With or Without Oil. "Nordsjøen" and the Persistence of Norwegian Exceptionalism

Abstract

Within the catastrophe genre, films that deal with the environment are a fertile ground for the production of arguments about the Anthropocene. In Nordsjøen [The Burning Sea] (2021), a massive oil spill is an opportunity to lay out a perspective of Norway and its relationship with fossil fuels. This article shows how, through an exercise of effacing and erasures, the film bends three basic rules of the catastrophe genre to conceive a society with problems but without conflicts: the disappearance of the struggle between “good” and “evil”, the elimination of economic interests, and the minimization of human error. Without enemies, greed, or malevolence to fight against, the heroes reveal themselves in the film in the production of what I define a “Norwegian exceptionalism,” a worldview with two basic tenets. One is that of a society without struggles, guaranteeing well-being and extending its benevolent influence beyond its borders and to the entire planet. The other, associated with it, is the presentation of dependence on oil exploitation as a sin of an era that must be left behind in order to recover a nostalgic version of pre-oil boom Norway. In this perspective, nature assumes a moral character, warning humans about the effects of fossil fuels. This warning opens the doors to an specific transition towards renewable energies, reifying the material and discursive exploitive relationships that make extractivism the dominant form of interaction with non-human nature.