A deeply moving and profoundly philosophical intervention into the problems facing contemporary Sweden. If social change can be produced through moving-image, this series is its proof.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Swedish series Thin Blue Line (Tunna Blå Linjen) might appear to be just another murder mystery, Scandinavian-noir police procedural in the vein of Beck, Wallander, and The Bridge that, while enjoyable and even interesting, as a genre can become a bit exhausting, particularly if they aren't precisely on point and pitch perfect. But this is absolutely something far more than any of these series. First is its flawless execution, perfect performances from each and every actor, natural and yet intelligent dialogue, a tone that ranges the spectrum from dry black humor to intimate relationship drama, through to its meticulous production values and deeply moving soundtrack. It is also a profound exploration of the philosophical core of Swedish liberal society, thought and behavior and the sorts of fundamental transformations that emerge from out of its cultural challenges, and the politics of change that might carry Sweden through the new realities it faces. This is a series that truly redefines what one will think Swedish television capable of producing.

From Documentary Style to Existential Articulation

Every moment of Thin Blue Line is real. It's hard to say if it is the documentary style of the series, with its quick takes and always moving camera that keeps the perspective unsettled and voyeuristic (something like The Office) that produces this. Or whether it is some unnatural autism of these actors that allows them to absolutely block-out any awareness of a camera crew filming them, or of the fact that their behavior is memorized script. It's impossible to say, the moment-to-moment of this series is simply flawlessly real. Each moment settles into the infinitely deep unpredictability of a lived experience. One's eyes will study the scene in all its detail—the expression on faces, passers-by walking, the scenery outside the car window—and be lost in the reality of the moment. And, as the series unfolds, with it the entire internal universe of each and every character emerges and, through them, the social and societal context within which their lives are lived.

Thin Blue Line does not make points by speaking them and making them explicit. The most profound points it makes arise from out of a poetics of a radically liberalized state of being. It is the most profound communication of language, as that which is said while what is said is being said. At every moment what the series fundamentally communicates arises out of the fact of showing a context and reacting on that context continuously until it is pushed to an emotional and rational limit. These are the kinds of situations one dreams of, when the reality of their choices in life conspires with their context to fully liberate them into a space of radical individuation. Rather than being the acts of one navigating their context through a series of logical steps trapped in the repetition of the present, the limit and then breakdown that exposes the absolute contingency of one's agency, freeing them for the beginning of an open-ended timeline. When a character acts in Thin Blue Line they do so as existential transformation: it is as if the filming context, its story, its actors have all come-together to produce a something within which what takes place in the film is stripped of all contrivance to become an articulation of reality.

The Enforced Naivete of State-Sanctioned Ideology

In many ways Sweden is an exemplar of liberal culture. It is a country whose expansive welfare state is the expression of a profound philosophy of the individual that sees the state's purpose as primarily to free individuals from all traditional forms of constraint and oppression. Whether it be the discrimination based on gender that prevents the equal involvement of women in the economy or liberation from the perversities that arise in the confines of the conjugal family home, the function of the state is to provide a means of escape into civic life. The state provides an escape from these kinds of oppressive situations not only to fulfill a sense of moral responsibility, but more fundamentally because its role is the production of radically liberalized individuals who encounter one-another without any form of contrived dependency. It is a belief in the absolute contingency of existence as the prerequisite for the production of truth, whether it be in one's work, personal life or in what emerges in national discourse.

The unexpected side-effect of this, however, is a pervasive naivete. On the one hand, this has to do with the simple decency of Swedes that is an expression of their solidarity and the confidence they have in the durability of their system that has worked so well for them for so long. But it is also the case that because toleration and respect of the assertions of others has become a legal obligation enforced through penalty of punishment by the state, that it naturally must be applied to situations to that do not conform to it. And while this can be considered as the price to be paid for maintaining the purity of purpose of the system and its ideological principles, it is also true that the realities of contemporary Sweden are exposing more fundamental cultural and philosophical flaws in the entire liberal philosophical framework under which Sweden has operated for so long. Naivete in this way becomes not only about any kind of ignorance or blindness of a culture unexposed to these new realities; it becomes about the self-aware articulation of an entire system necessarily held legal and cultural hostage to the belief that the ideological incommensurabilities and cultural incompatibilities of the new contemporary reality will all eventually work themselves out.

