SPIEL Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft

SPIEL: Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft

Jg. 21 (2002), Heft 2

Peter Lang Frankfurt am Main • Berlin • Bern • Bruxelles ■ New York • Oxford • Wien Bibliografische Information Der Deutschen Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar.

ISSN 0722-78332199-8078 © Peter Lang GmbH Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften Fra k nkfurt am Main 2004 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany 1 2 3 4 6 7 www.peterlang.de Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft

SPIEL 21 (2002), H. 2

CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF EUROPE. European Identity in the 21st Century

ed. by Rien T. Segers The editor apologizes for the undue delay in the publication of this issue of the journal. Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft

Contents / Inhalt SPIEL 21 (2002), H. 2

Rien T. Segers (Groningen) Preface 157

Rien T. Segers (Groningen) The Underestimated Strength of Cultural Identity: Between Localising and Globalising Tendencies in the European Union 159

Marc Boone (Ghent) Flemish and Brabantine Identity in Late Medieval/Early Modern Europe: Cities and Princes in the Contest for Mastering Regional Identities 178

Carl Reinhold Bräkenhielm (Uppsala) The Idea of Europe in the Perspective of World Views and Values: an Introduction 187

Claudio Cressati (Udine) The Emerging European Constitution: Historical Trends and Political Models 203

Gareth Davies (Groningen) European Law and the End of Europe 215

Habbo Knoch (Göttingen) The Violence of Memories. Images of Two World Wars and European Cultural Identities 228

Richard Münch (Bamberg) European Identity in the Making: Between National Traditions and Global Networks 242 J. Erika von Rautenfeld (Gottingen) Culture, Identity and European Cultural Policy 258

Undine Ruge (Gottingen) Conflicting Identities? The Concept “Europe of the Regions” and the European Integration Process 274

Reinhold Viehoff (Halle) Euocops - On the Search for a European Identity 290

Herman H. Voogsgeerd (Groningen) A Reappraisal of H.-P. Ipsens „Zweckverband". Unidentified Finality as an Essential Element of a European Political Identity? 313

RUBRIC

Sibylle Moser (Wien) Hermeneutic Cybernetics. A Constructivist Methodology for the Empirical Study of Literature 327 10.3726/80994_290

SPIEL 21 (2002), H. 2, 290-312

Reinhold Viehoff (Halle)

Eurocops - On the Search for a European Identity A Road to Europe

Eurocops - Auf der Suche nach einer europäischen Identität. Ein Weg nach Europa

Der Beitrag skizziert das Bemühen um kulturelle Identität in Europa. Ausgangspunkt sind einige Beobachtungen zur gegenwärtigen Identifikation in Europa bei der Bevölkerung in den unter- schiedlichen Ländern Europas. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird die TV-Krimi-Serie EUROCOPS in ihrer Entstehungsgeschichte dargestellt und in ihrem Versuch bewertet, durch visuelle Identitäts- marker und kulturspezifische Formen der Inszenierung ein transnationales Bewusstsein von Europa zu konstituieren. Dazu wird an Beispielen analysiert, durch welche visuellen Zitate als Rückgriffe auf kulturelles Wissen dem Zuschauer vermittelt wird, in welcher europäischen Kultur die jeweiligen Kriminalfilme spielen. Im Besonderen nutzen die Krimiproduzenten eine Art „estab- lishing shot“ bekannter Architektur, um die Lokalität eindeutig zu machen. Darüber hinaus verwenden sie aber auch vielfältige kulturspezifische Interaktionsmuster, die - orientiert an den nationalen Images - eine jeweilige Zuordnung ermöglichen. Dieser Versuch wird - gemessen an der Resonanz des Publikums - als mehr oder weniger gescheitert angesehen. Die Gründe dafür werden erörtert, wobei zurückgegriffen wird auf das Lebens weit Konzept von Jürgen Habermas. Abschließend wird argumentiert, dass ein langfristiger Erfolg der Serie nicht ausgeschlossen erscheint.

The Maastricht treaty talks about creating “an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” and some of the ideas in it seem to presuppose a common “European identity”, enough to justify, for example, soldiers being killed for a European foreign and security policy. If such a “European identity” does exist, does this mean that EU citizens ought to feel at home everywhere?1 If the answer is “yes”, then the Union has been a failure. However, almost four decades after the treaty of Rome, there are few signs of a European identity emerging to replace old national loyalties. It is not just the squabbles of Europe's fishermen or the ranting of Britain's Eurosceptics that prove this. The EU's own opinion polls show that few of its 373 million citizens think of themselves as purely European.2 The biggest step in this direction has been made in Belgium and Luxembourg, where a tenth of the population reckons that “in the near future” they will see themselves as purely European. They are far outnumbered (about half the population of Great Britain, Portugal and

