Danish Mothers On-Screen (Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender) 303088578X, 9783030885786

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1: Introduction: Narratives of Danish Culture in Fiction and Policy
Chapter 2: Gender and Motherhood in Danish Social Policy
Chapter 3: Policy in Practice: Film, Television and Cultural Policy
Chapter 4: Motherhood, Sexuality and Shame in Danish Cinema
Chapter 5: Crime Dramas and the Working Mother’s Sacrifice
Chapter 6: Powerful Women and Forgotten Mothers in Danish Public Service Drama
Chapter 7: Conclusion: Manifesting “Good People” Through Fiction
Works Cited
Film and Television Works Cited
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN (RE)PRESENTING GENDER SERIES EDITOR: EMMA REES

Danish Mothers On-Screen Djuna Hallsworth

Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender Series Editor Emma Rees Director, Institute of Gender Studies University of Chester Chester, UK

​ he focus of Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender is on gender and T representation. The ‘arts’ in their broadest sense – TV, music, film, dance, and performance – and media re-present (where ‘to represent’ is taken in its literal sense of ‘to present again’, or ‘to give back’) gender globally. How this re-presentation might be understood is core to the series. In re-presenting gendered bodies, the contributing authors can shift the spotlight to focus on marginalised individuals’ negotiations of gender and identity. In this way, minority genders, subcultural genders, and gender inscribed on, in, and by queer bodies, take centre stage. When the ‘self’ must participate in and interact with the world through the body, how that body’s gender is talked about – and side-lined or embraced by hegemonic forces – becomes paramount. These processes of representation – how cultures ‘give back’ gender to the individual – are at the heart of this series. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16541

Djuna Hallsworth

Danish Mothers On-Screen

Djuna Hallsworth Department of Gender and Cultural Studies University of Sydney Sydney, NSW, Australia

ISSN 2662-9364     ISSN 2662-9372 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender ISBN 978-3-030-88578-6    ISBN 978-3-030-88579-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88579-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration:© Emma Strange / Getty Image / With cover design by eStudioCalamar. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This book is dedicated to Kira, Joe, Anna, Sarah, Birgitte, Katrine, Signe and Isa, and all of the real women who inspired them.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the many Danes who contributed, directly or indirectly, to this research and whose generosity, transparency and enthusiasm added depth and perspective to this project. Tusind tak to my interview subjects: Katrine Vogelsang of TV2, and her assistants Janne and Lea; Vinca Wiedemann, formerly of the National Film School, Denmark; the incredible actress Stine Stengade; Steen Bille, former film consultant at the Danish Film Institute (DFI); and the DFI’s Kirsten Barslund, who dedicated both time and warmth to me each time we spoke. Tusind tak to Susan Yi Sencindiver and Gunhild Agger for reading chapters of my work and providing thoughtful and insightful comments. Tusind tak to the Media and Journalism Department at the University of Aarhus, especially to Pia Majbritt Jensen Azzolini and Anne Marit Waade, who hosted me for three months and helped me to better understand Denmark’s idea of a “flat hierarchy”. And mange, mange tak to the creatives involved in the objects of study upon which I wrote my case studies; your work continues to challenge and inspire me. Thank you to the Gender and Cultural Studies Department at the University of Sydney, and particularly to my thesis supervisors, Dr Anthea Taylor and Professor Meaghan Morris, whose expertise guided me to the point where I was not just satisfied with but proud of my work. Thank you to my thesis examiners whose feedback was both touching and pragmatic, and validated my idea to publish my research. To my family—my mum, dad and brother—thank you for encouraging me, not least in seeking out the edgiest and most confronting films and television shows! For reading drafts, engaging in debates and always vii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

believing I could achieve that upon which I set my mind, I am extremely grateful. To my friends for always cheering me on from the sidelines, and promising to buy copies of this book as soon as it is published: you are the best. And to Jamie, whose patience, kindness and support are daily reminders of the goodness in the world: thank you for making the publishing process a great deal easier for me.

Contents

1 Introduction: Narratives of Danish Culture in Fiction and Policy  1 2 Gender and Motherhood in Danish Social Policy 19 3 Policy in Practice: Film, Television and Cultural Policy 39 4 Motherhood, Sexuality and Shame in Danish Cinema 63 5 Crime Dramas and the Working Mother’s Sacrifice 95 6 Powerful Women and Forgotten Mothers in Danish Public Service Drama131 7 Conclusion: Manifesting “Good People” Through Fiction163 Works Cited175 Index205

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About the Author

Djuna  Hallsworth  completed her PhD entitled “Motherhood in the Danish welfare state: citizenship and shame on-screen” at the University of Sydney in October 2020, receiving her award without revisions. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications and English with First Class Honours from the University of Western Australia. Hallsworth has, throughout her academic life, focused her research upon media content analysis, mental illness, feminism and cultural policy. She is the author of “National broadcasting, international audiences: how cultural difference is represented in the Danish television dramas Ride upon the Storm, Liberty and Greyzone” and “Making visible the incomprehensible: ambiguity, metaphor and mental illness in The Haunting of Hill House”. In between teaching, Hallsworth works on further research on media representation and her own fictional writing projects.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Narratives of Danish Culture in Fiction and Policy

In the 2021 Academy Awards, a Danish production won Best International Feature Film for the fourth time in history. The successful film was Druk (Another Round) (Vinterberg 2020), a dramedy that jovially examines the effects of consistent intoxication on four middle-class, middle-aged men. On the same day as the awards ceremony, DR2—a channel of Denmark’s national broadcaster—posted a video on its Facebook page which featured a scene from Druk recreated with four Danish actresses. Instead of guzzling expensive wines and spirits like their male counterparts, the women are enticed by rosé and Somersby cider. As the montage unfolds they become progressively drunker and rowdier (despite only appearing to consume four ciders and one bottle of rosé in total), tearfully declaring to each other “I am so over the menopause!” and “You are so beautiful! I love you” in a caricature of female sentimentality and intimacy.1 The real parody, though, appears to be of Druk’s reception in the Danish media, as indicated by the fake reviews of this alternative female version that feature at the end of the clip: “Wow, can four drunk girlfriends be loud. I had pain in my ears for weeks after”—Berlingske; “Can women be funny? Oh, yeah… if they, for example, get an electric shock”—Jyllands-Posten; “Rosé keeps you young!”—Alt for Damerne; “I would not fuck them”—Ekstra Bladet (TPS: Drinks / DR2) (see Note 1). While the mainstream film industry was celebrating the quirky and novel Danish tale, local

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 Author’s translation.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Hallsworth, Danish Mothers On-Screen, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88579-3_1

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practitioners were mounting a subtle yet effective critique of the acclaim bestowed upon a film about men, by men. This satirical clip is intriguing for a number of reasons: by parodying the glorification of male drunkenness, it presents an alternative response to the pride that Denmark no doubt feels as a small nation competing in an international film market; it implicitly suggests that films about women will deploy common stereotypes, such as their low alcohol tolerance and emotionality; it mocks the way that media commentary reduces films about women to a critique of their appearance and debates their merit as likeable, or “fuckable”, characters; and it demonstrates the dual role of DR, as the state-funded public service broadcaster, in providing both informative, educational material and content that critiques the current dominant narrative. It might be relevant to note, also, that Denmark’s entry to the Academy Awards for the previous year was the provocative Dronningen (Queen of Hearts) directed by May el-Toukhy (2019). While Druk was written and directed by men and featured an almost completely male cast, Dronningen was written and directed by women and stars the enduring actress Trine Dyrholm as Anne, an older woman in a controversial secret relationship with her stepson. Despite winning the Nordic Film Prize and Best Film in the Danish Robert Awards and Danish Bodil Awards, it was not even nominated for Best International Feature Film in the Academy Awards. Dronningen has not premiered in Australian cinemas, nor was it available in Australia on any streaming platform  until late  2021, which demonstrates the perplexing and sometimes unintelligible ways that media content is distributed and acquired across borders. Perhaps it also speaks to the mainstream marketability of films about men and the still-controversial nature of the older woman-younger man relationship. The father characters in Druk may be questionable—pursuing their bizarre experiment to the detriment of their family responsibilities—but they are not transgressive in the way that Anne, a mother and a maternal figure to her stepson, is. The depiction of women in Danish screen fiction has been discussed in academic literature and highlighted in popular critique, yet it is often from the perspective that the high frequency of female leads in contemporary Scandinavian narratives necessarily speaks to a progressive political landscape. Research continues to concentrate upon the genre of the police procedural, with its notable inversion of the male cop archetype, and rarely unites film and television texts together as objects of study despite the considerable overlap between these industries in Denmark (Redvall,

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“Dogmas for Television Drama” 231; “Writing and Producing Television Drama” 72–74). It is widely acknowledged that media fictions provide vital spaces for the cultivation of belonging and a sense of a shared identity, and this is perhaps even more pertinent in countries such as Denmark, where media production is premised on state funding, public service values and universal, democratic access (see Bondebjerg et al.; Bondebjerg and Redvall, “Mediated Cultural Encounters”; Crusafon; Everett; Hjort and MacKenzie, “Introduction”; Hjort and Petrie, “Introduction”; Nestingen; Redvall, “Writing and Producing Television Drama”; Shriver-­ Rice, “Inclusion in New Danish Cinema”). The fact that on-screen images very effectively normalise or vindicate some characteristics and behaviours, and ostracise others, means that greater attention needs to be paid to the way that media fictions interact with state governance and cultural norms. Over the last decade, research into the production, distribution and reception of European television drama series has attracted considerable regional funding, and Denmark, in particular, has proven to be an appealing case study. The small nation’s narrative fiction is intriguing to scholars interested in the logistics of transnational co-productions or in the salience of public service broadcasting in the era of video streaming-on-demand. Equally, the incredible international appeal of media content featuring the linguistically marginal language of Danish—spoken by approximately six million people worldwide—is a source of wonder for scholars and journalists alike, many of whom deploy the term “Nordic noir” to describe the brooding, atmospheric fiction produced in (and around) the Nordic region (Agger, “Transnationality in Nordic Noir” 88). In film scholarship, practitioner studies of prolific directors such as Susanne Bier or Lars von Trier continue to manifest in monographs and journal articles, though these have declined in quantity since Nordic noir replaced Dogme 95 as Denmark’s primary aesthetic brand. Altogether less common is the examination of representational trends and motifs within and between genres of Danish fiction, which, I argue, is vitally important if scholars, audiences and funding bodies are to appreciate the value of screen fiction in shaping, communicating and challenging shared cultural narratives and ideologies. This book identifies and examines a trope that I have observed across styles, genres and mediums of Danish screen fiction: that of maternal shame, inadequacy and social isolation. Despite the overwhelming number of absent, ashamed or transgressive mother characters in Danish films and television dramas, no comprehensive study of these characters exists, to date, in English. State-supported narratives produce and contribute to

