Abstracts
Tatiana Bazzichelli
imvtb@hum.au.dk
Ph.d.-student
IMV, AU
Media Ghosts Between Conspiracy, Pranks and Myth
My proposal reflects on the activity of a series of media artists and activists in Italy who created fictional myths, conspiracies and mythopoiesis – between urban legends and alleged crimes – in the middle of the 1990s. It addresses the creation of media ghosts and conspiracy theories as a form of art, where tactical and strategic use of media aims to underline sensitive nodes of social and political reflection (Wu Ming, 2006). Through the analysis of some pranks, conspiracies and artistic interventions, I will describe the process of creation of fictional identities as a challenge for cultural criticism. The method will be comparative, based on the ethnographic investigation of a few cases. First, I will address the pranks by the Luther Blissett Project (1994-1999). Luther Blissett, a multi-use collective alias adopted by artists and activists, followed the need of a multitude of people in the Italian underground scene to be represented by a collective folk hero, a collector of experiences and memories beyond individualistic belonging (Bazzichelli, 2006). The prank to the TV-show Chi l’ha visto? (Who Saw Him/Her?), in which investigators search for a fictitious artist disappeared on the Italo-Yugoslavian border; the prank played by dozens of people in Latium, involving black masses, Satanism, Christian witch-hunters in the backwoods of Viterbo (1997); and finally, the creation of a made-up artist Darko Maver (1998) – the real name of a well known Slovenian criminologist – who simulates violent murders to denounce the war’s crimes in Yugoslavia, were able to reach the purpose of quickly penetrate the defence system of culture, and therefore of the art world (0100101110101101.ORG, 1999). Finally, a more recent work, Amazon Noir – The Big Book Crime (2006), by Ubermorgen.com, Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico, trio of artists who discover the bugs in the Search Inside the Book Amazon’s function, making copyright protected books ready for free download, will conclude my investigation on the ability of fictional plots and subliminal media fights to provoke social debate.
Kerstin Bergman
Kerstin.Bergman@litt.lu.se
Docent/Senior Research Fellow
Lund University, Sweden
Sensing the truth. The emotional truth-value of science in contemporary crime fiction
One of the taglines of the television crime drama CSI is that “evidence never lies”. Another common expression is that “anything can be proved with science”. These paradoxical statements express the conflicted attitudes and emotions towards science characterizing contemporary western culture. Crime fiction is often considered chiefly an entertainment genre, but simultaneously the growing use and popularity of science in crime fiction has increased the status of crime fiction as popular science. Science in fiction often has a legitimizing function, just as it has outside fiction. When used in fiction, however, there are many other aspects than truthfulness that dictates how science is portrayed. The major decisive principle in fiction is always that the narrative is consistent and believable to the audience, making any correspondence with an external reality, scientific or other, secondary. It must feel true, not be true. The aim of this paper is to shed light on how authors and producers of crime fiction in literature and for television and film handles this balance when they use science in order to make their fiction seem true. And what is it that makes readers and viewers perceive science, even fictional science, as true? This will be discussed using contemporary examples from forensic crime fiction – literature (Reichs), television (CSI, NCIS), and film (Emmett’s Mark, Like Minds, Quantum of Solace).
Annelie Bränström-Öhman
Annelie.Branstrom@littvet.umu.se
Associate Professor
Department of Culture and Media Studies, Umeå university, Sweden
Barefoot and pregnant in Kiruna and in Glasgow
Emotional narrativity and narrative spatiality in Åsa Larsson’s Rebecka Martinsson-novels and Denise Mina’s Paddy Meehan-novels ”Only the emotional content is substantially fictionalised ", the Scottish crime writer Denise Mina said as a comment on the authentic background for her first novel in the Paddy Meehan-series, located in her hometown Glasgow. ”I’ve got snow in my head”, the Swedish crime writer Åsa Larsson said, explaining the location of the Rebecka Martinsson-novels to her hometown Kiruna, above the arctic circle. Both of them, thus, in different ways addressing the strong connection and/or tension between emotion, place and choice of narrative strategies in the writing of crime fiction. It is of course a mere coincidence that both Mina and Larsson are born in 1966, and share the same educational background in law studies. However, the fact that they are two of the most critically renowned of Europe´s bestselling female crime-writers, makes the comparison interesting. By choosing ”peripheral” locations for their plots and for the (anti-)heroines of their crime novels, they have given voice to a geographically as well as distinctively gendered and class-marked generational experience. Taking the reader in on a mystery tour, in the backyards or in the snowy waste lands of the modern welfare state – as well as in the dusky back waters of its emancipatory visions, where women still are seen to walk ”barefoot and pregnant”. This paper focus on how Mina’s and Larsson’s novels can be read not only as thrilling crime-investigations, but also as critical investigations of how the construction of gender and class are related to the dynamics of ongoing (re-)constructions of social, geopolitical and/or cultural centres and peripheries. In the narration of place, the ”emotional narrativity” (in the words of philosopher Martha Nussbaum) is of utmost importance.
