Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.05.2010, Blaðsíða 27

You are called Jón Gnarr and Icelanders know
you well, but most of our readers do not. So
tell us, who is Jón Gnarr?
Er, well. I am a self-educated artist that has
been involved in various projects. I have done
acting, writing, directing, worked in advertis-
ing and created a plethora of comedy shows.
And I’ve starred in some feature films.
I guess I think of myself as a sort of think
tank. I think a lot. My head is like an airport,
like Heathrow. It’s never off; there’s always
someone coming or going, but no one stays,
because I am very forgetful. I am a self-made
man, and I have never ever taken the conven-
tional path to anything—I have no formal
education.
“I have always been a rather shock-
ing character”
At age eleven I gave up on school. I refused to
learn the multiplication table, Danish—pret-
ty much everything I couldn’t see a practical
use for. I wanted to be a circus clown. When
I was thirteen I had dropped out of school
completely and was sent to a boarding school
for delinquents and troubled teens at Núpur
in Dýrafjörður. I had a lot of peace there and
room to do my own thing. At age fourteen I
was an active member of many international
organisations that were being founded at the
time, the Campaign For Nuclear Disarma-
ment, Black Flag, Greenpeace—I joined a lot
of radical organisations and even was part of
a letter writing campaign to jailed anarchists.
I had a lot of free time to delve into that stuff.
Your artistic output has always been rather
avant-garde and on the edge. How have you
manage to gain the mass appeal that you
have, with [comedy troupe] Fóstbræður, [radio
show] Tvíhöfði and your other assorted proj-
ects?
When I was a kid, I read a book with the let-
ters of Franz Kafka. I loved him. I read The
Trial and Metamorphosis, and also this book
of letters. In it—and this deeply affected
me—he says that the purpose of art, or what
makes it important, is to unsettle us, to shock
and surprise us and to make us think. To
evoke feelings that we were maybe unaware
of. I have always been a rather shocking char-
acter, ever since I was a kid. It has always
been part of my personality, to shock. As a
four year old, I used to go up to people on the
bus and ask if they had been fucking. “Are
you always fucking?” I’d ask, and my mother
would have to rush me out.
I consider myself an artist, and I am my
own subject. I am the only thing I have to
work with.
There have been very harsh responses to
almost everything I’ve participated in. When
I was with Tvíhöfði, and with Fóstbræður,
we used to get sued a lot, even though the
stories rarely made it to the media. When
Fóstbræður [a very popular sketch show on
Stöð 2] was showing, the station had a record
number of unsubscriptions. In the station’s
history, there have never been as many sub-
scription cancellations—folks were doing it
to protest the show. And Tvíhöfði never mea-
sured high in the listener polls, actually. The
other stations had a much bigger following.
Frankly, I was very surprised by the fol-
lowing Næturvaktin got. I had thought it was
the type of show that would only be appreci-
ated by a small, smart crowd that ‘got it’.
I want to try it all
You are often regarded as an Icelandic coun-
terpart to Andy Kaufman, in that the whole
of society seems to be your stage, and the
audience is often unsure of whether you are
joking or not. A case in point would be your
‘Catholic phase’ [for a period, Jón claimed
he was a born-again Catholic, and he wrote
many, many op-ed columns discussing his
newfound faith, often sounding disturbingly
‘born again’]. In this light, a lot of what you’ve
been doing with Besti f lokkurinn seems
to make sense—anyone can run for office,
and if they do they will get media-time and
a chance to stir up things. Is your campaign
really some sort of subversive, public perfor-
mance art?
I’ve never really been a big fan of Andy
Kaufman. I like some of what he did, but he
was never a favourite. So I can’t really answer
that. Ehrm. Yes, there’s no connection in my
mind.
But could you be categorised as “in the same
vein” as Andy?
