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Kopi fra DBC Webarkiv Kopi af: Arbejdspapir : Introduction and participant projects : facts, fiction, and purpose Dette materiale er lagret i henhold til aftale mellem DBC og udgiveren. www.dbc.dk e-mail: [email protected] Introduction and Participant Projects Facts, fiction, and purpose Scandinavian crime fiction has been a success, in Scan dinavia as well as internationally. New genres of crime fiction have emerged in books and films, on televi sion and computers. Facts about crime are present ed in journalism. How can the relationship between facts and fiction be described? What role does the me diatiza tion play? What do the places of crimes mean? In what ways is crime fiction a part of media culture? Such questions will be the focus of the project. Crime Fiction and 30 % of the Danish population watched episode 14 of Unit One, Crime Journalism in broadcasted on DR 1 on April 8, 2001. The introduction went: “While a number of local police officers are on a routine task in Scandinavia an area with many immigrant families, they are contacted by a www.krimiforsk.aau.dk ter rified young girl. In the girl’s flat, a tragedy awaits; along with a shocking con fession. It looks like a domestic scene in con nection with a forced marriage – but is that the whole truth?” Working paper As of autumn 2000, Ekstra Bladet ran a number of reports on the no. 2 reality behind the fictions ofUnit One. Episode 14 was not unique © The Project in its reliance on reality, neither in reality nor in the genre of re porting, which is apparent from the following: “Honour kill ing. Aalborg 2008 An early morning, a woman walks steal th ily down a quiet resi dential street somewhere on Amager. On the run from her fam ISBN: ily, her background, and a demand that she abandons the per 9788791695117 son she loves. Three weeks later, she dies out side the rail way station in Slagelse. Shot by her brother.” (Politiken, May 14, 2006). TV dramas are based on actual crimes. Facts about crime are pre sented via the mechanisms of fiction in the newspaper re port, the magazine programme on TV, reality shows, and film documentary. TV series and TV magazine programmes are fol lowed by the pub lication of books, such as, Niels Brinch and Jes DorphPetersen’s Op klaret, 2000, and Eigil V. Knudsen’s books about Unit One, 200102. On the Internet, continuous com muni cation and analysis are taking place, and interactive crime fic tion is being developed in computer games. The purpose of this project is to chart and analyse the new forms of interaction of crime fiction and crime journalism in a Scandinavian context, and assess their significance for the ex peri ence economy in the global market. It is our presumption that the concepts of trans gression and cultural citizenship may contribute to elucidate the par ticular role of the mediatization. Despite the popularity and con spi cu ous expansion of the sub ject matter content, it has never before been examined in a con Design and layout certed, larger project. Kirsten Bach Larsen • Introduction 1 The mediatization of crime Crime is a summarising concept of committed, punishable acts (Balvig 1997. For refer ences, please consult Bibliography, www.krimiforsk.aau.dk). Defined as an unwant ed transgression of moral norms, crime has always been surrounded by the attention and sanc tions of society. However, the understanding of the concept has never been unambiguous. The history of crime and forensic sociol ogy show that the perception of crimes depends on social, cultural, and mental con nections. From the Ancient Times through the En lightenment to the present time, the relationship between society, crime, and punishment has been the subject of problematisation and discussion (e.g., Seneca in the 1st Century, Beccaria 1764, and Christie 2003). Since the modern, urban breakthrough, mediatization of crime has been a crucial factor in determining how crime is perceived within the public sphere. Thus it has enabled a dissemination of the dis cussion from the few enlightened to the many citi zens. Crime is the central point of an extensive production of books, film, TV series, and games. This development, which created the concept of crime fiction and crime journalism, accelerated in the 20th Century. ‘Crime fiction’ we understand as fiction in book form, as film, or TV drama in which crime and the detective process govern the acts of the cha r acters and the plot. ‘Crime journalism’ we understand as journalis tic communication of matters relating to crime in news papers and electronic media of various genres. From the middle of the 19th Century, all the internationally known types of crime fic tion and crime journalism became widespread in Scandinavia via translations, trans formations and, gradually, orig inal contributions, which have helped turning what was previously a periphery into