In Performative Histories, Foundational Fictions, Anu Koivunen analyzes the historicity as well as the intertextuality and intermediality of film reception by focusing on a cycle of Finnish family melodrama and its key role in thinking about gender, sexuality, nation, and history.

Koivunen argues that the Niskavuori films have mobilized readings in terms of history and memory, feminist nationalism and men’s
movement, left-wing allegories and right-wing morality as well as realism and melodrama.