För Sverige i tiden?

Abstract

The theme of this issue of Kulturella Perspektiv is cultural perspectives on the Swedish royal family. Academic cultural approaches to monarchies and royal families are unusual, maybe because royalties are generally considered to be outdated political symbols. However during the last two decades there has been a growing interest within Nordic research on the royal families' mass media exposure. This is in line with a far more extended tradition in Great Britain comprising studies on the relations between monarchy and media, as well as on ideas on nationalism and national identity. Many of the articles in this issue touches on questions of mass media and nationalism in a similar way. Since studies on monarchies and the royal family are rare even in an international perspective we have found another quite new interdisciplinary field of research that serves our purposes well — celebrity studies. Celebrity studies focuses on both the production and the consuming of celebrities, on how audiences, groups or individuals use and reproduce celebrities. Since royalties are losing in political power they are no turned into high-rank celebrities with unquestionable fame since birth. But how is royal celebrity performed and what kind of values are connected with it? All articles, except one, focus on representations of the Swedish royal family, in painted portraits, an annual tv-show, satire and humour programmes, a theatre play etc. One common theme in the articles is the dichotomy of private/public. Different understandings of private/public is used and/or constructed for various reasons.