Frame from the Pippi Longstocking series.
He enters the village whistling a tune, on the back of a piebald horse, both menacing and irresistible. She’s a red-haired nine-year-old girl with a muffin on her shoulder, but she runs like an outlaw: fiercely independent, utterly unruly, and with her own legal code. The irreverence of Pippi Longstocking comes to Filmin, which revives the mythical series from 1974 in Spain. Aired again in 1979, 1987 and again in the 1990s, it is part of the childhood imagination of several generations of parents who enjoy showing their offspring that cool things were made in their own time. But how has he aged?
“It’s cool because he does what he wants.” “She’s a rebel.” Lupe and Celia, seven and ten years old, break down when the little Swede cracks eggs with her head or skips school and making feathers. They like that “it’s not cheesy at all,” that it “gets cool with the villains,” and “it’s strong and crazy.” “The amazing thing is that Pippi wondered what a 1940s girl should be, but she still does,” says Elina Druker, professor of children’s literature at Stockholm University, where she teaches a popular course on the author Astrid Lindgren wrote the screenplay for the series in 1969, based on his books about the character, written in the middle of World War II and filled with a deep anti-authoritarian spirit. Lindgren was a middle-class housewife, a secretary by training, who wrote her first novel to distract her daughter. And like Pippi, she did what she really wanted.
More information
The success (and controversy) of the books was immediate, and a first film, which the author hated, was made in 1949. “Screenwriter Per Gunvall decided to add a romantic plot to make it more appealing to adult viewers,” explains Annika Lindgren, Astrid’s granddaughter and director of the company that manages the rights to her work. “It was a big disappointment for her and it didn’t work out for the audience either, since then she decided to write all the adaptations herself.”
“Pippi is more than a girl, she is a superhero of what we would now call gender fluid,” says Druker, “she laughs at gender roles, social norms, etiquette, bureaucracy, the educational system, authority, normative beauty…” If you see a sign in a pharmacy that says “Do you suffer from freckles?”? To sell an ointment she comes in and says no that she loves hers. “I know how to take care of myself,” defends the strongest girl in the world, and also “I like the police officers less than sour compote with flies”. “In that sense, it’s incredibly timely, it’s still weird, it’s still unnerving, it’s still provocative, it still works,” says Druker, “and of course it’s still incredibly cool.”
Art direction and Swedish minimalism help. Pippi’s eccentric wardrobe, but also Annika’s raincoats and Tommy’s thick sweater, as well as the interior design of the series in general, are timeless and stylish. Many of the plans are reminiscent of the modernist illustrations in the original books by Ingrid Vang Nyman (recently published by Kókinos in Spain), which challenge the classic codes with daring low-angle views, overhead or subjective shots, and disturbing foreshortening to show the grotesque or the surreal. The music, light and mischievous jazz, accompanies.
Astrid Lindgren on the set of the series with actress Inger Nilsson.
But half a century has passed and you can see it in some things. The special effects are wonderfully vintage, and their analog charm makes today’s little viewers laugh. They accept the rhythm – there are long sequences of walks through the forest or on the beach – with unusual composure, since they have fed audiovisually on the hustle and bustle of the multiverse. What squeaks the most, what smells the oldest is the foreigner as a joke. “There is a certain post-colonial revisionism within the academy that is critical of the exoticism, romanticism and mockery that Lindgren infuses into other cultures,” says Druker. “Although there is no ill intent,” he continues – Lindgren, who has proclaimed himself anti-fascist, was an extensive activist for human, child and animal rights – “times have changed.” In 2014, the Swedish cut public -legal television two scenes from the series, one in which Pippi shouts “My father is the black king!” (an adjective that has become a serious racial slur in both Swedish and English) and another in which he stretches opens his eyes to sing a song with an Asian accent. “We accept the changes with no problem,” says Annika Lindgren, explaining that the Astrid Lindgren Company also removed “the N-word” from the books and that the author herself (she died in 2002 at the age of 94) was already in Its validity had been questioned decades ago. In Sweden, however, debates about respect for multiculturalism and the excesses of political correctness caused a stir.
Still from the series Pippi Longstocking
10-year-old Tomás opens his eyes in disbelief when Pippi squints at him (Filmin’s version is the original): “That’s racist,” he says without batting an eyelid. When Pippi tells you that in Egypt you sleep with your feet on the pillow and lie down all day, or that in Argentine schools the children don’t study but eat sweets until their teeth fall out, or that in the Congo they are cannibals, the Boy, who has Asian classmates, an Egyptian friend and several who went to school in Argentina, snorts and rolls his eyes as if he’s up to a bad joke or a silly joke. These aren’t the funniest of Pippi’s (a character he clearly admires) tales to tell, but listening to them at least starts an interesting conversation about how the world and television have changed since it was his mother who did the his mother has seen stockings.
You can follow EL PAÍS TELEVSIÓN on Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Receive the TV newsletter
All the news from channels and platforms, with interviews, news and analyses, as well as recommendations and criticism from our journalists
REGISTRATION