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linnlarsnhansn · 5 days ago

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SKAM 10 year anniversary podcast -

English translation

NRK is celebrating a decade of Skam (😭) with a nine episode podcast. You can listen here

I'm collaborating with @kosegruppie who will be posting my translations and make subtitled videos with them. Make sure to follow them here on insta for all the latest!

Below the cut you'll find the transcript of the first episode (I've skipped a few summaries, the radio hosts watching the show etc, but all cast and crew interviews are there!). Enjoy!

From 03:50

Torkil Risan: It’s hard to measure that kind of thing, but Skam has to be Norway’s biggest tv show success. It was a small productio with low budget, had unknown actors and no traditional marketing. But the show would go on to break streaming records, set the agenda for public debate and take part in changing the language both in Norway and abroad. It would change the lives of many young people and entertain hordes of adults, and not only in Norway, no. There were people using their free time to translate the Norwegian episodes to a steadily growing international audience. Episodes were downloaded both illegally and, well only illegally really. But whatever. People all over the world were watching Skam. Skam has, up until this point, nine international adaptations, with Sram in Croatia as the latest one - it came out in October 2024. And all of this, that is the Norwegian original version, is created, written and directed by one person - Julie Andem.

JA: It became very difficult after a while to film and keep the storylines secret, because we were recorded wherever we went. Especially the outdoor scenes. Like at Nissen there were suddenly hordes of fans from all over the world when we were supposed to film, so that made it a bit difficult.

TR: And you can’t picture what it would become like when unknown 16 and 17 year olds get cast in a new show at NRK.

JA: Before these actors got their roles, at the last round of auditions, I had a talk with each one of them where I said: “I don’t know how big this show will become, it can become nothing, but it might become big. And if it becomes big and you become famous, you give away part of your freedom - the freedom to be anonymous to people. Today, when you’re on the bus, having a bad day, no one bothers you. But after you’ve become famous, people will walk up to you and want to talk to you and you can’t get away from that. When I call you next week and give you the role, if I do, I’ll ask if you’ve thought that over, and what you think of it - because you have to think that over now.” And I said that to each one of them before they got their parts. And then I think it was Josefine who said, we talked later about what I had said, that she thought “that lady is delusional. She’s making a small P3 show”. My talk went in one ear and out the other.

JA: It’s hard to imagine things like this for people that haven’t experienced success like that, and what it demands of you afterwards. And the freedom you lose to be anonymous. It is a really difficult pressure and it can be challenging. We thought a lot about it throughout and one of the main reasons that we ended Skam when we did, was because of that pressure on the young actors.

TR: Is this an ongoing conversation with the cast?

JA: I always think - there’s no one outside of it who understands what we experienced with Skam. So the best ones to talk to, always, about these things are the cast and the production team, who understand it and have the same feelings.

TR: That Skam also changed the lives of those who created it, we’ve established. I am curious about how Julie Andem, who has no clue how big the show is going to become, created these characters?

JA: As I remember it, I did loads of research with the target group to understand what that group, girls in Norway aged 16, needed, what stories it needed. And I think my goal was to develop 10 characters who could fit into a universe about them. That’s where I started. And the plan was that all the characters would develop in a way that they could carry their own season. So all of them were developed as main characters. I created them before the seasons, before the storylines.

TR: In September it’ll be ten years since Skam was released. It was released more like an event than a traditional tv show. Short clips could be dropped at any point during the week and people in the show posted on social media. It was Mari Magnus who was responsible for these digital updates.

MM: All the characters, even if they don’t have open accounts on social media, have a bunch of email addresses. I have a box full of sim cards and burner phones. Everyone had a facebook account. They were private, but it was so that it would feel a little real if you searched “Isak Valtersen”.

TR: Someone else that became well known to the audience, was media professor Vilde Schanke Sundet. She saw the format as unique enough that she had to start doing research on Skam while it was still possible.

VSS: I binged the entire first season one night. I remember laying in the cosy corner at home, watching on the ipad. I went to bed at 2:30 am and thought “now I understand what they are talking about”. I was interested in analysing it the same way researchers have been interested in analysing multimedia storytelling - how the story is built, how you make the different components, what it is NRK wants with this show, what it is trying to tell. And you become so drawn into the story that the ability to analyse goes a bit up and down through the different seasons.

TR: What makes Skam different from other tv shows?