Towards an Escape from an Anachronistic Cultural Bind

Set in Malmo, in the south of Sweden directly across the Oresund bridge into Denmark, the city the site where the kinds of social and cultural transformations taking place across Sweden are played out in condensed and amplified form. Here, as depicted in the series, a large immigrant community that has arisen through histories of refugee settlement mixed with immigration from the free movement of people within the the E.U., with their own specific cultural customs and religious beliefs, comes into direct conflict with traditional Swedish culture and its liberal-secular civil society. Sweden's approach to its immigration has historically been one of economic self-sufficiency for those communities rather than assimilation, and Malmo finds itself at the epicenter of the reality and viability of this strategy.

The series depicts the peculiar form of collective alienation Sweden's hands-off approach to their immigrant communities has produced. On the one hand, is the seemingly well-intentioned impotent bubble in which the police find themselves trying to simultaneously enforce the city's laws and ordinances while themselves following them. It isn't only an immigrant community that refuses to obey norms of civility and tolerance, it is also a younger generation of (radical activist) Swedes found scattered throughout parks smoking weed and relaxing that doesn't want to be bothered with what they perceive as the enforcement of a different (uptight) police culture over and against their political right for an alternative preference. In the once case, it is cultural specificity of a minority authorized by the liberal obligation to tolerate and respect it, and in the other case, it is a transformation in Swedish culture itself towards more (cynical) political assertiveness that sees itself as the expression of a contemporary liberalism adapted to modern wants and mores. What this situation creates is a context in which the police find themselves on all sides in a position of being unable and unwilling to exercise the kind of force necessary to penetrate this bubble and a citizenry of others of all kinds that don't regard what the police do as in any way important to them, related to their core values and rights, and thus, not worthy of their respect. The response then along the edge of this bubble of incommensurability is, among the immigrant community, one of frustration, anger, and sadness; and in the younger politicized Swede, annoyance(because they are young), entitlement, and trolling disrespect(authorized by the certainty of their claim of Swedishness).

To respond to this predicament, that is being inflamed by a string of rapes that the police have been unable to solve, a series of community bridge-building programs is initiated in an effort to build relationships with these communities. The goal of these initiatives is to introduce immigrant communities to the sorts of practical social activities available in Swedish society, to dislodge these groups from their own balkanized experience and to give them something to do together in a place where their own forms of activity may not be available, acceptable or expedient to undertake. These activities function as places where immigrants and the local Swedish community can mingle, become exposed to one-another's world-views and thereby build understanding and communicability that might provide the basis for durable relationships. They also give the police the opportunity to convey to these groups what it is that they are trying to accomplish, what principles motivate policing in Swedish society, and how the laws they enforce themselves reflect the cultural, ideology and sensibility of the Swedish nation.

What is interesting is that these efforts do not succeed (or fail) in the ways in which one might expect. The community garden ends-up being burned down when illegal marijuana plants are removed that presumably irritate not the immigrant community but younger rights activists; the friendly citizen stance towards working with and supporting these communities and their experiences is no longer seen as commensurate to the problem of 'terrorism' and so police are authorized by the government to become more militant and targeted in their approach to remove deadly weapons and drugs from immigrant communities; and the hand-ball club that was beginning to make a difference in kids lives becomes a proxy for broader immigrant community politics surrounding these 'stop-and-frisk' style government policies that are received as a violation of the premise, and promise of these initiatives. Tasked with policing a Nazi march that is being met with the organized protest of the politicized younger liberal generation who want to see all forms of racism opposed, things come to a head. The protest erupts on all sides with vitriol and violence as the police try to form the barrier between both sides, giving each the space to express themselves without permitting either to infringe on the other's freedom. Then the immigrant community erupts into organized, radicalized resistance to the police's changed strategy. The police become attacked on all sides: on the one hand, by traditional Swedish society for their failure to take a position on the racism of the Nazi marchers, to apprehend the rapist surely among the immigrant community; and, on the other side, by the immigrant community for the failure to live up to the promise of their community outreach efforts that have now transformed into repression and a more organized criminal response born out of the resentment of the targeted suspicions brought to bear on them.

