#muricuh

The so-called "Nightmare King" from Burger King. I just had to try this gross monstrosity! XD

tl;dr: It’s not like America has a shortage of teen-centric shows. They just haven’t been able to do them as well as Skam has. It’s cool that foreign producers are taking notice, but it’s hard to believe Simon Fuller can give justice to what Skam is all about. Unless he plans to go around the USA talking to American teenagers, pouring the same amount of hard work NRK has done into researching Norwegian teens, why even bother.

The purpose of Skam has always been clear — it was to educate young people [in Norway] about the important issues they’ll have to face as they grow up. We can all agree that teenagers all over the world need something like Skam in their lives. The lessons the program delivers are universal. (As is the effectiveness of NRK’s social media/marketing strategy, as evidenced by the odd sleeping patterns many of us overseas fans have recently acquired.) 

With that in mind, it would be more practical for foreign producers to just make the show more accessible to their audience by buying the rights to sub the show in their language. The show is already so amazing on its own, and just subbing it in English already achieves that accessibility for so many international fans.

But on the other hand, it’s also evident that Norwegian culture is vastly different from American culture and other cultures. And it can’t be denied that many American viewers are unused to reading subs, which might still make it uninteresting for most, which would then defeat the original’s purpose to educate the general teenage population (’why can’t they just learn to get used to reading subs,’ I hear some of you say; but we have to understand that American audiences who would gladly read subs and learn a new language in the process are still only the niche). Furthermore, while learning about Norwegian culture is a true joy and lovely learning experience in itself, teens from the US might not be able to relate on a more personal level to these Norwegian characters’ experience as well as they would if the characters they see on the screen were based off their own real world experiences as American teenagers. 

In this regard, there is merit in creating a localised version of the show. So if Simon Fuller, and whoever else from any other foreign country who finds the concept of Skam wonderful, uses the show as an inspiration to have a more in-depth understanding of their teenage audience, the struggles they face, and the values they need to develop, and then produce their own version of the program using that understanding, then I think that would actually turn out to be pretty awesome. 

Unfortunately... American TV is almost always too majorly concerned about making money. It’s just the way things work in the extremely capitalist American society. Given that, it’s very hard to have faith that this version Fuller has in mind would be done in the same spirit. But, hey, maybe they’ll surprise us. /weak shrug

Hello my loves. The polls will open soon around America and in less than 24 hours we will have a clear picture of who will lead America for the next four years.

Seeing as I’ve already had some bad anxiety about everything, my loving partner has decided to plan a day of self care for me.

In doing so, I’m going to sign off of social media and my phone for the day.

I love you all and I hope you stay safe. Please take care of yourselves.

I know you’re scared and tired and stressed. I’m here for you. Message me if you need to talk or need a distraction or whatever.