VSS: There’s both things that make it very different and things that are very similar. Because the dramatic curves are similar to other dramas we know of. It’s love triangles, good vs evil, the struggle to find yourself, all things similar to the high school/coming of age genre. And it’s well made, but that’s not what’s groundbreaking. The groundbreaking part is how the story is told. You're doing it real time, so if you’re following the blog it will appear very close. You never know when something is coming. It’s unpredictable, it drags people in. It’s based on the needs of the audience. They did loads of research when developing the show and it appears closer when the setting is a Norwegian high school than an American one. That makes it different and innovative. I think all the fans know they are fictional characters, but they feel much more real because we are not sitting down in front of the tv to watch, they are just there in your everyday life. It’s much more at the top of your mind than other things you watch and put behind you until the next episode is released.

TR: The way Skam was created made it special. But that was not the most important part for Morten Hegseth.

MH: The format has been given too much credit. It was a good format to post clips in that way, but the reason it was so good was that the content was amazing. It wasn’t the publishing strategy that made Skam an international phenomenon.

(Skip to 13:26)

TR: Before they created Skam, the show creator Julie Andem and a few others made in depth interviews with young people in the target group. And the challenges Eva has in season 1, was pretty common with the group.

JA: What is that life like? When you’re coming from secondary school, where you have a friend group and a familiar and safe environment and you’re thrown into a new universe. Everything is starting over and you have to find your place again. But she starts out as a girl who has become totally dependent on her boyfriend. She’s been thrown out of the friend group because of the choice she’s made to be together with her boyfriend, with Jonas, and that makes her dependent on him.

TR: A successful way to independence is to become friends with a confident, stylish and cool new girl, like Noora. That, despite being good in Spanish, isn’t as crazy about russ as the other girls Eva start’s to hang out with - Jente-Chris, Vilde and Sana, who has concrete plans to fix a spot on a russebuss. And there you have our girl gang. Do you, the listener, think they are cool? Are they supposed to be cool?

JA: Socially, in school, they are not a cool group. That’s what the first storyline is about. The Pepsi Max gang are the cool, pretty girls and the other girls are not so cool. But I think they are very cool.

TR: What about the boys, aren’t they cooler?

JA: Yeah, they do at least have cooler references and masks. I’s more important to them to be cool. So they might be “cooler”.

TR: To actress Lisa Teige, it was a bit like starting a new school - moving from Bergen and start working as an actor in Skam. How much of Eva is really in Lisa?

LT: In the beginning I felt very different from Eva, because she went through very different things, I thought at that time. But things like finding friends in high school, I do identify with. I didn’t have that boyfriend drama, at least so early on. But looking back at it now, I would say I see myself in a lot of the things Skam talks about. I’ve also been in girl drama, had partner problems and the vulnerability in finding new friends. But back then, I felt the need to be like “No! I’m not going through the same things as Eva right now”. But really I did eventually go through those things.

TR: And like Eva, Lisa did find some good friends on Nissens’s school yard.

LT: I remember I noticed they were a few years older than me. I thought they were incredibly cool. That was my first thought “shit, these are cool people with experience”. It felt very cool to be part of that group. And I have so many good memories from the set with all the girls together. Especially because there’s a lot of humor surrounding the Vilde and Chris characters. They improvised many funny parts and we were laughing so hard on set. The dynamics of the group was really good.

TR: But Bergen, where Lisa is from, and Oslo are two different cities and they have different accents.

LT: Some things were difficult for me, as someone from Bergen. Like when I was supposed to say vors (pre-game) for the first time, which I had never said before and I don’t think I had ever been to one. And they said vors in the Oslo dialect and it was so difficult for me. I had to call mum and dad back home to ask how I was supposed to say the word.

TR: Eva is also one of the characters who is making out the most in the show. And here both Lisa and actor Marlon Langeland, who plays Jonas, got thrown into the deep end from the start.

LT: We had a workshop before filming, where we got to know each other and we played some games, as warm up. But to start kissing that person is something totally different. I remember dreading that quite a lot, because we were making out the first day of filming.

LT: And that’s the kind of thing you dread a lot, but when you first get going it’s very mechanical in a way. You don’t think about what you’re really doing and it’s like “can you place your hand there”, “turn a bit that way” and “make the kiss a bit more intense, because it looks good on camera”.

