Synthesis of N‐Fused Indolines via Copper (II)‐Catalyzed Dearomatizing Cyclization of Indoles

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Synthesis of N‐Fused Indolines via Copper (II)‐Catalyzed Dearomatizing Cyclization of Indoles © 2021 The Authors. Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis published by Wiley-VCH GmbH. Published version Zhang, Jingyu; Xia, Wei; Huda, Saskia; Ward, Jas S.; Rissanen, Kari; Albrecht, Markus Zhang, J., Xia, W., Huda, S., Ward, J. S., Rissanen, K., & Albrecht, M. (2021). Synthesis of N‐Fused Indolines via Copper (II)‐Catalyzed Dearomatizing Cyclization of Indoles. Advanced Synthesis and Catalysis, 363(12), 3121-3126. https://doi.org/10.1002/adsc.202100290 2021 kvarter akademisk academic quarter Volume 22 124 Volume 22. Spring 2021 • on the web Kaisa Hiltunen isafilmscholarandseniorresearcherattheDepartmentofMusic,ArtandCultureStudies,Universityof Jyväskylä,Finland.Shehasrecentlypublishedabout cinematicrepresentationsofrefugees,belongingand NordicNoir.Hercurrentresearchfocusesonecocinema andhuman–naturerelationship. Remote but Connected Lapland as a Scene of Transnational Crime in Ivalo Abstract Set in a small town in the north of Finland, the crime TV series Ivalo (ArcticCircle, Finland, 2018) exemplifies the fascination of Nordic Noir with ‘remote’ locations as scenes of transnational crime. The plot seems to forebode the corona pandemic, portraying the spread of a life-threatening ‘Yemenite virus’ developed as a biological weapon from the Balkans to Lapland. In this article, I analyze how the virus narrative allows the series to bring new perspectives on Nordic Noir. The narrative emphasizes international connections while creating representations of places that can be characterized as both translocal (Greiner and Sakdapolrak 2013) and glocal (Robertson 2012). Because of its far northern location, the series can be described as an example of Arctic Noir. However, Ivalo breaks with traditional representations of both Lapland and the Russian border in Finnish audiovisual culture, striving towards a new cosmopolitan imagination. Keywords: Arctic noir, border, cosmopolitanism, glocality, Nordic Noir, translocality kvarter akademisk academic quarter Volume 22 125 Remote but Connected Kaisa Hiltunen A co-production venture between the Finnish Yellow Film & TV and the German Bavaria Film, the crime TV drama Ivalo (ArcticCircle, 2018) takes its name from a small Lappish town, the administrative center of the second northernmost municipality in Finland, Inari. Ivalo is located close to an international airport, at about 50 kilometers from the border with Russia. The area has become a popular travel destination for tourists with its skiing centers, national parks and wilderness areas. This arctic location is the series’ prime production value (Waade 2017, 6) and reflects the current fascination of Nordic Noir with “remote” locations and the interest to turn them into scenes of transnational crime. Ivalo was filmed by Finnish director Hannu Salonen, co-written by the Finnish Joona Tena and the Icelandic Jón Atli Jónasson. It stars actors from Finland, Germany and Iceland. The main languages spoken in the series are Finnish and English. It has been sold to more than 20 countries, including Germany, Spain and China (Koskela 2019). It exemplifies Ib Bondebjerg’s (2016, 5) observation that “the crime genre on television is one of the genres where European co-production has resulted in quite advanced forms of transnational stories and creative collaboration.” In Finland, ArcticCircle was premiered on the Elisa Viihde video-on-demand service from December 2018 to April 2019. The plot starts when the local police find an abused Russian prostitute barely alive in an old cabin. Taken to the hospital she is found carrying a life-threatening, sexually transmitted ‘Yemenite virus’. When two more prostitutes are found murdered, the National Bureau of Investigation takes over the case and sends for German virus specialist Thomas Lorenz (Maximilian Brückner). Local police officer Nina Kautsalo (Iina Kuustonen) is ordered to assist Lorenz; together they will come to realize that not only is the virus in direct connection with the murders, but that the infection, which was started in a distant place, might now have serious consequences for Lapland and even for the whole world. Ivaloseems to convey forebodings of the corona pandemic, whose first suspicions in Finland were reported in Ivalo in January 2020. Although in the plot the ‘Yemenite virus’ is developed and spread deliberately, the scenario feels particularly pertinent in the light of the current pandemic crisis, now that we have become aware that globalization also has its dark side and it is not only people, goods kvarter akademisk academic quarter Volume 22 126 Remote but Connected Kaisa Hiltunen and ideas that travel around the world. As a matter of fact, through its virus-related plot, the series