhile now I may have lost the plot)? Which is how this circles back to David’s comment. I don’t have answers, just questions to throw out into the universe about his directing approach to Skam that differs to the original. His approach is so contradictory: in one sense, he leans into a more traditionally cinematic filmmaking style (soundtrack themes for characters, showing hallucinations that aren’t there, editing styles that evoke dreaminess/a step away from reality) and he furthermore breaks the illusion of reality through the promotional work the actors are doing, the BTS bits he releases - yet from all of this I can’t get the nugget out of my head from that one out of context comment - is David’s goal here more realistic perhaps than Julie’s? Is he proposing that this is in fact meant to be read as an honest depiction of France in 2019? I don’t know, don’t take this last paragraph too seriously, but I wanted to put it out into the void.
In the meantime, his unrelated comment spurred me into essentially writing an essay-form love letter to the genius of Skam, so there you go Tumblr. Enjoy?
There is no doubt Isak knows something is up with Sana. But I love, that he doesn’t throw a pity party for her and tries to make her spill out all of her broken heart feelings. He knows her well enough to know, that is not how he should approach it.
He clearly has a feeling that Sana’s main issue has something to do with the girls, and he clearly understands why. lol... He knows Sana don’t want him to feel sorry for her, but he knows she needs an ally... He lets her know he is on the same page as her. Without ever asking her if she needs a friend or a shoulder to cry on, he lets her know that she does have a friend in him... And then he lets it subtle slip that he still needs her as a biology partner, without begging her to take him back.
He makes her feel like he needs her more than she needs him. Sana doesn’t want pity friends, she wants equals.
Isak does the exact right thing, and this friendship could rise to new levels. I am living for this alliance!!.. (also, can Sana please visit Even and Isak)
.... Also, this could finally lead to Sana and Isak texting again!!
first clip of s1 e8, storytelling through the shots
i’ve thought about this since i first watched season 1, and i noticed how they more than once in different episodes, gave us this shot of Isak. We see Isak from behind when he’s walking behind Eva and Jonas. The first one is from episode 1 and the second one is from episode 4. Both times he’s in the same clothes, green jacket, light brown backback and green hoodie. Him walking behind them is making it obvious that he feels like a third wheel with Eva and Jonas.
And then, we get this shot, in the first clip of episode 8
It starts like this, and it looks suspiciously much like Isak. I’m sure i’m not the only one who thought this was Isak the first time i saw it. Which is, intentional. They have now two times made us connect Isak to this kind of shot, so Isak is the first person we think about when we see this. This is also why they made Eva have her hood pulled up, to hide the hair.
She walks towards the boys, and we see this,
We see that it’s Eva, and we see how she sees Jonas, Isak and Elias. At this point all that we know is that Jonas now somehow knows that Eva and Chris kissed, and that has strained his and eva's relationship. We don't know yet, and Eva doesn't know yet, that it's because of Isak that jonas knows this, but i think the shots are really telling.
Isak used to walk behind Eva and Jonas, now Eva has taken his place, and Isak has taken hers. Because of what Isak did, he now has the position in Jonas’s life that Eva used to have.
We didn't know that Isak was in love with Jonas and we didn't know that he told everyone about Eva and Chris, but it's all in the shots.