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a cultural discourse that informs and perpetuates gendered norms, stereotypes and standards, and for this reason they deserve scrutiny. Of equal significance, though, is the guiding policy and institutionalised practice surrounding both the Danish screen fiction industries and civil society, which can provide insight into the conditions for, and attitudes towards, women. This research unites two areas that have historically been analysed separately in research on Denmark: the social policy that impacts the day-­ to-­day existence of civilians and their relationship to the government and the cultural policy that informs the representation of this social reality on-­ screen. Cultural policy is, I believe, inextricable from the social policies that inform the space in which citizens interact and participate on a daily basis. The political narrative of gender equality, democracy and universal social support that permeates Danish state policy is often undermined in popular films and television dramas, wherein working mother characters are problematised and the welfare system’s integrity is challenged. The Danish film and television case studies in the following chapters are examined through the lens of specific government and industry policies, and policy rhetoric in general, that impact both screen production and social life. In the chosen cases, the welfare state is presented as unable to support single mothers and transgressive women, who are, in turn, depicted as compromised by their emotions or morals. The framing of femininity, motherhood and citizenship in many contemporary Danish fictional texts points to a latent anxiety about the welfare state’s institutionalisation of caregiving and presents absent mothers as an indirect cause of crime, trauma or social unrest. Across all of the texts discussed herein, devoted motherhood is associated with a comfortable and stable home, and equally, instability and discord arise when motherhood is not embodied in culturally acceptable ways. This book combines content analysis of fictional texts with discourse analysis of relevant policy documents from Denmark and the regional organisations of which it is a member, alongside first-hand interview material with Danish industry professionals. The opening chapters trace the pivotal moments in media and welfare state history to unite the two overlapping spheres of welfare state social policy and media imagery. In the subsequent chapters, I interrogate two films that received funding from the Danish Film Institute (DFI)—En Kærlighedshistorie (Kira’s Reason: A Love Story) (Madsen 2001) and Nymphomaniac, Director’s Cut (von Trier 2014)—and four television dramas produced by Denmark’s public service

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providers—Anna Pihl (Price 2006–2008), Forbrydelsen (The Killing) (Sveistrup 2007–2012), Borgen (Price 2010–present) and Arvingerne (The Legacy) (Ilsøe 2014–2017). Both film cases won Best Picture in their respective years at the Danish Robert Awards; through online streaming platforms and international acquisition, they are reasonably accessible to foreign audiences, having appeared in Australia on platforms such as Netflix and SBS OnDemand. The television series were funded by the state-owned television networks DR and TV2; they all attracted significant ratings in their original broadcast slots and have been acquired by various international distributors. Forbrydelsen and Borgen remain popular objects of academic criticism, while Nymphomaniac and Arvingerne have featured in some scholarship; En Kærlighedshistorie and Anna Pihl have attracted minimal academic attention. In addition to their unique commentary, each text speaks to a major trend in Danish screen fiction: Dogme 95, Scandinavian “blue” erotic film, the television crime drama and the television family drama, respectively. These narratives have several features in common: absent mothers are implicated in the breakdown of the family and its subsequent vulnerability; damage inflicted in childhood is associated with transgressive or dysfunctional behaviour in adulthood; and the focus on individual characters is contextualised in the broader landscape of a welfare state climate that encourages participation in particular accepted ways. The central mother characters in all of the cases, to a greater or lesser extent, manifest guilt and shame as the result of internalised social pressure to embody motherhood (or the possibility of motherhood) in a culturally appropriate way. For some, this transgression overlaps with a psychological disorder; for others, they find a way out of their shame by becoming extremely successful in their careers, as if to justify their emotional or physical absence from their children. Through the form of popular cultural objects, these texts address the contemporary concerns of the Danish welfare state’s considerable intervention into and politicisation of the familial space and citizen autonomy. That these female characters’ personal (and often professional) lives are bound up in their status as mothers and caregivers suggests that even the egalitarian Danish welfare state system has not negated the persistent ideological view of women as inherently maternal. The women in these texts might best be understood as ambivalent mothers rather than bad mothers—as they are sometimes cast—based on Rozsika Parker’s work on maternal ambivalence as the co-existence of feelings of love and hate towards one’s child. None of the mothers studied

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herein appear to hate their children, as such, but they do struggle with conflicting responses to child-rearing; they are simultaneously aware of their obligation to provide care, yet are intellectually or emotionally opposed to doing so. As Parker contends, though, “ambivalence itself is emphatically not the problem: the issue is how a mother manages the guilt and anxiety ambivalence provokes” (6; emphasis added). How mothers “manage” the expectations and pressures arising from cultural norms and political mandates—and the manifestation of shame in response to perceived inadequacy—is of primary importance to policy developers, social justice movements and citizens alike. By considering shame as a response to social and cultural standards and norms we can better understand how transgression, failure and value are conceptualised in the given context. My discussion of shame throughout the book is shaped by Elspeth Probyn’s work in Blush: Faces of Shame and Brené Brown’s rumination on this affect, while conceptualisations of “good motherhood” in a Western democratic context are largely informed by the work of Élisabeth Badinter, Rozsika Parker and Ann Taylor Allen. Despite the many ideological and political similarities across the Nordic region, and particularly between the Scandinavian nations, Danish storytelling differs from the Swedish and Norwegian approach, not least because each public broadcaster and national film institute has its own unique history. Denmark’s state broadcaster, DR, differs from the Norwegian national broadcaster, Norsk Rikskringkasting (NRK), and the Swedish national broadcaster, Sveriges Television (SVT), in that DR produces all of its drama in-house, consolidating a consistent series duration (10 × 60′) and almost exclusively producing original scripts over adaptations (Bondebjerg and Redvall, “A Small Region” 102; Hartmann et al. 19). In general, the narratives produced by each country reflect some of their cultural nuances (Forshaw 162; Langkjær, “Storytelling Schemes” 19; Sanandaji 45; J. Stevenson “Scandinavian Blue” 10). As a report produced by the DFI for the Danish Ministry of Culture in 2010 states, “Danish films do not cater to an international mainstream taste, but get their success by being Danish” (in Bondebjerg, “Regional and Global Dimensions” 26). The small nation’s film tradition tends towards “research-based film-making that favours realism over fantasy, authenticity over generic formulae, and a probing engagement with contemporary social issues over purely hedonic rewards” (Hjort, “Living with Diversity” 15), a description that could equally refer to Danish television drama. As Eva Novrup Redvall has discussed extensively, the personnel “crossover”

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within film and television production has benefitted both industries, producing more professional opportunities and, subsequently, higher production standards (Redvall, “Dogmas for Television Drama” 231; “Writing and Producing Television Drama” 72–74). She notes that “from DR’s perspective, the involvement of personnel from the film industry has also given their series an international ‘look’, which has helped benefit their export potential” (“Dogmas for Television Drama” 231). The sudden international appeal of a so-called Nordic aesthetic is discussed by Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen in his article “Nordic Noir in the UK” and Ben Pitcher in Consuming Race; Pitcher suggests that content from the Nordic region is enticing because “it provides a discourse of consumption that is secure in its whiteness” (64). The resulting narratives are, as Stougaard-Nielsen asserts, “accessibly different” (“Nordic Noir in the UK” 5; cf. Bondebjerg et  al. 25–26; Hermes 62; Jensen and Jacobsen “The ‘Three-Leaf Clover’” 433; McElroy et al. 181–182). Indeed, Nordic fiction is often branded, at least in anglophone contexts, as a product that provides a unique insight into a relatively homogeneous foreign culture (Agger, “The Development of Transnationality” 88; Agger, “Urban topographies” 236; Jensen, Nielsen and Waade 94; Jensen and Waade 261; Lehtisalo 88; Ward 253–254). Yet, despite consistently high ratings in the World Happiness Report (Helliwell et al. 20) and ranking highly in studies of quality of life and gender equality (European Commission, “Report on Equality”; “The Global Gender Gap Report”; Nordic Council of Ministers), Denmark continues to face criticism over its integration of asylum seekers and its regressive immigration policies (see Hervik “The Annoying Difference”; Sedgwick; Wren). Danish anthropologist Peter Hervik, author of The Annoying Difference: The Emergence of Danish Neonationalism, Neoracism, and Populism in the Post-1989 World, analyses the populist debate surrounding immigration and multiculturalism in Denmark, often citing Dansk Folkeparti, or the Danish People’s Party (DPP), as a dominant political voice in the disapprobation of immigrants (“Ending Tolerance” 212; “The Annoying Difference” 78). British historian Mark Sedgwick also cites the DPP as a source of prejudiced rhetoric, further noting that a centre-right government administration in Denmark between 2001 and 2011 was behind “some of Europe’s toughest laws against any further immigration” (210). Sedgwick argues that, on account of Denmark’s multi-party government system, the DPP gained more traction than it might have in a different system (210; cf. Wren 153). Denmark’s foreign policy is often visible

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on-­screen, in media representations of immigrants and racial minorities that are “dominated by stereotypes” (Andreassen 164) and which report “very nationalistic and racist perspective(s)” (Wren 156). Karen Wren explains how “cultural racism” in Denmark is not as overt or visible as in other contexts but is framed “within predominant discourses of a highly progressive welfare state, and in a country where relative sexual equality allows the demonization of other ‘backward’ cultures in their midst which are perceived to oppress their women” (147). Lisa Ann Richey has similarly argued that a “donor” identity allows Denmark to perceive foreign Others as “receivers” in need of aid—an attitude that might be dubbed exceptionalism. The state’s feminist social policy becomes embedded in foreign policy to the extent that Denmark feels justified in imposing its own moral and political values on culturally disparate groups that appear to lack the “progressive” approach to gender equality exemplified by the Nordic nations (Richey 200–201). Not all of my cases make visible the fraught cultural landscape, but even the absence of political debates around race and cultural Otherness is, in itself, notable: that racial difference is invisible in these texts makes the focus on maternal conflict and ambivalence all the more salient. In recent years there has been a push for visible diversity and equal opportunity in film and television production across Europe, mandated by policies implemented by the European Union (EU) and European Commission (EC) as well as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). In 2015, UNESCO released the “Summary Report on the Reshaping of Cultural Policies”, which emphasised the importance of media systems in creating platforms for self-­ expression and identity creation: “Public service media can be crucial enablers and drivers of the diversity of cultural expressions—as producers, commissioners, distributors, disseminators and mediators of a vibrant array of high-quality cultural content whatever the means and technologies used” (9). As a member of the EU, Denmark, through the Ministry of Culture, explicitly supports the production of socially relevant and edifying fiction, and since 2014, the DFI has investigated the barriers that might prevent socially marginalised people from engaging in screen industry professions. While this book does not have the scope to scrutinise the off-screen dilemma of a lack of diversity in media professions, the resources dedicated to the DFI’s research into structural and systemic barriers speak to key concerns discussed in each chapter—namely, the recognition of narrative media’s role in constructing a space for self and collective expression