Yes, categorisation. I am against that. We are
such a clever species of animal, we love defin-
ing everything. I like depriving people of that
sense of wellbeing they derive from that—
any sense of wellbeing really—and make
them feel uncomfortable. Not that I want to
hurt anyone. I just hate being categorised,
placed in a shelf. That’s one of the things I
am enjoying about Besti f lokkurinn.
I also really enjoyed being Catholic, espe-
cially how it got on so many peoples’ nerves.
That was really fun. Especially people of my
generation, folks that have made up a very
firm opinion on faith and religion. The Cath-
olic Church is THE ESTABLISHMENT in the
world, really, no state or nation in history has
survived longer than they have. It seems to
have this foundation that works, and that is
one of the things that fascinated me about it.
Did you ever believe in it? Was it all a perfor-
mance designed to get a reaction, or did you
sincerely count rosaries and stuff?
No, well, I never got that deep in. Everything
I’m doing with Besti f lokkurinn, it’s all
backed up by research and facts. Even though
some people think it’s nonsense—it isn’t.
I just like to try a lot of things, you know. If
you are a straight man and you want to ex-
periment with having sex with another man,
it doesn’t mean you need to be marked for life
as gay or bisexual or whatever. You don’t need
to be placed in some shelf or category, even
though that makes it easier for society to deal
with you.
People should do what they want to, in the
heat of the moment. And I, uhm, I have va-
cancy on this earth for eighty some years, and
I want to try it all so I can form an opinion of
it, without borrowing someone else’s.
As for the basic tenets of Catholicism; the
existence of God and that he materialised in
Jesus Christ and did all sorts of crazy things...
well. For example, one of the founding beliefs
of Catholicism is that of parthenogenesis;
that the Virgin Mary was just out walking and
all of the sudden got impregnated by the Holy
Ghost. I don’t believe that. It’s nonsense, it’s
illogical, and it makes it hard for me to affirm
the Nicene Creed. I don’t believe it, I can’t
help it.
I can believe that Jesus existed and can
agree that he was an important man. But
whether he did everything that’s credited to
him, I don’t know. And there’s no way to find
out. But as for religion, there are a whole lot
of smart people that have been involved with
religion over the years; it would be dumb to
dismiss it.
I have never had anything to revert to. I
have no education, I’ve got nothing. I can’t go
back to being a sailor if my career fails. And
I’ve always had to use myself as a subject for
my thoughts and projects. I got paid 15.000
ISK for each column I wrote for Fréttablaðið,
and it during was a period of my life that I
was interested in Catholicism. But I could
just as well resign from the church right now.
It has no meaning in my life anymore.
Dead and vapid discourse
Are Besti f lokkurinn’s platform of “transpar-
ent corruption”, absurd pet projects, etc., the
“ironic” generation’s way of saying that’s what
you stand against, that it’s something you
would never do? Is it—as one would maybe
hope, seeing that you seem to be winning the
election—a reaction to the fact of how politi-
cal speech has become polluted and diluted,
how politicians’ honesty and integrity are
public laughing matters that no one takes
seriously?
Political discourse is all dead and vapid. Yeah,
yeah. I’ve never been interested in gover-
nance or politics. I am very much opposed
to the idea that someone out there can in-
terfere with my life and the thought angers
me. None of this politics thing has ever in-
terested me. I’ve never watched Silfur Egils
[local political talk show] or listened to talk
radio. I don’t even know the politicians. I met
[Independence Party leader] Hanna Birna on
the set of a TV show and I had no idea who
she was.
All these people, these politicians, have
never been on my horizon, yet they’ve had
a tremendous impact on my life. And then
there are the businessmen that have in effect
given me the chance to work with what I want
to work on. Jón Ásgeir [Jóhannsson, bankster
and head of Baugur] is one of them and he
seems to own Stöð 2, where I have been given
numerous opportunities to work and create,
albeit on take it or leave it terms. I don’t own
the copyrights to anything I’ve created. Jón
Ásgeir does.
