Civilized northerners and primitive strangers : A critical discourse analysis of newsreel and documentary short film in the Swedish welfare state

This essay examines a small selection of Swedish newsreel and documentary short films, primarily travelogues, produced shortly before and after the second world war. The general aim is to expose differences in the representation of “The Other” and the “ethnic Swede” by applying a critical discourse analysis. The purpose is to illuminate how the material positions the latter as the norm and then contextualize this with xenophobic currents that had developed up until the middle of the twentieth century. Theoretical and methodological framework is drawn from the field of cultural studies as well as the nonfiction film. The analysis shows that the Swedish newsreel and travelogue indeed, to a high degree, possessed these currents even though part of them, mainly the anti-Semitic ideas, seems to relapse after the Holocaust