Jante'd - More on Jante Law

Amadeus trailer (1984)

(Jante Law, Part 1)

Artists (painters, writers, film-makers, musicians, ahem, DJs...), the narcissistic and self-centred creatures they are, live in constant fear. That fear is of competition, that a new hero/heroine will come up; being more talented, more creative, more innovative, more outspoken; outsmarting and making obsolete our poor narcissist, who will find out s/he is only a derivative hack feeding off other people's ideas and creating nothing essentially new in the process. Therefore, it will become necessary to eliminate the new contenders, whatever it takes, put them to their real place in the pecking order.

One of the most well-known case histories of this process of the artistic rival's elimination is featured in Milos Forman's 1984 biopic Amadeus, which depicts the intrigues and plots of composer Antonio Salieri to get rid of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose talent Salieri is fiercely envious and afraid of. (It's better not to get into any possible historical inaccuracies here, such as Tom Hulce's take of Mozart as a giggling punk rocker of his time -- the fabulist film-makers just want to tell as juicy story as possible to delight the viewers, not historians.)

Salieri's behaviour here is basically Jante Law in action, though usually its mechanisms are of more devious and invisible nature, much harder to detect. That is because there might not be found only one jealous Salieri to put spokes in the wheels but apparently a whole establishment (of rivalling artists and other cultural gatekeepers of the art world), as if designed to make our poor talent's life hard -- and this is also where conspiracy theories begin.

Is our artist only a paranoid imagining things, or is someone actually plotting to block his/her way, speaking bad things of him/her behind his/her back and generally making things difficult for him/her? Even worse than actual attacks on the artist's work and person or negative criticism might be the "conspiracy of silence", as if s/he was silenced to death by the lack of any feedback whatsoever.

Thus is born another martyr, another artist misunderstood by his/her peers, another victim of persecution syndrome. (Not to speak about other possible discriminating factors, depending on our artist's gender, nationality, race, sexual orientation, political views and so on: just open any art mag or culture pages of your morning paper for any desperate outcries and extra evidence.) Our artist was "Jante'd". Of course, there is no real way to know, but "being paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you". (Though personally, more than conspiracy theories, I always put more weight to just incompetence, people's laziness, prejudices and comfort-seeking nature that prevents them looking for any new viewpoints outside their small circles of acquaintances or "good old boys", comfort zones, current trends or "the tried and true".)

Naturally, it's possible our artist, that poor and sensitive spring daisy, may have only him/herself to blame, having just rubbed too many people the wrong way. Being a creative one doesn't always fit together with having a wholesome personality, being a nice, jovial bloke or lass, and many of them/us are -- let's face it -- just irritating twats with overblown egos.

We don't like obnoxious or boastful personalities, because it is as if they pose a threat to our own existence. Any self-hype makes us wary. We don't like forked tongues, slimy showbiz types, obvious fly-by-nights but most of all, we don't like people who blow their own horn too avidly: especially if they are potential rivals.

Or then, maybe our artist actually is talentless, despite his/her delusions to the contrary, so the Jante process of elimination only does a great service to the rest of the world.

The Jante Law

Aksel Sandemose, the inventor of Jante Law

Jante Law was developed by Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose (1899 - 1965) in his novel En flyktning krysser sitt spor ("A fugitive crosses his tracks", 1933). There Sandemose describes life in an imaginary village called Jante, which is loosely based on his own home village.

Jante Law is basically an unwritten and strict code of conduct regulating all fields of life and guaranteeing not one individual will rise above the rest, under the threat of all sorts of social sanctions, common disapproval and so on. These hierarchies and "pecking orders" will take care that only those members who will agree to play along the rules will subsist, and those diverting from the path will be cast aside. Jante Law is considered especially a Scandinavian phenomenon, distinctive of relatively tiny, close-knit societies of "small village mentality", but also Australia, New Zealand and Canada are said to have something similar, called "Tall Poppy Syndrome".

Lately Jante Law came up in Finnish domestic discussion when it was claimed Panu Rajala, the author of Unio Mystica, a biography of the legendary Finnish writer Mika Waltari, lost the acclaimed Finlandia Prize only because the Prize Board members thought Mr. Rajala's "celebrity status" -- the author often featured on the pages of ladies' magazines and so on -- prevented the book in question having any real "literary merit" in the eyes of the Board and thus from receiving the Prize many thought Rajala's book deserved.

Other examples in Finnish cultural life are countless; just every time when it's a question of the artists' job opportunities, grants and common recognition, being the source of endless bitterness for those hapless individuals who consider themselves being discriminated by "the System" or even by "the Mafia" (i.e. the cultural gatekeepers such as critics, curators, publishers and so on).

The late Finnish artist Kalervo Palsa, known for his morbid and grotesque paintings and comics depicting sex and death, kept Jante Law as his motto sign on the wall.

