Journey to Vietnam

"Kåldolmar och kalsipper" (don´t even ask me what that means) is a bizarre quasi-surrealist story for children, released as a record in 1976 by the grossly misnamed Nationalteatern (National Theater), actually a Swedish "progressive" rock band and theater troupe. A TV version from 1980 also exists. As an innocent child, me and my schoolmates were forced to listen to the record several times, since my teacher was a supporter of the Maoist "Communist Party of Sweden" (a small but very active group). I recently watched the TV version again, and it gave me exactly the right claustrophobic vibes. Weirdly, I still remember many of the songs, despite not having heard them for...what...40 years?! 

The "plot" can´t really be retold. Suffice to say is that it revolves around a number of very peculiar characters, including a 100-year old baby with a big beard, a Greek clown, a butchy female pirate, and a servant who speaks with a heavy "folksy" accent. The main character is a small girl named Ylle. The girl wants to liberate her friends from the clutches of two evil kings who abduct people and force them into slavery. She gets unexpected help from a ghost. After being chased by the kings, the liberated slaves end up in Vietnam (!) where they meet Ho Chi Minh (!!). They also have an encounter with Moby Dick (!!!) somewhere southwest of Java...

"Kåldolmar och kalsipper" is infamous for its political message, which is unabashedly Communist. The ghost turns out to be the Communist ghost, Uncle Ho tells the exploited Swedish proletarians to resist, and one of the evil kings wears a dress that looks like the Star Spangled Banner! Many people assume that the overlords are called "kings of the West", but a better translation would actually be "kings of the Best". (In Swedish, the neologism Bästerlandet rather than Västerlandet.) The "storm petrels" which try to scare the main characters during their sea voyage to Indochina, preaching a message of pessimism and parochialism, also spout American colors. Many political themes are touched upon during the surrealistic journey from the woods of Västergötland to the jungles of ´Nam: women´s oppression and feminism, racism and fascism (exemplified by the Greek colonels), ecological concerns, even the utter boredom of Swedish public housing! It´s probably not a co-incidence that all heroes (except Ho) are really heroines. There are no strong males in the story: Ho Chi Minh comes across as a sagely old uncle, while all other men seem weak. Unless you count the ghost, who is said to have been a boy in his previous existence...

In the TV version, the narrator is an an old androgyne who sits in an ugly bunker that seems almost post-apocalyptic. He/she writes something on a really old type writer. It´s almost as if the producers unintentionally gave us a glimpse of the post-revolutionary society. Well, I can´t say it was much of an improvement! But then, I somehow thought the storm birds had a point... 

Not available in an English version. Chinese re-education camps would probably be even worse if the inmates had been forced to watch this!