And that’s the way our society works—
you have an idea you want to execute, and you
need funding for that. I have never gotten a
chance at [state broadcasting agency] RÚV,
which is supposed to support Icelandic cul-
ture. But that institution is in the hands of
politicians—they control it, and stagnation
serves them well, because life and movement
are... the system is always against creative
thought. All systems are against creative
thought, because they are fully formed and
positioned on a shelf, and proud of it. It’s how
they survive.
Creative thought threatens them. It
threatens the school system, which begins by
teaching us that creative thought is worthless
until you are an adult. You will need to spend
the best years of your life learning about
someone something someone else created,
then you can go do something. Not everyone
fits into this model, which creates the need
for concepts and “problems” that need defin-
ing, which brings us to psychiatrists and psy-
chologists.
Fucking the system
And I think... Wait, you were asking about
the party? Well. I’ve listened to all the empty
political discourse, but it’s never touched me
at all or moved me, until the economic col-
lapse. Then I just felt I’d had enough of those
people. After the collapse and its aftermath,
I started reading the local news websites and
watching the news and political talk shows—
and it filled me with so much frustration.
Eww! So I wanted to do something, to fuck
the system. To change it around and impact
it in some way. I went to Austurvöllur and
protested during the pots and pans revolu-
tion, but it felt pointless to me. I didn’t really
feel any need to scare Geir Haarde—he’s just
a grown man that was sick. I don’t feel rage
against anyone really. Not the banksters ei-
ther.
This political world of ours is formed by
some sort of co-dependency that’s ingrained
in our society because there are so few of us.
If you are an insane alcoholic that doesn’t
know how to interact with others, you aren’t
ousted from politics—they’ll make you an
ambassador somewhere, or form a commit-
tee for you to run. That’s how our politics
works.
In Sicily they have a strong system, a mob
system, where everyone has a family name
with which they can be identified. By that,
everyone knows who you are, which village
you are from and who your uncle is. But over
here, you’re maybe called Einar Guðmunds-
son and no one has any idea who you are. And
this is where the political parties come in as
nice substitutes—they form these alliances
that are sort of patriarchies and feudalist sys-
tems, descending from the system we had in
the 12th century. We have the same four par-
ties, the socialists, conservatives, farmers and
social democrats, they occasionally change
names or split up but at the core remain the
same systems of feudal privilege that we’ve
always been governed by.
My father was a cop, and a big commu-
nist supporter. He was a police officer for
45 years, and was never promoted or earned
rank, because he belonged to the wrong po-
litical party. That’s how our system works, in
a nutshell. Every problem is solved through
knowing someone, through nepotism. You
need to know people to get things done. Ice-
land must be a horrible country for immi-
grants [laughs].
As for the political lingo... it’s sometimes
said that politicians in the US are superfi-
cial. That’s wrong. To succeed in politics in
the US, you need to be very smart, or at least
to have someone working with you that is.
Over here, you can just trudge forward like
a bull without any regard for anything... and
still make it. Like Bjarni Ben [head of the
Independence Party] said that my party’s
following bore “a sad witness to the fact that
maybe the parties failed in establishing ‘a liv-
ing telephone connection’ with the voters...”
What a bunch of empty hogwash? What does
that even mean? He is the head of the nation’s
largest political party, and this is what he has
to say? These phrases they’re using, when
conversation is turned into ‘a living telephone
connection’ and people become ‘individuals’
and everyone accepts it as some authority?
I am plainly tired of all this empty BS,
and Besti f lokkurinn is in a primitive way
protesting against it.
On being a simpleton
As a potential voter of yours, and someone
who is likely to take your party seriously, I still
have to think: “How can I know what they re-
ally want to do?” You have no platform, so I
can’t know.