Daniel Brodén
daniel.broden@lir.gu.se
Postdoc
Institutionen för litteratur, idéhistoria & religion, Göteborgs universitet
Genocide in the Welfare State: Black Humour and Post Secularity in the Cinema of Roy Andersson
The two-minute opening shot of Roy Andersson’s short film World of Glory (1991) is one of the most emotionally disturbing scenes in modern Swedish cinema: an absurd tableaux, depicting a genocide in contemporary society; ordinary citizens watch with indifference the gassing of men, women and children. Acclaimed director Roy Andersson often focuses on emotional coldness and human vulnerability. His scenes are perplexing, both deadpan serious and drastically ironic. The aim of this paper is to elucidate the unique critical perspective on in modern society that Roy Andersson has developed further in the feature films Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and You, the Living (2006). Firstly, I discuss how Andersson developed his original film style – “The Complex Image” – working on advertising spots after he made a name for himself with left-wing political films in the early 1970s. The style, which is influenced by the film theory of André Bazin and is characterized by long takes and no camera movements, makes for a deliberately hard viewing experience. With this style, Andersson addresses critical philosophical-political questions about the condition of Swedish society. I examine the thematic content of his films in relation to the tradition of black humour that combines humanism and a pessimistic outlook on the world. Surrealist André Breton’s idea of black humour as a special “shock aesthetic” is relevant, as well as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s writings on the dangerous relationship between modernity and rationality. Lastly, I argue that Post-Secular Theory can contribute to the understanding of Andersson’s troubling depictions of contemporary Sweden. Paradoxically, the director is an atheist who pities the loss of Christian ethics. The paper highlights the genocide in World of Glory as part of an aesthetic strategy to disquiet the viewer, emotionally as well as intellectually, by showing the capabilities of a modern society devoid of higher convictions.
Mathias Clasen
engmc@hum.au.dk
PhD Student
Dept of English, University of Aarhus
Extreme Crime in Horror Fiction: Rending the Shroud of Okay-ness
Fancy being eaten alive by a zombie? Drunk by a vampire? Slashed open by a homicidal maniac wearing a creepy mask? Fighting the darkest forces of the cosmos in a futile struggle for survival or spiritual integrity? Me, either. Yet horror fiction, puzzlingly, continues to draw massive audiences by dwelling on such scenarios. Crime or mystery fiction tears a hole in the delusional shroud of okay-ness that people project onto the world, often by introducing the upsetting murder of somebody. It then patches up that hole when the perpetrator is apprehended, the mystery unravelled, and order restored. Horror can follow the same trajectory by introducing and then neatly annihilating the monstrous, but on a deeper level, horror fiction suggests that the world is fundamentally not okay. There are dark forces out there. There are insane assassins of morality and societal order such as Leatherface, Freddy Krueger and other extreme criminals, and there are the monstrous, cosmic violations of “fixed natural laws” which so titillated H. P. Lovecraft and his countless emulators. So why would anyone be attracted to horror fiction and its extreme violations of aesthetic, natural and societal laws? I offer a tentative explanation based on findings from cognitive and evolutionary psychology: attention to evolved human cognitive architecture begins to explain why many people are attracted to horror, and how and why it works.
Audun Engelstad
audun.engelstad@hil.no
Associate professor
Lillehammer University College
An investigation of the ”television” in television crime series
“It’s not TV, it’s HBO” is the widely repeated slogan that has become much like a trademark for the critically acclaimed drama series from HBO. The idea that this slogan carries is that the HBO drama series represent something different than ordinary television, something distinctly of its own. Crime series, such as The Sopranos and The Wire, family dramas such as Six Feet Under, and western series such as Deadwood are all treated as innovative television dramas, propelling their creative writer-producers to auteur status. HBO has become a quality brand, almost in contradiction to television as a media. Due to their depth of characters, narrative complexity, challenging content, and scope of dramatic events, HBO drama series have been likened with other arts, mostly the cinema and the novel. It is as if television is just a platform through which the HBO drama series are mediated, instead of television being viewed as a media that contributes in shaping its productions. This paper will challenge the idea that the HBO drama series should be regarded as principally different from other television series (which is not to say that they don’t deserve their quality brand). Taking The Sopranos and The Wire as my cases, I will argue that these series are recognized by what can be regarded as television’s trade marks; dialogue based, intimate and confessional. At base in the series is a melodramatic impulse. The crime setting is almost devoid of any enigmas, instead we watch the rise and fall and daily struggles of men and women. Despite the high production value, intertextual references, the rich character assembly, and profound conflicts, the series have the same governing traits as soap opera, and its closest kin, the talkshow. In fact, I will argue, The Sopranos and The Wire demonstrate that the HBO drama series is television at its most television-esque.
