Crime Up North: The Case of Norway, Finland and Iceland

2015 ◽  
pp. 61-75
Author(s):  
Björn Ægir Norðfjörð
Keyword(s):  
International Crime ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Crime Films ◽  
Crime Film ◽  
Dramatic Rise

In this chapter I hope to account for the international (literary and filmic) origin of recent Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic crime films and television series as well as their particular local specificity. I will thus not only be assessing them in relation to their Swedish and Danish counterparts, but also to what I will be simply referring to as the international crime film. It is a norm mostly associated with Hollywood (albeit not limited to it) that is, as regards style, form and narrative structure, for the most part devoid of regional or national specificities. My use of the word ‘generic’ is intended to emphasise this dual nature by referring both to the essentials of a particular genre (crime) and a broad universality. Of particular concern is whether one can pinpoint any particular trajectory in the development of contemporary Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic crime films made with international aspirations during this dramatic rise of Nordic noir – that still shows no sign of abating.

scholarly journals Masculine Performance in Hong Kong Crime Films from Post-Bruce to the 2000s

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Gabriel F. Y. Tsang
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Action Films ◽  
Crime Films ◽  
Crime Film ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Bruce Lee ◽  
Chinese Masculinity ◽  
Artistic Images

Masculinity, in Lacan’s sense, is an imagination. To specifically theorise Chinese masculinity, Kam Louie examined the elements of wen (cultural attainment) and wu (martial valour) rendered through historical or artistic images, and Song Geng and Derek Hird guide the discussions about Chinese manhood represented in everyday life. With a Marxist perspective, Lo Kwai Cheung illustrated the dissolvability of Chinese masculinity under international capitalism. With reference to Aristotle, it is supposed that Chinese masculinity, similar to ‘tragicity’ in nature, can be represented through imitating actions and hence be perceived. Based on Aristotle’s understanding, we can regard actions as ‘iterable’ media (like Derrida’s understanding of written texts) which engender performances according to the genealogy of quantitative mimesis. Integrating theoretical discussions with a chronological approach, my full paper will go through following points in order to summarise the changes in Hong Kong crime films from the post-Bruce Lee era to the 2000s: (1) Hong Kong crime film inherited the martial side of masculinity from action films and became a popular genre since A Better Tomorrow was well received in the mid-1980s. (2) Many directors diversified the interpretation of crime in the late 1980s and the 1990s, but remained a focus on the strength, nimbleness and boldness of men. (3) After the decline of Hong Kong film industry for several years, Infernal Affairs’s success renewed the representation of manhood. (4) From the 2000s to now, male characters in crime films are preferably intelligent and wisely-romantic, like the fragile scholar in ancient China. (5) While globalisation seems to be eliminating the Chineseness of Chinese masculinity, I argue that geographical specificity and different speed of cultural development lead to the impossibility of synchronic masculine similarity. (6) Through a brief discussion concerning Hollywood’s adaptation of Hong Kong films, I argue that local masculinity is not transformable.  

scholarly journals “Volumes!”

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (79) ◽  
pp. 117-134
Author(s):  
Sara Tanderup Linkis
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Modern Media ◽  
Serial Novel

Departing from an analysis of Mark Z. Danielewski’s serial novel The Familiar, the article investigates how contemporary literature at once imitates and resists the serial logics of modern media culture. Thus, focusing especially on the aspects of transmediality and participatory culture, I point out how Danielewski’s work adapts the narrative structure as well as the modes of promotion and reception that characterize e.g. modern television series while also positioning itself in contrast to new media culture and emphasizing the ‘literariness’ of the literary series.

Conspiracy culture in Homeland (2011–2015)

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delphine Letort
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Political Message

Homeland is built on the conspiracy plots that provide entertaining suspense in the television series, which also reflects the fear culture that has developed in the wake of 9/11. CIA agent Carrie Mathison embodies the paranoid framework that undergirds the narrative, leading her to question the visible and to posit conspiracy theories behind coincidental events. Appropriating the narrative tropes of the gaslight films, Homeland enhances the unstable narrative structure produced by the combination of conspiratorial thinking with the serial. This article explores five seasons of Homeland and analyses the conspiratorial narrative it unfolds, highlighting how the serial format allows the creators to envision several scenarios illustrating individual and mass manipulation on the international stage, promoting a signifying system that blurs the final political message of the series.

