Greetings from Happyland
Klown is a comedy so shockingly funny that I’m not quite sure it’s legal.

The Danish, from my own unscientific observations in the field, have an ingrained sense of modesty, a rigorous hyperawareness of ‘saving face’ that comes across as a reticent submissiveness.  Or, in the parlance of a forgone generation, good manners.  It is seen as a good trait in the eyes of cultures that have it, a weakness in the eyes of those that don’t.  According to the Danish tourist board, Danish people ‘are always smiling and cheerful in their daily life. This is until you make a rude mistake.  It’s undeniable that there are perhaps too many rules… Perhaps all those rules form the Danish social system, where everyone, almost without any exception, is happy.’  So what only seems to an outsider like immobilizing propriety is actually happiness.  The tourist bureau goes on: ‘Denmark is the Happyland of the world.’

And in cultures with the Danish capacity for self-effacement and the near-possum-like trait of shutting down in the face of strong emotion (animal behaviourists call it ‘tonic immobility,’ that lapine instinct to freeze in the headlights) the humour is particularly pointed.  It is a humour of humility and humiliation, scathing because aggression is not taken out physically—like the pressure relief valve of slapstick in more effusive nations—but morally, societally, and usually on themselves.  I don’t think any other culture would feel the need to have a blog apologetically explaining their nation’s comedy.  But here it is, written by Maja Hald: ‘On one hand, we are a bit ashamed of our humour, because it can be cruel and vicious.  On the other hand, it is what makes our humour interesting… it is incredible difficult to understand by any other than Danish people.’  As Laura Turner Garrison describes it, it is ‘the comfort with discomfort.’

‘It’s important to remember that Danes are usually not very romantic. A decent dinner with friends may seem as romantic to them as a candle-dinner for two to others. However, this doesn’t mean they’re indifferent towards candles.  Moreover, they are crazy about them.’ – The Danish Tourist Bureau

Klown, the year’s highest grossing home-grown film in Denmark, directed by Mikkel Norgaard and starring Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen, is hardly a passport stamp to Happyland.  It is a comedy so shockingly funny that I’m not quite sure it’s legal.  Seriously.  All around me in the cinema people made a show of turning their heads to avert their eyes, for fear of social censure (or possibly being put on some offenders list). All the rules are broken, all the mistakes are rude, and one doesn’t have to be a Dane to jingle with discomfort.  Based on a TV series, Frank plays Frank, and Casper plays Casper, two men with bad motives who are completely oblivious to consequences.  At a party, Frank overhears that his girlfriend Mia is pregnant; she doesn’t tell him herself because she doesn’t consider—correctly—that he’s capable of being a father.  And he doesn’t really want to be, but he does want to prove to her he can so he kidnaps Mia’s nephew, Bo (Marcuz Jess Petersen).  Child endangerment, always a surefire way to convince loved ones of your parenting skills.  Again, from the Danish Tourist Bureau: ‘It’s important to remember that Danes are usually not very romantic. A decent dinner with friends may seem as romantic to them as a candle-dinner for two to others. However, this doesn’t mean they’re indifferent towards candles.  Moreover, they are crazy about them.’

The weekend Frank takes Bo—once he has him, he has no idea what to do with him—is also the weekend that he planned to foist himself on Casper’s annual trek to an exclusive whorehouse deep in the wilderness, accessible only by canoe—the ‘Tour de Pussy.’  It never occurs to Frank to cancel the trip, since he is now holding a pre-pubescent boy hostage, nor does it occur to him to return the boy.  Oops.  There is no possible good outcome for anyone involved.

Klown is essentially a road movie, a journey of selfish decisions and excruciating humiliations.  There are few decisions Frank and Casper won’t make badly, no strangers that they won’t alienate or family members that they won’t embitter, and few self-gratifications they won’t try to satisfy, from hitting on high school campers, attacking children in a playground, or committing armed robbery (and that’s barely scratching the surface).

It is the benevolent rigidity of decency and the reluctance to stand out and boast that has proven fecund territory for Danish film, a battleground for personal expression and the tamping down of self.  It is this brilliant tension that is the crux of Festen (Thomas Vinterberg, 1995) and The Idiots (Lars Von Trier, 1998), and provides the psychological brutality of Babette’s Feast (Gabriel Axel, 1987) and C.T. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan Of Arc (1928).  Film has been the weapon of choice in the rebellion against the Law of Jante, ‘a sociological term to negatively describe an attitude towards individuality and success common in Scandinavia,’ according to ‘Foreigners in Denmark,’ ‘a mentality which de-emphasizes individual effort and places all emphasis on the collective, while discouraging those who stand out as achievers.’  Originating in a 1933 novel by Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose, the law lists 10 rules, plus one extra; for instance number 1, ‘You’re not to think you are anything special.’ Or number 7, ‘You’re not to think you are good at anything.’  Or, number 9, ‘You’re not to think anyone cares about you.’  It comes down to ‘the town’s communal desire to preserve harmony, social stability and uniformity.’

Klown, I don’t think, would be nearly as funny if it were from a, well, looser society.  Like America, for example, where you’re expected to be brash.  If you’re not brash, you’re an egghead, and you lose presidential elections.  As shockingly, idiotically, as Frank behaves, he lacks the fortitude to enjoy it.  He is no Adam Sandler, or John Belushi.  He makes egregious blunders, and lies, but immediately is overcome with remorse and confesses, which gets him only deeper into trouble.  And though they have the forethought and ill-tempered sense of entitlement of terriers with ADHD, Frank and Caspar are oddly innocent, baldly innocent.  Not innocent as, say, free from sin—Frank and Caspar are compulsively committing mortal and venal sins, and a few modern ones as well that the gospel writers hadn’t even thought of yet—but an innocence nonetheless.  The performances are uniformly brilliant, completely lacking in vanity, which adds a naturalism to behaviour that even nature abhors.  Klown was made by Zentropa, Von Trier’s production company, and the hand-held lightness of touch gives it disarming honesty borne of realism that makes the wincingly horrible behavior sort of sweet and not actionable; a warm-hearted comedy about sodomy, prostitution, and children’s genitals that’s never salacious—a rare feat.

Hald writes, ‘We are a little country and like this internal humour, which makes us feel like Something.  It is our little secret.’  Possibly the secret is out. While no one got Lars Von Trier’s Nazi joke at the Cannes Film Festival a couple years back, Klown has proven remarkably successful, winning numerous festivals and has even been slated for an American remake.  Hollywood—God help us. So see it now, see it Danish.  You’ll leave buoyant and laughed out, if just slightly soiled.

Work Referenced

Danish People (Denmark Travel Guide)(2013). http://www.denmarkemb.org/denmark-guide/danish-people (14:30, 14/2/13)

Garrison, L.T. (2011). ‘Klovn Your Enthusiasmhttp: the Many Layers of Discomfort in Danish Humor.’ Sidesplitter. splitsider.com/2011/12/klovn-your-enthusiasm-the-many-layers-of-discomfort-in-danish-humor/ (15:15, 14/2/13)

Hald, M. (2011). ‘Danish Humor, Cozy Racism.’  Blogging Denmark.  http://blogs.denmark.dk/maja/2011/11/02/danish-humor-cozy-racism/ (17:30, 14/2/13)

Tholstrup, H. (2013).  ‘Jante Law.’ Foreigners in Denmark, http://www.foreignersindenmark.dk/display.cfm?article=1000552&p=1000549&page=Jante+Law (18:45, 14/2/13).

Sandemose, A. (1936). A Fugitve Crosses His Tracks (translation).  New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.