The adventures of Lisbeth Salander, a brooding 23 year old hacker babe, with a murky and disturbing past, have set pop culture ablaze for close to a decade now. I mean, darn, snagging Daniel Craig for the U.S. film: kind of enuf said, no?
Brainy, Goth chic though only explains part of the appeal of this pop culture cottage industry - three books, with a fourth on the way, films in both Swedish and English, TV miniseries and graphic novels. The franchise, widely identified as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series (or, in some circles, the Millennium trilogy), has an additional cultural cache in the strange back story of Lisbeth's creator: Stieg Larsson.
Larsson's story is a tale pregnant with the ironies of, just before. Just before he became a successful novelist, he was a notorious crusader against what he identified as the dark sources of Fascism and plutocracy in Swedish society. And, just before his novelist success produced a rather large personal fortune, he died.
This poses two questions to the inquiring mind. First, if he had lived, would he have remained quite as suspicious of wealth as a marker of evil? And, second, might the prior two facts be related?
Speculation on this latter question has led to some genuine lunacy. As a relatively young man, Larsson embraced Communism and anyone who pays any attention to such matters will be well aware that this creed has always been conspiratorial to its core. As a consequence, there's no astonishment at learning that for Larsson the 80s and 90s were devoted to unearthing the sinister secrets of rightist extremists and crypto-Aryan cabals.
The institutional legacy of all this was Larsson's establishment of a foundation and magazine, which he eventually edited, named Expo. These were pledged to exposing Swedish society's dark forces, its blackguards and villains. Now, don't mistake my tone here; it's not a matter of doubting the existence of such plotters and fantasists. It's just that fantasists are exactly what I think they are. They, no less than their arch enemies, like Larsson, exaggerate their relevance and influence all out of proportion to reality so as to make themselves and their titanic struggle seem of epic consequence. (I feel confident in saying that when barbarism next descends upon Western civilization, it won't be wearing jackboots and swastikas.)
And, for the record, I certainly do not accept that Larsson's death by "heart attack" (as some insist on putting it) on the "anniversary" (my scare quotes) of Kristallnacht means anything. This is just the conspiratorial mind out of control. Now, I grant you, if they'd waited to whack him in 2008; that would have been 70 years since the original night of broken glass. I mean, 70s years. Now, that would be meaningful, right? I mean, it must mean something? Right? Excuse my sarcasm; perhaps you get my point?
Despite the silliness of all this conspiracy theory in the real world, though, in terms of entertainment marketing, Larsson's fascination with blackguard plotters paid off handsomely in providing the thematic and plot backdrop of his much read and film adapted novels. And, strange as it may seem to some of us, Larsson's brand of paranoia resonates just as well in America as in his native Sweden.
It is the conspiracies and debauchery of these right wing Satanist that are exposed by the exploits of super-girl Lisbeth Salander - with the photographic memory, chess-like strategic mind, mathematical skills to make Fermat weep, and the ability to hack into the computers of banks and police departments more or less at will - alongside her journalist sidekick, Mikael Blomkvist. Indeed, in one of the sequels, it appears that maybe coming back from the dead may be added to her list of super hero qualities.
Okay, it is all a bit far-fetched. But whatever stretches of suspended disbelief (or plausible deniability) Larsson may ask of us, the protagonists and their virtuous mission makes for fun reading and viewing. And, hey, there's no success like market success.
The final irony, in it all, I suppose, is that even a paranoid commie like Larsson could brush lips with the zeitgeist and hit the jackpot. Though, I'm inclined to think that one probably ought not to reflect too deeply upon just what it is that that says about the rest of us.
Brainy, Goth chic though only explains part of the appeal of this pop culture cottage industry - three books, with a fourth on the way, films in both Swedish and English, TV miniseries and graphic novels. The franchise, widely identified as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series (or, in some circles, the Millennium trilogy), has an additional cultural cache in the strange back story of Lisbeth's creator: Stieg Larsson.
Larsson's story is a tale pregnant with the ironies of, just before. Just before he became a successful novelist, he was a notorious crusader against what he identified as the dark sources of Fascism and plutocracy in Swedish society. And, just before his novelist success produced a rather large personal fortune, he died.
This poses two questions to the inquiring mind. First, if he had lived, would he have remained quite as suspicious of wealth as a marker of evil? And, second, might the prior two facts be related?
Speculation on this latter question has led to some genuine lunacy. As a relatively young man, Larsson embraced Communism and anyone who pays any attention to such matters will be well aware that this creed has always been conspiratorial to its core. As a consequence, there's no astonishment at learning that for Larsson the 80s and 90s were devoted to unearthing the sinister secrets of rightist extremists and crypto-Aryan cabals.
The institutional legacy of all this was Larsson's establishment of a foundation and magazine, which he eventually edited, named Expo. These were pledged to exposing Swedish society's dark forces, its blackguards and villains. Now, don't mistake my tone here; it's not a matter of doubting the existence of such plotters and fantasists. It's just that fantasists are exactly what I think they are. They, no less than their arch enemies, like Larsson, exaggerate their relevance and influence all out of proportion to reality so as to make themselves and their titanic struggle seem of epic consequence. (I feel confident in saying that when barbarism next descends upon Western civilization, it won't be wearing jackboots and swastikas.)
And, for the record, I certainly do not accept that Larsson's death by "heart attack" (as some insist on putting it) on the "anniversary" (my scare quotes) of Kristallnacht means anything. This is just the conspiratorial mind out of control. Now, I grant you, if they'd waited to whack him in 2008; that would have been 70 years since the original night of broken glass. I mean, 70s years. Now, that would be meaningful, right? I mean, it must mean something? Right? Excuse my sarcasm; perhaps you get my point?
Despite the silliness of all this conspiracy theory in the real world, though, in terms of entertainment marketing, Larsson's fascination with blackguard plotters paid off handsomely in providing the thematic and plot backdrop of his much read and film adapted novels. And, strange as it may seem to some of us, Larsson's brand of paranoia resonates just as well in America as in his native Sweden.
It is the conspiracies and debauchery of these right wing Satanist that are exposed by the exploits of super-girl Lisbeth Salander - with the photographic memory, chess-like strategic mind, mathematical skills to make Fermat weep, and the ability to hack into the computers of banks and police departments more or less at will - alongside her journalist sidekick, Mikael Blomkvist. Indeed, in one of the sequels, it appears that maybe coming back from the dead may be added to her list of super hero qualities.
Okay, it is all a bit far-fetched. But whatever stretches of suspended disbelief (or plausible deniability) Larsson may ask of us, the protagonists and their virtuous mission makes for fun reading and viewing. And, hey, there's no success like market success.
The final irony, in it all, I suppose, is that even a paranoid commie like Larsson could brush lips with the zeitgeist and hit the jackpot. Though, I'm inclined to think that one probably ought not to reflect too deeply upon just what it is that that says about the rest of us.
About the Author:
To keep taps on the latest in the Stieg Larsson posthumous empire, you need to follow Mickey Jhonny's writing on the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo site. Mickey's latest writing includes a provocative review of the Michael Apted's amazing 7 Up documentary series for Best Documentaries on Netflix -- you don't want to miss it!
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