Day 1247: I, Daniel Blake

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?