1 For a discussion of this problem from different angles, see Viehoff and Segers 1999. 2 See for the latest issue: http://europa.eu.int/comm/dglO/epo/eb/surveys.html. A close inter- pretation of the data is also available in: Münch 1998, and Münch 1999. Eurocops 291

Greece, and a third of German, Spanish and Dutch populations) by those who think of themselves in purely national terms. But if we give a more modest interpretation of what might constitute a sense of European identity, things do seem to be changing. If one also counts as “European” those who think of themselves as European first, and nationals of their home country second, about a quarter of Belgians, Germans, French and Luxembourgers turn out to be “Europeans”. Intriguingly, according to the same poll, Britain, whose government is usually the odd man out, is in the same category as federalist Italy and Holland, with around a sixth of the population describing themselves as “European”. Ironically, the anti-Europeans are strongest in those countries that have benefited most from EU regional aid. In Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain (and - on a different level - Denmark), less than 10% of the population think of themselves as solely or primarily European. So much for all those signs saying “This road was built with EU money”. If we widen the category further to include those who consider themselves as primarily part of their nation, but also as Europeans, and close to two-thirds of Europe’s citizens feel some sense of “dual national identity”. The feeling of being European second is remarkably consistent throughout the EU; in all countries except Great Britain, roughly half of all citizens identify themselves in this way. It is in this respect that Great Britain really is the exception it is frequently claimed to be: only one-third of its citizens thinks of themselves as British first, European second. It seems fair to say that Great Britain is not the most anti-European EU member, while opinions on Europe are most strongly polarised, and have even lead to the creation of explicit labels: Europhiles vs. Euroskeptics. The polarisation of British society is also revealed in some related sequences of Eurocops that we will see later on. One possible explanation for the broad acceptance of a “dual national identity” (though not for the exception) is that nationalism in Europe - be it the Gaullism of the French or the prickliness of the Greeks - is not the only form of resilient tribalism still being practised. Older loyalties to smaller ethnical groups also survive, even though these ethnicities - the Welsh, the Basques, the Bretons, the Bavarians - who were assimilated to larger nation-states. Few Europeans have much difficulty with the idea of divided loyalty and divided sovereignty: this enhances the need for the European Union, at least in a loose form. From this viewpoint, the signs saying “This road was built with EU money” make some sense: at the very least, they make it obvious that there is something European behind the local road building corporations and companies. There is, however, another European road, that was “built with EU money”. To take this road is to be more directly confronted with the problems of European identity. It is the road of communication, the road of radio broadcast and TV channels, the road of giving support to the movie industry, to television plays and series production throughout Europe. What I am referring to here is the often marginalised, but nonetheless worthwhile cultural subsidies handed out by the EU. At present the EU “advance program” hands out up to 1.7 billion Deutschmark a year. The French film industry, for example, is subsidised by about 740 million Deutschmark, the German film production gets about 270 million a year, followed by Italy with about 190 million a year. The Eurimages -program, agreed upon in the eighties and devoted in particular to developing a European film industry, including content-oriented programs for the professional development of writers and directors, also offers strong financial 292 Reinhold Viehoff support.3 The TV-series Eurocops has to be seen as one element among many others which, taken together, form a road around a mentally, culturally unified Europe. It is not an all- American road-cruiser flagged with Hollywood stars that the EU wants to send down this road; it is a small European car, created to vitalise the European film industry and to advance the formation of a European identity.4 What cultural identity means in Europe today may be illustrated by the triangular model of cultural identity developed by Segers and Viehoff in 1999.5 The model is based on the idea that social and cultural identity is built on a process of at least three forms of communicative interaction. These take place whenever a tribe, a community or even a whole society consider it worthwhile to differentiate between “inside” and “outside”, between “us” and “them”, between the inhabitants of the polish and the barbarians out- side the city borders. Once this difference is established, the community’s cultural identity depends on three fundamental levels of communication, which furnish the mental background of the group. Firstly, communication about what we mean when we talk about “us”; this includes all the moods, styles, ways of thinking, problem solving, ways to express emotional attachment and values, and so forth. Secondly, the model consists of all communication that describes the difference between “us” and “them”, between what is familiar and what is not, what is strange and what is not, and so on. The third level has to do with the technical development and the process of modernity the group or society has gone through. There is a whole network of media and forms of communication, in principal open to all members and available to everybody who wants to use it - phone, mobile, walkman, TV, video, radio, journals, books, CDs, personal computers - and this network determines how the picture of “us” and “them” develops inside the community and becomes part of its communicative interaction. The third level of the model therefore includes those aspects of cultural identity by which a certain social group or society becomes aware of how other “cultures” think of and express the difference between “them” (from the viewpoint of “us”) and “us” (from the viewpoint of “them”). These theoretical considerations should serve as a background against which we can assess the life and death of Eurocops, and discuss some selected sequences and screenshots taken from this serial. With respect to the described model of cultural identity it comes, however, without saying that describing Eurocops is part of the so-called “description of the cultural identity of a particular group of people” which “should consist o f ... three factors .... We might start with a description of a number of relevant material “facts”, - statistics -, which should be complemented by a description of the self-image, which should be followed by an analysis of the “Fremdbild”, on the basis of which the self-image can be relativised. Obviously, a self-image is affected by the material facts and the

