Vi måste prata om klass (we have to talk about class) is a popular phrase at the moment in Sweden. Some Swedes see growing division in a society often praised by outsiders for its equality. It's not my intention to analyse the economic stratification of Swedish society - that's a whole academic area of research by itself. Nor do I want to get wrapped up in the messy business of defining class (that has its own research field too...) But I would like to share my peculiar experience of watching I, Daniel Blake in a Stockholm cinema full of Swedes.
I, Daniel Blake is a film by Ken Loach, a director known for highlighting issues of the working class in Britain. It won a golden Palm at Cannes film festival and got a lot of people talking. You can watch the trailer here, if you're interested.
Now, I don't like to generalise even though I do it a lot, I am going to generalise here and say that the majority of people in the audience for I, Daniel Blake last Sunday at the cinema on Stockholms South Side weren't drawing from their experiences living in modern working class Britain to help them relate to the film. In fact, I took a moment to absorb and admire the people who constituted the audience. I admired them for taking the time and the interest to watch a difficult film about something which probably had little actual bearing on their everyday lives. And for being open to learning about people who slip through the cracks in a society while they swan about attending Cannes-film-festival-winning-movie matinees.
But hey, that's me too. I live in my nice flat and I have my nice job and I go to my intellectual film matinees. And I find that hard to reconcile with my life back in England. Back in England I've got two family members who are basically Daniel Blakes. They're chronically ill and they've slipped through the cracks. If I still lived in England I would be in the world of the British working class. I was raised in a working class area, I lived with working class neighbours, and when my little students start imitating my accent I know I should pronounce my T's better. Being in Sweden means I've got a comfortable life and I don't know where the cultural differences end and the class differences begin.
The people in the South Side cinema who watched I, Daniel Blake have as much understanding of what life is like for working class Brits as I do for young jobless immigrants in Skåne because I watched the Swedish film Eat, Sleep, Die (Äta Sova Dö).
Both films are incredibly depressing in their own ways, one because it hits me so close to home and one because it doesn't. I don't know what the Swedish working class looks like, how people slip through the cracks
here, what their lives are like or how they get by. I don't know where
they live, what features of language they use or what their values are.
It is incredible how easily a whole division of society is hidden and I find myself asking, is it hidden because I'm British and I don't understand the system like a Swede or is it hidden because I'm middle class?
Sometimes when you've really got nothing better to do, you read the packet that bread comes in. And in Sweden packets are usually covered with interesting information. Is this because there is generally nothing better for anyone to do in Sweden? Who knows.
At any rate the packet told me something I actually wanted to know but never bothered to find out until staring lazily at a packet with a slice of bread hanging out my gob, which was why the Swedish word for sandwichis 'butter goose' (smörgås).
A long time ago a person who I can only assume was partially sighted was churning some butter, saw some solid chunks floating to the surface of the milk and decided they looked like geese. I'll provide you with a handy image of a lumpy butter churn and let you decide if the chunks look geesey.
Personally, I saved this image on the computer under the filename "not a goose" but I did say I would let you decide if there are any anserine globules in there. Assuming you found a goose, I'm still not sure how ye olde Swedish person managed to get the name to stick to the object after smearing the fat over a piece of months old crust and proclaiming the resulting foodstuff a Butter Goose. "Prove it was a goose" I would have demanded after my friend had already smushed it onto the sandwich. "I've got more in the churn!" she'd claim. Then we'd both go over to the churn, see a load of butter and decide to be like the Danes and the Norwegians and just call the bloody thing butter bread (Smørrebrød) like sensible people. But then we'd have nothing to read on bread packets...
