Reykjavík Grapevine - 19.05.2017, Qupperneq 60

60 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 08 — 2017
Riley. Riley, Riley, Riley. Do you know
Riley? She’s an Icelandic main charac-
ter in the hit Netflix show ‘Sense8’. Ri-
ley is not like a single Icelandic woman
I know, but she is the embodiment of
every preconception of what an Icelan-
dic woman is—and I know all about
those preconceptions, because foreign
men with IGF (Icelandic Girl Fetish)
have mansplained it to me many, many
times.
Riley is a Manic Pixie Disc Jockey.
Though even I can’t deny the cliché
of Riley’s profession—I can think of
seven female Icelandic DJs that I know
personally, just off the top of my head.
Iceland is legitimately lousy with them.
Riley even speaks with a soft-spoken lilt-
ing accent that I sometimes put on for
foreigners as a joke, when they tell me I
don’t sound Icelandic enough to them.
Maybe, I wonder, what nags at me
is that Tuppence Middleton, the actor
playing Riley, isn’t actually Icelandic?
We’re cool enough to portray, you see,
but not cool enough to cast in the lead.
But just as I reach peak bitterness, it
hits me. This rage has revealed to me
my staggering privilege. Before now,
I’ve never had to contend with how my
culture, how people from my country
and my culture are depicted by Holly-
wood, because we’ve been flying under
the radar so long.
Turns out, it sucks to have your
culture reduced to a wildly overrated
kind of yoghurt and drone shots of lava
fields. And before the Icelandic Skyr
Lobby comes after me and my family,
let’s just agree to disagree, and no one
needs to burn my house down.
Luxury problem
What a luxury it is, to complain about
Riley. Meanwhile, Sun, the Korean
martial arts genius, certainly lives up
to a trope or two about Asian charac-
ters. The single black lead, Capheus,
lives in a Nairobi slum with his mother
who’s dying of AIDS; Africa, CHECK!
And of course the brainy Indian wom-
an trapped in a loveless “love match.”
By comparison, Riley is practically an
example cultural of appreciation, not
cultural reduction.
Still, here I am, using my national
platform to complain about this show.
Why? Because this is the kind of pain
that a fan feels. Because believe it or
not, I love ‘Sense8’. I fucking love it.
Despite its problematic stereotyping it
gets so much right—the show’s trans
protagonist Nomi, for example, is a tri-
umph. In a world of superhero movies
and endless reboots it’s a beautifully
shot and inclusive sci-fi show. It wants
to show that cultural barriers are
brittle, that we can break them. That
people all over the world have more in
common than not, that we can share
our skills. That’s a message I can get
behind.
It might have been cool, too, if that
message included an African biochem-
ist or a Korean cop and maybe an Ice-
landic martial arts genius.
But maybe I’m asking too much.
Could the Wachowskis have sold this
pitch to Hollywood ten years ago?
Probably not—even with stereotypes
it’s a progressive show. Maybe we Ice-
landers should just be grateful to be
invited to the party and not look too
hard at the price of admission?
Either way, I really hope the Skyr
Lobby don’t burn down my house.
OPINION
CITY SHOT
Is This All We Are,
Hollywood?
‘Sense8’ stereotypes Icelandic women
Hvalreki is the Icelandic word for a
beached whale. It comes from the words
hvalur, for whale, and reki, meaning
something washed up on shore. In the
olden days, it also referred to an unex-
pected surprise, though it seems rather
outdated, given that the handful of
young Icelanders I polled did not know
that the word had an alternate mean-
ing. Presumably, a beached whale was a
delight for Icelandic settlers, who could
use the corpse for variety of different
purposes, including meat and oil, as well
as use the bones for building materials.
These days, whale is only consid-
ered a treat for unaware tourists. Only
1.7% of Icelanders reportedly con-
sume whale meat regularly (compared
to 18% of tourists), but Iceland re-
mains one of the few countries around
the world stil l hunting for whales.
Sometimes, the whale doesn’t always
wind up on a beach. Just north of Rey-
kjavík is a fjord called Hvalfjörður, which
means whale fjord. According to legend,
there was a fisherman who pissed off an
elf maiden, who turned him into a whale.
He was wearing a red cap, so the people
named him Rauðhöfði, meaning red head.
Rauðhöfði turned into a rather mean
mammal, wreaking havoc and sink-
ing ships left and right. Two of his vic-
tims were the sons of a pastor. The
pastor grieved deeply for his lost chil-
dren and vowed revenge. He baited the
beast into swimming further and fur-
ther into the fjord. Now there is a lake
there called Hvalvatn, or whale lake.
The pastor went further inland, even-
tually leading Rauðhöfði to a waterfall.
The frenzied whale tried to climb up the
waterfall, but being a whale, and also
having chased the pastor for some time
now, he died of exhaustion. The whale’s
remains were later found in Hvalvatn.
Fort unately, contemporar y Ice-
landic whales are not known to be so
vicious. Over twenty different spe-
cies of whales live around Iceland,
and many of them can be spotted fre-
quently on whale watching tours.
SHARE: gpv.is/words

Every Single Word in Icelandic (http://every-
singleword.is) is a pictographic exploration
of the Icelandic language. I find an interest-
ing compound word, then deconstruct and
illustrate it as icons. The goal is to express how
Icelandic can be deadpan literal and unex-
pectedly poetic at the same time.
Whale Tales
WORDS OF INTEREST
Words: & Art: Eunsan Huh
Words:
Nanna
Árnadóttir
Photo:
Netflix
Sense8's Riley, objectifying the shit out of Reynisdrangar
“Icelandic
people
are cool
enough to
portray—
but not
cool
enough to
cast in the
lead.”
Icelandic high school graduates celebrate by going green. Photo: Art Bicnick.
West-Iceland