3 See Euroimages, http://www.europarat.de/europarat/Pressemeldung/presse_maerz/09-3-euri- mage.htm 4 See for example Eurovision in the early 60ies, Brunn 1994. 5 See: Segers and Viehoff, 7-49. In: Viehoff and Segers 1999. See also the article by Segers in this issue. Eurocops 293

“Fre m d b ild the “Fremdbild” is constructed on the basis of the material facts and the self-image”. (Segers 1999) From a cultural point of view it is just this triangular model that seems to serve as a blueprint for the dramaturgic composition and representation of Eurocops. Frequently films start with the particular material facts, for example architectural icons immediately identified with a particular city, to inform the audience about the location of the film. These icons, which trigger a whole range of emotions and associations in the viewer, are accompanied by scenarios or situations representative of (or even stereotypical for) everyday life in each of the countries involved. They reflect the self-image held by the locals, which, vividly coloured and prismatically reflected, is incorporated into the “Fremdbild” of a certain national and cultural character. The combination of self-image and “Fremdbild” imbues Eurocops productions with their peculiar atmosphere. Where and how the problem of self-images comes into the Eurocops serial, and by what dramaturgic devices is largely a matter for further argument and research. Some preliminary ideas concerning self-images and other features of cultural identity in Eurocops will be raised in the following discussion.

Eurocops - a European Project of the Eighties

Eurocops is a project of the eighties, when the cultural dynamics of European unification seemed to be higher on the political agenda than they are today. European projects were, at least among intellectuals and politicians, if not necessarily among the “ordinary people” of Europe, more popular than they are today. It was a project that came from the top, therefore, and not from the bottom. Some of its problems probably stem from this origin, a criticism which is not uncommon in discussion about this European project. In the early eighties, when political-administrative and economical circles, came up with the idea of a European television program, a wide range of conferences, administrative papers, colloquial sessions, and political summits to develop the idea ensued. On December 10, 1986 the first conference of European heads of states, held in Vienna, debated the main issues relating to European mass media politics. 1988 was declared the first “European Year for Film and Television”. From an economic point of view, the Europe of those times had become a huge and lucrative market for audio-visual materials. Driving the market was an increasing and seemingly insatiable appetite for TV programs in all European countries. In the 1980s, new private TV channels began to dominate the market, and in 1988 the German forecasting institute Prognos estimated that there was a demand for more than 500 thousand hours of TV programmes for the expanded European audience. The European media industry then decided not to let this growing market be the playground for the US export industry in media and communication, in short: to strike back against Hollywood. The Europeans hoped to wrest from US companies a chunk of this lucrative market that was there at their own front door. The strategy they thought would bring success was to 294 Reinhold Viehoff be more European than anyone had ever been before. To be more European, however, presupposes the ability to know and to define what it is to be European. An added benefit of this economic development was that European intellectuals and politicians were provided with a new task: to define, from a more cultural aspect, what it might mean to be European. The term “Euro-pudding” emerged. It expressed the fear that bureaucrats in Brussels might prevent the emergence of a valid European cultural unity. “Euro-pudding” was the negative equivalent of the American “melting pot” - instead of stronger steel that alloys produce, the amorphous mass of local varieties and regional or national cultural traditions, boiled in a huge bureaucratic pot, could not avoid being disappointing. It certainly could not compete with genuine Italian antipasti, German sauerkraut, or mattes from Holland. The challenge was therefore to be different and yet recognisably European. Above all, the program would prepare the way for some significant new undertakings and enterprises. One result, - not the least impressive - of the new spirit of enterprise was the Europe- wide co-operative venture involving six European film and TV production companies on July 19, 1985. The newly founded company was called Europäische Produktions- gemeinschaft (EPG), and one of its offshoots was Monaca Film Production, the leading company for the Eurocops production and distribution.