Katarina Gregersdotter
katarina.gregersdotter@engelska.umu.se
Phd, Senior lecturer
Dept of Language Studies, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
Disgust and the unfeminine body in contemporary crime fiction
As children, we are taught that ugliness is bad news. Just as Cinderella’s stepsisters, ugliness can strike at the innocent, often more physically appealing. In Umberto Eco’s On Ugliness he lists several synonyms to the word ugly. In the list we can also see the relevance ‘ugly’ has to crime fiction., he mentions for example “horrible,” and “terrifying.” In the list we also find words such as “disgusting” and “grotesque.” These words are in this paper linked to unfemininity. This paper will investigate the construction of unfeminine female killers in contemporary crime fiction such as Minette Walters’ The Sculptress, Stephen King’s Misery, Val McDermid’s The Mermaids Singing and Scull Sessions by Daniel Hecht. The ‘natural’ importance of the body in this particular genre has been transformed from the significance of and focus on the dead body to the bodies of the killers in these narratives. The killers’ bodies are seen from a masculine and heterosexual perspective or through a masculine, heterosexual narrator, and are all perceived as sexually undesirable. This undesirability shapes the narratives and creates disgust in other characters as well as in the readers. Furthermore, the masculine emotions hate and aggression are linked to the unattractive women and they lead to violence and/or murder. The women are thus less feminine for two reasons: their emotions and their physical appearance. The acts of violence are in the narratives oftentimes depicted to be the direct results of the state of unattractiveness and these ‘bad’ women are frequently juxtaposed and compared to other women who are deemed to be more beautiful. The killers’ bodies are regarded as if they transgress several gender norms, and this fact seems to increase the severity of their crimes. Keywords: crime fiction, murder, gender, disgust, the grotesque, sexuality, undesirability, bodies, heterosexuality.
Kim Toft Hansen
mail@kimtofthansen.dk
Teaching Assistant Professor
Aalborg University
Murder and Self-constrained Modernity Metaphysical Re-openings in Crime Fiction
The relationship between rationality and metaphysics has been re-opened in recent crime fiction. Arne Dahl’s Swedish novels De största vatten (Many Waters, 2002) and Dödsmässa (Requiem, 2004) bear its Christian references in the titles. The Norwegian novels by Gunnar Staalesen Som i et speil (As If in a Mirror, 2002) and Ansikt til Ansikt (Face to Face) makes a specific allusion to the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians and applies its meaning to the plots of the novels. This goes for Oliver Bottini’s German novel Mord im Zeichen Zen (Murder in the Signs of Zen, 2004) as well, but here he refers to Zen Buddhism. The Danish author Henning Mortensen takes in his so-called Sondrup Trilogy (2005-2007) these tendencies very seriously in three novels that explicitly connect crime fiction with metaphysics. These trends are as well in evidence in the writings of the Swedish author Henning Mankell where he opens up discussions of inapproachable violence – a certain type of violence that he designates ‘the Swedish uneasiness’ – especially the brief short story “Sprickan” (“The Fracture”, 1999) deals with an unexplainable metaphysical horror. The question is, then, why we see this particular interest in metaphysics in crime fiction. In this paper I will approach an explanation from the point of view of what the Danish philosopher Hans Jørgen Schanz calls the self-constrained modernity: Modernity has come to realize – he explicates – that it cannot provide complete explanations of reality and, thus, it becomes self-constrained. This, says Schanz, re-opens modernity’s interest in metaphysics. In saying so, the sensibilities of crime fiction seem to reflect this re-opening. This paper, then, has a certain interest in revising the genre history of crime fiction: In Middle Age Chinese crime fiction we do in fact find the junction of crime fiction and metaphysics.
Liv Hausken
liv.hausken@media.uio.no
Dr.art., Associate Professor
Dep of Media and Communication, University of Oslo
Surveillance and moralism in forensic fiction
There are no emotions in the forensic fiction of CSI, but one the emotional expression of negative moral judgments. Forensic fiction is a genre that merges the mystery plot with a complex set of detection technologies, graphic imagery and a highly detailed scientific prose. The last decade has seen a remarkable rise in the popularity of forensic fiction, one of the most popular being CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000- ). Along with its two spin-offs, CSI has been criticized for the level of graphic violence, sexual content and for the lack of realism when it comes to police procedures. However, the CSI franchise has not received unfavorable reviews neither for its moralism nor for the way it portrays a society of total surveillance. In CSI there is a moral gap between the detectives representing the moral majority and the bad guys, the immoral minority committing the crimes just because they are bad persons. The detectives are disgusted by the crimes, and quite often the spectacular and devious character of the crimes committed also seems to correspond to their disgust. Otherwise, the detectives are calm, cool and collected, occasionally serving each other and the audience dry and witty remarks. The audience can additionally enjoy the morbidity of the criminal plot uncovered step by step through experiments and analyses at the crime lab, the splatter of the bodily remains as well as the spectacular illustration of a scientifically based hypothesis of a bullets trajectory through human flesh and bones. These graphic portrayals of gore has been characterized as ‘stylistically pornographic’ and criticized for being legitimized through the show’s focus on science. In this paper I will turn this argument around and suggest that the spectacular aesthetics, obvious exaggerations and cartoon like sound of CSI seems to support a highly problematic presentation of knowledge, crime and surveillance.