This is something I’m confronted with every
day now. This morning I wrote an article
about making Iceland a haven for electric
cars, for turning it into an electric car haven. I
believe we need to stop importing oil and use
electricity. That’s my opinion, but of course I
wrote the article with lots of intentional faux
pas in it, I wrote it like a simpleton. I like ap-
pearing as a simpleton [laughs very loudly],
like when I gave a speech at the University
of Reykjavík and shouted that I had risen
from the ashes like the bird Felix. I was just
waiting for some blogger type to correct me
on that. That gets the party press and expo-
sure, and as soon as they do, I can stand aside,
laugh and let the facts or essence of what I
was saying do the talking.
We still have three weeks until elections
[when we conducted the interview] and we
might well print a platform. I am just sort of
improvising and playing it by ear now. I think
this is very fun. I did publish a piece that was
a sort of manifesto for the party, no joke, and
I am sort of improvising and trying to carry
on from that.
So you foresee potentially introducing a plat-
form before the election? All of your cam-
paign is regarded as a joke thus far.
Well, our platform has been revealed pretty
much, directly and indirectly. Of course it’s
relative, what’s a joke and what’s not. Comedy
is very temporal; today’s joke might be tomor-
row’s pressing issue. I don’t consider the po-
lar bear idea a joke—polar bears are widely
considered an endangered species, and I hon-
estly believe it would be better to store those
that make it over in a zoo, rather than execut-
ing them on sight. It’s not farfetched—there
are polar bears in zoos all over the world.
As for placing a toll on the people of Selt-
jarnarnes [a municipality next to Reykjavík]
when they want to enter the city, I only think
of it as normal that they would have to con-
tribute to our city’s funds, as they use a lot of
our services—we put out their fires, for in-
stance. At a time when we have to cut back on
our services due to lack of funds, they—the
richest community in Iceland—brag about
paying the lowest taxes in the country.
A cultural revolution
Are you saying that you support progressive
taxation policies, that the wealthy should pay
higher taxes than the poor? This is a common
platform for socialist parties...
Well, I don’t know the taxing system, it’s very
complicated. If it were up to me, no one would
pay any taxes. I don’t like paying taxes, I am
always in debt to the tax office and I’ve been
badly hurt by the system. It’s unfair and I
want to change it.
I was attempting to define you politically, to
associate you with an ideology. What you said
could easily be summed up in a platform.
I just think it’s natural that the people of Selt-
jarnarnes should pay for the services they’re
receiving.
But do you envision—to make some people’s
lives easier—making a platform? A policy
that you swear to follow.
Ehrm. I can imagine doing that.
Let’s take that tax system as an example.
There are phrases, like lowering taxes for the
worse off, and increasing them for the rich-
ies. It would be very nice to do that. But what
we really need is to re-think the taxing sys-
tem. It is one of the most stagnant systems in
this country. But it’s not alone. It’s all dead.
The tax office is dead, the customs office is
dead. RÚV is dead. These are the institutions
that make up the foundations of our society,
and they are all dead. Bleeeeh.
Are you, in all seriousness saying that you
would like to restructure and organise society
from the bottom up?
Yes.
Are you calling for a revolution?
Yes. I am calling for a cultural revolution.
Is that a realistic goal? Is your candidacy a part
of it?
Yes. I hope we undergo a cultural revolution
here; that we start experiencing ourselves as a
nation in a new way. And I have some ideas on
that. As with the nation’s independence. I feel
it is being threatened. We need to reaffirm
it, which is where something like switching
over to an electric car system would come in.
To define and underline our uniqueness, to
creatively lead in some aspects. There is po-
tential there – we could serve as an example
for the rest of the world.
‘The Wire’ as yardstick
A lot of the “unconventional” parties that
we’ve had in Iceland have, once in office,
wound up either aligning with some of the
Big Four parties [see page 6], or disintegrat-
ing. How do you envision Besti f lokkurinn’s
future?
Say we managed to secure 2–4 candi-
dates, I would take it all very seriously, I
would ensure city politics run smoothly and I
would advocate for my polar bear plan [enter a
long, rambling speech about various odd par-
ty objectives, polar bears, tulips, banksters on
parole, etc. etc.] ...