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and representation, as well as the historical underrepresentation of the female voice. Despite increased diversity measures from the DFI, discussed further in Chap. 3, and the fertile environment for edgy, low-budget cinema that confronts social norms aided by the artistic values of the National Film School of Denmark (NFSD), the overwhelming majority of main characters in Danish film and television are white-skinned, “ethnic” Danes, who are not problematised by their linguistic, religious or racial difference (Hjort, “Small Nation, Global Cinema” 237–238). Indeed, the characters analysed in my case studies are white and middle class, in part because this is the female demographic most frequently pictured in contemporary Danish films and television dramas; the scope of my study of Danish women on-screen is limited in this respect. While these six case studies cannot be used to make truly conclusive claims about the current and/or future state of Danish screen fiction, the chosen texts are in conversation with aesthetic traditions, social movements and shared cultural narratives. This book marks a starting point for further conversations about the depiction of mothers throughout Danish fiction and the intersection of gender with sexuality, race and culture. This research is interdisciplinary, combining thematic analysis and empiricism with theory from media studies, cultural studies, political science and sociology. Each chapter takes the gendered nature of citizenship and cultural belonging as a point of departure in analysing the representation of femininity and motherhood on-screen. The research draws from the many edited volumes on Danish and European film and television, including European Cinema and Television: Cultural Policy and Everyday Life, European Film and Television Co-Production: Policy and Practice, Purity and Provocation and A Companion to Nordic Cinema, as well as from cross-disciplinary studies such as Andrew Nestingen’s Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia and Syvertsen et  al.’s The Media Welfare State. The extensive research on Danish media and cultural policy, and the European political and cultural systems in which Denmark participates, provides an incredible valuable foundation for my inquiry into the depiction of motherhood in Danish fiction. This study, I contend, sheds light on the concerns occupying the nation’s storytellers, who creatively respond to industrial constraints and shared cultural narratives. Arnlaug Leira has written that “an investigation of welfare state motherhood also sheds light on the welfare state approach to women more generally” (“Welfare States and Working Mothers” 3), while Walters and Harrison argue that “surely

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a nation’s deep angst over continuing struggles for gender equity can in part be seen through the frenzied and fraught representations of motherhood” (38). This book builds on these notions, asking why images of transgressive women and problematic mothers work their way into so many contemporary Danish stories. The empirical, qualitative analysis of content is supported by semi-­ structured interviews in English with Danish industry practitioners, who provide expert testimony to shape my argument and bolster my exposition. Between 2018 and 2019 I conducted in-person interviews with Katrine Vogelsang, Head of Fiction at TV2; Vinca Wiedemann, former principal of the Danish National Film School; Stine Stengade, screen and stage actress; and Kirsten Barslund, a project manager at the DFI, and conducted a Skype interview with Steen Bille, former film commissioner at the DFI.2 A follow-up interview with Vogelsang occurred in 2021, via email. The use of first-hand interview material is not unusual in research on Danish media as the industry is unusually accessible and transparent, boasting a “flat hierarchy” (Wiedemann, Vinca. Personal correspondence. 20 June 2018), though it often serves to illuminate production methods and industry culture. In many instances, the scholarly work avoids a discussion of the interview subjects as members of Danish society with their own preferences and opinions as viewers of media content. Gabriele Griffin notes that mixed-method research has become far more common across academia, with many more scholars now “employing interviewing as part of their methodological repertoire, for instance in humanities contexts where in the past they might have focussed exclusively on close textual analysis” (1). There are myriad reasons for this methodological shift, including the recognition of cross-disciplinary research as vital to broadening the scope and impact of the academy and the desire to foreground personal voices and testimonies in scholarly work. As Maureen McHugh asserts, one goal of feminist research is to give a voice to women and other marginalised groups rather than simply studying them as objects of inquiry: “The interview, and analysis, is not about discovering ‘truths’ but about identifying dominant and marginalized discourses” (150–151). As an Australian researcher with a limited comprehension of the Danish language, my interviews fulfilled multiple functions, including enhancing my analysis of the texts and their context with a 2  For the sake of comprehension, hesitations marked by words such as “er” or “um” have been omitted, and where phrasing may be unclear, clarification is provided in square brackets.

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cross-section of industry perspectives on media funding, production and governance. These interactions also demonstrated the relative transparency and openness of Danish industry professionals and presented individual perspectives on the themes and issues raised in this study. Speaking with Danish women, in particular, enabled me to locate a female voice in this milieu by prompting the interviewees to reflect upon their careers and creative projects through the lens of feminism and maternalism. The presence of women in positions of authority and management, such as leading the NFSD or a department of a major television network, could be construed as evidence of the successful integration of feminist ideology. Similarly, the high frequency of female lead characters in Danish films and television dramas has broadened possibilities for female actors and for audiences whose engagement with screen fiction constitutes a space for identification and participation. Yet, the picture that is likely to come to mind when one imagines a Scandinavian female protagonist is an attractive but somewhat masculine investigator who is equal parts obsessive and brilliant—no doubt, some combination of Sarah Lund, Saga Norén, Dicte Svendsen and Lisbeth Salander—lifted straight from the crime genre. Though the renowned works and subsequent adaptations of prolific Swedish male writers Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell have become metonyms of Nordic crime fiction, scholars have recently cast attention to Scandinavian women writers such as Anne Holt, Liza Marklund, Elsebeth Egholm and Camilla Läckberg, paying particular attention to their purportedly feminist or postfeminist take on crime writing (Alacovska 380; Kärrholm 135; Pâquet 196; Schmidt 425). Nete Schmidt and Ana Alacovska have both written about the femikrimi, or the feminist crime novel, which, according to Alacovska, “is crime fiction with an explicit feminist agenda” (386). Schmidt asserts that these “new female crime writers do not want to be placed in the context of ‘old feminism’” with its distinctly political aims (428). She suggests that their characters “typically face demands that bring out their inherent guilt feelings”, such as balancing being professionally successful, preserving family stability and, all the while, maintaining some degree of sexual attractiveness (431). Accordingly, Schmidt reads characters such as Marklund’s Annika Bengtzon and Egholm’s Dicte Svendsen as postfeminist—a claim supported by Stougaard-Nielsen who writes that the plots of female-centred crime fiction “often centre on [the protagonists’] (in)abilities to juggle their private lives as wives and mothers with professional ambitions in still male-dominated professions” (“Deviant Detectives” 17).

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Schmidt also includes the quite disparate character of Detective Inspector Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl) from Forbrydelsen in this category of postfeminist detectives, a judgement that I contest in Chap. 5. I further engage with the representation of the defiant working mother in Chap. 6 in the analysis of Borgen, suggesting that Schmidt’s denunciation of “old feminism” in favour of a new, postfeminist rhetoric is, in fact, not a defining feature of the contemporary Danish cultural landscape. Tasker and Negra define a postfeminist context as one where “educational and professional opportunities for women and girls; freedom of choice with respect to work, domesticity, and parenting; and physical and particularly sexual empowerment” are highlighted (2). Postfeminism as a lens through which to read fiction—and particularly crime fiction as a “masculine genre” (Alacovska 386)—is more often deployed by writers in relation to US or UK narratives: Charlotte Brunsdon writes of the female detective’s relationship with professionalism, sexuality and motherhood in UK police procedurals (see “Identity in Feminist Television Criticism”; “Television Crime Series”); Rebecca Feasey examines US television fiction as well as reality television and advertising (see “Absent, Ineffectual and Intoxicated Mothers”; “The ‘Charmed’ Audience”; “From Soap Opera to Reality Programming”); and Sue Turnbull has addressed the Australian context, particularly in relation to crime dramas (see “‘A Suitable Job for a Woman’”; “The TV Crime Drama”). A Scandinavian postfeminist context is referred to explicitly by Stougaard-Nielsen (“Deviant Detectives” 17) and Schmidt (426) and alluded to in the work of Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, who writes on “feminist” crime dramas, such as Sweden’s Anna Holt (Persson and Guillou 1996–1999) and Höök (Rundquist et  al. 2007–2008). The character of Anna Holt (Petra Nielsen), Povlsen proclaims, “is the (too) perfect mother who enjoys a seamless relationship between her professional life and her personal life as a single mother”, a description that is echoed in countless postfeminist readings of contemporary fiction (94). Sara Kärrholm comments on the producers of the work rather than their characterisations, suggesting that glamorised and self-­ promoting Swedish writers such as Läckberg and Marklund operate in a postfeminist milieu marked by consumerism, sexualisation and female entrepreneurship, despite Sweden’s claim to have the first feminist government in history (142; Chacińska 99). Generally speaking, though, the Scandinavian context—in fiction and scholarship—is rarely framed through postfeminism, and it is not a framework that I intend to deploy in my analysis. I do acknowledge scholarship

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on postfeminism throughout, because the themes and images I scrutinise have been described as postfeminist by some scholars and it would be remiss to ignore this. However, as Tasker and Negra argue, “the transition to a postfeminist culture involves an evident erasure of feminist politics from the popular, even as aspects of feminism seem to be incorporated within that culture”, and as the following chapters expound, the conversation and debate around feminism and gender equality persists in both Danish media representation and in the political realm (5). The postfeminist discourse is not particularly strong in Denmark and, thus, to impose this capitalist, neoliberal concept onto a social democracy is, I believe, not entirely appropriate. The female characters upon whom I focus are positioned by their creators as citizens more than consumers, negotiating their rights and responsibilities in the social democratic welfare state. In addition, the non-commercial (or semi-commercial in the case of TV2’s Anna Pihl) state-supported industrial context in which the texts were produced warrants analysis from the perspective of policy and governance rather than just from a popular culture or audience reception vantage point. While it is, I believe, generative to conduct comparative analyses of disparate sociopolitical contexts to better understand systems of governance and cultural phenomena, some studies uncritically apply capitalist logic to the Nordic states. For example, Nima Sanandaji’s 2016 book The Nordic Gender Equality Paradox centres its argument around the fact that “It is no coincidence that women who have successful careers tend to either take short parental leaves, or plan it well to fit in with their careers” (107), suggesting that motherhood, or the prospect of future motherhood, is damaging to women’s capacity to achieve career success. His study largely subscribes to the notion that Nordic women aspire to high-­ level management and leadership roles, as if this is an unequivocal measure of success. As Smith and Smith point out, though, “An important question is whether more women actually want to enter the executive boards” (39). Rather than transpose the values of neoliberal systems like those in the US, UK and France onto the Danish social democratic welfare states, I am concerned more with identifying the extent to which the female characters studied herein are pictured as being able to locate a sense of belonging and exercise their citizenship rights. Much of the most in-depth theorisation on the Scandinavian political model, in general, and the Danish welfare state, in particular, is from several years ago but forms a robust academic foundation upon which to build my contemporary study. A prominent figure in the 1980s was