Illustration 1: Logo of the “Europäische Produktionsgemeinschaft für Fernseh- produktionen”

When on January 1, 1988 EPG’s founding members, Antenne 2 from France, the English Channel 4, the Austrian ORF, the Italian RAI, the Swiss SRG and the German ZDF, were joined by the seventh, the Spanish Television company RTVE, this European group was all set to become the largest TV producer in Europe. They all agreed on a keynote statement that emphasised the prominent role this Europäische Produktionsgemeinschaft should play in the future of the television market. There is much talk of European culture in this statement, of the significance of European history, present and future, of Eurocops 295 supporting the uniqueness of European creative writers and actors, of high-quality products, of a new and a developing spirit of cooperation at all levels of hierarchy, and so on. What is of special interest here was explicit mention of the production of a new crime serial to be called Eurocops. Eurocops was declared the first project of a Europe-wide series. It was announced that the films would be shot and shown by all participating TV companies. The location would be well-known cities in each country, and so - little surprise - the French channel chose Paris, Great Britain was represented by London, Spain by Madrid, and the Austrian contribution was to be shot in Vienna. Germany, however, was to be represented by Cologne, Switzerland by Zurich, and Italy by Milan. The series' concept depended on the idea that the cultural backgrounds provided by the different cities and the local atmosphere were to have a strong visual impact. The character of the various European cultures, the differences in every-day life, in family behaviour, the laughter and sorrows of the locals would find vivid expression in all of the screen plays, each of which had to - of course - produced under the guidance of only one of the companies, but broadcast at the same time by all members of the club, following a joint program schedule. Let us take a short glance at what the European market was like at that time. The market for media and communication in Europe was an industry that provided services to about 370 million Europeans and had a financial budget of 60 to 100 billion ECUS per year (as was estimated in 1992). In terms of its monetary volume, the European market surpassed the US market by about 30 per cent; though compared to the US it is very heterogeneous. It is divided into hundreds of regional traditions and audiences along language borders and regional cultures. Although English has been accepted as the lingua franca for certain types of social interaction in Europe, audiences (especially those in France, Germany, and Italy, less so those in Scandinavia and Holland) have refused to give it the same place in their daily TV entertainment. The reason for this, as I will suggest later, has much to do with the intrinsic link between “good entertainment” and the characteristics (and subtleties) of people’s everyday life. Europe has at least five predominant languages: about 90 million Europeans speak German, about 60 to 70 million speak either French, Italian or English as their mother tongue, and about 50 million have Spanish as their first language. Given these figures, the languages in which Eurocops was produced covered more than 85 percent of the possible audience in Europe. As each issue of the series was to be originally produced in one of these languages and then immediately synchronised into all others (including English), Eurocops was at least on paper, in a promising starting position even in comparison to the major US companies. In 1988 Eurocops was to set an example for high-quality TV programs with a “European character”. Anchored in the cultural framework of various different natio- nalities and legal systems and respectful of genre traditions, it was nonetheless open- minded in its choice of topics and frequently focused on cross-border crimes. In doing so, it was not only spinning a fictional thread; it also reflected the reality of crime and police work. In a Europe of open borders, crime has become increasingly internationalised, as has the work of those who fight it - the “ever-closer” joint efforts of police forces and institutions across EU countries. The newly “European” nature of crime was behind the agreement in the Maastricht Treaty on the European Union of 7 February 1992 to 296 Reinhold Viehoff establish Europol. Europol, as it is described at its website6, is “the European Union law enforcement organisation that handles criminal intelligence. Its aim is to improve the effectiveness and co-operation between the competent authorities of the Member States in preventing and combating serious international organised crime. The mission of Europol is to make a significant contribution to the European Union’s law enforcement action against organised crime, with an emphasis on targeting criminal organisations”. Eurocops, the TV serial, was subsumed under the broad header of “TV enter- tainment”, which is itself a construct worth commenting upon, because TV entertainment deals with feelings and emotions to a greater extent than any European treaty, at least in the public mind. A frequent complaint during the last decades has been that the idea of Europe and European unification came from the head, not from the heart. As a way of getting around the abstractness of the notion and to increase emotional identification with Europe (a process hardly fostered by the dry bureaucratic papers dealing with recent EU decisions and grants) the decision was made to reflect the apparent increased Europeanisation of our lives in all genres of entertainment. This was a hot topic and judged to be the crucial turning point in the business of creating a European identity. The fifties and sixties had produced some forerunners to this project, distributed by Eurovision and primarily concerned with sports and European song festivals. The new European production agreement of the eighties, however, was to pave the way to a new, and better quality, type of entertainment: in addition to Eurocops, the seven companies decided to start and to strengthen programs like Eureka (a fictitious science magazine, produced by ZDF), S.O.S. Disparus (by antenne 2), The Managers (stories about the ups and downs of a premier league soccer club, by Channel 4), Rally (stories set before the background of motor races, by RAI), and La Vierge Noir (by SRG). Eurocops started on November 6, 1988. During the first year (that is, in the final months of 1988) another four plays were shown. In 1989 there were 11 Eurocops, about one each month. In 1990 there were 10, in 1991 only 6, and in 1992, as a kind of compensation for some production delays, 14 episodes. The highest output was achieved in 1993: 23 plays from all countries went to air. The number declined sharply in 1994, when only 7 productions were broadcasted, and in 1995, when the number fell to a dismal 3. The last play went to air on February 10, 1998. All in all 69 episodes of the series were broadcast. Since then, all the national TV channels have repeated the series, more or less concentrating on the issues produced in their own countries7, thereby somewhat bypassing the initial intention behind the production.

