Arctic Carnivalesque: Ethnicity, Gender and Transnationality in the Films of Tommy Wirkola

• Main Author: Iversen, Gunnar
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Edinburgh University Press 2015
• Subjects: Arctic; Blair; Norway
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694174.003.0008

This chapter examines the way in which Sámi filmmaker Tommy Wirkola ironically appropriates contemporary Hollywood films such as The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (2003-4) to create ironic, postmodern genres films that address questions of ethnicity and gender. Iversen examines the way in which Wirkola’s films made in Norway such as Kill Buljo: The Movie (2007) and the ‘Nazi zombie horror splatter comedy’ Dead Snow (2009) appropriate the horror genre to tell stories about traumatic events in Northern Norwegian history -- such as the German invasion during Second World War -- while incorporating visual references to European and Scandinavian art cinema. Iversen also analyses the representations of masculinity in Knut Erik Jensen’s Cool and Crazy (2001).