Research shows US fueled concept of “Swedish Sin”
In contemporary American media, audiences often see movies like Dumb and Dumber, which feature gorgeous Swedish models flaunting their looks and sexuality.
What many Americans may not know is that this concept of sinful Swedish women, valued for their bodies and beauty rather than brains, can be traced back to a 20 year period when Swedish young women were viewed as sexually loose.
Klara Arnberg of Stockholm University spoke on “Illegally Blonde: ‘Swedish Sin’ and Pornography in the Swedish and American Imaginations, 1550-1971” in Van Dyck Hall on Wednesday afternoon.
Before she began her in-depth analysis of sexual culture in Sweden, Arnberg showed a trailer from a movie entitled “Sweden: Heaven and Hell,” which compared Sweden’s reputation as the sex capital of the world with America’s more modest sexual culture.
“In America, you don’t see beautiful girls bouncing boldly out of the sauna into the snow. In America, you don’t see public pornography shops where erotic books are displayed for both sexes with government approval,” said Edmund Purdom, the narrator of the clip played.
Arnberg said the film was never actually shown in Sweden because of its portrayal of Sweden as a sexual paradise. She also pointed out how the film threatened gender roles and unfairly framed Swedish women as sex-crazed and uncontrollable.
Arnberg’s research on the topic focuses on the period before pornography was legalized in Sweden in 1971.
“I will analyze how Swedish communities have been imagined in gender and sexuality terms, both from the inside and from the outside, focusing on the U.S. as the main outsider in this case,” she said.
Arnberg said Sweden saw the U.S. as an ally—a country that they could relate to both culturally and politically. But during the Cold War, the U.S. became somewhat upset with Sweden’s decision to withhold its neutral position.
“If the U.S. was viewed as a kind of world police, Sweden tried to stand out as a world conscience,” she said.
Women’s sexual behavior became central to the nation’s reputation and honor, she said, and the exaggeration of Swedish women’s behavior by American journalists lead to Sweden’s negative reputation on the international stage.
“Pornography becomes a distorted mirror of the national narrative,” she said. “Pornographers can be seen as national betrayers . . . for sexualizing women for consumption.”
This distorted mirror that Arnberg spoke of was illustrated in a TIME magazine article written in the ‘50s by journalist Joe David Brown.
“Unwed mothers were practically heroine . . . sex educators encouraged sex before marriage as long as love was involved,” Brown wrote.
In his article, Brown also included the fact that many young people saw marriage as akin to signing away one’s freedom.
“Brown’s article started a wave of articles in the Western press that described Sweden as a land of sexual liberties without moral standards,” Arnberg said.
America portrayed the Swedish model as someone who needed to escape her monotonous life through alcohol, sex and ultimately suicide. Arnberg said views like these led to frosted diplomatic relations.
Sweden cut and banned American films in the ‘60s due to violence, but they were quite lax as far as nudity in films.
Arnberg said when pornography became fully legalized in 1971, Swedish and Danish pornography was smuggled and imported into America. Sweden began marketing pornography to an international audience, translating subtitles into English and German.
“These new genres used the myth of the sexually liberated Swedish girl as a marketing tool,” she said.
Eventually, the typical Swedish woman became known not for her pale skin and light hair, but for her sexual frankness. The concept of “Swedish sin” originated in America, which saw Swedish women’s behavior as sinful and taboo.
“The image of sinful Sweden was hard to get rid of,” Arnberg said.
She said even in American’s culture today, Swedish women continue to be viewed in the same way they were viewed throughout the ‘50s to the ‘70s.
To this day, they are often stereotyped as the blonde models from 1900s who did not want to marry but instead are defined by their wild nature and loose sexuality.
Victora Garvey, a School of Arts and Sciences senior, did not know what to expect when her professor e-mailed her class about attending the event.
“She was really knowledgeable, and I learned a lot,” she said. “I’m a Cinema Studies minor and I’ve watched films that have to deal with pornographic and sexual [themes], so it was interesting to sit back and listen to someone else talk about it.”
Kelly Velocci, a School of Arts and Sciences junior, thought the historical background of Arnberg’s research paper was very comprehensive.
“It was interesting to see the historical background and the relationship between Sweden and America and how the history of pornography played a role in that,” she said.