Iben Have
ibenhave@imv.au.dk
Associated Professor
IMV, Aarhus University
Reality and emotions in the soundtrack of Armadillo
”For you it is film, for them it is reality” is the translated poster headline of the Danish, much debated and Cannes award-winning war-documentary Armadillo (Janus Metz, May 2010) that follows Danish soldiers being stationed in Afghanistan. I will use this headline as a frame for analyzing and discussing the film’s soundtrack, which contributes to an aesthetic experience as well as an experience of the reality of the soldiers. Political and journalistic but not at least aesthetic ambitions among producers and directors have within the last decade developed into a successful brand of Danish documentary films. This development has given rise to a prioritization of the documentary soundtrack and a more tolerant attitude among critics towards enhancing emotional elements in a documentary. Sound and music play an important role when it comes to the emotional impact of Armadillo, and using the dense soundtrack of the trailer as an example the analysis will point at different emotional layers and communicative functions. These functions will be discussed in relation to the cross-medial representation and development of the film on different media platforms (cinema, YouTube, television, DVD).
Edvin Vestergaard Kau
imvek@hum.au.dk
Lektor
Informations- og Medievidenskab, Aarhus Universitet
The Screen of the Crime
To be able to tell about crime and detection you need someone to break the laws and rules of society. Crime films have many faces; gangster films, cop or detective films, crime thrillers, film noir, and heist films, to mention some. But what all examples of the genre have in common is the act of crime. As a rule, the point of departure is the everyday life in a normal society, and the crime story (as well as the fascination of it that attracts the audience) depends on the rupture of normality caused by criminal activities. To follow the criminal activities or the fight against crime we have to enter areas outside the laws and norms of the normal civil society, and what is revealed about the darker side of life may or may not be closed down again. In order to create crime fiction as entertainment film makers produce fantasies that describe the hidden side of so-called normal life. That is what makes it interesting and perhaps also a guilty pleasure to follow for the audience. Storytelling is not just about the story, but the activity of telling, and in this game uncertainty is an important element as a driving force. Furthermore, hesitation and slowness, not speed, often is of great importance. One doesn’t always want to race ahead for solutions. Excitement and suspense also means: waiting in a playful engagement between the audience and the presentational, aesthetic practice of the movie. That is, the viewer’s experience of how the film is telling the story. Watching a (good) film is also: waiting full of attention! Therefore, what I want to investigate and discuss is how directors of crime films stage events and actions to keep up the dynamics in order to maintain the atten¬tion, regardless of what consequences we may witness at the end of the movie. Suggested examples may include scenes from crime films by Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets, 1973; Taxi Driver, 1976; Goodfellas, 1990; Shutter Island, 2010) and Takeshi Kitano (Violent Cop, 1989; Boiling Point, 1990; Sonatine, 1993; Brother, 2000; Zatoichi, 2003). A motto: Scorsese about his favourite films: “I began to realize what a director did, and that is … translate ideas into images, using the lens like a pen. And that’s the key: Forcing the audience to see something a certain way you that you want them to see it.”
Marieke Krajenbrink
marieke.krajenbrink@ul.ie
Dr
School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication, Limerick, Irland
Murder and Melodrama. On media critique and the exploitation of emotions in Susanne Ayoub’s novel ‘Engelsgift’
From the early development of crime fiction, instances of often sensationalist and emotive media coverage of the crime cases under investigation feature frequently within the narrative, serving a range of functions. In E.A. Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue the vivid newspaper reports can for instance be seen to highlight the emotional impact of the horrendous murders in the public sphere, as well as the superiority of Dupin’s method of ratiocination. Reflecting the conditions of our mediatized experience of the world, the representation and construction of the strong emotions surrounding violent crime in the media is an important concern in the genre today.