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Norwegian political scientist Helga Hernes, who theorised around the potential for states to be “woman-friendly”, while more recent work by Birte Siim, Arnlaug Leira, Anette Borchorst and Bente Rosenbeck has ensured that scholarship on Danish state feminism remains current. This research is mostly conducted within the disciplines of political science and sociology, though numerous resources and studies have been commissioned by supranational and intergovernmental bodies such as the EC and Nordic Council of Ministers, which provide valuable quantitative data on gender equality and standard of living across the European states. In Chap. 2, I provide an overview and analysis of the existing research on Danish and European social policy and demonstrate the salience and impact of strategies, legislation and binding agreements between the Danish state and its citizens. This chapter traces the social and political conditions and policies that have shaped the current landscape for women, and particularly mothers, in Denmark, examining how the division of labour and the gendered nature of citizenship have developed. Here, I introduce the notion of cultural citizenship as an alternative way of conceiving citizen rights and responsibilities. Following this study of the Danish sociopolitical landscape and women’s rights in Chap. 2, I shift focus to the media industry and the cultural climate surrounding it, highlighting pivotal moments in film and television history that have shaped contemporary popular cultural narratives and women’s representation in media fiction. Chapter 3 traces Danish cultural policy throughout the twentieth century to its culmination in a prosperous and generative creative industrial climate in the late 2010s to demonstrate that the policies and principles relating to film and television production in Denmark have an undeniable impact on trends in narrative and representation, which, in turn, influence public discourse. This chapter argues that the consistent rendering of female characters as problematic mothers is inextricably connected to industrial and narrative traditions but also to the policies that governs women’s rights and responsibilities in the welfare state. Taken together, the next two chapters mark out the factors and circumstances that have contributed to the images of struggling, compromised (often working) mothers and, by extension, the prevalent framing of children as the innocent victims of societal injustice in contemporary Danish screen fiction, which I further dissect in the case studies later in the book. Building upon the exposition of the Danish political and creative landscapes, Chap. 4 introduces the film cases: En Kærlighedshistorie and

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Nymphomaniac. These films act as anchors for the discussion of definitive Danish film movements, but more importantly, they tell the stories of women whose experience of motherhood brings internal conflict which manifests as self-destructive or obsessive behaviour and an invalidation of the self. The characters at the centre of these narratives are Kira (Stine Stengade), a young, mentally ill mother, and Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg/ Stacey Martin), a sexually defiant woman with an estranged child. En Kærlighedshistorie was created in accordance with the Dogme 95 Vow of Chastity, while Nymphomaniac engages in a dialogue not only with von Trier’s previous works but with the Scandinavian blue erotic cinema emerging in the 1950s and 1960s. In many Scandinavian blue films, the eroticised female lead has unrestricted sexual escapades, often against a backdrop of a rural idyll contrasted with the chaotic urbanism from which she tries to escape. In speaking to a recognisable filmic narrative tradition of imagining sexually liberated women as necessarily transgressive, this chapter references the legacy of Scandinavian playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, who created naturalistic, realist plays that often scrutinised the plight of a woman stifled by class and marriage constraints. More than a century later, Danish storytellers continue to stage the dilemma of the woman who struggles to find meaning in the domestic space to which she is relegated but harbours shame on account of her internal conflict between desire and responsibility. Cursory analysis of recent Danish television dramas indicates that, like film, the narratives are frequently centred around unresolved familial disputes, moral dilemmas related to a sense of duty, and the social inheritance of inadequate parenting, in which the mother is often implicated. Chapters 5 and 6 illustrate these motifs in selected case studies of contemporary Danish drama series. The transgressive mother manifests in Chap. 5’s television cases as the working mother police officer, who is the site of contestation over the decision to prioritise demanding investigations over maternal care responsibilities. This chapter examines contrasting examples of the police officer/mother character in TV2’s locally popular Anna Pihl and DR’s iconic Forbrydelsen—two temporally overlapping crime series that were both received exceptionally well by the Danish public and which present almost completely opposite trajectories for the respective protagonists. Though there is little academic criticism on Anna Pihl, a substantial body of work on Forbrydelsen already exists, and I justify my focus on the latter by picking up on a theme that is regularly overlooked in its analysis: namely, the motif of children as victims of greed and exploitation.

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Chapter 5 utilises Carole Pateman’s work on citizenship, justice and the social/sexual contract, highlighting the persistent relevance of her challenge to the liberalist doctrine of separate spheres that marginalised women to a “private”, domestic existence (“The Disorder of Women” 4; “The Sexual Contract” 2). Despite the social democratic context in which these Danish crime dramas are set, there is the residual trace of liberalism, though both cases challenge this doctrine by positioning the female protagonists as the only characters capable of administering justice. It is her relationship to motherhood that distinguishes Forbrydelsen’s Sarah Lund from her counterpart Anna Pihl (Charlotte Munck): Anna is presented as a “good mother” because she embodies devoted, sacrificial materialism, while Lund is often treated in academic commentary as a “bad mother” because of her obsessive work habits and emotional coldness (Povlsen 97). These characters are respectively rewarded and punished on account of their maternal behaviour and work practices. In many Scandinavian crime narratives, the welfare states’ perceived fragility is implicated in the desperate and depraved actions of the perpetrators (K.  Bergman 292–293; Nestingen 79; Stougaard-Nielsen “Scandinavian Crime Fiction” 116; Wind Meyhoff 64; cf. Enli et al. 14; Nordlund 31; Syvertsen et al. 10). Thus, emerging from a tradition of political, didactic crime fiction, Anna Pihl and Forbrydelsen are intriguing cultural artefacts that reveal much about the modern tension between what is acceptable and what is illicit. Chapter 6 focuses on television series that reflect an investment by the national broadcaster, DR, in stories about the conflicts that the modern Danish family faces. Both Borgen and Arvingerne are family dramas where fractured relations and absent parents characterise the domestic landscape. In these series, the pervasive topics of belonging, citizenship and transgression, again, frame the way that the female characters interact with their surroundings. Borgen, as a hybrid of the family drama and political drama, is rich with political and cultural commentary and critique and explicitly depicts the gendered stigma directed at women who position themselves as public figures. The central female characters—Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and reporter Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen)—are mothers who are separated from the fathers of their children and face criticism for the choices they make in their careers and family lives; such criticism is not levelled at their male counterparts. The threat that an autonomous female sexuality poses, discussed in previous chapters, arises again in Borgen, where the provision of maternal care is problematised by personal, professional or sexual ambitions.

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A rather different conflict is at the heart of Arvingerne: here, the death of the matriarch, Veronika Grønnegaard (Kirsten Olesen), is the catalyst for an ongoing debate of birthright and what it means to belong in a fragmented family. My reading of Arvingerne, however, turns attention to Isa (Josephine Park), a young mother with mental health problems who is the only female character to give birth during the series. Isa retreats from her environment on account of the shame she harbours for being unable to fulfil her maternal role adequately—a feeling that is bolstered by the dysfunctional Grønnegaard siblings’ projection of “good” parenting informed by their conflicted relationship with their late mother. Isa’s manifestation of shame is more blatant than Birgitte’s: the latter retreats from the political sphere at the end of Borgen season two but overcomes her conflict through her meaningful professional work. More akin to En Kærlighedshistorie’s Kira, Isa’s struggle inhibits her ability to work or pursue motherhood, and she becomes a forgotten character in the series and in its commentary. The cases in Chap. 6 complicate the boundary between public and private caregiving and demonstrate the characters’ salient preoccupation with “good” parenting, although it is ultimately the mother’s role that is scrutinised and problematised. In both series, “the family” can be interpreted as an extended metaphor for the welfare state, conceptualised as dynamic, conflicted and an unfinished, ongoing project. These dramas subscribe to and reproduce an open-endedness that is central to the concept of belonging: they interrogate the explicit and latent criteria for participation in spaces governed by professional ethics, social rules and moral standards. This chapter examines the discourse of belonging and builds on the discussion of cultural citizenship from previous sections, engaging with the work of Nira Yuval-Davis and Joke Hermes, as well as the rhetoric surrounding female politicians in Western democracies. In a society that deeply values democratic rights and equality of opportunity, the idea of a citizen having their ability to participate impeded is highly relevant. Each chapter approaches the above-mentioned texts and their context from a feminist cultural studies angle, advocating for more critical academic attention to the specific qualities and trajectories of female characters in public service media and state-supported film in Denmark. As a final caveat, I have chosen to use the original Danish titles for film, television and literature texts, with a translation in English where the title appears for the first time in a chapter. This is to avoid ambiguity, as several texts have English-language remakes (for example, The Killing and The

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Bridge), but also to retain the integrity of the original title, as many translations deviate considerably from the original meaning (for example, Rejseholdet/Unit One). Reports and other documents that appear in English but which have Danish titles are referred to in both languages in the first instance and in English in each subsequent instance, to reflect the language used in the document that I accessed and how the title appears in the bibliography.

CHAPTER 2

Gender and Motherhood in Danish Social Policy

The Danish welfare state, typified by its universal breadwinner model and interventionist politics, is widely regarded as an exemplar model for facilitating women’s employment, gender equality and broad-reaching social support for all its citizens (see Abrahamson 399–400; Brodmann, Esping-­ Andersen and Güell 600; Leira “Childcare in Scandinavia” 87; Leira “Parenthood Change and Policy Reform” 27; Mulinari et al. 35; Neergaard and Thrane 88; Polakow 246; Richey 183; Stoltz 426; Weckström 5; Wren 146). This Scandinavian model is premised on equality of opportunity (Ellingsæter and Leira 7) and defines caregiving as a responsibility of the state, relocating childcare from the home into the public domain through universal, government-subsidised childcare (Borchorst, “Danish Child Care Policy” 543; Neergaard and Thrane 91). The ideology that underpins contemporary Danish society, including freedom of expression and collective responsibility, informs and is visible in state-supported film projects and public service broadcasting. The development of the film and television industries in Denmark has undoubtedly been influenced by the welfare state agenda of promoting equal access, equal opportunity and a political dialogue between citizens: as Birte Siim writes, “social equality, democracy, and gender equality are crucial elements in the country’s sense of national belonging” (“Feminist Challenges”, 197). In order to justify its high public cost, state-funded storytelling in Denmark is obligated to engage with issues of wide social relevance. In recent decades, the binding, periodically revised Media Agreements © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Hallsworth, Danish Mothers On-Screen, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88579-3_2

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between the industry, government and society have served to determine the public service obligations of media outlets. The national broadcaster, DR (formerly Danmarks Radio), provides the majority of the country’s public service content through the television and web content it produces. Prior to the advent of television, though, it was film that was connected to the development of national identity and the communication of cultural values. C. Claire Thomson points out that, as early as the 1930s, Danish society recognised the need for state intervention into cultural production (82). In 1932, Dansk Kulturfilm (literally, “Danish culture-film”) was established with the purpose of creating edifying content to educate and inform the public and to mitigate the effects of rising Nazism just across the border in Germany (Thomson 82). These kulturfilm were early examples of government-funded public service media; they were non-fiction shorts produced to be screened in educational settings and prior to features in theatres (L.R. Larsen). Although Dansk Kulturfilm was inspired by the success of German propaganda films of the period (Nørrestad), “the kulturfilm in Denmark served to propagate and even shape the values of the Welfare State, rather than National Socialism” (Thomson 86). As Kim Toft Hansen notes, Denmark’s 1933 Cinema Act stipulates that licensees have a responsibility to screen “the culturally and artistically most valuable film” (168). Dansk Kulturfilm produced around 400 short films on a vast range of topics before, in the 1960s, radical changes to technology and across society at large rendered the organisation redundant (Thomson 79). It was during this period that Danmarks Radio, as it was known then, began broadcasting widely on television, causing a decline in cinema admissions and the subsequent closure of several theatres (J.  Stevenson, “Dogma Uncut” 165). Jack Stevenson writes: This crisis gave occasion for a new debate on Danish film and culture in general, and a belief took hold among politicians and opinion-makers that there should be more diversity in Danish cinema. This coincided with the new thinking that film was art, not just mindless entertainment […] it was quite clear that without financial support, artistic but commercially marginal films would never be made. (165)

In 1964, the Danish Ministry of Culture was established, solidifying the move into a new era of centralised, arm’s-length media regulation and a renewed commitment to film production.

