Coping with Shame in a Media-saturated Society: Norwegian Web-series Skam as Transitional Object

Abstract

Since its launch in late 2015, the Norwegian web-series Skam ( Shame), produced by public broadcaster NRK, has become one of the most notable successes in Norwegian television history, both in terms of ratings and critical acclaim. A high-school web-series about teenagers, mostly girls, coming of age in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, the series not only depicts young people in their everyday digital-media use but also reaches its audience through these same media and in a variety of formats extending far beyond video clips. Its success, we argue, is significantly tied to its multimedial form and distribution. We unpack the show’s sociocultural potential by analyzing its various outputs (video clips, screen grabs of the characters’ messenger chats, and updates from their Instagram accounts), as well as the audience’s/users’ responses to these in the form of comments to the web page. We argue that the show functions as a “transitional object” (per Winnicott) for its teen audiences, providing them with a “potential space” (also from Winnicott) in which they can learn how to cope with the challenges of a media-saturated society.

From ‘secret’ online teen drama to international cult phenomenon: The global expansion of SKAM and its public service mission

“…The result was an online drama series that followed a cast of teenage characters at Hartvig Nissen High School in Oslo, as they navigate life at home and school. According to Andem, the concept used elements from television drama, sitcom and soap opera to tell its stories (quoted in Faldalen, 2016), thus combining a ‘complex TV’ narratology (Mittell, 2015) with humour and daily cliff-hangers (see Haastrup, 2018; Krüger and Rustad, 2019; Lindtner and Dahl, 2019 for analyses of SKAM ’s aesthetic strategies). Each season centres on a different main character told in the first person, which in turn helped the series to supply a range of possible identification positions and, furthermore, develop different main character stories across seasons (see also Jerslev, 2016; Sundet, 2017b): in season one, Eva (Lisa Teige) begins high school while feeling guilty about a lost friendship; she has to navigate new social hierarchies while wondering about her boyfriend Jonas’s (Marlon Langeland) commitment to her.…”

“…This article addresses the production, distribution and global expansion of SKAM at a time when television is increasingly distributed to national and international audiences to be consumed through both linear ‘flow’ and on-demand user modes. Although several studies have addressed the recent international success of Scandinavian prime-time television drama and the role of public service broadcasters (Bondebjerg and Redvall, 2015; Hansen and Waade, 2017; Jensen et al, 2016; Redvall, 2013; Sundet, 2017a), less has been written about the smaller online drama series that are also booming in the digitised Scandinavian television market (with exception, see Bengtsson et al, 2018; Krüger and Rustad, 2019; Lindtner and Dahl, 2019; Rustad, 2018). Many of these online series are produced within the same public service production culture and share the same ambition of ‘double storytelling’ (Redvall, 2013) as the more well-known Nordic noir series, though they target smaller and more distinct audience groups and use digital media and storytelling techniques to do so.…”

Moved by Observing the Love of Others: Kama Muta Evoked Through Media Fosters Humanization of Out-Groups

“…How does this happen? The series has attracted a lot of Norwegian and international attention due to its moving depictions of gay and minority teens in Norway ( Krüger and Rustad, 2019 ). The comment above illustrates the emotional responses to the video clips, which evidently convey positive feelings about gay men.…”

Shared, Shamed and Archived Images of Vulnerable Bodies: On the Nexus of Media, Feminism and Freedom of Speech in Scandinavia

“…Stage 2017;Christensen 2017;Hougaard et al 2017). Whereas the studies by Anne Jerslev (2017) and Vilde Sundet (2017) also highlight the series' creation of immediacy and hypermediacy, and erasure of bounds between fiction and reality, due to the use of digital media platforms and real time, Krüger and Rustad (2017) and Rustad (2018) focus on the series as producing 'a digital space for interaction and experimentation' (Krüger and Rustad 2017). Meanwhile, the following will focus especially on the use of interfaces in SKAM , and explore the intensification of affect relations involving bodies and technology alike.…”