Culture of shame examined through modern dance

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By Leena Pallari
     
      “Is it OK?” asks choreographer Sanna Kekäläinen of her assistant Lilja Lehmuskallio. Lehmuskallio nods, and Kekäläinen relaxes her right forearm, which can be seen under the head of dancer Panu Varstala. Varstala checks the direction of his gaze and moves his head slightly.
      Kekäläinen is an artist who has long been interested in the themes of shame. There actually seems to be some shame in the air.
     
“I discovered shame in about the year 2005", says Viola Parente-Capková, teaching assistant a the Department of Finnish Literature at the University of Turku.
      She was preparing an article about the mother-daughter relationship in Finnish literature, and shame seemed to become a uniting factor in generational interaction.
      Parente-Capková soon noticed that researchers of many fields had something touching upon the concept shame in their sights.
      A multi-disciplinary series of lectures under the title “You should be ashamed of yourself!” was held a year ago at the University of Turku, and now a collection of articles is under preparation, in cooperation with Siru Kainulainen.
      “Shame transcends many levels of identity”, Parente-Capková says. At the end, the researcher, who speaks perfect Finnish, laughs that she felt ashamed to speak Finnish with the journalist, because it was a foreign language for her.
     
Psychoanalysts say that the roots of shame go back to the disappointment that small babies feel at their inability to communicate with their mothers. The baby assumes that the mother will come immediately, but the footsteps go past.
     Shame sits deep within people, permeating their whole essence. It always involves other people - an attempt to reach someone else, and a failure in interaction.
      Sport psychologist Juri Hanin says that people react to shame by running away, by avoiding communications and withdrawing into themselves. Another valid method is to be angry at the circumstances, or to blame other people.
     
Finns continue to be proficient at feeling shame. Hanin says that the reason for this is in their basic honesty. If we screw up, we admit it.
      “It is necessary to distinguish between personality, and situational behaviour”, Hanin says. He means that although a sport achievement failed in this competition, the fault is in the attempt, and that there is not necessarily anything basically wrong with me. We just need to practice more.
     
At the University of Joensuu several doctors’ dissertations are being written at the Faculty of Theology on the topic of shame. According to Paavo Kettunen, Professor of Practical Theology, guilt is associated with doing, but shame is part of a person’s basic nature.
      At least two people are needed for shame to be felt. A small person yearns for approval even as an adult, and seeks refuge from inadequacy in a rush to achieve. “Perhaps he or she will accept me if I look really proficient.”
      “Haste can be an escape from one’s own anxiety. Life is crammed full of things, which makes ups stronger.”
      Kettunen feels that being is a more important state than doing, if one wants to open the locks of one’s mind. In the process, if a person does something wrong, he or she feels guilt. The feeling is eased by forgiveness. Shame involves deeper levels. No amount of apologising will work against it. The best alleviation for it is mercy - the feeling that a that I am acceptable just as I am.
     
Now that we have figured out what shame is, Martti Sarmela, Professor Emeritus of Cultural Anthropology, says that shame does not actually exist - at least not any more.
     Sarmela says that shame is part of an age when family and village cultures prevailed. Families took care of their members and if a member went astray, the whole family was shamed.
     “There is nothing before which a person can feel shame, because there is no more community. Now a person can do anything he or she is able to do. There is no morality and no conscience in Western countries. There is not even any sin. Conscience nowadays is a surveillance camera.”
     According to Sarmela, a curtain moving in a neighbour’s window has been exchanged for scientific and technical surveillance gadgets. Pictures of intoxication stay permanently on the Internet.
     “By its very nature, the computer is a control device. It has all of the birth records of the world, soon we will end up having an identity chip or implant so that we might be able to consume and travel in the Schengen zone without a passport!”
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 29.11.2009

More on this subject:
 Resistant audience exposes performer to shame
 COMMENT: Shame, play, and irony

LEENA PALLARI / Helsingin Sanomat
leena.pallari@hs.fi