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In 1966, the National Film School was established in Copenhagen. In the same year, the contraceptive pill was introduced in Denmark—a major step in facilitating women’s sexual autonomy. While superficially there may not be anything to link the advent of women’s contraception with the formation of the National Film School, this period in time is one where cultural liberalism coincided with immense political and structural shifts and revisions. The Danish National Film School was the second in the Nordic region, after Sweden’s, and, Astrid Söderbergh Widding explains, was grounded in the ideological notion that the state ought to support and enable film production (106–107). A high-quality training institution was essential if Denmark was to produce accomplished films locally. Widding states: The National Film School was from the outset placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, and has repeatedly defended itself against all attempts to move it to the Ministry of Education, arguing that such changes might be ‘threatening [to] its status as an elite, small-scale, conservatoire-­style institution devoted to art’ (Hjort 2013a, 130). (107)

Indeed, the National Film School still falls within the portfolio of the Ministry of Culture rather than the Ministry of Education, demonstrating Denmark’s treatment of creative and artistic ventures as having serious cultural capital, and the desire for an integrated approach to film education and production, managed by one ministry. By 1967, the University of Copenhagen had introduced film studies into its curriculum in response to the idea that if filmmaking was to be treated an art form it required specialised skills that must be cultivated (J. Stevenson, “Dogme Uncut” 160; cf. Kääpä 152; Widding 106). In the pivotal year of 1968, student protests began at the campus and throughout Denmark, similar to what was occurring across the world from Prague to Paris to the US. The Danish protests left a lasting imprint on the country’s culture, dismantling the social hierarchy and sowing the seeds of egalitarianism (Jørgensen 198). Although this was an era of relative emancipation for women and other marginalised demographics across much of Europe, the displacement, persecution and loss caused by the Second World War lingered. The institutionalisation of the arts, specifically film production, provided a vital creative pathway through which to express the personal and cultural stories that would come to define this conflicted period of history and revolutionise film production going forward. Cinema

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was a “serious” medium, and European cinema, in particular, came to be associated with artistry and integrity, as distinct from Hollywood’s commercial output (Bondebjerg and Redvall, “A Small Region” 79; Norðfjörð 44; O’Reagan 34). The conflicts of a given period are always more or less visible in formal and material features of narrative fiction and media production. Of central importance to Denmark’s film history was legalisation of pornography in the late 1960s; specifically, the law forbidding obscenity was repealed in 1969 (Gade 23; J.  Stevenson “Scandinavian Blue” 4). Justice Minister Knud Thestrup helmed the decision to extend the 1967 ban on censorship of the written word to images as well, declaring pornography “an aesthetic and not an ethical issue” into which the state had no right to intervene (J.  Stevenson, “Scandinavian Blue” 123). Rune Gade writes that, following this landmark decision, “For two or three years Denmark was the global centre of porn production, delivering the goods worldwide” (24), though Sweden, too, was at the forefront of the erotic cinema movement. Following in Denmark’s footsteps, and after the release of several provocative films by the acclaimed directors Ingmar Bergman and Vilgot Sjöman, Sweden legalised pornography in 1971 (Larsson, “Ingmar Bergman, Swedish Sexploitation” 52). The Danish and Swedish films of the 1960s channelled the spirit of the time, not just in regard to sexual deviance (or liberation, depending on one’s perspective) but by weaving erotic exploration into stories about moral vice, waning religious devotion and a sense of rootlessness in citizens. Across Denmark and Sweden, in general, screen images of women became far more titillating and occasionally explicitly pornographic in keeping with the sexual liberation that many Western nations were experiencing. Some of the more critically acclaimed Danish erotic films, such as Weekend (Rifbjerg 1962) and Gade Uden Ende (Street Without End) (Vemmer 1963), are, however, quite prosaic by contemporary standards, grappling with the social problems of working- and middle-class Danes and omitting the graphic depictions for which the region’s cinema was often associated, particularly by American audiences. Both were distributed internationally and, notwithstanding some critique for being dull, were widely regarded as intelligent and important films (J.  Stevenson, “Scandinavian Blue” 30). As Stevenson notes, “It appeared that going to the movies to think and feel and be confronted by something was going back in style” (J. Stevenson, “Scandinavian Blue” 43).

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A defining shift in both audiovisual production and civil society occurred in 1960s Denmark, parallel to the protests and revolutions occurring across the world and following the emergence of iconic aesthetic movements such as Italian neorealism, the French new wave and British “kitchen sink” realism. Akin to these styles, Danish cinema of the 1960s featured wayward, antagonistic young men and highlighted concerns with how individualism—manifesting as vices from gambling to infidelity—would degrade society. Yet, in many of the most popular examples—such as the Bodil Award-winning Weekend, Gade Uden Ende and Gertrud (Dreyer 1964), as well as the hugely successful Jeg, en Kvinde (I, a Woman) (Ahlberg 1965)—it was the gendered, female individual that destabilised the social order by becoming visible. That the women in these films appear to choose promiscuity over chastity contributes to their controversy but could also be construed as a factor in the male characters’ feelings of disempowerment and frustration. Similarly provocative women appeared around the same time in erotic films such as Ingmar Bergman’s Tystnaden (The Silence) (1963), Luis Buñuel’s French masterpiece Belle du Jour (1967) and the much more lurid US Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Meyer 1966), which depict emancipated women as dangerous or self-­ destructive. The cinematic icon of this era was, it appeared, the transgressive, sexualised woman who undermined the institutions of religion, marriage and the family. The Danish policies that enabled the representation of sex in fiction and the production of controversial narratives were accompanied by policies and social attitudes that would challenge the gendered division of labour in the home and workplace. Alongside the global rise of consumerism and new technology in the 1950s and 1960s was an ongoing negotiation of gender roles and civil rights, supported by the women’s liberation movement. A period of decline in married women’s employment in 1950s Denmark was followed by an increased demand after the economic boom of 1958. During this time, women joined the labour market and continued to participate even after having children, signalling a shift in domestic arrangements (Borchorst, “The public-private split” 104; Ravn and Rosenbeck 21). As Arnlaug Leira points out, though, “in the 1950s, nowhere was it evident—or taken for granted—that, following the entry of mothers into the labour market, the care of pre-school children was to become a responsibility of the welfare state” (“Childcare in Scandinavia” 85). It would take some time before childcare policy would reflect and accommodate the actual arrangements of families.

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The 1960s bestowed Danish women with improved reproductive rights, direct receipt of child allowances that were previously transferred to fathers (Ravn and Rosenbeck 15), improvements to public day care systems, a strong global community of feminists and a surge in sexually explicit images of women on-screen; all of these factors altered the relationship between mothers and the state. Around this period, Denmark and the other Scandinavian nations moved towards what is retrospectively referred to as a “defamilialised” system. Ruth Lister, who was instrumental in coining the term, describes defamilialisation as “the degree to which individual adults can uphold a socially acceptable standard of living, independent of family relationships, either through paid work or through the social security system” (“‘She Has Other Duties’” 37; cf. Esping-Andersen, “The Household Economy” 40). From the late 1950s onwards, Ravn and Rosenbeck explain, “Equality between classes was substituted by gender equality as a main goal in Danish (Nordic) family policies, and women’s, especially young women’s, labour market participation soon came to equal that of men’s” (24). Maternity leave was first introduced in Denmark in 1960—four and five years after Norway and Sweden, respectively—marking the first major verdict on parental leave in Denmark since the introduction of maternity protection in 1901 (Abrahamson 401; Lammi-Taskula 22). By 1985, Denmark had introduced parental leave that could be split between either parent, a decade after Sweden who set the world precedent (Nordic Council of Ministers 12). Politically and culturally, the Danish welfare state has consistently exhibited high levels of defamilialisation, but Sophie Mathieu argues that this is better understood as demotherisation because “care work has, historically, been performed mostly by mothers, instead of by ‘families’” (577). Symptomatically, one does not speak of the “working father” but of a “dual-earner” or “universal breadwinner” model—phrases that point to the emphasis on the integration of women into the labour force more than men into the home (cf. Lister, “A Nordic Nirvana?” 249). The “re-­ familialization” of fathers has not yet destabilised the gendered nature of familial care in Scandinavia and across the Western world (Ravn and Rosenbeck 24–25; Stoltz 430), and, in Denmark in particular, men’s roles as fathers or caregivers have not become a project of the state to the same degree as in the other Scandinavian countries (Borchorst, “The public-­ private split” 102). The integration of fathers into domestic activities throughout all the Nordic countries is increasing, but at present, Denmark is the only Nordic country not to have a father’s quota for parental leave

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(Nordic Council of Ministers 28–29). Though instituted in 1997, the quota was dismissed as interfering with familial choice by a right-leaning government administration in 2002 (Ellingsæter 264; Lammi-Taskula 23). The upshot of this is that Danish fathers take the lowest proportion of the available shared leave in all of Norden: according to data from 2018, only 10 per cent of the allocated parental leave is used by Danish fathers (Nordic Council of Ministers 31). This is likely because Danish women earn, on average, 68 per cent of the average male wage for similar work— only 3.5 per cent above the world average of 64.5 per cent—meaning it is more economical if the mother stays home (“The Global Gender Gap Report” 143; cf. Neergaard and Thrane 99; Statbank, “Gender equality indicator of gender pay gap”). Denmark’s progression towards a dual-earner, dual-carer model in response to the changing economic and political landscape was not wholly liberating for women, and many scholars argue that policies that appear as “woman-friendly”—a term coined by Norwegian political scientist Helga Hernes to describe the potential for a feminist political agenda (Hernes, “Welfare State and Woman Power” 15)—are, in fact, “family-friendly” and are targeted at women as the expected care providers (Borchorst and Siim, “Woman-Friendly Policies” 60; Hernes, “Scandinavian Citizenship” 200; Leira, “Welfare States and Working Mothers” 6; Ravn and Rosenbeck 16). From the mid-twentieth century, the focus of Danish welfare state policy indicated an increasing concern with the emotional and structural needs of children, in part because of the recognised cost of social inheritance to society (Danish Child Welfare Commission 7; Lister, “A Nordic Nirvana” 247). In 1960, an ad hoc government committee was set up to assess existing family policies in Denmark, and the findings were presented in a report in 1964; these findings led to the 1964 Child and Youth Care Act, which enabled the expansion of childcare facilities in line with the increasing demands, with the aim of providing universal access (Abrahamson 401; Borchorst, “The public-private split” 106; Danish Child Welfare Commission 17; Ravn and Rosenbeck 21). The legislation formalised, so to speak, the defamilialisation of Danish society and enabled parents to retain their careers after having children (Nordic Council of Ministers 11; Ravn and Rosenbeck 24). The state assistance for families also recognised the higher costs associated with raising a family and attempted to equalise the discrepancy in expenses between those with children and those without children (Leira, “Welfare States and Working Mothers” 52–53).

