Been familiar with Kalervo Palsa's art since early 90s. When I heard "Eläkeläinen muistelee" has been translated to English my immediate reaction was it is not a very good idea and I still think the same.
Finnish philosopher/cognitive scientist Tere Vaden once made a book as Kalervo Palsa at its center. Even the name and cover of the book was taken of Palsa's work. According to Vaden, Palsa's art is rooted to Finnishness in general and to northern Finland peripheral locality in particular. I think translating Palsa's written/cartoon work to other languages cannot really be understood among people outside finnish culture sphere.
It is true not many finns were into Palsa and his obscure art when he was alive. But accepting doesn't always mean understanding as disapproving doesn't always mean not understanding. Wider interest/acception of Palsa's art during the 21st century hasn't change the general attitude. Only rise of degree in ignorance and tolerance in society blurs this vision.
Palsa's art is often transgressive which can be partly so because of the northern environment both in nature and culture he lived most of his life. Sect of Lutherical Christian church, Laestadianism, organized life and power and Palsa saw through its double standards. Or perhaps he was just irreversibly opposite to normal way of life. His art was the way to take part/comment this social life where scale of topics was stretched wide from locality to problems of humanity in general.
I guess most people disagree with me, though, and that's why "Eläkeläinen muistelee" is pushed to global sphere. It's the same in selling Finnish northerness/Lapland/snow for tourists nowadays. This wholesale of northerness/winter to the world with multimillionare celebrities spreading the word in social media is just pornographic in nature: even the furthest parts of the world must be exposed and sold to masses as the world is collapsing under consumerism, climate change and biodiversity loss.
The lowest common denominator is the very key to the idea of globalism. This banality slowly eats the locality up.
But when pornography in Palsa's art was a way to question and comment on the locality Palsa loved and hated and was ultimately inseparable part of, pornography in the form of travelling industry uses places, people and way of life like bodies and literally makes people homeless when apartments serve as air B n' B accommodation instead of homes for people.
Of course, this is one extreme of continuum where everything can be reduced into profit/non-profit. But as Tere Vaden has stated, Finnishness has been retreating/vanishing for long time now, it has been on that path for centuries or even millenias. Whereas part of the 4th world and indigenous peoples, Sami People in Finland, fight for their survival, Finns literally sell themselves out to extinction.