6 http://www.europol.eu.int/content.htm.7facts/en.htm Based in The hague, The Netherlands, Europol started limited operations on 3 January 1994 as the Europol Drugs Unit (EDU). Other important areas of criminality were added progressively. The Europol Convention was ratified by all Member States and came inro force on 1 October 1998. Following a number of legal acts realted to the Convention, Europol commenced its full activities on 1 July 1999. It is interesting that fiction (Eurocops) was a decade ahead of the reality (Europol). Maybe Europeans were thought to be in need of familiarisation with the concept. 7 See for this tendency in general: Hallenberger 1999. Eurocops 297

Eurocops - a Crime Series to Construct a European Identity ?

Eurocops differs from its rivals, especially the US series, in that its elements (recurrent characters, local decors and regional objects) are to a certain extent fixed and unchangeable. To ensure that the international audience would always be able to recognise where the story was taking place, some obvious hints were necessary - icons for the country and the city in question. This, in turn, implied that in each series any little bits and pieces that could refresh the viewer’s memory of historical place and events were important elements. Nothing happens in any one episode that might alter the series’ essential character. A similar point can be made about the development of the plot: to make sure that the audience recognised the police officer not only as an individual, but also as a representative of a particular national and regional culture, their qualities and “national” characters were defined in advance - though obviously not eternally fixed. Although commissioners and officers were often involved in non-local events, foreign countries, murderers from abroad or thieves from outside their home cities, they always return to their hometown. The officers might be personally affected by the European consequences of the crime and their European experiences during the investigations, but they always keep their feet on the “local” ground. The international character of the series requires this: if these fixed points in the narrative were missing, the audience, especially viewers from abroad unlikely to pick up more subtle hints about the particular character and his background, would find themselves completely at a loss. The more an episode strove to remain faithful to the underlying aims, the more it taught a moral lesson. The moral lesson was, in brief, that crime does not pay, no matter where in Europe it is committed. The inherent morality was combined with specific political goals: legitimising an interventionist role for police in Europe to maintain economic and social order, in a certain sense to legitimise Europol. Two narrative constructions that occur somewhere in each play at a particular point reinforce these objectives: firstly, the regional geography or an identifiable location (the Collosseum, the Eiffel Tower etc.), the genius loci, is filmed in such a way that it is immediately recognisable, and this formula is constantly repeated, and, secondly, the crossing of borders between European countries is filmed in considerable cinematic detail. The audience has to know, preferably at first glance, where the play is set. This requires openly visible and frequently re-introduced references to the location of the story. Though these reference points are referred to by means of a variety of cinematographic devices, there are necessarily certain stereotypes. Such stereotypes (for example, intro- trailers) are necessary so that the audiences can recognise recurrent patterns that go back to the very beginning of the series. Let us revisit Eurocops’ introductory trailer. The images are graphically unambiguous: animated maps of the cities where the commissioners hunt for criminals. The trailer ends with the police identification mark of the local police force. The example we see here is from the British series. 298 Reinhold Viehoff

Illustration 2: The English police officer in the introductory trailer

The stage in which the cultural context is established, especially the local details by means of which the audience is informed about the place the murderer and his victim met for the last time, or where the stalker, hidden in the shadows, begins his round, or where the burglar opens the closed door to find the safe full of English pounds, Italian lire, German marks, or Spanish pesetas, are not stereotypical in the same direct way. Each play will have some references to local and regional features. In addition to these concrete indicators of place, there is another important feature that distinguishes the various national productions: each country's own cinematic tradition, filming and acting styles and ways of building up dramatic tension, comes into each episode. There is much to say about this topic, but here we lack the space to more than just hint at it.8 Let us now look at the initial scenes of a typical Italian production - Milchstraße - which was first broadcasted in Germany on November 24, 1993. The first shots make it abundantly clear that the setting is in Italy. We seem at first to be looking at a stage setting, then children dressed in uniforms appear. They are in a playground, and are being looked after by nuns. When the camera moves to the clock, it is no surprise that it has an inscription in Italian - ora elletrica - The entire scene has reinforced typical Italian characteristics of location and situation.

8 See for some additional features: Hallenberger and Krewani, 1996 Eurocops 299

Illustration 3: Introduction to Tommy’s Geschichte, first broadcast in Germany on November 29, 1994.