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This government-led action points to the recognition of society as the backdrop of family life and the role of the state in shaping and communicating social values and standards (cf. Danish Child Welfare Commission 4). A later inquiry into conditions for families in Denmark was conducted by Børnekommissionen, or the Danish Child Welfare Commission, which concluded with a 1981 report (Abrahamson 402). In the English-language summary, the commission declares that “Individual problems cannot be solved without seeing them in a greater context”, capturing the very essence of welfare state ideology (Danish Child Welfare Commission 18). The report emphasises concerns over the social conditions that saw, in the heteronormative family situation, both parents employed and the care of children unsystematically displaced outside of the home (14). The commission stressed that family policies should, among other things, rest upon gender equality, writing: “it is considered disadvantageous to transfer the traditional pattern of sex roles to the coming generations” (19). The institutionalisation of caregiving functioned to both compensate for the decrease in women’s (unpaid) domestic work and produce a high degree of quality and continuity in children’s development and socialisation (Danish Child Welfare Commission 16). The structures and provisions implemented by the Danish welfare state to support working parents are often presented as indicators of gender equality in that they enable mothers to balance careers with childcare responsibilities, thereby allowing women to be liberated from domestic responsibilities. Systemic support for families by the state cannot, however, be construed as evidence of a feminist government; as Birte Siim astutely identifies, “the politics of motherhood and women’s inclusion in politics as citizens are two analytically separate processes that need to be analysed in greater detail from a comparative perspective” (“Gender and Citizenship” 34). One could argue that even the promotion of fathers into caregiving roles in Denmark is motivated by the cultural prerogative of ensuring the child’s access to two parents, more than by the goal of women’s financial and social autonomy (Abrahamson 402; Danish Child Welfare Commission 20–21; Nordic Council of Ministers 28). Since the Enlightenment period, the tone of the debate around childcare and parenthood in Europe has increasingly stressed devotion, emotional connectivity and social pedagogy as definitive of the mother-child relationship. In her eminent 1980 book Mother Love, French philosopher Élisabeth Badinter documents how, during the mid-1700s, the public discourse across Western Europe “created an atmosphere of obligation in

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which women were told to be mothers first and foremost, engendering a myth that is still tenaciously supported two hundred years later: maternal instinct” (117). An attitude shift occurred across Europe “when a wealthy middle class which could dispense with the labor of its children created a new kind of childhood involving education, age-appropriate play, and individualized nurture”, a consequence of which was also the moral demand upon women to exhibit maternal devotion (Allen 10). Concomitantly, global developments in transportation, medicine and education in the late nineteenth century transformed the view of children as economic commodities towards viewing them as state assets (Allen 65–66; Badinter 143; Lister, “‘She has Other Duties’” 247). The new science of “demography” (or, as it later manifested, eugenics) proved influential in states’ attempts to improve the value of their citizenry (Badinter 121). By the time the first Danish Child Law, or Børnelov, was instituted in 1901, rhetoric advocating for the “quality” rather than “quantity” of the population was emerging in Denmark (Abrahamson 400; Ravn and Rosenbeck 14). A series of influential policy changes from the late 1800s onwards enabled greater security and rights for Danish children. One of the goals of the Scandinavian welfare state system was to ensure both mothers and fathers were involved in childcare (Haavet 195), though Arnlaug Leira argues that a “moral claim” was, in fact, not made of fathers until the 1970s (Leira, “Childcare in Scandinavia” 87). One could argue that motivating the state’s focus on the welfare of the needy and vulnerable in the early iterations of the welfare state was the knowledge that tertiary intervention is more expensive than primary intervention and that if parents exercise their financial responsibilities the public cost is reduced. The policy reforms and new legislation early in the twentieth century solidified the patriarchal arrangement that saw married women, particularly mothers, superficially encouraged to engage in employment but more realistically delegated to duties in the home due to the infeasibility of paying for services to supplement their resulting absence from the domestic sphere (Ravn and Rosenbeck 24; cf. Danish Child Welfare Commission 28; Haavet 212). Denmark’s early family policies focused on primary intervention and the strengthening childcare infrastructure, but the moral obligation to provide adequate care remained with mothers (Haavet 212). What Ravn and Rosenbeck describe as the modified dual-earner system, which prevailed in Denmark from the early twentieth century until the 1970s, was a system where men and women both contributed labour, though men’s was largely paid and women’s was domestic and unpaid; this

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system had inequalities built into it that “were strengthened through the economic stipulations of tax legislation, especially joint taxation of spouses and marital tax relief, the effect of which was to discourage married women’s labour market participation” (Ravn and Rosenbeck 24). The legacy of the social reform period in early twentieth-century Denmark was the recognition of the importance of women’s labour to economic growth and achieving gender equity, but a failure to fully offset these labour market expectations with a renewed conception of femininity as extricable from motherhood. The result of much of this early legislation was that “Women were liberated from direct male guardianship and control but ended up in a situation where the role as mothers was indirectly made the primary choice” (Ravn and Rosenbeck 10). Women’s labour is, according to much scholarship on Danish social policy, largely seen to be an economic means to an end (Borchorst, “The public-private split” 105; Ellingsæter 260; Leira. “Welfare States and Working Mothers” 12). Several theorists have argued that what appear to be policies aimed at fostering gender equality in Denmark were motivated by the improvement of conditions for children as future citizens, more so than rights for women (Borchorst and Siim, “Woman-Friendly Policies” 219; Ellingsæter 260; Lister, “‘She Has Other Duties’” 248; Neergaard and Thrane 94; cf. Marshall 15). Referring to the reforms of the early 1900s, Inger Elisabeth Haavet points out that “It was seemingly easier to argue for the welfare of children than for the rights of their mothers” (203). Anette Borchorst is more optimistic, asserting that women have gained financial independence from the state’s childcare policies, but she concedes that family policy is child-centred rather than sustained by feminist ideas (“Danish Child Care Policy” 544). Neergaard and Thrane have suggested that the state is not inherently “woman-friendly” and that it has emphasised the uptake of women to the labour market more than men into the domestic sphere (90, 99; cf. Lewis and Humbert). Despite policies that seem to reduce the gendered division of labour in Scandinavia, it appears that a gendering of work, whereby care is assumed to be a female task, prevails (Borchorst, “Danish Child Care Policy” 570; Borchorst and Siim 62; Hernes, “Welfare State and Woman Power” 54; Leira, “Childcare in Scandinavia” 86; Ravn and Rosenbeck 27). This is true across the European Union (EU); according to the 2020–2025 gender equality strategy, 44 per cent of Europeans believe that “the most important role of a women is to take care of her home and her family” (European Commission, “A Union of Equality” 6). This report, like much

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of the scholarship referred to throughout this chapter, discusses gender as a binary concept comprising “man” and “woman”, without reference to gender non-binary or transgender persons. The only reference to queer sexuality or transgenderism in the European Commission’s gender equality strategy is the mention of a subsequent report on integration and inclusion which “will be linked to this strategy” (17). It seems ironic that a strategy on gender equality neglects to practise the very acts of inclusion that the EU promotes, but unfortunately this is not a debate in which this book has the scope to participate. In addition, it is important to problematise, as the feminist movement has done, the idea that women, as a unified collective, have common interests (Borchorst and Siim, “Woman-Friendly Policies” 216). Mulinari et al. astutely explain that some feminist researchers have criticised the Nordic welfare model and have argued that “Nordic state feminism has been blind to diversity and in particular, to multiculturalism” (35). They add that “‘women-friendly’ policies are based on a heteronormative perspective, providing services and benefits mainly to women living in heterosexual nuclear families” (35). Though this book does not focus on texts where racial minorities or persons of immigrant background are at the forefront, it is necessary to point out that demographic research on gender in the welfare state frequently negates intersectionality as a theoretical lens and often emphasises motherhood and maternalism as major characteristics of femininity. In particular, the reconciliation of work and motherhood is often a point of discussion in national and supranational analysis. Historically and to this day, women’s employment in Denmark has been predominantly in the public service, education and care industries, likely on account of Denmark’s large public sector and its greater flexibility for working parents (Esping-Andersen “A New Gender Contract”, 72; Hernes, “Welfare State and Woman Power”, 54; Knudsen 262; Neergaard and Thrane 94; Nordic Council of Minister 12; Sanandaji 20). Employment in these industries is conducive to raising a family but does not necessarily enable career impact and progression (Kangas and Rostgaard 246; Knudsen 264–265; S.O. Sørensen 304). This is the key argument in Nima Sanandaji’s 2016 book The Nordic Gender Equality Paradox: Public sector monopolies in female-dominated areas such as healthcare and education substantially reduce the opportunities of business ownership and career success among women [in Nordic countries]. Welfare state safety nets discourage women from self-employment. Overly generous parental leave

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schemes encourage women to stay home rather than work. Substantial tax wedges make it difficult to purchase services that substitute for household work, which reduces the ability of both parents to engage fully in the labour market. (20)

Although the way that Danish women engage in the labour market indicates higher frequencies of public sector employment, part-time work and occupation of the full allocation parental leave, these trends do not demonstrate women’s preferences. Rather, they speak to the way that women shape their careers around the expectation of child-rearing, as well as workplace cultures that may inadvertently create an environment more conducive to some demographics (Hall 105; S.O.  Sørensen 298–299). Families can hardly be seen to exercise choice if the father’s workplace is less accommodating of men taking parental leave (Borchorst, “The public-­ private split” 102; Hall 105; Leira “Childcare in Scandinavia” 100). Several decades since the reforms and social changes of the 1960s, women are still underrepresented in senior management and on management boards across Denmark. According to the 2020 Global Gender Gap Report, 26.7 per cent of legislators, senior officials and managers in Denmark are female, and women account for only 39.1 per cent of the Danish parliament (“The Global Gender Gap Report” 143). Even if mothers do obtain such jobs and split domestic tasks with their male partners, they find themselves undertaking the “time inflexible” activities such as school pick-ups, while men are more likely to complete the tasks that do not have fixed timeframes (Smith and Smith 31–32; cf. Sanandaji 76). Research suggests that women feel as though they have to sacrifice other aspects of their life or identity to take up high-ranking or managerial positions and are more inclined to pre-emptively alter their careers and choices based on cultural gender norms (European Commission, “Equality Pays Off” 1; Knudsen 264–265; Smith and Smith 33). For instance, figures from 2019 show that full-time employed mothers across all sectors take, on average, up to twice as many days of leave when their child is unwell compared to fathers (Statbank, “Absence by indicator of absence”). The 2019 Nordic Council of Ministers’ “State of Nordic Fathers” review by Carl Cederström indicates that Nordic mothers and fathers both agree that parental leave and childcare responsibilities should be shared between parents (Cederström 9). However, the report also states, “When their partner takes the main responsibility for childcare,

