Confronting Skam in Each of us in the Critical Media Studies and Cultural Trauma Theories

Abstract

This paper will conduct a TV series from Norway called Skam (Shame) as a case study and discuss its impact by utilizing critical studies of media and cultural trauma theories. Simply put, this paper aims to illustrate that Skam depicts the shame arisen from mythical norm labeled by the dominant narratives under the mainstream media and understands the true meaning of healing for traumas in two aspects based on cultural trauma theories. For one, trauma is intersectional and therefore varying from every individual. For another, the mainstream power-over approach cannot help to heal trauma, but only the person herself/himself can be the one to deal with own relationship and confront with the truth. Lastly, this paper will bring up a rebuttal to criticize the drawback of mainstream media to the paradigm shift of understanding cultural trauma theory.