The beauty of genre fiction is how easily it lends itself to allegorical interpretation of the cultural circumstances that birthed it. The hyper-literati of the print and celluloid geeker-domains are particularly prone to looking upon innocent horror, science fiction, and  wild west offerings  as  not mere works of artistic expression and imagination, but grand statements about “the  moment.” The  innocent works are subjected to much rigorous existential, political, and psychological analysis and  become objects onto which to project our  fear, and, more often than not, exercise useless academic proclivities. After all, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is not a book about a mad scientist creating a monster, but mankind's obsession with technological advancement gone haywire.  The  Cabinet of Dr.  Caligari is not about  a somnambulist under  the spell of a murderous doctor, but  a precursor  of the atrocities of Adolph Hitler himself. Invasion of the Body Snatchers  isn't really a tale of legumes from space taking over human  bodies, but the threat of communism, or, depending upon who you ask, the mindless conformity of 1950's American culture.  I could go on with many many more examples, but I think you get my drift here. Please  feel free to list  some  of your  favorite allegorical interpretations in the  comments section herein.

This brings us to the recent Swedish film Let the Right One In. Yes, it is a sweet  little story about a child vampire who befriends a lonely and bullied boy and helps him stick  up for himself that can be read in a thousand different ways, not the least of which is as a fairy tale. But what is it really about in the context of present day Scandinavia and Northern Europe in general?

I am not claiming to be any sort of expert on the region. I  have never been to Sweden or Scandinavia. The closest I have been is the  Netherlands, a nation that shares Scandinavia's “immigrant problem.” Those unfamiliar with the sad state of  affairs in Holland  would do themselves a great favor by researching  the  misfortunes that befell the openly gay anti-immigrant politician Pim Fortuyn,  famous for his campaign slogan “Holland is closed!” and filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, a direct descendant of Vincent Van Gogh. Fortuyn  was assassinated for  his views by a lone gunman, or so  goes the official report [Van Gogh's film about the Fortuyn assassination, May 6, seems  to indicate a conspiracy on par with the Kennedy assassination], while Van Gogh was stabbed to  death by  an angry  Muslim who  did not like his film Submission, a stark critique of the  Islamic world's treatment of woman  written  by Somali immigrant, politician, and  feminist Ayaan Hirsi Magan who has  been  living under constant police protection  since the release  of the film.    

As a news junkie with a satellite hook-up to BBC World  Service and  a high-speed internet  connection,  I've heard and read a lot  about what has been going on in Scandinavia. Like Holland and France, relations between the natives and immigrants are far from pretty in the region, and the immigrants seem  to be wreaking  havoc  upon once peaceful, proud, and  open societies.

The recent spate  of anti-western violence over a Danish cartoon depicting the profit Mohammad in flagrante with a canine was  common knowledge throughout the world. Lesser known to those outside the region is  the proliferation of violence in the southern Swedish city of Malmo where several young Swedish women have been gang-raped by  roving bands of Muslim men who assumed that since they were  not good  hijab-wearing Muslim women, they were thus whores who got what they deserved. The city of over 250,000 is inhabited by over 65,000 immigrants of Middle-Eastern and  North African descent, most  of whom adhere to a fundamentalist form  of Islam that is incompatible with the traditional openness of Swedish society. Throughout Sweden, in a situation very similar to that  found in Paris, Marseilles, and Lyon, hundreds of thousands of guest workers who came  to the country  after World  War II have not  assimilated with the  local culture. A  few  generations have inhabited the country without even bothering to learn   the  local language, choosing to isolate themselves in seething ghettos not unlike the many  Parisian banlieue that have erupted over the course of the last five years. Malmo and other Swedish cities with substantial Muslim immigrant populations have become virtual war zones where Muslims burn down co-ed schools and Swedes retaliate by taking out a Mosque.

So if you haven't guessed where I'm going with this, I'll spell it out. As  far as one reading of Let the Right One In, it is a tract about Sweden and its very generous welfare state being sucked dry by generations of immigrants who refuse to assimilate. It does not look upon these “vampirish” immigrants so much as being at fault for Sweden's predicament, but appears to look upon Sweden's hyper-tolerant political correctness, “let's party” attitude,  and docile socialism as the  culprits. It is a classic case of the enlightenment and social plurality eating itself.

WARNING-- SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

In  the film, Oskar is the lonely bullied boy  who lives alone  with his mother in  a small flat in suburban, snow-driven Stockholm. Oskar is  the  vision of  Swedishness- blond hair, blue eyes, skin so pale that it is virtually translucent. He occasionally has  the pleasure of  seeing his doting father who now lives in the countryside with his male lover. Oskar's mother works much of the time, and the quiet, introspective Oskar is left to fend for himself, something he does not do so well. He is  consistently tortured by a group of boys from his school who refer to him as their “piggy.”

The mysterious Eli  moves next door to Oskar with a man who seems much too old to be her father. Eli does  not look like your typical Swede. She  has black hair and  deep set dark brown eyes. Though cursory research into the background of the young actress who plays Eli shows her to be Swedish through and through, to my less knowledgeable eyes, she could well be  Turkish or Tunisian. For this reading, that is exactly what she will be. Eli is in a permanent state of being  12 years old. She is a vampire.

It turns out that the  old man is her slave. He kills  for her, draining the victims' blood for Eli to drink. The old man is an enabler, the socialist system itself. He  delivers  the blood Eli needs, thus mollifying her need to commit violence. When he fails to come back to their flat with blood, Eli scolds him and goes out to kill her own victims. Even when he does deliver the blood, she  goes out to kill anyway.

Together, the two leave a trail of corpses, mostly of young gullible Swedish men who easily fall for the old man's stories that allow him to entrap them, gas them, hang them upside down, and slit their throats. One of Eli's victims is a doddering old drunk, another is a hapless member of the drunk's crew of middle age misfits who do nothing but drink and scheme while living off Sweden's lavish welfare system. It  is as though their gullibility to  believe in the socialist system drains the victims of their life blood, or more literally, taxes, and to a certain extent, ambition and will, that perpetuate a non-assimilated underclass who refuse to join and contribute to  society and eventually tear down the society itself.

Oskar  eventually figures out that Eli is a vampire. The two accept each other for what they are and form a rather tender bond.

 

In one touching scene, Eli becomes  ill after eating the candy given her by Oskar. She  prefers blood. The candy is the largesse of the  system. Blood is the system itself. The candy would mean acceptance and assimilation. Blood would tear it down.

Yes, Eli does teach  Oskar to stick  up for himself and even decimates his torturers in an oddly gruesome, yet humorous scene. Sadly though, the old man is eaten by  Eli after having made the mistake of getting caught by police  in the  act of draining a victim. In the film's final scene, Oskar and Eli (safely tucked away in a  box, away from harmful sunlight) are on a train, leaving for new climes. Will Oskar take care  of her now? Is he  the next wave socialist  handouts? Will his blood be sucked dry by Eli when he makes a mistake? Either way, the film can be read as seeing Oskar and Sweden in general as suckers.