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mothers feel less competent as parents but are more satisfied with their jobs” (Cederström 10; emphasis added). This review supports my argument that caregiving and career goals inevitably conflict when women are expected to function at capacity in both roles and that a sense of guilt accompanies mothers’ relinquishment of care responsibilities. Danish self-employed women are particularly impacted by restrictive policies that do not support working alongside child-rearing. Female entrepreneurs lose all access to maternity benefits if they continue to work in their business immediately after their child is born; the financial burden of hiring an additional employee makes entrepreneurship and motherhood virtually unfeasible, meaning women who are planning families are discouraged from starting their own businesses (Grünfeld et  al. 51–53; Neergaard and Thrane 88). A 2020 report on entrepreneurship in the Nordic region found that in Denmark men are more likely to aspire to entrepreneurship than women (Grünfeld et al. 10–11), that men anticipate career growth and success more than women (23) and that, despite these facts, female entrepreneurs are more highly educated than male entrepreneurs (33). Across the EU, male starting teams claim more than 90 per cent of the available capital (European Commission, “A Union of Equality” 9), while in Denmark, male teams received 98 per cent of the capital in 2018 (Grünfeld et al. 42). Female entrepreneurship is also commonly based in the sectors in which women are more frequently employed—education, health, service industries and the arts—which are generally less lucrative (Grünfeld et  al. 16). While these statistics may reflect a lack of interest, skill or enterprise in women proportionate to men, it is more likely that they point to a perception of inadequacy internalised by women (and other marginalised groups) on account of their historical exclusion from the fields of science, technology and engineering. The extent to which women in Denmark can balance their familial obligations with their personal ambitions is still heavily determined by the government, which plays a greater role in women’s lives than it does in men’s (Hernes, “Welfare State and Woman Power” 40, 54; Neergaard and Thrane 99; Polakow 261; Siim, “Gender and Citizenship” 27). Swedish policy expert Karin Svanborg-Sjöwall speaks of false liberation of women from gendered subjugation, writing that it is striking how easy [sic] some people confuse, on the one hand, real independence for women with, on the other hand, replacing one form of depen-

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dence—economic reliance on husband and repressive norms—with a new kind of dependence on government and the whims of political majorities. (9; cf. Hernes, “Welfare State and Woman Power” 54)

The language of “balance” remains associated with femininity and motherhood across the Western world, as if finding appropriate balance— between work, family, social engagements and self-fulfilment—is a concern for women but not for men. More specifically, this rhetoric often speaks to the uptake of men (as fathers or partners) into unpaid domestic or care work and the intervention of the state into women’s (as mothers) lives to decrease their care burden. Naturally, such a narrative presumes a heteronormative relationship between two able-bodied, gainfully employed members of society. It also presumes that the “life” element of work-life balance pertains almost solely to childcare obligations. A brief survey of reports by the European Institute of Gender Equality (EIGE) illustrates the frequent conflation of “women and men” with “mothers and fathers” and the conceptualisation of work-life balance as a harmonious distribution of effort and resources between paid work and unpaid care responsibilities. The “Gender Equality Index 2020: Digitalisation and the future of work” report, for example, refers to work-­ life balance with almost exclusive reference to childcare, family and parenting duties. The section on the digitalisation of work includes the phrase “[mitigating inequality] requires specific measures to support work–life balance, such as affordable, high quality care provision and well-paid care-­ related leave available to all” (European Institute of Gender Equality [EIGE], “Gender Equality Index” 15; emphasis added). In the section on flexible work, the report states: “Women are more likely to opt for it because of the potential for better working time flexibility, work–life balance and opportunities to combine care and work responsibilities” (95; emphasis added). Referring to the unusual circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the report indicates that “work–life balance struggles” are primarily “due to closures of schools and kindergartens”, which suggests disruption primarily affects parents and families (58–59). Similar results can be found in the 2015 “Reconciliation of work, family and private life in the European Union Policy review” (9), the 2020 “Gender equality and long-term care at home” report (9), the 2019 “Tackling the gender pay gap” report (26) and the 2021 “Gender inequalities in care and consequences for the labour market” report (65), all of which discuss

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work-life balance with reference to care, predominately the care of children. The underlying assumption in these reports is that women undertake more (unpaid) care work than men and, therefore, require systematic institutional intervention in order to achieve the same quality of life as men. This assumption is supported by data from across the EU, and it is not the salience of this claim that is being queried here. What is of note here is the absence of reference to life choices that do not involve raising children. That women—and, indeed, men—may have other goals or circumstances to “balance” with their careers is largely ignored in the aforementioned EIGE reports. One could argue that it is primarily the imbalance in care/domestic duties between men and women that impedes gender equality and is, therefore, relevant to the EIGE. Yet it is clear that employed women are usually more highly educated than men and, in general, earn less for similar work, which suggests that women have to work harder to achieve the same professional outcome as men (European Commission, “2018 Report on equality” 17–18; EIGE, “Gender Equality Index” 12, 35–35; EIGE, “Intersecting Inequalities” 22; EIGE, “Reconciliation of work, family and private life” 14; EIGE, “Tackling the Gender Pay Gap” 26). In addition, women are more likely to face harassment at work than men, and in Denmark, sexual harassment is more prevalent in the care industries, where women are overrepresented as employees (“Sexually Harassed at Work”). There are, surely, factors outside of childcare obligations that affect the ability for women to undertake rewarding work that is fairly and equally remunerated. The Danish welfare state’s intervention into childcare supports, in principle, a culture where women are not expected to compromise their paid work to look after their children (Weckström 6). Lisa Ann Richey astutely points out, though, that “it is important to consider both actual state policies directed towards gender and development, but also the language and myths that are used to construct these policies and that are in turn created or reinforced by these discourses” (182–183). The symbiotic relationship between the Danish state and its citizens entails a wide range of privileges but these are accompanied by moral and cultural ideas about what a well-­ functioning citizen looks like. Though one could readily point to the legislative infrastructure that shapes women’s participation in contemporary Danish society as evidence of high defamilialisation and female agency, the assumption is that these “Family policies enabling citizens to reconcile

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work and family life” (Abrahamson 399) also eradicate the moral and ideological pressure on women to not only become mothers but to become good mothers—a task considered more achievable because of the state’s investment in childcare and social support. I argue that more attention needs to be paid to how the “good” mother is conceptualised in public discourse, in which narrative media plays a significant role, and what the consequences are for women who are unable to embody the ideal citizen-­ worker-­carer role (cf. S.O. Sørensen 297–298). Certainly, Denmark and the entire Nordic region demonstrate pronounced commitment to social democracy by supporting schemes that proactively target vulnerable and disadvantaged members of society (Rasmussen 71–72). The Nordic Council of Ministers’ 2018 “Knowledge that Works in Practice” strategic review conducted by Árni Páll Árnason outlines the region’s identified weaknesses and proposes strategies to improve social cooperation; a presiding theme in this review is to minimise disadvantage in vulnerable groups, particularly children and youth (Árnason 30–31; Danish Ministry of Economic Affairs 43). Despite the recognition of social exclusion as a compounding political problem that can be combated by reducing the barriers to participation, no mention is made of the isolation or exclusion of new mothers (or fathers) as individuals whose lifestyles, priorities and values (are expected to) have changed; rather, the mobilisation of children into education and of marginalised adults into employment is promoted as the solution (Árnason 30–31). The Danish government’s 2018 National Reform Programme similarly refers to the overall satisfaction of the family without explicitly citing the isolation or anxiety that parents might face: “The Government aims to improve parents’ freedom of choice, strengthening existing flexible services and improving the framework for a good work-life balance for families” (Danish Ministry of Economic Affairs 43). Loneliness and social marginalisation are referenced in relation to those citizens outside of the labour market, as if employment mitigates these conditions. Equally, the wider EU growth strategy, to which Denmark complies, seeks, as Siim and Borchorst write, “to strengthen the integration of women into paid work; whereas gender equality in other respects and solutions to facilitate work and family have been watered down” (“Gendering European Welfare States” 61). In Denmark and across Europe, employment is presented as the remedy for social and economic disadvantage, but the promotion of marginalised individuals into employment or social participation negates the fact that the pressure of maintaining functional working, domestic and

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social relationships may be the cause of isolation and stress arising from the internalisation of unrealistic, gendered expectations (cf. Young, “Responsibility for Justice” 8). The provision of welfare in the Danish state is (at least theoretically) universal and premised on substantial benefits in exchange for high-level participation (“Social Policy in Denmark” 6). Yet, as many scholars have argued, citizenship is differentiated, and access—to benefits, to spaces for cultural participation, to forums of debate—is varied and conditional (Borchorst 570; Hernes, “Scandinavian Citizenship” 201; Leira, “Welfare States and Working Mothers” 25; Walby 167). Eminent welfare state theorist Gøsta Esping-Andersen has pointed out that “The presence of a set of social policies does not automatically imply a welfare state, which, following Marshall (1950), implies social entitlements as a matter of citizenship, comprehensive risk coverage, commitments to full employment, and active reduction of inequalities” (“Welfare Policy Comparisons” 511). Given the generous benefits provided by the states, the duties of Scandinavian citizens have often been overlooked in scholarship, but such duties do exist: “There is the duty to attend school for a given number of years, the duty to pay taxes, to do military service, and the duty to accept a job even if this means moving home and family” (Hernes “Scandinavian Citizenship” 201; cf. B. R. Larsen 248). These obligations were historically applied more to men than women, providing men with the opportunity to fulfil their citizenship duties in exchange for social benefits. In her most prominent work from the 1980s, American political scientist Carole Pateman contends that the welfare state’s historical demands of men and women have produced a gendered differentiation of what “contribution” entails: “Men’s duty to die for the state is matched by women’s duty to give birth for the state” (“The Disorder of Women” 11). Women’s contributions, she points out, are construed as biologically inherent obligations, rather than as voluntary social contributions for the good of society (“The Disorder of Women” 10). Pateman’s discussion is informed by the long-standing liberalist doctrine that associated citizenship with financial and political independence and participation in the so-called public sphere—opportunities denied to women for centuries. According to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European social contract theorists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, women’s provision of care and domestic labour is complementary to male waged labour: it is the naturalised role that women occupy to ensure the continual possibility of male employment and political involvement (Berns 129;