Jante Law:

1. Don't think you are anything.
2. Don't think you are as good as us.
3. Don't think you are smarter than us.
4. Don't fancy yourself better than us.
5. Don't think you know more than us.
6. Don't think you are greater than us.
7. Don't think you are good for anything.
8. Don't laugh at us.
9. Don't think that anyone cares about you.
10. Don't think you can teach us anything.

Jante'd - More on Jante Law

Joining Facebook

Do you have Facebook?

Some time ago I received a mail from a friend who wanted to have me as his Facebook friend. As one proof Finland still remains a monoculture, local media also tends to have a sort of monomania as to what they write about and consider newsworthy at a given time. Whenever a new trend arises, Fenno-Ugric media lemmings immediately hop on the bandwagon, and for a month or two one rarely hears about anything else, when every journo worth their salt wants to give their in-depth analysis (or less than that) on what this shiny new and (supposedly) revolutionary whatchamacallit is all about! Of course, this is how media works all over the globe, but the small population of Finland (5 millions) also means the sandbox is somehow far more limited and it's harder to escape if one does not want that sand to one's eyes.

As you have gathered by now, the inescapable trend Finnish wheelers and dealers of media have been obsessing about has been this Facebook thing, one of these "social networks", founded in 2004 by an American college student called Mark Zuckerberg, where one can share with the rest of the world all sorts of important and essential facts such as what one watches on the telly and whether one is a pathetic, miserable loser with no friends, no spouse, no job, no education and no money or a super-social and sexually successful mega-networker with a formidable CV, nice annual income and naturally tons of cool friends (however a "friend" is defined), especially those with a heavy name-dropping value.

Now, I already have registered myself to Yahoo, Blogspot, MySpace, YouTube, Last.FM and Flickr (not to talk about countless mailing lists and forums I may or may not follow actively), so after all this (and having to consider also the fact I still have limited daily hours for my Net activities) I'm wondering how can I have time and energy for all this networking. Not to talk about maintaining and updating the pHinnWeb site, blog and mailing list, and keeping up my daily e-mail correspondence and constantly answering people's inquiries from all over the world about this thing or that. All these newspaper and magazine articles have been prone to emphasize the fact that people have been known to spend (or waste, however you see it) hours and hours daily at Facebook so, really, that's the last thing I need now! And as said, do I really want the rest of the world to know about my humble person anything more than is necessary; always wishing people to rather judge me by my, erm, work (or whatever you can call all this dabbling with music & culcha) than whether my face is pretty or if I have a great ability to whisper sweet nothings to their ears at a cocktail party or not.

So, I kind of had already sworn I wouldn't add any more of these "social networks" to my already considerable burden of obligations (hah!), but what do you know. Though I didn't want to be a nasty asocial curmudgeon (any more) and do a disservice to this mentioned friend of mine, so as a courtesy (and always being a curious cat and a sucker), I registered at Facebook and accepted his request. So, all you pHinn fans (and haters) can now find me there as "Phinn Kompleksi" (this Facebook member system apparently doesn't allow one to spell "pHinn" correctly). On hearing about my registration, one friend suggested I might next like to join Irc-Galleria, too (a popular Finnish social network favoured by teenagers) -- uhh, touché!

About the myriad ways Facebook has enrichened my life so far: already I have been turned into a vampire and been sent all sorts of invitations, e.g. to join some TV trivia quiz or to compare movie tastes, or to clubs in other towns that I can't possibly attend. And now people also can add all my known nicknames to my profile. Though I haven't sent or been sent any "gifts" (obviously a virtual counterpart to that little tinsel you can find from chocolate Easter eggs) or haven't been "poking" anyone, either, to avoid any possible embarrassing misunderstandings and accusations of sexual harassment. How long will it take before the ecstasy of communication will turn to panic? Well, I adopted a policy of not taking anything here too seriously, as long as there's an "Ignore" button available to any of these offerings. It would be interesting to know how much of the "New Communality" of this much-touted Web 2.0" actually consists of just new technology-enabled ways to talk crap with your friends and waste time (and precious working hours) on trivial activities that were not possible before.

Talking of the related issues of privacy and Facebook, Juri sent me the YouTube link above. Well, I guess I have to take the risk, then. Besides, if CIA and all these intelligence [sic] organisations want to gather indiscriminating information on someone, aren't there already a million and one other places where to get the dirt if they really need it? Living in the age of information, we have already lost the game of retaining a total control over the life-long data that's in distribution about us, and potentially accessible to anyone with necessary means who just wants to grab it. Perhaps I see fatalism as a better option than paranoia, but we become vulnerable as soon as we are born, become members of society's networks, both formal and informal, and all sorts of personal files (health, education, work, financial) on us are beginning unavoidably to find their way to the system. Not to talk about our own involvement in all sorts of social activities leaving a record somewhere. And as for spreading personal info about oneself to these networks, I suppose it's always a conscious choice. After all, we are all social animals aware of our own self-worth, being unique and with the urge of being recognised by others (there's both narcissism healthy and unhealthy, and in some cases just a fine line separating both).

Well, gladly there's also now Arsebook as an anti-social alternative!