History and Tv in Finland
by Jarmo Valkola
General ideas
The 21st century has witnessed many significant and wide changes in television on technological, aesthetic, political and social levels. Digital production, proliferation of television formats, YouTube, and other dimensions of web-based footage have caused rethinking inside television circles. Digital technology has made it possible to build on the ability to artificially construct realism. For example, digital images can be produced without a camera, but they can still look like photographs. (Finnemann, 2000; Sturken & Cartwright, 2001: 10-44; Seiter, 1999: 116-121; Lister et al., 2003: 190-199).
This means that the photographic image is produced without a reference in the real. Certain technologies and style encourage us to believe in a tight correspondence between images and reality, but the effects of lenses, focus, colour, depth of field, high-resolution media, etc., seem to guarantee the authenticity of what we see. Thus in the contemporary world of audiovisual culture and visual images, different forms of image manipulation are creating a broad array of images that defy traditional notions of time and space (Austin & de Jong, 2008: 1-5; Rieser and Zapp, 2002; Valkola, 2006).
We can ask: What is the speciality of historical material in our digital age? The phenomenon is very wide, and difficult to determine. We can talk about history programmes in television and their relationship towards the society, or towards human development, and towards situations inside human communities. Through this context we can observe and analyze them from the point-of-view of (1) semantic density (meaning), (2) aesthetic impressiveness, and (3) historical significance.
In most cases, the same historical programmes in context can be approached from a variety of different perspectives, all of which are relevant to understanding some aspect of their form or significance. It is important to recognize the multidimensionality of historical programmes where the semantic, aesthetic, affective and purposive dimensions all apply to the same object at hand. Historical analysis must involve an understanding of how the parts contribute to the whole and what makes historical programme as it is in contemporary context. This can only be determined by analysis across media and across contexts. (Morphy & Perkins, 2006: 18-19).
The study of historical programmes encourages researchers and theoreticians to deal with the temporality of cultural processes, to connect the experiential dimension of culture, the immediacy of performance with longer term and general processes. Historical works have different duration. Some may be over in a matter of seconds, even if the impact of a single work can endure for a lifetime. Others may be present and last for many hours. Others may be part of a permanent structure as an iconic presence, as it is the case with many classics. The different durations of presence will affect how such works are seen, how people relate to them over time, how they can be used in knowledge transmission, how they can be perceived, and so on. The analysis of their form and content must take these factors into account – the historical programme is not simply the object itself but the whole context in which it is produced, seen and used.
There is an added complication. The experience of a single historical programme is not necessarily confined to a single event or context. Different dimensions of it may come into play over time as a result of multiple exposure or evocations of the memory of form. A more general point is that there must be a central proposition of the meaning of historical programme in the contemporary world: understanding the significance of it requires placing it in the widest possible context. It is not sufficient – or perhaps possible – to understand its immediate effect or significance without first understanding the historical, social, and cultural backgrounds of its production.
One of the advantages of studying responses to programmes is that they provide a means to access the processual dimension of culture. They connect events with processes and they connect experiences separated in time. (Seiter, 1999: 12-20). Studying viewer responses recognises the direct relationship to actuality in them. (Vaughan, 1999; Ward, 2005). The relationship between fiction and non-fiction is a blurred boundary (Nichols, 1994), so, the spectatorial activity of interpreting the material becomes central. The modalities of performance in drama/documentary programmes foreground the hybrid and uncertain nature of the contemporary situation. Television studies is an attempt to account the specificity of television, often using comparison with radio and cinema with particular attention…to debate about the nature of the television text and the television audience. (Brunsdon, 1998: 96). The meanings of television have ideological significance that shapes relationships between television texts, audiences and society. (Bignell, 2008:103-106).
Changes in media policy
The place of television in Finnish culture can be analyzed as a builder and circulator of meanings and technology, and as a re-builder of social practices and general life style. In another sense, television has been a kind of memory machine with continuing elements of nostalgia and past. Television has also been a time machine with a kind of futurist perspective. It has, in many ways, represented the modern world, and the inevitability of change as a part of larger cultural category. Television has also been an example of virtual tourism with capabilities to wander around the world. In the beginning of Finnish television, the broadcasting activity was based on live recordings from TV-studio and from public places like theatres and sport happenings. (Wiio, 2007).
