Localized hip hop authenticity in early 2000s Finland : Retaining representations of race, class and gender in Beauty and the Bastard

Abstract

Beauty and the Bastard (Karukoski 2005), a pioneering and award-winning youth film set within the emerging Finnish hip hop culture, draws on early twenty-first-century music-related youth films produced in the United States and reaches out thematically and musically to both African American and Finnish hip hop culture and rap music. Set in a predominantly White Finnish society, the film confronts many representational challenges concerning diversity, whether racial, class or gender. Based on contextual analysis of audio-visual representations, we discuss how such categories contribute to the construction of the film’s ‘authenticity’ – a key notion of hip hop culture – as a localized representation. We argue that in its project of localizing hip hop authenticity in early 2000s Finland, the film retains, rather than challenges or questions, representations of normative Whiteness, oppressive class distinctions and unequal gender norms.