Milchstraße is typical of the whole of the series. I think it is unnecessary to tell where this story (illustration 3) takes place. Here - in Tommy's Geschichte (first broadcast in Germany on November 29, 1994) - the shot of the cathedral in Cologne immediately establishes the location. Using such pictorial iconisation, nearly all major European cities are instantly recognisable as the location. It is worth mentioning this because it constitutes a major difference between European and US police series. US series have to introduce the location in a more personalised fashion, which reflects the lack of traditional architectural icons in US cities (perhaps with the exception of New York City and San Francisco). They have to mention the name of the city to attract the attention of their audiences: “Miami Vice”, “New York Police Department”, “Streets of San Francisco” and so on. Of course, in Eurocops we often find other examples of introducing the action, by certain acoustic devices, for example the sound of police cars at first and the uniforms at the very beginning of Letzte Fahrt (first broadcasted in Germany September 14, 1995) make it instantly clear that this has a German scenario. It should be mentioned that no northern European country is affiliated to the Produktionsgemeinschaft. One reason might be that, since World War II, audiences in that part of Europe have rejected the sight of German uniforms and signs in any regularly repeated entertainment form. The following illustration (illustration 4) shows another still from the same episode: it cites the icon of that particular European city (Cologne). Similar examples could be found for Madrid, Paris, London and many other European cities. Art, architecture and landscaping have left identifiable marks on each of them. They have identifying icons that most Europeans and even people from non European countries will recognise. 300 Reinhold Viehoff

Illustration 4: Letzte Fahrt, first broadcast in Germany on September 14, 1995.

Illustration 5: Zocker, first broadcast in Germany on January 3, 1995.

Just one example of an icon in a different city to illustrate this point. Eurocops 301

Illustration 6: Tote schmuggeln nicht first, broadcast in Germany on August 18, 1992.

A more sophisticated way of establishing the location is by quoting cinematographic history. This depends, however, on the existence of a well-known visual paradigm. Vienna, of course, can rely on The Third Man and the chase through the sewers of Vienna. This type of citation appeals to all those in the audience who are in one way or another acquainted with the images that famous films have created of European cities in the past.

Illustration 7: Tote schnuggeln nicht, first broadcast in Germany on August 18, 1992.

Illustration 8 illustrates the second point, that the crossing of borders is frequently highlighted (e.g. by crossing a bridge). The new location is indicated by inscriptions like 302 Reinhold Viehoff the one here (“Gasthof’) and by the commissioner trying to change Italian money into Swiss currency, which seems to be hard to do.

Illustration 8: Die Milchstraße, first broadcast in Germany on November 24, 1993.

Illustration 9: Screenshot from Unter Zwang, first broadcast in Germany on December 20, 1996.

An example of another frequently adopted device is this: an establishing shot for a location that makes use of suburban architecture and the narrow housing that is typical of the country where the film is set, in this case, the British production Under Pressure (see illustration 9). To show how effective that kind of staging is, look at the next Eurocops 303 screenshot which carries you off to Italy within seconds. Because we are now in Italy, the actress is allowed to move, look excited, wave her newspaper (it is the Gaseta Milano), and we, as TV audience, know exactly where we are in the fictitious world of the detective series.

Illustration 10: Screenshot from Finale, first broadcast in Germany first on July 30, 1993.

The English episode Under Pressure has an introductory sequence with obvious cinematic quotations of cultural life. Various hints and devices - Speakers Corner in Hyde Park - make it clear that we are in London, where people of so many different cultures and races live together - though not in harmony, as the opening sequence establishes. In the right corner of the foreground we see the police arriving, disturbing and provoking the speaker and the audience. 304 Reinhold Viehoff

Illustration 11 : Screenshot from Unter Zwang, first broadcast in Germany on December 20, 1996.

The police force of Great Britain is, just like society in general, under considerable stress, and the commissioner in Under Pressure is on the verge of killing his wife. Personal and psychological insights were typical of British plays, while the Italians tended to see themselves in more humorous and ironic ways. The following screenshot (illustration 12) could not possibly have been shot in England. In Italy, however, it would seem that the lower ranks are regularly the butt of their superiors, the inspectors and constables. Italians apparently have no conjunction about making fun of prejudices or mocking the state of things. Here, the fact that nothing works properly in Italy, not even closed circuit cameras, is highlighted. Eurocops 305

Illustration 12: Finale, first broadcast in Germany on July 30, 1993.

On the other hand, the Germans are portrayed as having a more serious image of themselves than any other Eurocop nation: the inspector face to face with a suspect, most often seen in over shoulder shots, is a hit. We identify ourselves with the inspector, we think and feel what he thinks and feels at that particular moment. Another classic scene from the German episodes shows the inspector discharging his duty of informing the relatives of the victim of the murder. A lack of frivolity of any kind is very German.