But would you consider forming a majority al-
liance with another political party? Anyone in
particular? Anyone you would not work with?
I would not work with the Progressive Party,
and I hope that party just up and leaves and
ceases to exist, at least in Reykjavík. But I
don’t know. I don’t really know the people
running, and I don’t really differentiate be-
tween parties. It depends on the people. If I
am hanging out at the Left-Green office and
we are all talking about The Wire and all of
them agree that it is the best show ever made,
and then someone from the Independence
Party shows up and they haven’t heard of The
Wire, I know who’s fun, and I know who I’d
rather work with.
Still. If you compare, say, the Independence
Party and the Left-Greens, they are very dif-
ferent parties with very different platforms
and policies. One is for privatisation and pri-
vate enterprise, while the other runs a leftist,
socialist platform. Leave aside if the members
are fun or not, but you must admit that these
are two very different ways of viewing society,
and unhinged power to either of them would
surely impact Reykjavík massively.
Well, yeah. I would, yeah. If we’re talking
about us getting four candidates in... If we get
the majority we would just take the reins and
control everything. And put running the city
in the hands of skilled professionals. I think
the city as an entity and structure is perfectly
capable of running itself without the help of
politicians. They spend half their day work-
ing for their party interests anyway.
An anarchist in disguise?
Still, this is important. If people are to vote
for you, even if they buy into the whole irony
and dismantling of politics post-modernism
thing, they still must be able to discern what
you stand for, and how you will handle certain
things. For instance, I was in city hall when
the Independence Party and the Progressives
voted for selling the city’s shares in HS Orka
to Magma Energy [read more about that else-
where in this issue].
The sale was very much in line with the
Independence Party platform, and it was
heavily opposed by the Left-Green counsel-
lors, in keeping with their platform and out-
spoken policy. I do not want my government
selling off or privatizing Iceland’s resources,
and if I am to vote for you, I need to know
where you stand on that issue. And many oth-
ers. They are important, polarizing ones!
It would be easy for me to say “Left-
Greens are the only party I will work with.”
Is that true?
No, but I could say it. Just to say it. And then
tell people later on that I’d been joking, that
I’d rather work with the Progressives. That’s
what politicians do. But I think... Policy?
What can I say. We are sort of an “indepen-
dence party” [laughs]. Our ideology aims at
securing our independence. That we don’t
wind up as tenants in our own country.
I have said that Besti f lokkurinn is an
anarcho-surrealist party, combining the best
bits of anarchism and surrealism. And it’s
always been my political conviction, really,
anarchism and surrealism. But if I went and
said that on Stöð 2 news or on a talk show,
that we are an anarchist party, then the public
would place a different meaning on us. “This
isn’t Jón Gnarr, this is some sort of crazy an-
archist party,” they would say. Maybe it’s just
Gnarrism?
And on the political compass, anarchism
is to the left. But I am against a hegemony
that dictates what one should do. Banning
things. Banning strip clubs and internet
access. I can’t sign on that. What’s it to me
if someone wants to spend their time on in
strip clubs or smoking crack or surfing the
web for pornography. I think the political par-
ties in Iceland are at such a dead end. They
are done.
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 06 — 2010
15
After the collapse and its aftermath, I started reading the
local news websites and watching the news and political
talk shows—and it filled me with so much frustration.
Eww! So I wanted to do something, to fuck the system.
To change it around and impact it in some way.
WTF IS REYKJAVÍK VOTING FOR?
My father was a cop, and
a big communist supporter.
He was a police officer for
45 years, and was never
promoted or earned rank,
because he belonged to
the wrong political party.
That’s how our system
works, in a nutshell. Every
problem is solved through
knowing someone, through
nepotism. You need to
know people to get things
done. Iceland must be
a horrible country for
immigrants.All systems are against
creative thought, because
they are fully formed and
positioned on a shelf, and
proud of it. It’s how they
survive.