(skip to 27:19)

TR: Mari Magnus mentioned The penetrators, the coolest russebuss at Nissen.

MM: Penetrators has a song, that’s on Spotify and I don’t know if it has been said before, it probably has, but *whispers* it’s Tarjei.

TR: That’s rapping?

MM: Yes.

TR: So the guy singing lines like “Penetrators cums on your face, the weather report says flooding, it’ll rain cum”, that Tarjei Sandvik Moe, who plays Isak. Tarjei went to Nissen himself during this time and managed to sneak in several references to actual things going on in the school. And to blur the lines between the fictional and reality was one of the show’s goals. To make the show as real as possible they had instagram accounts and could start chatting with each other on friday evenings.

MM: It was a Friday evening and Julie was probably at work and we posted a photo on Jonas’ account, a Big Smalls reference, that he tagged Isak in. And we are logged into one account each, one on Isak’s, one on Jonas’. And we decided to have some fun in the comment section, hoping that maybe three people would see it, but that these three would have such a weird experience that they in school on Monday would say “You won’t believe what I say on instagram on Friday”. So Isak and Jonas drag Eva into it, but Eva is on a russebuss. And the audience is so cool, there are fans playing along and commenting things like “I saw you in the cafeteria today” “what did you get on your maths test?”. This is week two maybe, and those things we could do a bit more strategically at the start to get the engagement going.

TR: It’s a bit slow in the beginning, but interest in Skam grows quite fast. So to chat as the characters on instagram becomes too difficult, there’s too many others taking part in the conversation. And some audience members were more engaged than others. One of them was Julian Dahl, who was very active in the comment section. Active enough to get mentioned in the show.

TR: You’re living alongside these characters and sometimes that creates problems. Because Eva wants Jonas and Isak to go with her to the revy-party but they can’t. Why not?

Isak: We can’t

Jonas: Why not?

Isak: The tickets to Kindred Fever.

Jonas: I had totally forgotten that.

TR: You’re excused if the name Kindred Fever doesn’t ring any bells. They had a mini hype right around the time when this was released and they happened to have a concert the same day as the revy-party.

JA: The only reason we picked that concert was because it was Oslo that day. We just thought what band could they possibly be interested in that’s playing in Oslo that day?

TR: To make the right references is hard when you’re making a show. How do you know what 16 year old boys are saying, doing and would post? Sometimes Mari Magnus asked the actors to do it themselves.

MM: In season one we sent Isak, Eva and Jonas out on the town with some phones and told them to make some content as if they were a friend group eating burgers in town. And they came home with loads of nice stuff we could post.

(Skip to 33:40)

TR: I’m at your disposal - you can ask questions about the show and leave your thoughts and tips. There’s many easter eggs and symbolism in Skam that might be fun to dig deeper into if we come across it. There’s a messaging function on NRK radio. You could for example ask, like I asked Julie Andem, why is the show called Skam?

JA: We had loads of suggestions and we hung big sheets of paper at the auditions where they could write suggestions for the name of the show. And we got a lot of strange ones and Ingvild Marie Nyborg, who was on the team, came up with Skam and no one of us hated it, so that was the one.

TR: Do you remember any of the ones you hated?

JA: I remember “the 99:er gang”.

TR: I’ve found some questions the fans are wondering by sneaking around in some of the many Skam online fan forums: Like, who in the Skam universe is Lisa Teige?

LT: During the auditions I very much wanted to be Noora. Especially when I was 16 I thought Noora was super cool. But I do feel closest to Eva. I recognize myself in the insecurity and the fun parts and being someone with principles. It’s a boring answer, but it is Eva. That’s why I got to play her.

#im baaack #feels like ive been unemployed but finally have something to do lol #if you see any grammatical errors or wrong uses of the english langugage youre very welcome to lmk #praying i can keep the energy going for nine eps #no promises tho #skam #skam norway #julie andem #lisa teige

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infinitelystrangemachinex · 8 months ago

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Jayce and the fallacy of the butterfly effect in Arcane's narrative

If Jayce's symbol is the butterfly, then my theory is that we're going into a full "butterfly effect" narrative in Act 2. Either we'll watch it happen, or we'll only see Jayce come out the other side of it changed by the experience, knowing - or more importantly, THINKING he knows - what to do to change the future. Literally, to "defend tomorrow."

tl;dr: Jayce will encounter the butterfly effect in season 2. Viktor and Mel both foreshadowed this in season 1. I think Jayce will fixate on Viktor and will believe that stopping or changing Viktor either in the past or the present - most likely the present - will mean he can save the future. I believe this will lead to an even worse tragedy and may have the same effect as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ekko's approach to changing the future by sticking closer to the present - considering only tiny increments of time to alter more immediate future outcomes - will be the superior approach. I also think that Jayce attempting to change the future will create the conditions that push Viktor to become the Machine Herald.

