You can’t watch this show and think that Norway is better off for the presence of Muslims and other foreigners. Why would any land want to import people who have allegiances above their new homeland?
And I’ll also tell you at least one way in which “Lilyhammer” is more intelligent, edgy and sociologically resonant than the Kevin Spacey political drama — in its ongoing critique of multiculturalism, the ideology that dominates American political life but is rarely explored in mainstream media.
Series creators Anne Bjornstad and Eilif Skodvin say they conceived of Van Zandt’s Frank “The Fixer” Tagliano as a “fish out of water,” a safe and reliable comedic device. But in the musician’s performance and his own scripting for the character, Tagliano has become a way for millions of viewers to symbolically explore American cultural imperialism as well as the pluses and minuses of a belief system that privileges individual ethnic, racial and religious identification over any allegiance to a national system of values.