This paper examines how these issues are explored in Iranian-Austrian author Susanne Ayoub’s historical crime novel Engelsgift (2004). Based on the sensational real-life case of a woman who in Vienna in 1938 under the newly installed Nazi-regime was sentenced to death for the poisoning of her husband, her baby daughter, her aunt and a lodger, the narrative is set in the present. Here, script writer Marie Horvath plans to write a screenplay about the sixty year old case and is presented with a very different, if no less gruesome version of events by the son of the alleged murderess. His gradually unfolding version, which claims to tell ‘the full truth that was never told in the newspapers’, implies that his mother fell victim to the sensationalist press coverage. The paper will discuss in what ways the novel with its emphasis on the media construction of the glamorous red-haired angel/demon as a projection of stereotypical fantasies about female transgression, provides a critique of the media and in how far it itself participates in an exploitation of emotions around crime.
Palle Schantz Lauridsen
schantz@hum.ku.dk
Associate Professor
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Genre, media, and audiences – The Case of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes was introduced in Denmark from the middle of the 1890’s though translations of the books and stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Originally published in books, the Danish translations soon met other formats of publication: serialization in newspapers and magazines, booklets in subscription. During the period 1908-1911 the newly founded Nordisk Films Kompagni produced 11 Sherlock Holmes films. But the early peak in Sherlock Holmes’ becoming a popular hero in Denmark came in 1902, when he hit the scenes of popular theatre across the country. The paper traces the early popularization of Holmes in Denmark focusing on the decisive generic modulations between the written, the staged and the cinematic constructions arguing that these modulations are primarily due to the generic expectations of the reader- and spectatorship of the various media
Yvonne Leffler
yvonne.leffler@lir.gu.se
Professor
Dept of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, University of Gothenburg
Gothic Crime and Emotions in Contemporary Crime Fiction
There has been an extensive production of crime fiction in Scandinavia the last ten years. Some of the most popular crime stories are illustrative examples of an intercultural and intermedial exchange between a variety of genres and media forms. Gothic and melodramatic elements are enhanced and different narrative strategies have been developed to stimulate the audience’s emotional response. For instance, when the Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s crime stories, the Millennium-trilogy about Michael Blomqvist och Lisbeth Salander become films the stories are placed in a typical gothic setting and some of the crime scenes are structured similar to as confrontation scenes in a horror film. In this paper I will highlight the role of emotions and the use of supernatural and gothic elements in today’s crime fiction. I start by giving some examples of how the supernatural and the gothic elements are enhanced. I show for instance what happens when Stieg Larsson’s crime novels are transferred into films and how one of the most prominent Swedish crime writers of today, Johan Theorin combines supernatural, gothic and sentimental elements. On the basis of these examples I will discuss the mediatization of the “new” gothic crime and the relationship between crime and emotions. I analyze the gothic representation of crime, its thematic consequences and emotional aspects and how the narrative form of the crime scenes serves as an instrument for both evoking and controlling the audience’s emotional reactions. Finally, I will discuss the way the multiple focalisation of modern horror is used in today´s crime fiction and how it probably engages the audience in a both frightening and enjoyable role-play.
Siri Hempel Lindøe
siri.h.lindoe@uia.no
Assistant Professor/ PhD-student
University of Agder
Emotion and investigative TV-journalism
The empirical basis of this paper will be a TV-program under the genre of investigative journalism. The focus will be put on how the audiovisual text invite the viewer to respond and relate emotionally to the different persons or agents who populate the program. Investigative journalism is a genre whose rhetoric orchestration is structured as a trial seen from the view of the prosecutor: A crime, or an act that can be judge as not morally acceptable, has been committed. Following Peter Harms Larsen in his "De levende billeders dramaturgi"(2002) (eng. translation: Dramaturgy of moving Images), the narrative scheme of these kind of programs has four types of agents: the victim, the persecutor, the witness and the prosecutor (in most cases the prosecution is done by the journalist). The emotions addressed in these kind of stories are compassion on behalf of the victim and indignation towards the persecutor or the evil doer. The role of both the prosecutor and the witness is to build up the tension between these emotions by showing evidence of the critiqueworthy act. In this paper I will analyze the audiovisual text to show how the spectator is invited to respond emotionally. As a theoretical background I will also use perspectives from Luc Boltanskis Distant Suffering. Morality, Media and Politics (1999). In this book, Boltanski asks for the forms or genres that can be used to speak about other persons suffering in a morally acceptable way. He argues for the existence of three different genres, which he describes as three topics of suffering, all three introduced in western public life in the 18h century. Using the term topic , he refers to a “form suitable for feeding the imagination and the preconventions which enframe the emotional coordination between the sender and the receiver of a distant suffering”. One of these topics is the topic of denunciation, a form where “Pity [towards the sufferer] is transformed by indignation [towards the persecutor] (…) and acquires the weapons of anger.” In the paper I will discuss if the genre of investigative TV-journalism can be said to be television’s version of this form of public speech about suffering.