Thinking about television licenses, a crucial happening was the televising of Rome Olympic Games in the summer of 1960. Another big thing was on the 21st of July 1969 when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. In this year there were over one million television licenses in Finland. In the 1960s, in Finnish society there were a lot of young people, who were also targets for political and cultural impulses. Then, television had an important role in present new world views, and also it had a special significance in gathering people together.
Typical of the 1970s was again a belief in the omnipotence of politics. During that period especially YLE reflected heated political struggles and came under close scrutiny. Finally in adapting to the “markets” of the 1980s and 1990s YLE has once again been a product of its times, adapting to a globalization of the media markets.
The 1980s saw a clear change in the paradigm of media policy in Finnish society. The shift can be described as a move from policy oriented to market oriented broadcasting. But Finland was not alone in the process. Winds of de- or re-regulation, liberalisation, commercialisation and internationalisation had been blowing all over the European continent. Because of the ideological, economical, and technological changes, broadcasters were suddenly thrown into a new situation where they had to be able to negotiate with different interest groups from the fields of technology, politics, competitors and viewing public in order to survive. (Aslama, Hellman, Lehtinen, Sauri, 2007).
In Finnish media and broadcasting culture, Yleisradio (YLE) as a public service broadcasting company has during its whole lifetime always been an image of its times. In the late sixties (the period called Reporadio) YLE stepped to the forefront of a process of change in the society. It opened up a new kind of publicity. Television’s significance as a kind of far-seeing instrument was highlighted. The peculation around the alternative future was an important element in the discussion of television’s role in Finland, especially in the seventies.
One of the best examples of this has been YLE:s documentary programme Maailmantelevisio (World Television), which was launched in July 1975. The idea was to present thoughts and visions concerning television’s significance in the future broadcasting. Also technological changes were forecasted. The essential concept was interactivity, which was suggested already in Maailmantelevisio programmes. It played with the idea that television and computer would be converged into one medium. The belief into informative television policy was strong then. The history of Finnish television shows how paradoxical views related to media changes and public reactions have been strongly present. (Kortti & Salmi, 2007: 22).
Explaining the national past
In the history of Finnish television, the past has always been present. History lives through those traditions, which have their continuation in television as audiovisual medium. There is an ontological dimension in the history programmes, since they can reflect the work and nature of memory, the construction of history, and they create phenomenological reflections on the medium itself. History programmes and films can enact a mimetic desire and evoke an aura of authenticity. They are dialectical negations arising from within the province of the documentary or other forms, accepting their central presuppositions, yet displacing their context.
They bring the private and the marginal into the field, discarding often the centralized perspective of the narrator in favour of multi-layered fragments, and can rely on affective expression without always forgetting analytical interpretation. As immanent negations, they enlarge the framework and scope of history. In a way, historical films and programmes are research trips into the past, and the presentation of memory in these programmes can be compared with the knowledge proposed by various disciplines that research and speculate on memory processes.
History programmes have always been present in Finnish television, whether the function of them has varied. Finnish perspective shows that if history programmes give us images of memory, the personal archives of the past, they also give us images of history, the shared and recorded past. In fact, films and programmes often merge the two levels of remembering the past, giving large-scale social and political history, and the subjective mode of a single individual’s remembered experience. So, it is a kind of flashback in its innovative use of found and other footage. They are re-edited traces of a past framed by a narrative which transmits the concepts of history and memory. In this sense, the past is not regained but reframed through montage and fragmentation.
The turn to more personal histories has also happened in Finnish television during the last two decades. The daily experiences of people, their individual destiny and efforts are concerned in these programmes more affectively than before. This phenomenon has had larger dimensions in Finnish culture, since these symptoms have not only been present in television history programmes, but, for example, also in new Finnish documentary. In a larger scale, documentaries are aimed at local and global audiences. They precipitate and influence change individually and at the grassroots level. Documentaries resonate deeply with people and show results in visible and measurable outcomes. Usually a documentary with a profound local effect will also speak to a wider national audience through television and potentially internationally. (Corner, 2008: 13-28). In this way, it is possible to reach both a targeted and broad audience.
