Investigating Nordic Noir

<p>Scandinavian crime films and television series have become popular in recent years. This thesis explores some of the key texts in ‘Nordic noir’ through a discussion of detectives, the environment, and visual style. The emphasis in the project is on textual analysis. The first chapter examines the figures of Wallander and Lund in Wallander and Forbrydelsen respectively. I argue that the conflicts Nordic detectives often have between work and the domestic sphere are an indication of how gender stereotypes are challenged in the Scandinavian crime genre. The second chapter considers the role of the natural and built environments in Nordic noir. Features such as forests and water play a crucial role in Forbrydelsen because of the ways in which they create uncertainty, anticipation, and suspense. The urban spaces of Bron/Broen develop a sense of anonymity that recalls the function of the city in classic film noir. Rather than developing links between Sweden and Denmark, the series suggests that the Øresund bridge that spans the two countries is ultimately a disconnecting, centrifugal force that functions as what Marc Augé would call a ‘non-place’. The final chapter considers the role of colour and light in the films Insomnia and Jar City. My analysis demonstrates that Nordic noir encompasses more than naturalism and realism. Like classic and neo-noir, it includes a range of expressive aesthetic strategies that serve both narrative and thematic functions.</p>

Investigating Nordic Noir

<p>Scandinavian crime films and television series have become popular in recent years. This thesis explores some of the key texts in ‘Nordic noir’ through a discussion of detectives, the environment, and visual style. The emphasis in the project is on textual analysis. The first chapter examines the figures of Wallander and Lund in Wallander and Forbrydelsen respectively. I argue that the conflicts Nordic detectives often have between work and the domestic sphere are an indication of how gender stereotypes are challenged in the Scandinavian crime genre. The second chapter considers the role of the natural and built environments in Nordic noir. Features such as forests and water play a crucial role in Forbrydelsen because of the ways in which they create uncertainty, anticipation, and suspense. The urban spaces of Bron/Broen develop a sense of anonymity that recalls the function of the city in classic film noir. Rather than developing links between Sweden and Denmark, the series suggests that the Øresund bridge that spans the two countries is ultimately a disconnecting, centrifugal force that functions as what Marc Augé would call a ‘non-place’. The final chapter considers the role of colour and light in the films Insomnia and Jar City. My analysis demonstrates that Nordic noir encompasses more than naturalism and realism. Like classic and neo-noir, it includes a range of expressive aesthetic strategies that serve both narrative and thematic functions.</p>

Filmgoers’ Fingerprints

This chapter focuses on fingerprinting stations, which, from the early 1920s until the late 1950s, were often located in the lobbies of movie theaters and used both in conjunction with crime films and as part of a broader push to collect Americans’ personal biometric information. An increasingly popular component of efforts to normalize civil identification, fingerprinting stations routinely functioned to promote both crime films and local police departments. They also raised alarming questions about the scope of police power in the United States. Fingerprinting stations were naturalized aspects of a cinematic assemblage that served police power, smuggling law enforcement into the local movie theater and making the collection of patrons’ personal biometric information seem continuous both with screen representations and with the wider work of advertising and publicity departments.

Samuel Khachikian and the Crime Thriller in Iran

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.

Ghosting in the outback Noir

Who was the ‘jolly swagman’ in Waltzing Matilda, Australia’s unofficial national anthem? In this essay I argue that the ghost of the swagman can be heard in a number of recent de-colonising crime narratives. Outback Noir is a relatively recent genre category that describes a new wave of Australian crime films that highlight Indigenous and white relations and take a revisionist approach to traditional history. These films often feature redemption stories that highlight effective collaborations between Indigenous and white policing practices. Uncovering a rural communities’ dark, repressed secrets in order to solve a current problem is a common trend in Outback Noir cinema. I examine Patrick Hughes’ 2010 film Red Hill as an early provocative example of Outback Noir and as modern reimaging of the Waltzing Matilda narrative with the swagman’s avenging ghost exposing the social fractures and corruption that are destroying rural communities. I argue that the Outback Noir genre with its focus on revenge-redemption narratives shapes the cultural dialogue around putting the ghosts of the colonial past to rest.

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

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.