Yong Liu
yongliu@fudan.edu.cn
Assistant Professor
Fudan University
American filmmaker, Brian De Palma directed digital film, Redacted, intensively indicates new form of storytelling and expression with digital artistic facilities and metaphorically reveals the genuine and core characteristics of new media culture based on internet and web2.0 technology in digital era. It also demonstrates profoundly the vague relationship between culture producer/costumer and the complicated definition between the authorship/viewership. The film’s multi-device storytelling strategy is a typical metaphor of new media culture producing and consuming to a certain extent. The docudrama shooting style, the consumer-camcorder captured images, even the MSN online talking sequence and surveillance CCTV videos cannot bring true effects to audiences, and all these stylishly digitized sequences would rather let audiences feel the story and events “make-believable”. The film tells the story with multiple digital approaches to show the multiple aspects of the truth, which is a visualized metaphor of us opening multiple interfaces from different sources on internet to know multiple dimensions of an event. However, after viewing the film, we still have bunch of questions to ask because of our doubt about the realness of the story: do the seemingly realistic devices show us how much extent of the reality or just a “virtue reality”? Does this kind of “virtue reality” make us further from the real world or closer to it? Do those classic traditional film theories and their related cinematic metaphors: Cine-Eye, Cine-drug, Cinema Magic, Window on the Window, Camera-Pen, Film Language, Film Mirror, and Film Semi-Dream, and so on…still function to new media devices or there needs a new one for not only the new media producers but also new media receivers? Quite similarly, when we scrutiny some news or events online we pretty much ask ourselves easier questions but subconsciously referring and summarizing to above questions. This paper will analyze this phenomenal film, Redacted and its theoretical metaphor for new media cultures creation and consumption, so that in the end the explicit traditional author/viewer relationship will be reviewed and redefined.
Birgitta Ney
birgitta.ney@sh.se
Docent
Södertörns högskola, Journalistik
Sob sisters in (Swedish) crime reporting
At the turn of the last century Sob sisters was coined a name for a group of women reporters covering a murder trial in New York. There is a link between sob sisters and let me call it sob journalism (snyftjournalistik) that I think needs to be studied. I have published about them and their style in ”Pennskaft, sob sisters och stunt” in Nordicom Information 1/1997. According to many researchers the expression Sob Sisters stems from 1907. I have, however, not found anyone researching if and how the style established by the sob sisters is still in place in reporting about crime. For this conference I would like to give a paper about some of my results of reading coverage of crime in Swedish newspapers as well as crime novels by former reporters. If the coverage of the 1907 murder trial was affected by things that would tempt many reporters: wealthy men known for scandalous living; a young woman married to the accused killer and a former lover to the murdered man – so a mix of celebrity, sex and crime. And the celebrity quota has not lost its strength. Tears and crying are implied already in the nickname sob sisters; expressions of strong feelings and emotionality have been complicated to handle in journalism. I also think there is a need to understand the impact of a melodramatic tension here. I plan to read selected articles in Swedish tabloids and other newspapers during the last few years to find out if and how the style established by sob sisters is still present in crime reporting.
Jakob Isak Nielsen
jakobisak@gmail.com
Adjunkt
IMV, Aarhus Universitet
The cell phone and Danish crime series
The cell phone has not only become central to interpersonal communication in our own private and professional lives but has become just as crucial to the aesthetic and narrative design of contemporary drama series. This paper will discuss the cell phone’s functional potential in contemporary Danish crime series – focusing on its thematic, aesthetic and narrative possibilities (as well as limitations). Focusing on select examples from Ørnen (DR 2004-6), Forbrydelsen I & II (2007, 2009) and Livvagterne (2008-), the paper will try to unearth the cell phone’s specific contribution to this particular television genre.
Dali Osepashvili
dali.osepashvili@tsu.ge
Associate Professor
Tbilisi State University, Georgia
Coverage of Children and Crime in modern Georgian Media
Our research is aimed at studying the Georgian press coverage of children and crime. While covering the cases of minors it is necessary to keep confidentiality - it is the international demand that contributes avoiding stigma i.e. prevents attaching stigma of criminal. But in Georgian media presumption of innocence is violated quite frequently. While covering the news the juvenile suspects are often mentioned as criminals however their guiltiness is not proved yet. The names of the suspects are also divulged publicly. This kind of activity is violation of professional ethics and at the same time it is violation of children's right - personal privacy. One might say that the journalists face a kind of dilemma - they have to choose either proposing scandal events about the juvenile crimes or caring about their rights. That is, what would be preferred: public interest to learn about occurred events or the interest of minors themselves. he main mistake often made by Georgian journalists while covering this topic is violation of presumption of innocence. Except covering the facts of crime itself the analysis of publications figures out two more main topics - what kind of crimes the minors commit and what is the cause of aggression in minors. As the research results prove for discussing the above mentioned issue the journalists in Georgian media refer to interviews only with politicians, psychologists or lawyers. The publications are not prepared on the basis of multiple sources in which the efficient persons would have made deep analysis of problem. It would be very interesting to involve the "voice of children" - what the juveniles think about aggression that is so excessive in their peers.