One of the most common reactions even the casual viewer had to Arcane season 1 was this: "If [character] had just done this one small thing a little differently, [tragic event] wouldn't have happened!"

Arcane has been called a Greek tragedy for the main reason that because of how well built up the characters' personalities and reasonings are, there's no other way season 1 could have gone. There was no stopping the multiple tragedies that occurred, because with one event leading to another, the chain of seemingly inevitable events goes too far back to identify what one singular event caused everything, what one character made what one decision to put our characters on the terrible paths they walked.

Arcane is about to investigate this idea in its own narrative, and I think that Jayce will be the character to stumble into the flawed idea that you can change one event, or stop one character, and change the future for the better. This is because Jayce struggles with a few very interesting character flaws, one of them being that he believes himself to be the main character, and it is therefore his responsibility to intervene, be a hero, and fix things.

Viktor and Mel both foreshadow Jayce's future encounter with the butterfly effect.

Recall that Viktor said: "There is always a choice."

Jayce sees choices in black and white, believes that he has no other options but to go along with what he's persuaded and pushed into, and acts too boldly with too much power multiple times.

Recall that Mel said: "We can't change what fate has in store for us, but we don't have to face it alone."

Jayce tries to solve big problems on his own, and though he delegates to Enforcers and the like, Jayce relies on his reasoning and his alone to make important decisions if he doesn't simply become persuaded - usually through strong emotions like fear - by other characters. In addition, since Mel is specifically talking about Viktor's plight here, it's worth mentioning that while Jayce did say that he would help Viktor in acts 2 and 3 of season 1, Jayce does wind up leaving Viktor to face his fate alone. When Jayce tries to change that fate in s2 ep1, ep2 shows that only tragedy can come of this as well.

Viktor and Mel's statements here are not contradictory. Viktor makes the point that you can always make a choice. In context, he's literally referring to the classic "secret third option," because given a choice between aggression and passivity, war and surrender, Viktor chooses to defuse the bomb instead. Mel, interestingly, seems to believe that destiny is fixed in a broad sense, and she operates as a politician and diplomat and investor who navigates that line of destiny in the most optimal way possible. In reality, in context, she is referring to the fact that Viktor can't change the way he was born and so he has no way to change his fate and therefore must face it, which is true - she's only missing the information that Viktor actually does have the means to change his illness and his body. Her wisdom still applies however, because he'll have to accept the hand that fate deals him after he makes that choice. Will he face it alone, or not?

There is always a choice, there's even secret third options, because having a fate doesn't mean that you are doomed to make only one possible series of choices. What it does mean is that each choice comes with a hand that fate deals you. It is impossible to know what all of these branching choices and consequences are in advance, and it is just as impossible in hindsight - the branches are too complex and the end outcomes are all equally meaningful, just different. If Arcane season 2 is to be a tragedy, it may show us that each possible outcome is still tragic if you fall for the fallacy of the butterfly effect.

Jayce is counseled by some of the wisest, cleverest characters with the deepest life experiences in Arcane, but he hardly ever takes that counsel to heart. If he does, he still acts on that counsel in flawed ways that have unintended consequences. This will come to a head in season 2.

Viktor and Jayce both have a butterfly following them around in season 1. The butterfly effect refers to one small seemingly insignificant event changing the course of history, and changing that event therefore changes history. Viktor bled over the railing of a Hexgate in season 1:

And Heimerdinger sees what we can only assume is Viktor's blood contaminating (?) the Hexgate in s2 ep3:

This might be the seemingly unimportant "inciting incident" that Jayce (and Heimerdinger and Ekko) settle on as something that should be avoided or erased by changing the past (if they time-travel with Ekko, for example).

I doubt that, if this is what this crew chooses to fixate on, it will be the only event that is considered as something to change. But let's take this and run with it for the sake of discussion.