The Criminalization of Homosexuality in Popular Cinema

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Dalton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sexual Deviance ◽  
Popular Cinema ◽  
Crime Films ◽  
Crime Film ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Year 2000

In the early 1940s, films started to appear where homosexual characters were represented as inherently criminal. These early representations were often subtle or implicit because various production codes operating in the United States and United Kingdom forbade explicit depictions or naming of homosexuality. During the 1940s, homosexuality was associated with disease and sexual deviance. This ensured that these early depictions were unflattering. Gradually, as time progressed and homosexuality became a less taboo topic, representations of homosexual criminality became less coded and more explicit. Filmmakers became bolder in their treatment of the theme of homosexuality and crime. The most fascinating discovery is that, when it comes to popular culture and the cinema, murder is the crime that is typically associated with homosexuality. However, murder has been a mainstay of crime film plots and so it is not surprising that homicide features in films linked to crime and homosexuality. By the year 2000, it is apparent that the cinematic treatment of homosexuality and crime had evolved to become quite sophisticated. Whereas earlier films reviled their homosexual characters such that they attracted little empathy from the audience, these later films have sought to engender a greater tolerance and sympathy for the homosexual killers they depict. Finally, it is important to note that films that depict homosexuals as killers are not an expression of homophobic sentient per se. Crime films have long situated killing as an essential aspect of their plots, and so films that feature homosexuals as murderers are simply a subset of this most popular cinematic genre.

‘Does he know you like I know you?’: Barbara Kean’s bisexual appeal, the Male Gothic and Gotham’s woman problem

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carey Millsap-Spears
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The Us ◽  
Media Texts ◽  
Definition Of

This article discusses how the FOX television series Gotham (2014–19) fits the overall definition of a traditional Male (Horror) Gothic text and how disruptive female characters, like Barbara Kean, push against these seemingly strict Gothic boundaries. Through the development of the bisexual character Barbara Kean, the conservative, Male Gothic foundation is ultimately questioned in the US television series. Gotham’s portrayal of Barbara not only propagates bisexual stereotypes, but it also speaks to the larger discussion of bisexual aversion and eventual erasure present in many media texts. Additionally, Gotham employs the depraved bisexual trope, in which bisexual characters, like Barbara, are shown to be duplicitous. Barbara Kean, however, transgresses the boundaries of the Male Gothic tradition and thrives within the narrative structure of Gotham.

Transmedia and the Vagueness of Narrative Structure

2019 ◽  
pp. 167-189
Author(s):  
Ahmet Oktan
Keyword(s):  
Motion Pictures ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Harry Potter ◽  
Star Trek ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Hunger Games ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
The Hunger Games ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Game Of Thrones

This chapter focuses on the types of transformations that transmedia applications cause on the narrative structure of motion pictures and television series. Since different methods are used to construct the story as a transmedia narrative in different films or series, as many works as possible are included in the study to make more accurate determinations. In this context, examples of Star Trek, The Godfather, The Matrix, Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Shrek, Madagascar, Lost, Game of Thrones, Medcezir, and Vatanım Sensin have been examined in terms of their narrative structure. In these works, the condition of the parts constituting the story universe compared to the main narrative, the elements that enable the construction of new narratives related to the main narrative in different media, fictionalization of the elements such as story lines, characters, spaces, atmosphere, and sound, the methods that are used for the transition among stories, etc. have been examined.

