From success to human waste management: Class, family and traces of neo-liberalism in the Finnish films Beauty and the Bastard and Bad Family

Generational conflict is at the core of youth films. In several films in the 2000s, this conflict has been connected to the ethos of neo-liberalism. This article presents two Finnish fiction films, Dome Karukoski’s Tyttö sinä olet tähti (Beauty and the Bastard) (2005) and Aleksi Salmenperä’s Paha perhe (Bad Family) (2010), as examples of the ways in which films in the changing Nordic welfare state, and under the prevailing ethos of neo-liberalism, function as a technology of class, i.e. how they negotiate the class divisions in contemporary society. The films, depicting the generation conflict within a middle-class and an upper middle-class family, are analysed in the context of hardening neo-liberal attitudes arising from the competitive efforts of individuals to achieve or sustain a successful position. The families in the films are understood to be miniature societies relating how young people negotiate the constraints of the dominant neo-liberal ethos. Both films represent a critical view towards generational continuity and a success story as the only acceptable option; however, as they also depict a shift from success to human waste management, they represent different attitudes towards neo-liberalism.