The most powerful documentaries and history programmes show how people’s lives are interwoven with historical, cultural and social issues and how they reflect on how we live, think and interact with each other and our world. In Finland, recent years have seen a re-emergence of the documentary form from its cultural background and movement towards a proper recognition of its role as a model of cinematic and televisual practice which can educate, entertain, provoke, persuade and affect audiences emotionally. Maybe documentary is nowadays also in a state of crisis and it might be so that documentary makers turn their critical faculties on the discipline itself trying to keep the genre alive. Tracing the survival and redefinition of the genre is part of the picture concerning documentary narrative. Drama-documentaries have also had their traces in Finnish television. In drama-documentary sequence of events from a real historical occurrence or situation are taken, and real people are involved to authenticate the dramatisation of events. Even though their acting style may differ from more naturalistic professional styles, their performance draws attention to the truth claims of these programmes. The position of the television viewer is marked by changing sequence of camera shots, the words of on- or off-screen narrators and the accompanying music. These are signs and codes of narrative structure, which determine the audience’s identification with the role positioned to her by the broadcaster.
On cognitive level, the problem of representing history is bound up with finding another way to write history, one that acknowledges, rather than occludes, the processes of constructing history; a form of history that finds a place for history’s indeterminacies, in terms of both the limits of representation and the problems that beset our understanding of the temporal. Special programmes on the history of Finnish architecture have dealt with the northern location, natural conditions and the often sparse resources are behind the distinctive architectural tradition in Finland. Outside influences have been adopted to suit the Finnish conditions. Besides mutual characteristics, local conditions, differences in cultural landscape and ecological preconditions and building methods have created differing environments in different parts of the country.
The significant distinction husbandry has produced in the Finnish landscape has been studied through inventories and history programmes. Heritage biotopes, heritage landscape and traditionally built environments are in the intersection of nature, industry and architecture. From and point of view of Finnish architectural heritage, the continuous use of old buildings and the control of new building work take a central role in these programmes. Concrete and prefabricated construction methods are connected in Finland to the architectural heritage of the last few decades as creations of the industrial and post-industrial society.
In Finland, the connection with television and Finnish film history has been crucial. Many film stars were able to create their own programmes in Finnish television. Television has always been a forum for old films. When the Finnish studio system ended due to television’s rapid increase, studio’s sold the television rights of their films to YLE and commercial channels after the beginning of 1960s. Nostalgia as a form of a mediator between popular culture and fashion is highlighted in Finnish television. The number of nostalgic programmes has increased tremendously after the year 2000. For example, the circulation of old classic television series is cheap programming for all channels but still there are slots for documentaries and educational programmes. In modern Finnish television history is in many ways present and it is used for many purposes. (Wiio, 2007).
The structure of Finnish television – a combination of public and commercial activities, is even in European standards exceptional. Still, the symptom is that entertainment programmes have increased at the cost of more informative programming. The scale of programming was relatively stable between the years 1960-79. The increase of entertainment happened after that. After 2000, the development has been more stabile, and nowadays the informative role of Finnish television has even increased. The research of history shows that Finnish television output has been many sided at least when the scrutiny is based on programme types. Although the profiles of different channels have changed in the course of time, and two independent commercial channels have come along in the 1990s, the sphere of the whole programming has been as broad as before.
Telling about history with educational challenges
Finland is a multilingual country, in that sense, that there are lingual minorities. Television out put covers both Swedish (from the beginning of Finnish television) and Saami-language programmes (from 2000 on), Russian and Roman language programmes have been more in the radio. The rising multiculturalism in Finland is one of the challenges also in television. In the year 2005 YLE accepted a service strategy for special and minority groups. European Union’s television directives were applied in Finland in 1994.
