By Finland correspondent, Therese Catanzariti -- Crikey (Australia) -- October 18, 2005
Finland is a self-conscious country so when Conan O'Brien mentions them, it's front page news. Australia's international image is formed and shaped by our television soaps. Similarly, I can write all sorts of columns about Finland, but many people in Australia will always think of Finland as being Aki Kaurasmaki's Drifting Clouds, one of the most popular films at the Sydney Film Festival in the late 1990s.
And in Finland, the US is Late Night with Conan O'Brien, an American late night talk show that's huge in Finland. And as O'Brien has mentioned a number of times on air, he gets lots of emails and postcards from Finland.
But what happens when there is a wormhole in the universe, and the universe starts reflecting back on itself? What happens when Conan O'Brien starts referring to Finland? Conan is the US – so the US is commenting on Finland. It's news.
Finland is a self-conscious country. There's a Finnish joke – an American, a Frenchman and a Finn are on safari and come across an elephant. The American thinks “How much money can I get for the tusks?” The Frenchman thinks “What sort of love life does the elephant have?” The Finns thinks “I wonder what the elephant thinks of me...”
Last year, Conan had a segment “Conan Hates My Homeland” where he said a few nasty things about a number of countries each episode and then waited to see how many emails and postcards he would receive – click here for the full list of insults. But Finland couldn't wait and started sending emails and postcards before Conan even got past the Bs, prompting this insult: "Finland: We're so dumb, we can't wait to be insulted to send a meaningless postcard with a tire on the front."
That was met with an unprecedented avalanche of Finnish feedback and Conan apologised for the insult, sitting in front of a Finnish flag holding a Swedish flag with the legend “Sweden Sucks.” This picture is plastered all around the University of Oulu. The skit – check it out here – was big news and reported in the mainstream press.
And now it's happened again. Last Wednesday, Conan revealed that he looks like Finland's president, Tarja Halonen, and provided a face next to face comparison. He then mentioned that the Finnish presidential elections are coming up and promised to use his "immense popularity" to ensure that Halonen is re-elected.
He even produced a cheesy “Tarja for President” ad – watch it here – in which Conan encourages Finns to vote for her because "she looks just like me."
The segment makes the front page of Friday's Ilta Sanomat, Helsinki's main tabloid newspaper and the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs news website. The Tarja campaign loses no time.
Finland broadcasts Conan's show a few days after it's broadcast in the US, so when the skit is finally shown in Finland, there is a "Tarja for President" ad before the show starts and ads throughout the broadcast.
There's even talk that Conan will actually shoot a few episodes in Helsinki. The universe will collapse into itself.