Guilt and Shame in (Trans)national Spaces

While Chapter 3 analyses how the Baltic morphs from a border to a boundary, Chapter 4 concentrates on the less illustrious aspects of neighbourhood and movement of commodities across the Baltic. In the first part, two Swedish films are discussed (Lilya 4-ever by Lukas Moodysson and Buy Bye Beauty by Pål Hollender), which stage the Baltic as a moral and economic border/boundary, delving into sex-tourism and sex trafficking. The analysis follows the discourse of guilt which these two pictures epitomise, arguing that the ostensible ‘admission of guilt’ is rooted in narcissism. The second part of the chapter explores the narratives of shame – an emotion often confused with guilt – in a transnational, Nordic/Russian context. Relying on ethical-philosophical and psychological conceptualisations of guilt and shame, the chapter seeks to demonstrate that narratives of shame allow limits of the ‘self’ to be questioned to a greater extent than guilt does. This is particularly palpable in The 3 Rooms of Melancholia, a documentary by Pirjo Honkasalo. Using examples of other Nordic films, the chapter also shows that transnational shame is – more often than not – activated with respect to Russia, whereas the ‘weaker’ Baltic neighbours trigger guilt narratives.