As examples of history programmes in Finnish television have frequently evidenced, conventionally, television history programmes are made by first settling on a story line, then looking around for visual material to illustrate it, without any attempt to analyse what is being seen on the screen. Visual evidence is in itself of great value in historical study; television programmes should concentrate on those areas where there is a richness of visual source material and should be built up, outwards as it were, from that source material. Some of the programmes concentrate strongly on the problems and techniques involved in the critical analysis of different types of visual source; others concentrate almost exclusively on bringing out the value of particular visual sources in making a special contribution to an important historical problem. While it would never be possible to deal comprehensively with any historical topic through television alone, nonetheless history could be presented on general television in a more authentic way if the conventions and clichés of traditional television production were jettisoned in favour of a recognition of the potency of visual sources properly and critically handled.
A special programme and project called Dokumenttiprojekti (Documentary Project) was launched in YLE TV2 in the year 1990, to secure continuing documentary production. Nowadays it is an established institution with several special projects like Toinen Suomi (Other Finland) and Steps for the Future. Generally, the history of documentary since the late 1940s is very closely associated with the development of television industry, and some of the most interesting developments in the form of documentaries have been directly attributable to television’s constant generation of new types of programming in the relentless quest to maintain or increase audience share. One of the clearest illustrations of this is a marked tendency to produce hybridised forms, in which generic boundaries have been blurred in the effort to create an attractive new format. Documentaries have indeed often been regarded as a form of antidote to the more entertainment-orientated part of the television schedule. They may make greater demands on concentration, but they have traditionally been seen as a type of programming which is on a par with the various forms of broadcast journalism. Documentary Project has had many international projects during its existence also the programme has taken part in producing films, especially documentaries related to Finnish traditions and everyday life.
In the eyes of television viewers, documentaries are defined as much according to their relationship with other forms of television output as by being measured against that notional template ‘documentary’. In spite of more recent developments in which film makers have been required to produce work that is more accessible to the television audience, documentary has not entirely cast off its reputation of being a serious, worthy, but ultimately rather boring form of programming. This has led to the more traditional forms of documentary not being given a high priority in today’s television schedules.
Finnish television has had a media educational aim since the beginning. This role has not always been the same, there have been changes. In many cases, historical scenes may build themselves up with more reliance on the principles of sound or spoken commentary. There can be big generalisations when talking about identifiable scenes in a history programmes. In reality, many scenes in these programmes may build up more on the argumentative power of sound than of image. As suggested in many historical programmes in Finnish television, voice-over narration might bring in elements of the story, and hint to any other directorially suitable conclusions. It is, moreover, quite instructive to consider the respective gains and losses which occur when broadly the same subject matter is treated in different media formats.
YLE Teema’s significant role
The increase of history programmes, and especially European history ones, is largely connected with the birth of YLE Teema -channel. YLE Teema started in 2001. It is a special channel for science, culture and history programmes. YLE Teema’s evenings comprise of drama series, documentaries and late night movies. The speciality is that each evening features a different theme: usually popular culture on Mondays, history on Tuesdays, art and culture on Wednesdays, science on Thursdays, everyday-history on Fridays and the special Theme-Saturdays. The different programs on Theme-Saturdays are carefully chosen from a wide selection of documentaries and movies, forming unique pairs according to each week’s theme.
YLE Teema is committed to seeking out documentaries that dive deep into their subjects. These documentaries fall under the headings of Popular Culture, History, Art and Culture plus Third Dimension, which addresses issues concerning the third world. YLE Teema’s TV-Archive searches the massive databases of the Finnish national public service broadcasting company to find immemorial moments from the past. The viewers can also wish for their favourite programs to be shown by sending e-mail to the channel. YLE Teema science programs each explore their respective fields in detail, both pinpointing problems and offering solutions and positive case studies. Thursdays are devoted to science. Once a month certain themes are investigated in detail.
There was a special report announced on 25th of September 2009, and according to this Brand-measuring report for the first time in Finnish Broadcasting history the channel YLE Teema (Theme) won other main channels like YLE TV1 and TV2 and MTV3. The result was based on reliable research among Finns.