Samuel Khachikian and the Crime Thriller in Iran

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Kaveh Askari
Keyword(s):  
Film Noir ◽  
Modern Design ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Crime Films ◽  
Crime Film ◽  
The World ◽  
Mixed Feelings ◽  
Made In

Abstract Samuel Khachikian was the most successful director of crime films in Iran during the genre’s heyday in the late 1950s and early 60s. Debates among critics about his films highlight how the crime film was able to thrive as a prestige form in the years before boundaries had solidified between commercial films and intellectual films made in Iran. Film noir, from its earliest transatlantic imaginings to its recent global circuits, has consistently engaged with an imagined elsewhere through its modernist style. In many parts of the world, it allowed a kind of performance of exuberant cinephilia while also attracting attention about its originality. In Tehran, as elsewhere, the genre accompanies the global circulation of modern design with strong, but mixed, feelings.

Battlestar Galactica and Space Opera: Transforming a Subgenre

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-123
Author(s):  
MEGAN FRANCISCO
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Battlestar Galactica ◽  
Space Opera

AbstractRon Moore, creator and producer of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series, outlined his proposed show's aesthetic in a manifesto aptly titled “Naturalistic Science Fiction or Taking the Opera out of Space Opera.” The title of this essay took a stand against the science fiction subgenre of space opera, asserting that it was outdated, overdone, and unrealistic. Moore's vision for his series revolutionized iconic elements of classic television space operas. Though Moore resisted the stigma of space opera, his reimagined series holds an inherent “operaticness”—a term first coined by opera scholar Marcia Citron. Battlestar Galactica has many operatic qualities, particularly in its narrative structure, cinematography, characters, and music. After analyzing Galactica's explicit evocations of opera, this article will explore the operatic features of the soundtrack and evaluate the characters intimately tied to the opera by tracing the tropes of gendered opera as outlined by Susan McClary and Catherine Clément. Through a detailed analysis of three episodes, I will demonstrate how Moore successfully constructed a series that relied deeply upon operatic qualities and resonances.

scholarly journals Montage Sequences, Diegetic Music and Narcotics in Vince Gilligan‟s Breaking Bad

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 500-503
Keyword(s):  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Television Channel ◽  
Crime Drama ◽  
Breaking Bad ◽  
Crime Films ◽  
Crime Film ◽  
Pay Television ◽  
Walter White ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Plot Structure

Vince Gilligan’s “Breaking Bad” is a neo-Western television crime drama series that was broadcasted on AMC (American pay television channel). Crime Films can be comprehended as a cinematic genre that was inaugurated by crime fiction in literature. The crime film is a complex and variegated object of study. Unlike the other existing genres, “crime film” is not defined as a cinematographic genre. This genre is characterized by stories where there is an impending crime, in some cases the crime would have already taken place and is followed by the consequences. The advancement in technology especially the invention of VCR,DVD and many such affordable machines have made viewing television easy and affordable, which in turn paved the way for the success of critically acclaimed serials such as “Breaking Bad” to embrace the success it deserved. The arrival of large screens and quality visuals largely contributed to an increase in viewership and audience. “Breaking Bad” was recognized for its complex and violent plot structure, where in the protagonist, Walter White is an antihero who is diagnosed with cancer. The disease aids as a catalyst to bring out the passive demon and narcissist within him and this in turn wrecks his familial and professional life. The present paper proposes to explore how advancement in technology and the use of music successfully brings out the narcissistic tendencies in Walter White’s character.

Italian Crime Films and the Years of Lead

2019 ◽  
pp. 20-41
Author(s):  
Austin Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Italian Cinema ◽  
Italian History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Crime Films ◽  
Crime Film ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Post War

This chapter places Italy's 1970s within a broad continuum in post-war Western Europe, in which wartime schisms were silenced and shelved, only to reappear decades later into a transformed cultural landscape. An attendant sense of national 'taking stock' manifested itself in an acute awareness of the weight of the past, and of the present moment's significance as a turning point in Italian history. The chapter analyses this point in detail by looking at the influence of the USA in the post-war years, with a particular focus on Italy's film industry. As a barometer for the intimate economic and cultural relationship between the two nations, Italian cinema embodied wider tensions between the local and the global, and the 'crime film' is taken as a case in point.

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