Illustration 13: Screenshot from Sumpfblüten, first broadcast in Germany on June 25, 1993. 306 Reinhold Viehoff

I want to finish the screenshots here, though still want to briefly touch upon another issue, one that all Eurocop productions were insufficiently in addressing. The directors frequently played on subtle ideas, or ambiguities in language and expression which work in the original language, but did not necessarily work in dubbed script. Transfer into a different cultural framework was likely to destroy some of the meaning. Consider this example: the inspector, in Tommy's Geschichte, posing as a manager in a taxi, flirts with the female taxi driver and says he “wants to have a closer look at the cathedral and treasures of Cologne”. The double meaning is obvious in German, though not necessarily in the other languages. It is a matter for further research to investigate how these kinds of ambiguity were transferred into different European cultural backgrounds. As a final illustration, notice how differently the Italians and the Germans like to finish their films. A typical German end: a freeze which brings out all the hidden feelings and emotions; the Italian end: a summary of the plot in which the key scenes and turns of the plot are revisited.

Illustration 14: Screenshot from Letzte Fahrt, first broadcast in Germany first on September 14, 1995. Eurocops 307 308 Reinhold Viehoff

Illustrations 15, 16, 17 and 18: screenshots from the end of Finale.

The Eurocops - an Example of the Problem of Creating a European Identity

The first three or four plays that were broadcast in 1988 were watched by a relatively large audience: about a third of those targeted. In the following years, however, audience interest lessened. In 1998, when the serial was last produced: by this time, the audience Eurocops 309 had shrunk to a fraction of what it had been, and during the last months when the ZDF repeated a selection of Eurocops productions while there was some audience interest, it was relatively subdued. Media and film critics usually come up with a simple explanation for the failure. To construct a European identity through a television series was bound to failure because of the paradoxes involved. To use a genre which by its very nature depended on the shared cultural background of the audience to create a common, European culture that did not yet exist; what made a crime story good for one audience made it strange and ambiguous for those from different cultural and cinematographic traditions. This, those critics have argued, was the reason that Eurocop-episodes failed to capture the international audience they were intended for, and were watched only by their national audiences. I do not think that this is a sufficient explanation. It fails to explain how Hollywood- movies can reach worldwide audiences, watched around the world by full houses of viewers who empathise with the actors. For a better explanation of the failure, economic and otherwise, of Eurocops I would like to revise some ideas by Jürgen Habermas. This will hopefully also highlight an important feature that has been more or less ignored in the oversimplified conformity models of other social system approaches which are now, philosophically transfigured, enjoying a renaissance in the humanities, (cf. de Berg & Schmidt 2000) The notion I have in mind is that of Habermas’ life-world theory. Habermas relocates the opposition between the ideal and the real within the domain of social practice itself. He argues that communicative interaction is everywhere permeated by idealising pragmatic presuppositions concerning reason, truth, and reality. Strictly speaking, in Habermas’ concept these idealisations are neither constructive of reality in the Platonic sense, nor merely regulative in the Kantian sense. We cannot avoid making sense while engaged in processes of mutual understanding, so that these presuppositions are actually effective in structuring communication and at the same time typically counterfactual in ways that point beyond the limits of actual situations. As a result, our ideas of reason, truth, objectivity, and the like are both immanent to and transcendent of the practices, norms, and standards of our culture and everyday life. In his work, Habermas inveighs against models of social interaction which treat as epiphenomenal what the actor knows of the social structure, and how he or she reflexively makes use of the resources for making sense that the given culture makes available. Habermas, by contrast, claims that we use our common sense knowledge of the social structure to make situations of interaction both intelligible and accountable. Common sense knowledge is a kind of shared knowledge, shared by any subject of a given cultural system. This kind of shared knowledge informs the normative expectations we bring to social situations, and thus it serves simultaneously as a subjective cognitive and a social normative background to any interaction. Thus, if we want to make sense of social situations, we cannot help but relate reflexively to background schemes of interpretation and expectation, and draw actively on our capacities for practical reasoning and acting in concrete situations. Habermas argues, however, that in the course of the evolution of modern society the pure concepts of the life-world, for example “truth”, emerge from their origins in everyday life and constitute a system of their own, the system of law, for example. Acting in actual situations and practical reasoning, has 310 Reinhold Viehoff therefore to take into account the established laws of a given society as well. Habermas does not ignore that in industrialised modern societies the law can take over the role of a system antagonistic to people’s life-world. He therefore often claims that law, religion, science, economy and other social systems which have been brought into being by social evolutionary processes and normally display a high level of formal regulation and bureaucracy, should be regarded as a kind of colonialisation of the life-world. To avoid any personally degrading and alienating consequences caused by such estranged social systems, the only effective instrument is communication, Habermas says. Even stronger, we have nothing but communication. To defend truth, objectivity, sense and beauty against the dangers they face in modern societies, we must realise the inherent intention of any free communication, that is, to unfold the universalistic aim of communication by reaching a consensual arrangement between all the participants of communication who are each acting in their own right. For thousands of years our social experience has shown that narratives help us to figure out schemes of interpretation and expectation for truth, objectivity, and sense. In normal social interaction, we reciprocally impute practical rationality to other parties with whom we interact, credit them with knowing what they are doing and why they are doing it, view their conduct as under their control and done for some purpose or reason known to them, and thus hold them responsible for it. Although this pervasive supposition of rational accountability is frequently - strictly speaking, perhaps even always - counterfactual, it is of fundamental significance for the structure of human relations that we deal with one another as if it were the case. This communicative concept is, so to speak, a basic social arrangement of striking for the best solution in practical life, not because it is judged as the best social arrangement forever but because we have no better one. Narratives (like Eurocops), especially those which are embedded in discourses which constitute the normative structure of our social practice and our everyday life, that is Habermas’ life-world, primarily use the “as if ’-formula to create a virtual world of experiencing. They most often create such worlds in order to balance the kinds of unavoidable simplification of social complexity that come with the general rules which inevitably and by necessity grow up in social interactions and social systems. Narratives, according to this sociological view, allow one to create a more complex picture of shared life-worlds, and train people to perceive alternatives to the current situation: for the sake of stabilising our life-world we should always be aware that there is more going on in placid scenes of “community agreement” and “general rules” and the like than appears to the naked eye. This is, in my view, a salient - and open to rational discussion - theoretical frame for understanding why Eurocops, seen as an example of medial communication more generally, has failed to capture the interest of the audience. I guess, however, that once the series (or a similar project) has been repeated several times, it will be better understood and more enjoyed by European audiences. To judge Eurocops as a failure because of its failure in terms of audience and in an economic sense is a too shortsighted a view. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will Europe be. Eurocops 311