connects a sparsely populated place in the subarctic region with several other, often quite distant, locations. In the following, I analyze Ivalo as an example of Arctic noir and discuss the way in which it creates, through its topical virus narrative, an unconventional representation of Lapland that can be characterized as both translocal(Greiner and Sakdapolrak 2013) and glocal (Robertson 2012). There has been a tendency to represent Lapland as Finland’s ‘internal other’ in Finnish audiovisual culture (Hiltunen 2019). However, the fight against the virus portrayed in the series calls for both inter-regional and international co-operation as well as the crossing of borders, especially the Russian border. I argue that the virus plot brings changes to both the nature of crime investigation in Arctic noir and the representation of Lapland and the Russian border in Finnish audiovisual culture. Arctic noir and translocality Nordic Noir has recently traveled further north and further away from urban centers, revealing the underbelly of small arctic communities in series such as the Icelandic Ófӕrð (Trapped, 2015), Swedish-French Midnattsol (MidnightSun, 2016) and the Norwegian Monster (Id.2017) (Hiltunen 2019; Waade 2020). Researchers have adopted the term Arctic Noir to describe crime series that use the harsh far northern climate as a marketing device and a central aspect of their aesthetics (Waade 2020, 38–39; Iversen 2020). Most of the Finnish Nordic Noir TV series, such as Sorjonen(Bordertown, 2016–20), Karppi (Deadwind, 2018–20), Ratamo (Id., 2018) and Bullets (Id., 2018) have been located in cities. The noir-western Armotonmaa (LawoftheLand, 2017), a film set in western Lapland, and Kaikkisynnit(AlltheSins, 2019), a crime series set in Ostrobothnia, are the only notable exceptions. Therefore, Arctic Noir as a ‘sub-genre’ of Nordic Noir is a novel context for the analysis of audiovisual productions located in the north of Finland, Lapland. Waade points out that the Arctic has been represented, mostly by outsiders, as an elsewhere (2020, 42). Therefore, it can be argued that Ivalomarks a significant turn in the history of Arctic noir and its role in shaping our conceptions of this increasingly contested and vulnerable region. kvarter akademisk academic quarter Volume 22 127 Remote but Connected Kaisa Hiltunen Greiner and Sakdapolrak note that a translocal perspective on places focuses on both what is in them and what flows through them. They write that “Translocality (…) implies a transgressing of locally bounded, fixed understandings of place and at the same time emphasizes the importance of places as nodes where flows that transcend spatial scales converge” (Greiner and Sakdapolrak 2013, 377). Therefore, they suggest, translocality can be used as a “starting point from which to challenge dichotomous geographical conceptions (Agnew 2005), such as space and place, rural and urban, core and periphery” (Greiner and Sakdapolrak 2013, 380). Although Ivalo is no doubt peripherical when looked at from Helsinki, in Ivalo it becomes the center of the action. The virus, or the invisible connector Greiner and Sakdapolrak (2013, 380) point out that discussions about translocality “direct attention to various modes of mobility beyond the movement of people”. In virus epidemics, the infectious agents move with people, but usually unbeknownst to their own human carriers. In the series, the virus is a powerful but at the same time largely invisible driving force of the plot, which adds a medical context to the narrative. Its image is visualized in the first episode when Lorenz lectures about his work at his daughter’s school, and when he tries to convince the chief inspector of the dangerousness of the Yemenite virus. In a later episode, an image of the mutated virus is shown. Otherwise, the virus is visualized only in the title sequence as images of enlarged cells and as a black rhizome-like structure that turns dark red while expanding in the snowy landscape, spreading around from buildings, cars, trees and other elements of the scenery, giving the impression that an all-encompassing enemy is taking over everything. The title sequence plays a special role in that it makes the virus visible and illustrates in an exaggerated manner the way it works – something that the actual narrative cannot do. The Yemenite virus is told to always travel together with the herpes virus. It is activated when a woman gets pregnant and can cause both severe deformity in fetuses and, frequently, the death of expectant mothers. This grim prediction comes true when a local Laestadian woman and her baby die during childbirth. Laestadianism is a pietistic Lutheran revival movement, the members of kvarter akademisk academic quarter Volume 22 128 Remote but Connected Kaisa Hiltunen which hold conservative values and avoid all forms of ‘worldliness’. Ironically, the dead woman’s husband has to confess that he enjoyed the services of