As indicated before, the role of historical programmes has increased after 2000. In last decades, most of the history programmes are dealing with Finnish past, how Finland was born, what is the history behind these happening, how can we relate ourselves in the modern world, and especially as part of EU? Finnish history examples: Special projects like Unelmana Karjala (Dream Karelia) highlight Finnish past and the idea of lost Karelia to Soviet Union after the II World War. Karelia has been a constant topic in history programmes after the Second World War. Consequently, Karelia has always been a place of utopias and dreams in Finland. The images that we have of this area tend to originate in national projects and Karelianism. Historically, Karelia has been divided between two states – Finland and Soviet Union – since Finland gained independence in 1917. Karelia belonged to Finland until 1939. After World War II a total of 430,000 evacuees, 407,000 of who were Karelians, were resettled in different parts of Finland. Actually in this interview-based programme series Karelia is told by Russians living nowadays in that area. The broadcast used archives, interviews, witnesses of happenings and also interviews with the specialists. Memories were awaked through the use of various subjects. National history, political happenings and past events in society were highlighted during the broadcast.
Another ten-part programme called Muistojeni Karjala (Memories of Karelia) focused on Finnish people living in that area. Generally, utopias anchored in recollections are central in the discourse about Karelia. They are attached to the imaginary properties of place and to the meanings created by absence and cession. The hopes and desires of migrant Karelians are anchored in places of memory which do not exist: the ceded Karelia, home village and one’s own yard. Similarly, they are attached to places with images of future harmony and hopes like perhaps the ceded Karelia will be returned to Finland in the future. In this case, truth and reality do not constitute primary meanings in utopian speech or memory but the action and contents emerging from this thinking are more significant. The programme showed how utopias are real in reminiscences and dreams of people. Utopian thinking has varied in different decades and developed contents related to that particular period. The earlier impressions are associated with the phenomena described as Kalevalan cultural nationalism and political ethnography. From the historical point of view, Karelianism forms the core of this discourse. The first people to go to Karelia were the representatives of peaceful nationalism – collectors of folklore, authors and artists –, then followed the advocates of revolutionary nationalism, white soldiers and red workers who dreamed of Great Finland. These visits created a dream of an independent nation of related peoples with Finland, because of its developing ties to Europe. This dreamland was created around myths and therefore a lot remained outside the appropriate discourse and was left unsaid.
Finnish history with Russia has been under scrutiny in many programmes over the past decades especially Finnish Winter War in 1939 has been topic of various history programmes: Veteran soldiers remembering the happenings in a style of straightforward documentary with archive images in between interviews. The Soviet-Finnish War of 1939 – 1940, which lasted 103 days and is commonly known as the “Winter War,” had its origins in the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 23, 1939. The secret protocols of that non-aggression accord divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet security zones. Finland, which had been part of the Russian Empire for more than a century prior to gaining its independence during the Russian Revolution, was included by that agreement within the Soviet sphere.
These war memories are usually shown during good broadcasting times, and they attract widely audience’s interest. The style of these documentaries is emotionally laden and memories of Winter War and later Continuation War between Finland and Soviet Union during the 1939-44 are a continuing aspect of historical documentaries and dramas. One of the most important themes to be found in these programmes is the concept of national unity. For the Finns, the Second World War was not a wanted war, more like they were forced to fight in defense of the nation, but for most people these were also turning points, which showed the Finnish unity, a nation that stood unified against a big and powerful enemy. The symbolic role of war memories is a continuing topic on these history programmes.
A larger perspective is found in programmes like Industrial Revolution – Story of Europe, which tells about the European heritage. The programming of these documents shows that it is a big question, and therefore, historians and economists have tended to explain the Industrial Revolution in different ways. Some have focused on the long-term nature of economic growth in Europe, seeing British industrialisation as one, striking, part of this. Others, particularly economists, have formulated general propositions about economic growth: to them the Industrial Revolution is one instance of such growth, albeit a very important one. And some have seen the Industrial Revolution as a dramatic, once and for all, change. The French documentary B as in Babylon (B … comme Babylone, 2007) offered a fascinating voyage to meet a lost civilisation between historical, cultural and fantastic realities.
A strong European perspective was found in History of Fashion with many parts devoted to the opening of world-view, started already in 16th century. Setting fashion within its social, cultural and artistic context, History of Fashion presented an engaging history of the interplay between commerce and culture, technology and aesthetics, popular culture and pastiche, and fashion and anti-fashion. War documentaries, The Battle of Sedan in 1870, Swedish documentary Like Witches in the Night tells about happening during the II World War in Soviet Union. There was a special unit comprised only of women, who were specialised in night bombings. A documentary about Henry VIII and his building projects featuring castles, palaces, war ships. Architectural documentaries concerning Europe’s buildings from the Middle-Ages are also shown in Finnish television.