On 1 January 1999 a new currency came into existence - the Euro. By the middle of 2002 it will have replaced most national currencies within the European Community, bringing about a full economic and monetary union. Is this single money important for a truly united Europe? Moreover, what meaning can we give to a “truly united” Europe? Obviously, economic unification is not all there is to the ‘European project’. There must be something beyond “bread and butter”, an idea, perhaps the idea of Europe as a particular culture and a type of (exceptionally cultivated?) behaviour, with roots in the old Greece and Roman culture, and a good share of Christian and Judaic heritage. I would like to conclude my argument with this: a united Europe cannot consist of mere economic and monetary unification. Economic and monetary unification must pave the way for “true unification”: a single Europe, with supranational policies, and a common European cultural identity. Perhaps Eurocops has a role after all.

Reference

Berg, Henk de, and Johannes Schmidt (eds.), 2000. Rezeption und Reflexion. Zur Resonanz der Systemtheorie Niklas Luhmanns außerhalb der Soziologie (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp). Brunn, Gerhard, 1994. “Gründung und Aufbaujahre der Eurovision”. In: Helmut Kreuzer and Helmut Schanze (eds.). Bausteine III. Beiträge zur Ästhetik, Pragmatik und Geschichte der Bildschirmmedien. Arbeitshefte Bildschirmmedien 50 (Siegen University), 47-52. Habermas, Jürgen, 1981. Theorie kommunikativen Handelns, Vol. 1, 2. (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp). Hallenberger, Gerd, 1999. “Eurofiction 1998: Tendenz zu einheimischen Produktionen”. In: Media Perspektiven, Vol. 9, 469-479. Hallenberger, Gerd, and Angela Krewani, 1996. “The Aesthetic Side of European Coproductions: How European Can You Get?” In: Gerd Hallenberger and Sofia Blind (eds.). European Coproductions in Television and Film (Heidelberg: Winter), 91-102. Münch, Richard, 1998. Globale Dynamik, lokale Lebenswelten. Der schwierige Weg in die Weltgesellschaft (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp). 1999, “Europäische Identitäts- bildung. Zwischen globaler Dynamik, nationaler und regionaler Gegen- bewegung”. In: Viehoff and Segers (eds.), 223-252. Segers, Rien T., 1992. “Research into Cultural Identity. A new Empirical Object”. In: SPIEL. Siegener Periodicum zur Internationalen Empirischen Literatur­ wissenschaft, Vol. 11, 149-162. Viehoff, Reinhold and Rien T. Segers (eds.), 1999. Kultur Identität Europa. Über die Schwierigkeiten und Möglichkeiten einer Konstruktion (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp). Viehoff, Reinhold, 1996. “Literature and Cultural Identity. A Socio-Constructivist Approach”. In: Margarida Losa, Ismenia de Sousa and Concalo Vilas-Boas (eds.). Literatura Comparada: Os novos Paradigmas (Porto), 306-315. 312 Reinhold Viehoff

author's address: Reinhold Viehoff Media and Communication Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg 06099 Halle Germany E-mail: viehoff@medienkomm. uni-halle.de