What Game Does Ruben Östlund Play? Neorasism and Critics of Multiculturality in the Film “Play”
Abstract
The subject of the article is the analysis of the mechanisms of functioning of contemporary multicultural society on the example of Ruben Östlund’s Play, with particular emphasis on ways of presenting racial issues. The title category of “game” indicates one of the possible interpretational clues associated with the performative dimension of ethnic identity, according to which the race is associated not so much with biological inheritance, but with the cultural system of expectations we have for people with a different skin colour. Loska wants to show that the director violates the taboo, which is the matter of skin colour, and forces us to reflect on the causes of social conflict, which only seemingly does not exist, he makes the audience aware of how identity is produced and played out, how relations between power and subordination work.
Keywords:
Ruben Östlund, Swedish cinema, race, racism, multicultural societyReferences
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Authors
Krzysztof Loskakwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
Profesor Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, dyrektor Instytutu Sztuk Audiowizualnych tamże, wiceprezes Polskiego Towarzystwa Badań nad Filmem i Mediami, redaktor naczelny „TransMissions: Journal of Film & Media Studies”. Zajmuje się kulturą japońską i historią filmu. Autor stu kilkudziesięciu publikacji naukowych, w tym dwunastu książek, m.in. Dziedzictwo McLuhana - między nowoczesnością a ponowoczesnością (2001), Hitchcock: autor wśród gatunków (2002), David Cronenberg: rozpad ciała, rozpad gatunku (2003, wspólnie z A. Pitrusem), Tożsamość i media. O filmach Atoma Egoyana (2006), Poetyka filmu japońskiego (2009), Kenji Mizoguchi i wyobraźnia melodramatyczna (2012), Nowy film japoński (2013), Mistrzowie kina japońskiego (2015), Postkolonialna Europa: etnoobrazy współczesnego kina (2016).
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