certain party girls. The only other known carrier of the virus beyond the Russian prostitutes is Nina Kautsalo’s promiscuous sister, who is put to quarantine. Yet, when Kautsalo’s small daughter is also found infected with the disease, it soon turns out that the Yemenite virus is able to mutate and spread in different ways beyond sexual transmission. In the second season of Bron/Broen (TheBridge, Sweden/Denmark, 2011–18), environmental activists use a deadly virus to draw attention to their cause.In a key scene, a character exposed to the infection dies a painful death and a female police officer decides to commit suicide rather than wait for the disease to kill her. In Ivalo, the medical context is a more integral and visible part of the narrative than in Bron/Broen, but in the latter the consequences of the virus are shown in a more grisly manner. The crime investigation takes a new turn when the pharmaceutical entrepreneur Marcus Eiben (Clemens Schick) from Amsterdam arrives in Ivalo and asks Thomas Lorenz for assistance. Eiben reveals that the virus was developed in 1993 in Bosnia by a Serbian scientist micic with the intention of destroying the Muslim population of the country. A small group of Serbian soldiers were injected the virus and assigned the task to rape Muslim women, with the goal to infect the whole Bosniac population. However, the operation was interrupted once the war came to an end. Only one soldier with the virus in his blood, Lazar Cevikovic (Aleksandar Jovanovic), was left alive. Called “patient zero” and believed to possess an antidote to the virus, this man has been hiding in Yemen but now lives in Murmansk, in northern Russia. Eiben has been looking for Cevikovic for 20 years, since he lost his wife and child because of this man. When finally Cevikovic is found, he claims to be a victim as well, having been unaware to be carrying the virus until the death of his own child and wife. Therefore, only Micic can disable the virus. We also discover that Cevikovic has ordered the murder of the Russian girls, whom he claims had seen too much at his parties. The first suspects, local thugs, turn out to be minor figures working for Cevikovic. Spatial and temporal connections are created through actions that are reactions to the virus. By locating the story in the far north kvarter akademisk academic quarter Volume 22 129 Remote but Connected Kaisa Hiltunen and the origin of the virus in southern Europe more than 20 years earlier, the narrative calls attention to the fact that in today’s mobile world everywhere is connected to everywhere else and local and global can become linked in complex ways. Although the virus causes fear and suffering, it also leads to positive forms of co-operation between experts of different fields and nationalities. Before long, the National Bureau of Investigation has to concede that expertise can be found also in Lapland. Local knowledge turns out to be crucial in different phases of the investigation. Moreover, in the present of the story-world, movement across the Russian border is the most significant form of transnational mobility. Crossing the Russian border Borders and cross-border operations have been from the beginning important ingredients of Nordic Noir, most importantly perhaps in Bron/Broen and in the Finnish Sorjonen. Since the Russian girls are victims of human trafficking, the Russian border guard is involved in the investigation, albeit on a rather superficial level. Although Russia is associated with threat, a certain change of attitude towards the eastern neighbor can be seen to take place in the series: the main characters venture to the other side of the border in a way that has not been seen in previous Finnish films and series. As Juha Ridanpää (2017) has observed, audiences seem to be interested in borders today; he mentions as examples Bron/Broen, its several adaptations, and Sorjonen. As in Ivalo, in these series activity near and across the border is associated with criminal activity. The meaning of borders is therefore easily constructed as negative, and border stories are often used to “strengthen different forms of patriotic ideology”, although the same series can have an educational and informative impact, too. (Ridanpää 2017, 100. My translation.) It should be noticed, however, that the focus of Ridanpää’s study is not Nordic Noir but rather two earlier Finnish films, Renny Harlin’s, Jäätäväpolte(BornAmerican, Finland and US, 1986) and Wilho Ilmari’s Ylirajan (Finland, 1942), in which the crossing of the Russian border takes up negative meanings related to the stories’ time-setting, respectively the Cold War period and WWII. In Finnish cinema, the author writes, “the crossing of the Finnish-Russian border has been always portrayed in a negative light and as a highly criminal and dangerous activity, and the films’ kvarter akademisk academic quarter Volume 22 130 Remote but Connected Kaisa Hiltunen heroes have always