Highlights of 2009
Fictional series and films are frequently broadcasted in Finnish channels, both on public and commercial ones. There were special highlights in the year 2009 by Teema-channel. On 5th of September the channel organised Berlin 24 hours programming, a 24-hour nonstop-broadcast on the life of the metropol-city. One million Finns were following this spectacle. It started the Theme-Deutschland programming, which included many other programmes. Life with Enemy – Allied Powers in Post-War Europe (2009) – a four-part history series about the years which changed attitudes and beliefs after the II World War. Walks with an Architect, in which two famous architects Ricardo Bofill and Roland Castro talk about the personal and professional significance of Berlin to their lives. It also featured strolling around the city, point-of-views towards the historical significance of Berlin, the logic of architecture and the changes among the cityscape of this city.
Grenzenlose Liebe (2007) was a point-of-view of how historical happenings affect our lives, and how people were separated in Germany in 1961. It followed a documentary narrative consisting of two pairs living on both sides of the wall. It showed how many documentaries and historical narratives bear all the hallmarks of a gripping story or a well-wrought drama. Individual characters assume the conventional roles of hero, villain and victim and are played off one against the other in ways with which we are all familiar from television drama or film. Plot is used as a device for creating interest and suspense. Events are recounted in such a way as to create the impression that all hinges on the resolution of a conflict between opposed forces or warring fractions.
Historical fictions were broadcasted largely as well: examples include Die Frau von Checkpoint Charlie (2007), a two-part programme about an East-German woman, Nikolaikirche (1995), a two-part programme situated in Leipzig in the years 1987-89, Deustchlandspiel (2000), a two-part fiction about the unification of Germany, Die Unberühbare(2000), a story about the writer Gisela Elsner, and the collapse of values after the breaking of the wall, and Brennendes Herz (2006), a narrative concerning a member of the neo-Nazis in contemporary society. Also Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s monumental Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) was broadcasted in Teema-channel. Other programmes related to Germany-theme were Wim Wenders’s film Der Himmel über Berlin (1987), Bernstein- Ode to Freedom (1989), Als der Ostblock Geschichte wurde (2009), Lost world of communism 2009), a three-part documentary using archives, and interviews with people from East-Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania.
A final note
The question of television as a mediator between past, present and future is not always a linear one. Television’s role as a communicator in the middle of our everyday lives is also connected non-linear and cyclical features. Television brings in new elements of circulation. It also has an important role in the cycle life of people. It gives people a special rhythm to follow, and this often means a certain special feeling of secure, as well. The Finnish experience shows all these symptoms very well. The communication system has had s vivid influence on the lives and perspectives of human beings, especially into the control of their usual habits.
History shows how the idea of broadcasting to private homes from a certain source was widespread long before it became reality. Broadcasting as a social form goes on with the development of modern society. Multichannel broadcasting systems do divide audiences between various channels related to the pluralistic nature of it. Digital broadcasting has already had significant influences on the storage and distribution of information. The future will show us the new possibilities dealing with the merge of broadcasting, telecommunications and internet. We can say that we need new media policy in front of all new developments. The critical awareness of media users in private, professional and public contexts is the only key for a better future.
History programmes concerning European history leave behind glimpses of that knowledge we have about history, life of our parents, public life, and about that everyday
history which has become an essential part of our national heritage. Microhistory, psychohistory, private everyday history – they all have a modern day relevance, and in them historical programmes function more like shadows with important messages. Historical programmes explain happenings, reveal them through gestures. Historical programmes highlight the secret strategies of destiny. Mankind has never have as powerful tool of philosophical speculation. In television, the situation does not always look so bright. We have a lot of material in our hands but still often I have the feeling that we do not seem to “understand” it any better than before.
Scholarly Publications
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Ward, Peter (2006). “The Future of Documentary? Conditional tense documentary and the historical record”, in J. Rhodes and J. P. Springer (eds.) Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking. Jefferson: McFarland and Company.
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