The Birth of a New Realism

What one is left with at a certain point in this series is the futility of it all. There is no prospect for redemption, the divides are just too wide. Even in the private lives of the officers things are all unraveling. Jesse has been living in a trailer while his divorce is finalized, forced to the periphery of his family as a new, more tolerant boyfriend comes into the family that allows his daughter the freedom to become caught-up in smoking marijuana and shirking school and family responsibilities. Magnus's best efforts to get his sister into rehab haven't been successful and the sister's best friend has succumbed to an overdose the blame for which only further diminishes his relationship within his family who perceive him as a poor, feckless police officer who is only the shadow of his father (who was also police). Sarah's relationship with Magnus has seemingly fallen victim to the problems in her family (a cancerous mother and the death of her father) that are impelling her to return home to the north out of a sense of responsibility to her family and ex-boyfriend. It all looks grim, like it is nothing more than a repetition of all the same sorts of outreach efforts previous generations of governments and police precincts have made that validates the prevailing cynicism that anything is anymore or ever has been possible. It seems that all this effort at a new life, on new terms, in this new city have all been a fantasy and that only through a return to tradition, to the past and to old relationships can one hope to persist.

And yet, out of the chaos of these conflicting forces some glimmers of hope emerge. One of Magnus's hand-ball kids meets him at the hospital to pick him up after he was shot raiding a group of drug traffickers when his family isn't bothered (“you have a shitty family”); Jesse is vindicated in his suspicions about the new boyfriend as his wife realizes Jesse's battle-worn wisdom about his daughter was justified (he smiles at the predictable ignorance of his naive wife and turns his back); Sarah's mother refuses that she move back north to live with her and her ex-boyfriend, insisting she stay committed to the life she has started building in Malmo (“Tobias is so boring, I won't allow you to do this for me.”); and the rapist is apprehended finally, not, as was suspected, from among the immigrant community, but right there in the hidden confines of traditional Swedish domestic life (after the tragi-comedy of Magnus himself being suspected of matching the police sketch of the rapist).

In each case, the unexpected path forward is revealed to be not some empty performance of what is already known or a return to the safety of tradition, but rather the sober acceptance of the actual possibilities offered by this new life. It's not the Michelin star glamorous restaurant for a 'real' first date, the taking-on of religious or family duty out of the sense of rote obligation, the retreat from the hectic city and return to the tranquil rural, nor the valorization of the familiar over and against the foreign. It is, rather, the kebab in the rain on an improvised terrace, the re-dedication to and reliance on new friendships when confronted with problems, the commitment and adaptation to the rhythms of one's new home in the city, and the return to religious practices when they are a matter of lived memory and the solace of community through private suffering. What we understand in this series is that these lives themselves, lived there at the intersection of all forms of irreconcilabilities in the city of Malmo are becoming something irrevocably new. There is a form of life that is emerging there in the city where the bridge heads over the Oresund that is stripped of its naivete, contrivance, and false romantic ideals. Born out of the crucible of its conflicts and dramas, a sober perspective that lacks all pretension presents itself as liberation from the rote performance of a middle-class belonging that no longer properly reflects the strange context in which they find themselves. Having persevered in their principles and stood resolute in their convictions, a new expanse of life finally opens before them. Stripped of any cloying dependency, they now each of them stand on their own in this new world, differentiated each from what was. And yet, a re-found sense of the communal comes from out of the appreciation that this experience of being beyond the brink of the familiar and now on one's own terms is shared: a profound, almost religious understanding of the contours of existence. Rather than opening-up to a future of alien possibilities that make these lives foreign to their country, these radically individuated existences are themselves the most pure fulfillment of the philosophical principles of the Swedish liberal State and the prerequisite for the kind of radical truth its social life is more fundamentally based upon. These are lives that are prepared, as no other lives can be prepared that have been lived outside that context and experience, for the realities of the future Sweden as a whole now faces.

And while one might argue this is hopelessly naive and captive to the creative poetics of the film-making, it is also true that such depth of communication, such a profoundly philosophical articulation of film and society, can only but arise when it is itself the very thing it represents.