an important production centre. Fiction in particu lar enters significantly into the experience economy on an interna tional level; cf. the Swedish heavyweights Henning Mankell and Liza Marklund. Numerous authors of crime fiction, female as well as male, have expanded the concept of the typology and function of crime fiction – e.g., Arne Dahl, Håkan Nesser, Jan Guillou, Inger Frimans son, Karin Alvtegen, and Åsa Nilsson in Sweden; Gunnar Staalesen, Jo Nesbø, Karin Fos sum, Kim Smaage, and Anne Holt in Norway; and Susanne Staun, Gretelise Holm, Elsebeth Egholm, and Sara Blædel in Denmark. Swedish film and TV drama have had no problems matching the production. In Denmark, the TV crime series has en joyed the strongest position in an international context. Transgression and cultural citizenship Transgression in mediacommunicated crime raises and discusses a number of ques tions: 1 the violation of ethical norms (the dilemma between an unaccept able degree of indi vi dual liberation and, simi larly, an unaccept able degree of collective suppression, the question of the existen ce and status of evil), 2 the social ties and trans gression (dominating in American forensic sociology since the 1920s), 3 the psychological dimension (which involves interpretation models of the relation ship between the individual and the community, the observer’s mirror function), 4 the legal framework (the interplay between that which is allowed and not allowed, the sense of justice, the actual discourse on crime, cf. Agger 2005), 5 the aesthetic dimension (transgression in genre, style, hidden cam era, the crime novel, etc.). • Introduction 2 Mediacommunicated crime is also about cultural citizenship. The popular culture of fers us a selection of imagined communities (Anderson 1996) and, in particular, shared fantasy reservoirs (Elsaes ser 2000). When we use the media, as readers, viewers, or players, we join audience communities that reach beyond the national level (e.g., feminist crime fiction) yet, at the same time, produce local pockets within the nation – such as, fan or viewer groups (Hermes 2005). Thus the popular culture produces a cultural citizenship, which cannot be reduced to a subculture or a counterculture, but which weaves in and out of the existing global, national, and local cultures. In the media, matters related to crime are discussed, such as, the forms of order, crime, and punishment to be desired in a society – and thus the societies that are de sirable. The individual subject is given an opportunity to practise desirable compet ences and psy cho logical mechanisms, and ‘work’ with them like a good citizen. The consequences of the popular culture for the citizens’ selfdevelop ment may be ex pressed as an image of a D.I.Y. citizen (Hartley 1999). With regard to crime fiction, this applies to the strategies of order and passion that the viewers and readers are able to negotiate in re la tion to their own lives. Thus, the cultural citizen is a human being that continuously reflects on itself. Cultural citizenship is a process of ‘bonding’ and reflection on this very bonding. It is implied in the media’s offers to readers and viewers, and also provides the audi ence with the opportunity to enter into an ironic distance – without evading the pos sibility to par ticipate in the cultural consumer ‘democracy’ of the media. Using different approaches and methods, these assumptions will be examined in the project. Methods • Registration of material: types of crime fiction and documentaries. • Source studies of the crime journalism of the period. • A media and genre historyorientated approach. • A comparative approach – at numerous levels. We will carry out comparative ex am i na tions between facts and fiction, different me dia (book, film, TV, the Internet, pc), and between national and international/transnational versions (primar i ly using ma terial obtained from Scandinavia). • Selection of material about chosen cases. • Text analysis on the basis of genrebased and aesthetic categories. • Production analysis. • Reception analysis. • Introduction 3 Gunhild Agger Memory, identity, and past The purpose of the subproject is to develop a typology for registering the historical crime novel and crime documentaries in Denmark from 1985 to 2006, and to supply an account of how these genres have developed during that period. Theories on me m o ry, oblivion, nos tal gia, and history (i.a., Boym 2001, Johannisson 2001, Riceour 198385, Todorov 2000) will provide a basis for a comparative, intermediate analysis of select ed novels, TVdramas, films, and documentaries in order to qualify the hypotheses about how the historical dimen sions function in fiction and facts, respectively. My hypothesis is that the past when represented in the historical crime novel and crime documentary has three decisive functions.

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