I arrived at the Abba Museum with what I would consider to be a below average knowledge base about the Swedish pop supergroup that the museum itself was presenting. I had seen the film Mamma Mia a few times and was familiar with the universally known tunes such as Dancing Queen and Waterloo, but there truly were massive holes in my knowledge-base. Before arriving, I had no idea that they won the Eurovision contest. I had no idea that the group had consisted of two married couples. In fact, I had no idea that the group even consisted of four people. But if one had fast forwarded two hours into the future, they would have found me professing my love to the band members’ wax figurines and signing up for the ABBA cult fan club at the end of the museum’s bright and flashy exhibit.
What caused this drastic change? Well firstly, The museum was undoubtedly well designed and curated. It told the story of the supergroup that means so much to the country of Sweden with brilliance and vivacity. I would go as far as to say that it was one of the most aesthetically pleasing museums I have ever visited. The colors and interactive exhibits kept me guessing and literally singing along with their plethora of hit songs. I spent more than two hours watching every single hi-definition television, dancing on a 1970s dance floor, making an ABBA music video and even performing Dancing Queen on a digital stage. I was so overloaded with information and media that every part of my body was high on the multiplicity of sensory inputs that it had just endured. Whilst I was on my way out of the museum, the loop-like layout of the exhibit led me past the beginning again. I stepped back into the first room of the museum one more time and watched the intro video yet again because I truly thought it was a work of art put together by Christian Larson. (http://christianlarson.com/short-film-abba-world/). After I had left and had given my mind some time to recover, I made a realization: I had been brainwashed by an expertly crafted propaganda piece. As successful as the museum’s execution was, the intro/welcome video expertly summed up the entire museum experience in less than five minutes.
The short film features an absurd amount of glittering generalities - a propaganda technique that has been used for decades. This tactic refers to the act of repeatedly referring to words or ideas that evoke only a positive response. Amongst many themes, the intro video linked above showcases the four members of the group smiling, performing in front of large audiences and wearing shiny outfits that could pass as 18th century halloween costumes for the Swedish Royal Family. These images do not for a second display any member of the band struggling or even wearing something pedestrian. During the four and half minute long presentation, the ABBA song that accompanies the flashy images switches every five to ten seconds. Every one of these songs is either a studio recording or from a live show, but is a recognizable hit either way. These tunes bring back a sense of nostalgia for those real ABBA fans who are watching and familiarize those who have a comparatively limited ABBA knowledge. With so many recognizable tunes being utilized, even the marginal listener (myself included), feels like they are part of the club going forward. The reason this glittering generality approach works so well is hugely helped by the fact that most of ABBA’s hits are upbeat songs. The imagery and the incredibly fickle audio keep the spirits very high and the viewer strangely hypnotized.
The video also contains the incredibly useful propaganda technique of bandwagoning. This “join the crowd” technique convinces the audience that they should join in on the fun being had by everyone else and this is seen quite literally throughout the video in a myriad of ways. The video begins with a heartbeat-like rhythmic unveiling of a massively attended ABBA concert. The imagery is in black and white and shows thousands of fans running to the stadium, counting tickets and screaming for ABBA’s arrival. The frenzied imagery is brought to a head with a faded text that simply reads: Welcome. With the audience formally invited to this virtual social event, the experience begins and the video switches to color. The video is littered with merchandise offers (which perhaps are even convincing the museum goers to stop by the gift shop on the way out) and personal anecdotes from fans, including one man who claims that the concert he had just attended was “the most orgasmic moment of [his] life”. Even if approached from a meta angle, the viewer is swept off of their feet by the bandwagon imagery and sound from the opening seconds until the climactic finish.
Perhaps the most important technique used in this video is that of Card-Stacking- showcasing the best parts and omitting anything even slightly negative. Much like the museum itself, not one negative or contentious part of ABBA’s fourteen year history was on display at all. The only unfavorable clip of the video features the frustrated face of Bjorn while he listens to a chorus of tone deaf children. But this clip ends in a matter of two seconds and was more likely plugged into the montage for comedic relief only. Absolutely no imagery was included in the video or the museum about the eventual disintegration of the group or either of the divorces that occurred during their years as an active band. The video expertly keeps the viewer at bay by distracting them with only positive imagery. They mention the social prevalence of “Agnetha’s Bottom”, a shirt salesman and their first tour in the United States instead of mentioning anything resembling reality. This propaganda technique loaded the four minute video with enough smiling faces and screaming fans that the question at the end of the film was never, “Well… did anything ever go wrong, or was every second of their existence play out like this film?”.
The piece of art that introduces the ABBA museum to those who visit is nothing more than a spectacularly executed piece of propaganda. If it hadn’t been for the conversations that I had with my classmates afterwards, perhaps I never would have questioned what the intro video or the museum itself was missing. But lack of negative content is not a direct knock on the legitimacy of the art piece created by Christian Larson. More than anything, I am praising the video for successfully priming the viewer. But perhaps the most interesting part of the video is the final sequencing, which purports two different dramatic endings that could both stand on their own (one ending at 4:04 and the other ending at 4:20). These two endings and the very last clip of a melodically unsettled piano trill align with the propaganda-like intention of the video and the museum as a whole: for die-hard ABBA fans, the group never had a definitive and satisfying conclusion, so just leave all those details out of the story entirely!
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