David Levente Palatinus
dlpalatinus@gmail.com
Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture
Dept. of English, University of Ruzomberok, Slovakia
Technics and Crime: CSI and the Pathology of the Screen
The purpose of this paper is to explore the technological imperative that characterizes applied medicine (i.e. forensic pathology) in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation where the visual prominence of the technological gear that is at the disposal of forensic scientists, and the detailed visual portrayal of diagnostic and investigative methods are paramount to the success of the show. Bernard Stiegler uses the term technics to describe this imperative. For Stiegler, technics denotes a horizon of human existence where forms of knowledge and the “hard technologies” through which they are produced and disseminated are mutually dependent. CSI clearly links medical episteme to the use of hard technologies – raising technological awareness on part of the audience. But, on the other hand, quality television itself is trapped by the technological apparatuses that render the representation of science a matter of aesthetic curiosity. Technics indicates that the question of screen-aesthetics is closely linked to both tekhne (that is, the hard technologies on the screen and the hard technologies of the screen) and episteme (meanings and forms of knowledge embodied by the very same technologies). Accordingly, CSI as a meta-narrative of applied medicine functions not only as a form of education or popular televisual entertainment, but also as the pathologization of the episteme that shapes response to the traumatic effects of crime - both on a subjective (somatic and cognitive-emotional) and a socio-cultural level.
Ester Pollack
pollack@jmk.su.se
Docent
Department of Journalism, Media and Communication Studies, Stockholm University
Victims, emotions and media trials
The media’s interest in crime news has always been significant. In different historical periods, crime journalism has been more seriously respectively more sensation-oriented in its approach. The commercial value and emotional appeal of person oriented crime news has been especially important for popular tabloids. A late development in Scandinavian and international crime journalism is the increasing use of victims and strong emotions in crime reporting from the courts. This refers especially to big legal cases – mostly concerning exceptional crimes of violence – with high media attention and where a parallel media trial takes place. What does the focus on victims, their relatives and their perspectives and emotions mean for the framing of the news stories? How are the victims suffering used in media reporting? How are the victims used in the public debate about crime verdicts? What role do such stories play in the market competition between different media enterprises, including in their use of new “social media”? In this paper I discuss the question of the use of victims and their emotions in Swedish press in relation to questions of media trials as media spectacles. Theoretical perspectives are gained from journalism studies as well as criminology and law. My material consists of data from four national newspapers (including their web outlets) in five Swedish crime cases with great media attention: the Knutby case (2004), the Riccardo case (2007), the Arboga case (2008) and the Engla case (2008). The analyses focus on the use of sources, the categories of victims, the images of victims and the emotional framing of the crime stories.
Tanja Poulsen
aesttp@hum.au.dk
PhD student
The Doctoral School in Arts and Aesthetics, Department of Aesthetic Studies, Aarhus University
Trauma, emotions and reality in crime fiction
In her 1999 crime fiction novel, Som Arvesynden (“As the Original Sin”), Susanne Staun makes use of the factual story of the American killer Albert Fish (1870-1936) in the fictional story of a forensic psychologist in a not-so-distant, but somewhat different future. This paper will examine the interplay between fact and fiction, how the original historical narrative of Albert Fish is translated into a background narrative for the story. Central to the examination is in what way historical facts contribute to the fictive narrative; does the use of factual crime in a fictional story become traumatic because it is real and not possible to dismiss as mere fiction? Is this a sort of traumatic realism that increases emotional response? Is it the thrill of realism as a narrative trick, the thrill as a safe acquaintance with what was a very real danger to the victims? Either way, it seems that the incorporation of factual crime in fiction heightens the dramatic impact of the narrative and the emotional response to it. This paper intends to examine this subject closely. Albert Fish tortured, killed and ate children. Children as victims seem to also increase the sense of trauma in fictional as well as actual crime. Archetypically associated with innocence, the child calls for protection from harm and the violation of this innocence may be interpreted as a transgression of a cultural ethics and biological necessity that heightens the trauma of the event. I intend to discuss the subject of trauma and emotions in relation to these two themes, the use of reality in fiction and the use of children as victims in fiction.
