Difference in Reality: Ethnic Minorities and the Boundaries of the Nation in Reality TV in Finland

Abstract

Reality TV has provided a new platform for ethnic minority performers in various European countries. This article explores the implications of such visibility by focusing on two Finnish reality TV shows: Talent and Big Brother. It is suggested that reality TV shows operate as a site where the definitions of the ordinary and the nation are being circulated, contested, and, at times, stretched. The article demonstrates the ways in which global format, production aims, and audience participation together challenge and expand the concept of Finnishness with transnational dimensions of citizenship and cross-border engagements. However at the same time the persistent nationalism in forms of conflicts and racism pushes through the global format. It is argued that representing difference carries particular contextual commercial value for reality formats applied particularly by strategies of diluting difference and emphasizing conflicts that limit the political potential of these representations.

Notes

¹The Habermasian concept of public sphere, formulated in his book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (from 1962, translated in English, 1989), refers to the designation of civic participation through rational deliberation. It is an institutionalized arena, separate from the state, for citizens to discuss matters of common interest. According to Habermas, the liberal bourgeois public sphere was the ideal (although never realized in its full potential) emerging in the 18th century European liberal democracies.

²As argued by Aden (2010), a member of the Finnish Somalian community, negative media coverage, focused on crime and problems has a direct effect on how members of that particular community are treated and the implications are more intense if members of the community are easily identified. Finnish people who have originated from Africa also experience more racism than others (Ellonen, 2006).

³The first black news anchor, Jesca Muyingo, appeared on commercial channel Nelonen in 2009, while the first current-affairs reporter and presenter with an immigrant background appeared in 1995 on PSB YLE 2, to be followed by a reporter with Somalian origins as late as 2009.

⁴The largest immigrant groups in Finland originate from Russia (52,000), Estonia (22,000), and Somalia (11,000) (Statistics of Finland, 2009). In addition, Finland has a history of multiculturalism with a small Swedish-speaking minority, the Samí and the Roma minorities. In terms of the two latter minority groups, various forms and histories of institutionalized racism have been identified (Makkonen, 2000; Rastas, 2005).

⁵Formerly True Finns. The party changed their official English name from “True Finns” to “The Finns” in August 2011.

⁶Finnish television has been politically significant in Estonian history as it was secretly followed during the Soviet regime and its programming symbolized a Western way of living (Virkkunen, 1999, p. 87).

⁷Discussion on Suomi24, August 29, 2009. Available from http://keskustelu.suomi24.fi/node/8435367