Coping with Shame in a Media-saturated Society: Norwegian Web-series Skam as Transitional Object

Abstract

Since its launch in late 2015, the Norwegian web-series Skam (Shame), produced by public broadcaster NRK, has become one of the most notable successes in Norwegian television history, both in terms of ratings and critical acclaim. A high-school web-series about teenagers, mostly girls, coming of age in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, the series not only depicts young people in their everyday digital-media use but also reaches its audience through these same media and in a variety of formats extending far beyond video clips. Its success, we argue, is significantly tied to its multimedial form and distribution. We unpack the show’s sociocultural potential by analyzing its various outputs (video clips, screen grabs of the characters’ messenger chats, and updates from their Instagram accounts), as well as the audience’s/users’ responses to these in the form of comments to the web page. We argue that the show functions as a “transitional object” (per Winnicott) for its teen audiences, providing them with a “potential space” (also from Winnicott) in which they can learn how to cope with the challenges of a media-saturated society.