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The professionalization, commercialization and mediatization of sport permeate
Solna Centre in the global branding and personalities that are evident throughout the
mall. In this sense, Solna is not so different from other shopping centres. The global
economic structures of sport are a clearly defined dimension of late modernity,
lacking any link to a specific place. What distinguished this particular consumption
space from the general pattern is rather the ways that specific events and artefacts
work to activate local pride among some mall visitors. During these events the two
dimensions of place – the geographic and the social – are tied together. In such
moments, Solna becomes a football town, finding its expression in the local loyalties
that coalesce when visitors reread the story of how the golden shoe came to be
displayed in the mall, browse in the AIK shop or gather to celebrate the team.
Without such events and in the absence of the specific artefacts that anchor the social
to the geographic, Solna Centre loses its geographic specificity and becomes part of
the generalized culture of sport. This pattern of generalization and loss of specificity
of place can also be found in other cultural phenomena, as we see in another local
dimension: Solna’s tie to the Swedish film industry.
FILM CITY
Film City, the former headquarters of the Swedish film industry’s production studios,
is also in Råsunda, quite near Solna Centre. Film City dates back to the early years
of silent film and is the place where many Swedish film classics were produced. In
2001 Swedish Film (Svensk Filmindustri), the country’s largest film producer and
distributor, and owner of the largest chain of theatres, moved its headquarters ‘home’
to Råsunda. The renovated Film City Råsunda now includes a new theatre with three
relatively small viewing spaces, each named after famed Swedish actors and the addi-
tional ‘Bergman Salon’, renovated in the style of the 1940s, where films made during
the period 1919–1970 are shown. 32 It is possible to book tours of the old facilities
that now include a café and souvenir shop, and ‘Old Film City’ has become a site for
events commemorating the studios’ history. 33
Like Solna’s history as a soccer town, the town’s place in the history of Swedish
film would not be obvious to the visitor entering Solna Centre for the first time. The
small mural of Greta Garbo is obscured behind an elevator, and the Hollywood
Stairs can at best be seen as an obtuse reference to the nearby film studios. Also like
sport, however, film as a major cultural phenomenon is evident throughout the
mall. There is a large video and DVD rental shop, the library has a video rental
section, and many stores sell videos and DVDs of popular films, including Disney
classics. Film stars and characters appear in advertisements for a range of products,
an aspect of the previously mentioned intermedial use of characters and themes
from popular films. Characters from blockbuster films and Disney classics are found
on posters and products in virtually every shop in Solna Centre. Until 2002 there
was also a small film theatre that showed current popular films most evenings.
Despite the prevalence in this space of consumption of these many references to film
in general, specific films and film characters, these do not refer to any concrete place,