Norskov as local noir and regionalization in Danish TV drama production Kim Toft Hansen, Aalborg University.

Norskov as local noir and regionalization in Danish TV drama

productionKim Toft Hansen,

Aalborg University.

1. Local drama production in Denmark is on the rise

2. Nordic noir may be a driving force of localisation

3. Norskov may ‘lift’ a locality away from the periphery

Regional noir-drama production

En by i provinsen (1977-80)Strisser på Samsø (1997-98)

Unit One (2000-4)Dicte (2012-)

Norskov (Danish TV2, 2015)

‘local noir’ (Leenhouts 1996)‘local noir literature and film’ (Mah 2014)

The West Danish Film Fund

Film Commission Fyn

Covers 26 out of 96 municipalities in

Denmark

Copenhagen Film Fund

Public Service Fund:regional obligations in the media for agreement 2015-18

Ludvig and Santa Claus (2011)

The Twins and Santa Claus (2013)

Dicte (2012-)

The Legacy (2014-

1864 (2014)

Midsomer Murders (2014)

Heartless (2014)

The Team (2015)

The Bridge III (2015)

Norskov (2015)

The Christmas Wish (2015)

Television series co-financed by regional film funds

Local representationin local TV – local noirAlmost haft shows are crime fiction

Motivation: Creating/sustaining local growth and talent

Denmark is ‘local’ in the world too

Definition of ‘local’ varies

Rita III (2015)

Wallander (BBC)

Nordic noir, or local noir

Nordic noir brand – a fuzzy reference to placeLocal - peripheral Denmark vs. place specificity

“If anyone tells you that this is peripheral Denmark,

tell them that the world is not flat”

Place in production and plot

“It’s the first time that a town plays the lead role in a TV-series.”

Mikkel Seedorff Sørensen (Managing director at Port of Frederikshavn)

Local TV and local noir challenges…

…generic notion of Nordic noir (not a genre)…traditional production models…traditional funding models…dichotomy between cultural and industry policies…specificity of Nordic noir

NORSKOVFrom ”Nordic crime drama” and ”police drama” to ”drama”

a noun losing adjectives (reversed Rick Altman)Nordic noir as a selling point for local funding

”Norskov is so global” (Rose Aykroyd, ICM Partners)

Norskov as local, or even port noir: the port as a very local and global place (Alice Mah)

1) Early international promotional material for Norskov (2014).

2) Promotional still from canaldigital.dk.

3) Images in promotion folder about port expansion (”Port of Opportunities – Sæt kurs mod fremtiden”)

4) Still from Wallander – Sidetracked (BBC, 2008)

AFP – Advertiser funded productionSponsor’s show reel: representation of locality in

sponsorship8-10 mio. DKR into a potential second season

The port in Norskov: the closest you may get to product placement in

Danish television drama

Translocal images with commercial value:Hinterland and Norskov

Panoramic maps as place branding

Quebec 1755 London 1845

St. Louis 1859 Copenhagen 1640

“In contemporary ‘international communication’ the standardisation of locality is crucial. A ‘lifted’ locality – a sense of locality that is communicated “from above” – has to be a standardised form of the local (whether it be a neighborhood, a city, a country, or even a world region). An ‘international TV enterprise like CNN produces and reproduces a particular pattern of relations between localities, a pattern which depends on a kind of recipe of locality. This standardisation renders meaningful the very idea of locality, but at the same time diminishes the notion that localities are “things in themselves.”

Roland Robertson 2012: 195

Intention: lifted localities

Local TV-drama production as a part of

‘a counter-urbanisation trend’creating

‘forms of dwelling in a world of flux’and ‘a global sense of place’where people are ‘rooted’ instead of ‘routed’

Shaun Moores – Media, Place & Mobility

From above, from below

Local noir is a trend on the rise in crime fiction, even though ‘places as such’ have been a topos in Western crime fiction since its beginning. Local noir is part of an general counter-centralization trend in drama production and story-telling. For the locality, it may create a new sense of dwelling and ‘pride’ in a world on the move, but it may outside of the locality still be viewed as very both national and global in scope. Rather than diminishing the idea of localities, local TV production, and especially local crime fiction in its broad appeal, draw attention to specific places and may ‘lift’ it from out of the downward spiral of peripherality. In doing so local noir challenges several traditional assumptions about drama production and consumption.

Sum up / defining local noir: