Into the Blue. The Visualization of Building Walls and Transgressing Borders in Scandorama by Hannele MikaelaTaivassalo and Catherine Anyango Grünewald

Abstract

This essay examines Scandorama, a graphic novel from 2018 scripted by
the Finland-Swedish writer Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo and drawn by the Kenyan-
Swedish artist Catherine Anyango Grünewald. The work is read as a comment to
unsettling trends in contemporary Scandinavia such as rising nationalisms, antiimmigrant
sentiments, and the destruction of nature. Special attention is given to how
the issues of building walls and transgressing borders are recorded not only on a
verbal level but, first and foremost, to the ways in which these concerns are entrusted
to the visual code of comics. It is argued that the chromatic structure employed in the
book creates a visual subtext expressing the dystopian theme embedded in
Scandorama. Through the use of a single colour, blue, in a monochrome storyworld,
the idea of erecting walls and transgressing borders is backed up and expressed in at
least three contexts investigated in the article: (1) ‘othering’; (2) architecture; (3) body
and mind. Here, the dramaturgical potential of colour combines with motives such as
government surveillance, loss of individualism, genetic engineering, futuristic
technology, environmental destruction, and urban settings to produce a dystopian
‘blueprint’.