Victor Navarro Remesal
vnavarro@gmail.com
PhD Student
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
WHY WE PLAY? EMOTIONS + GRATIFICATIONS = EXPERIENCE
Why do players play videogames? Many people would say that we play for “fun”, but I believe there is more to it than mere “fun”. The videogame is a system with constant communication: it sends information to the player, she interprets it and reacts, this creates another reaction inside the system, and so on. These reactions are always valorised, and linked to emotions. This emotional “journey” is perceived by each player in a different way and creates a sensation of being “lived-through”. In his theory of basic emotions, Robert Plutchik lists 8 basic emotions, in couples of opposites: joy and sadness, acceptance and disgust, fear and anger, surprise and anticipation. They can be combined into advanced emotions. A videogame is a logic system of rules. Can we include emotions in it? Not in a mathematical fashion, but knowing the basic human emotions and the players’ action tendencies, the system can incorporate predicted actions and reactions. The interaction with the videogame system gives some rewards (“gratifications”) to the player. They can be more or less related to the emotions at play and complement them. Analysing and comparing several lists by other authors, I created my own list of gratifications: · Sensation, audiovisual/representative appreciation · Fantasy, believability of the fiction · Narrative, satisfaction with the story and plot of the videogame · Accomplishment, completion of a challenge · System mastering, acquisition of skills and knowledge · Peer-defeating, triumph in a player(s) vs. player(s) duel · Fellowship, player to player interaction · Discovery, the exploration of uncharted territory · Expression, agency within the videogame system · Submission, pastime Experience, then, is the sum of the emotions and gratifications created by the perception of the events of the videogame system that build a particular lived-through journey.
Kathrin Rothemund
rothemund@uni.leuphana.de
Research Assistant
Leuphana Universität Lüneburg / Germany
Emotionalmotives in ‘In the Face of Crime'
The highly acknowledged mini-series „Im Angesicht des Verbrechens“ (In Face of the Crime) by Dominik Graf, which premiered during the Berlinale 2010 and which was first screened on ARTE this spring (another screening will be held on the public tv station ARD in autumn), does not only develop the crime genre on German television further through its complexity of aesthetics. It also offers a strong perspective on narrative motives which are grounded on basic emotional values such as revenge, greed and love. The story of the series evolves around a young police officer being personally related to members of the Russian mafia in Berlin – him being a link between the two worlds of the law and the mafia. The duality of the opposing worlds is intensified through cultural and linguistic differences while interactions of the various protagonists offer a web of relationships between the different sides. The tale told in ten episodes bases its main storylines on emotional motives in order to symbolize each invidual's choices in life. The emotions presented as the main drive for the narration enhance the epic narrative structure of the series while the setting in Berlin localizes the story. Therefore the crime itself retreats into the background and the main focus is on the action and reaction of the protagonists.
Matthias Stephan
engms@hum.au.dk
PhD Student
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
It can be argued that detective fiction has altered with relation to the way society is defined and accepted. This paper seeks to trace those definitions from the classical approach (Poe’s Dupin, Christie’s Poirot, Adrian Monk), through a modernist understanding (hard-boiled (Chandler), police procedural (Law and Order, Beck, forensic (CSI)) to a postmodern construction (i.e. Paul Auster, Thomas Pynchon, Memento). In doing so, the paper will specifically consider the role of the reader/audience determining with whom the reader is supposed to identify, how one is supposed to understand the role of detectives in society, and the emotions and reactions those shifting associations and perceptions inspire. Through this investigation of literature, film and television, I hope to demonstrate the role of detective fiction not only in reinforcing but defining man’s relationship with society through the changing acceptance of how society sets its limits (specifically in relation to crime, but more broadly with all social norms and conventions) and how this genre delimits that understanding. By tracing the changes in different time periods (and the use of different techniques in more contemporary times) I will further show the tension that exists between different modes of understanding those limits, both as social constructs and how they are encoded in the justice system.
Margrethe Bruun Vaage
margrethe.vaage@ntnu.no
Postdoctoral researcher
Dept. of Art and Media Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Engagement with The Sopranos, partiality and moral
The Sopranos television series remains HBO’s biggest hit. The series encourages sympathy for the main character Tony Soprano, an American gangster running the North Jersey mob. The spectator’s sympathy for this criminal and murderer has been the material for numerous discussions. How come we as spectators like him and root for him? One tentative answer from film theory is that through narrative alignment, the spectator learns about Tony’s positive, or at least very human sides, and this initially fosters sympathy for him (Smith 1999, forthcoming). Furthermore, over time this narrative alignment activates some of the same mental mechanisms as do friendship in real life (cf. Blanchet and Vaage, under preparation). In this paper, I will argue that the series explores and takes advantage of the morality of friendship. This morality, in addition to the somewhat circumscribed morality that the fictional context arguably prescribes, warrants the spectator to be partial. The spectator is encouraged to understand and be loyal to the characters he knows – the characters the spectator has already sided with. The morality of engagement in The Sopranos is one of partiality and favouritism. I will explore this as a type of morality connected with friendship, and as thus, part of our moral psychology. In order to explore this, I will analyse Dr. Jennifer Melfi’s function as a meta-perspective on the spectator’s engagement throughout the series, and argue that through this character, the series engages in a self-aware commentary on the engagement it entails.
Jakob Ion Wille
Digital and visual storytelling in David Finchers film Zodiak
Abstract is to be annonced.