As silly as it sounds, how do you stop Viktor from allowing his blood to come into contact with the arcane? Stop Viktor's involvement with the Academy entirely? Don't invent Hextech at all? But what if someone else invents Hextech besides Jayce? What if future tragedy befalls Piltover because it didn't invent Hextech?

The possibilities and what-ifs could branch on forever. But because Jayce is who he is, and because his tragedy with Viktor is still raw and recent and frightening, I think Jayce's butterfly effect experience will have to do with Viktor.

My personal prediction is that the timeskip between s2 ep3 and ep4 will be Jayce experiencing a timeline where Viktor, taken over by the Hexcore, brings about an apocalyptic event similar to what Heimerdinger experienced in his past. Either Jayce and co. can't go into the past to change the present, or Heimerdinger and/or Ekko advise strongly against it to avoid a paradox. This will lead to them re-entering the canon Arcane timeline before this apocalypse, but still after the timeskip. Jayce, believing that destroying Viktor and his cult will save the future, and believing that resurrecting Viktor was Jayce's mistake to fix, attacks him. But the consequences don't unfold the way he hopes, because trying to change fate once the cards have already been dealt has led to tragedy before.

The butterfly is a symbol of something other than just the butterfly effect - change, evolution, and rebirth. If the butterfly symbolizes the butterfly effect for Jayce, then I think it has a different meaning for Viktor - the change and rebirth meaning.

I've always found it very interesting that we see a similar-looking butterfly on Progress Day... but made of metal.

Every time Viktor's situation changes, he adapts and evolves. If Jayce attacks him, if his cult is destroyed, if the Hexcore is causing Viktor to decay, if all of these things happen at once - he'll just evolve again, and I think the Machine Herald is the next step. And the Machine Herald will be a triumph for Viktor, but Jayce will believe that he's created something even worse. The resulting feud will be a personal nightmare for both of them.

I think this still allows Viktor to use his own agency to choose to become the Machine Herald (the MH will probably be the "secret third option" that saves Viktor, or there will be a secret third option that ends the feud) while still allowing Jayce to be offended and horrified at whatever the Machine Herald represents or is trying to do in the undercity. Introducing the element of time travel allows Arcane to explore the meta concept of tragedy and fate that season 1 was built on while showing that you can't "solve" a tragedy, because there are other terrible possibilities lurking behind alternate choices. Especially if what you're trying to change is singular people or events and not systems of power.

This is why Ekko's approach with his Z-drive will be superior to Jayce's sweeping attempt at changing the future. Ekko's goal has always been societal change. He creates his own punk society in the undercity, more progressive and successful than anything Vander or Silco ever created, and a better bastion of safety, hope, and progress than what Heimerdinger founded in Piltover. Trying to change systems by going back in time is most likely futile. But taking what Ekko has already built in the Firelights, curing his tree, and fighting for the Firelights' survival bit by bit by optimizing the present with the Z-drive shows that:

It's more worth it to focus on becoming wise (Ekko's mask is an owl) and making choices you won't regret

It's best if you don't face your fate alone (act as a collective and take care of each other)

Consider every option, not just the obvious black and white choices

Maintain and fix what you've already built instead of abandoning it once things get difficult

Adapt as needed if the choices you made lead to dark consequences, and once again, stick together and take care of each other when the bad times do come

That's my Act 2 but, ultimately, my season 2 prediction based on the butterfly symbolism we've already seen. Ekko's involvement is what will give the series the at least partial happy ending that the creators have referred to. I personally don't think that the Viktor/Jayce feud will end quite so well, but maybe, they will still survive.

#arcane #spoilers #arcane s2 #arcane spoilers #jayce talis #ekko #viktor #viktor arcane #long post #meta #jayvik #arcane meta #heimerdinger #I'm positive that Mel will be deeply involved with this too considering her comments on fate #honestly the thought of her being caught in the Viktor/Jayce feud is terrible to contemplate so I'm just gonna pray for my girl #I did not like the time travel implications when i first watched act 1 but after thinking about this i feel way better about it #Another reason I think this will come down to Viktor is because Heimerdinger has distrusted Viktor since season 1 and he will focus on him #Ekko will see the faults in focusing on one person #Jayce is least likely to survive all this considering how fast the consequences of his actions are catching up with him #but there could also be a chance here of viktor choosing to spare him - if only to curse him with the Defender/Herald feud forever idk #anyway i am feral for season 2 so far can't you tell

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