been aware of the severity of the punishments resulting from such activity” (Ridanpää 2017, 102. My translation). For historical reasons, the border has been considered to keep the two nations apart. WWII cemented this view, because Finland lost 12.5 % of its territory to Russia and during the Cold War, Finland was seen as a buffer state between Russia and Europe (Ridanpää 2017, 101–102). Still today, the eastern border is not open, which is in marked contrast to the western border. In Nordic Noir’s representation of transnational crime, border crossing has not always been associated with negative meanings and unlike in periods of war it does not lead to hostilities between nations.” In Bron/Broenthe co-operation across the Swedish/ Danish border reveal national differences, which can be a source of humor (Åberg 2015). Ivalo too takes small steps towards showing a more easy-going relationship between the Finnish and the Russian authorities than what was seen in, for example, Sorjonen or Jäätäväpolte, where the trip to Russia was nightmarish. In Ivalo, on the contrary, the representation of the Russian authorities even displays some humor as in the figure of Alexander Ragulin from the border guard. On the other hand, the series upholds a negative image of Russia. The Finnish police do not think it is safe to return the prostitutes to Russia and the girls are horrified by the sheer possibility of being repatriated. Moreover, the most violent scenes take place during a dangerous expedition to Russia to find Cevikovic. However, the crossing of the border itself goes almost unnoticed. Although Ivalo creates the impression that Russia is somehow closer or can be reached more easily than in previous years (c.f. Saunders 2017, 4), some stereotypes are reminders of the conflicting historical relationship between the two countries. While Cevikovic is not Russian, his criminal activity is organized from the Russian side of the border. As an example of “banal geopolitics” (Ridanpää 2017, 106), the difference between the countries is illustrated by cars. When the search team enters Russia, they change the snowmobiles for old Ladas in order to not draw attention to themselves. Following Saunders’s (2017) analysis of “geopolitical television”, Ivalo can be read as both a geopolitical intervention and an act of “world-building”. The series suggests that a change in attitude is possible, although it does not seem to be entirely sure of its own stance. On the kvarter akademisk academic quarter Volume 22 131 Remote but Connected Kaisa Hiltunen one hand, it sticks to old conventions, one of which is giving Russians, or Eastern Europeans more generally, the role of villains, on the other, it seeks to create, in this geopolitically loaded region, a new kind of transnational narrative. Although the border is a significant trope in the narrative, Ivalo is not ultimately so much concerned with questions like national identity and self-image, which, according to Ridanpää (2017), are typical of border stories. Rather, it is more interested in exploring the nature of the individual characters and the intersections between their lives in a translocal place, which Mandaville (2002, 204) characterizes as “a space in which new forms of (post)national identity are constituted, and not simply one in which prior identities assert themselves”. Constructing a cosmopolitan Arctic It has been argued that Nordic Noir owes its popularity to a skillful combination of local and global elements, which Stougaard-Nielsen describes with the term “accessible difference”. In order to arouse interest, the story needs to be rooted in a certain locality, yet at the same time it also needs to be transnationally recognizable. (Stougaard-Nielsen 2016, 3.) This situation illustrates Roland Robertson’s theory that in cultural products locality tends to be “communicated ‘from above’”. This kind of standardized form of locality is captured by the term glocal. (Robertson 2012, 195.) When Nordic pullovers started to appear in crime series, they became global signifiers of Nordicness. Local is thus a consequence of, or becomes recognized as local through, global processes. Moreover, ‘local’ elements are combined with the international conventions of the crime genre, as Seppälä (2020, 258) points out. In this respect, Ivalo resembles many other Nordic Noir productions. It aims for a new, cosmopolitan representation of Lapland, while at the same time adhering to certain local specificities. Ivalo does not settle for the authentic landscape but turns it into something more exciting. In its fictional world, on top of Kaunispää Fell sits Arctic Resort, an impressive glass-fronted hotel digitally created for the series. In reality, there sits a log house. Although the hotel features a lot, no key scenes take place there. It could therefore be argued that the main function of the building is to create a cosmopolitan atmosphere on the aesthetic level (c.f.