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Georgieva-Stankova 6; Pateman, “The Sexual Contract” 7). Rousseau’s belief that “The virtuous family forms the only secure foundation for the virtuous state” (Berns 136) betrays the public/political/masculine sphere’s dependence on the “female” contribution of care and domestic labour—a contribution historically made invisible by sublimation to a separate, so-called private, sphere. As the policies and legislation cited earlier in this chapter suggest, women in the Nordic countries have often been granted civil and political rights ahead of other countries, but a woman’s position in a marriage was often as the care provider, supporting the breadwinning male. Women were granted rights as mothers, or even as workers, but not as political citizens (Siim, “Gender and Citizenship” 14). Ongoing academic attention directed at the Nordic region has revealed the ways in which access to welfare services is still formulated around the contributions associated with labour market participation (“Gender and Citizenship” 25; cf. Leira, “Parenthood Change” 27; Hernes, “Welfare State and Woman Power”, 115; Leira, “Welfare States and Working Mothers” 26; Ravn and Rosenbeck 14; Siim and Borchorst, “Gendering European Welfare States” 63–64). The Danish state’s ambition to “activate” citizens through education and paid work may promote social and economic independence, but it does not account for the actual time that mothers still spend performing unpaid care and domestic work. That is, if citizenship is predicated on making specific, recognised contributions, most likely through employment, this arrangement is complicated by the emotional and practical responsibilities associated with motherhood and the high expectations placed upon parents as responsible for their child’s wellbeing. Despite a cultural rhetoric of equal parenting and family friendliness, Danish women are more likely to face criticism on account of their manifestation of parenthood than men (Lahad and Madsen 183, cf. Borchorst and Siim, “Woman-Friendly Policies” 219–220). As the case studies in subsequent chapters illustrate, emotionally or physically absent mothers are still often framed as immoral and transgressive according to the Western myth of inherent maternal instinct (Allen 1; Badinter xx, 117; Leira, “Welfare States and Working Mothers” 4; Ussher 265). In the chosen cases, mother characters who do not externalise devoted motherhood become more or less isolated or excluded—a pattern that suggests certain performances of maternity are essential to retaining citizenship rights. In a country where the two state-owned television networks consistently

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claim the majority of domestic viewers and film production is heavily subsidised by the government in accordance with the principles of edification and democracy, patterns in narrative and representation are significant. The creation of state-funded fiction involves a symbiotic relationship between the industrial scaffolding, shaped by policy and tradition, and the collective imagination of the nation. Though this relationship is, in Denmark, formalised through the negotiated agreements between industry, government and society, manifesting in the Film Agreements and Media Agreements, the actual practice of accessing and engaging in cultural projects that negotiate and reify belonging in the community is one that is difficult to define. It is perhaps best conceived as cultural citizenship—a mode of citizenship that is alternative to the citizen-state model, which privileges the relationship between duties and benefits. Cultural citizenship involves cultural rights, as opposed to civil or political rights, and is premised on the idea that the ability to participate in and express oneself through cultural activities and in public forums is a fundamental freedom. The concept of cultural citizenship entered the academic debate through the writings of Renato Rosaldo, Will Kymlicka and Toby Miller around the mid-1990s; Miller defined the concept as concerning “the maintenance and development of cultural lineage through education, custom, language, and religion and the positive acknowledgement of difference in and by the mainstream” (“Introducing… Cultural Citizenship” 2). Building on this foundation, Joke Hermes deployed this concept in her work on popular culture by exploring the relationship between the representation, ideology and identity (4). Another prominent voice in the discussion of cultural citizenship is Nick Stevenson, who asserts that the construction of public space is crucial to building an inclusive society (9); citizens should not be excluded from symbolically significant or generative shared spaces because this undermines their ability to cultivate a sense of belonging. Citizenship involves a continuous negotiation over who has the right to participate, with a fluid transaction of opportunities and obligations; cultural citizenship frames participation from the perspective that cultural sites and productions activate, exclude and unite citizens in varying ways. Yet, as Syvertsen et  al. point out, “there is little mention in the [welfare state] literature as to how norms and values are sustained, debated and negotiated—all crucial tasks of the media and communication system” (12). Further to this, the existing literature undervalues the significance of the relationship between the

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belonging and identity associated with citizenship and trends in on-­screen representation. I utilise the concept of cultural citizenship as a lens through which to view Danish popular fictional texts, in order to identify and analyse the imperatives, standards and values associated with cultural belonging in Denmark. It is my contention, as the following chapter expounds, that thematic analyses of both creative productions and the strategic documentation surrounding them provide a crucial insight into the way that cultural belonging is cultivated, communicated and negotiated in the given context of contemporary Denmark.

CHAPTER 3

Policy in Practice: Film, Television and Cultural Policy

Djuna Hallsworth: I’m interested to know what you identify as the Danish film tradition and how [National Film School of Denmark—NFSD] students are encouraged to respond to this. Vinca Wiedemann, Former Principal of the NFSD: That’s a very good question. So, we have a tradition of a flat hierarchy, and we have a tradition of development methods that include a lot of different functions from the film team. We have a tradition—when we are at our best, of course—of looking for synergy where others would only see contradictions. I would say that these are some of the most obvious parts of what I would call the Danish film tradition, which I would say is something that has been part of the film tradition since the 60s, not before. (Personal correspondence. 20 June 2018)

In the years from the 1960s through to the 2010s, the Danish film and television industries steadily gained traction. The 1960s was the decade when women’s labour, children’s rights and citizenship parameters were redefined in Denmark, but this was also the period in which the Ministry of Culture—under whose portfolio the Danish Film School would fall— was created. In 1972, the Ministry of Culture established the Danish Film Institute (DFI) to manage the funding and organisation of film production in Denmark through “at-arms-length” government support (Schepelern, “Danish Film History”). By 1988, two Danish films had won

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Hallsworth, Danish Mothers On-Screen, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88579-3_3

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Academy Awards for Best International Feature: Babettes Gæstebud (Babette’s Feast) (Axel 1987) and Pelle Erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror) (August 1988). The state-owned, semi-commercial broadcaster TV2 was established the same year, to end the national broadcaster DR’s monopoly on television broadcasting. In 1995, filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg flouted the institutionalised film funding system and threw copies of their Dogme 95 Manifesto over balconies into the crowds below in Paris, sparking a worldwide trend of low-budget, emotionally wrought films (Tønder). As if to formalise the minimalist approach of Dogme 95, the New Danish Screen (NDS) initiative was launched in 2003 to encourage emerging filmmakers to produce smaller scale films. The year 2007 saw the ground-breaking first season of Forbrydelsen released on DR1; this precedent-setting crime drama is analysed in Chap. 5. Soon after, Danish television drama gained an International following and became the focus of the Aarhus University research project “What Makes Danish Television Travel?”, where an international research team applied theoretical and empirical studies of production, reception and content to analyse the surging popularity of Danish television drama. These are but a few pivotal moments in Denmark’s creative screen industry’s history—an industry consolidated by the political investment of the Culture Ministry and which has continued to benefit from government support by way of the DFI as its gatekeeper. Following on from the examination of Danish social policy in the previous section, this chapter demonstrates how welfare state values are present in Danish cultural policy and how they have contributed to a production environment where problematic or compromised female characters are frequently implicated in social discord and domestic conflict. During the 1960s, a school of thought that suggested “film was art, not just mindless entertainment” emerged, replacing the idea of cinema as either an educational presentation or an escapist indulgence (J. Stevenson, “Dogme Uncut” 165; cf. Bondebjerg, “Dogma 95” 21). Consistent throughout much of the existing research on Danish screen fiction, and the Scandinavian and Nordic traditions in which it fits, is the recognition of audiovisual texts as particularly salient and vital objects that interact in valuable ways with ideas of identity and belonging (Bondebjerg et al. 28. Bondebjerg and Redvall, “Breaking Borders” 6; Hermes 8–9; Hjort, “Living with diversity” 9; Jacobsen and Jensen 124; Kääpä 152; Nestingen 20; Shriver-Rice, “Danish Privilege” 244; cf. Pateman, “The Sexual Contract” 1). This function is, of course, not unique to these social

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democratic states but reflects the broader agenda of the European Union, of which Denmark, Sweden and Finland are members. The strength of fictional storytelling is highlighted in several European Commission reports and strategies, which routinely identify media, particularly public service media, as a powerful tool in shaping and communicating shared values and cultivating diversity and inclusivity (European Commission, “2018 Annual Work Programme” 10–13; European Commission, “Creative Europe MEDIA” 2; European Commission, “European Film in the Digital Era” 2). Across Europe, the audiovisual sectors are, accordingly, highly regulated and often financially supported by state or regional bodies (European Commission, “European Film in the Digital Era” 2; Norðfjörð 44). The Danish screen industries, as in most small nation contexts, are virtually dependent on state funding, and thus, in the early days of state-­ regulated film production the parameters for what constituted a “Danish film” were tighter and funding was stricter (Bondebjerg, “Regional and Global Dimensions” 21; Langkjær, “Realism as Third Film Practice”45; L.O. Larsen 187; Lowe et al. 17; McElroy et al. 172; Norðfjörð 44). The 1964 Film Act laid the groundwork for determining the activities of the film industry, but major changes arrived with the 1989 Film Act (Schepelern, “Danish Film History”; Valsson 113). A priority of Danish national cinema prior to the 1989 changes was to appeal to a Danish audience by investing in stories of Danish culture and society; films had to feature a Danish-language soundtrack to be eligible for DFI funding. After 1989, though, films could be “‘shot in Danish or exhibit a particular artistic or technical quality which contributes to the advancement of film art or film culture in Denmark’” (in J.  Stevenson, “Dogme Uncut” 168)—a far more flexible and less nationalistic approach than in the preceding legislation. Since the 1980s, the attitude across Europe to films that blend languages and traverse national borders has backflipped, with the European Union now actively encouraging its member states to produce content that is transnational (Bondebjerg, “Regional and Global Dimensions” 19; Bondebjerg and Redvall, “Introduction” 1; Bondebjerg et al. 5; De Vinck and Pawels 103; European Commission, “Creative Europe Media” 2–3; Hallsworth 123; Hansen et al. 12; Hansen and Waade 167; Valsson 114). This is, in part, because of the European Union’s recognition of narrative fiction as a generative site of participation and identification and its potential to foster intercultural collaboration (Bondebjerg and Redvall,

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“Breaking Borders” 214; Paterson 49). A series of momentous initiatives in the 1980s laid the foundation for stronger transnational alliances in European audiovisual production, including the European Commission’s MEDIA Program (now called Creative Europe) and the Council of Europe’s Eurimages (Bondebjerg and Redvall, “Introduction” 4; cf. De Vinck and Pauwels 104). This policy foundation enabled and encouraged the sharing of nationally produced content across national borders, promoting a narrative of shared European history and the value of cultural difference. The changes in Denmark’s 1989 Film Act reflected the development of a more united Europe, which was formalised in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, of which Denmark was a signatory. From the 1990s onwards, national film institutes, in general, began to fund culturally diverse and more commercially appealing films, transforming “from aesthetic gatekeepers to cultural-economic facilitators” (Nestingen 67). Despite the increasing “transnationalisation” of audiovisual content (cf. Hjort and Lindqvist 20), Danish cinema, as well as television drama, has maintained cultural specificity, which is distinct even from the output of its Nordic neighbours. As this chapter argues, contemporary Danish screen fiction employs narrative and formal conventions that can be clearly situated in the political and industrial history of the nation (Agger, “The Development of Transnationality” 84; Jacobsen and Jensen, “Born European” 124; Redvall, “Can You Export a Production Culture?” 125–126). Danish industry professionals operate in a climate characterised by national and supranational institutional support for cultural projects— in particular, film and television—as well as by the Danish ideological principles of free expression and egalitarianism. This sociopolitical context has shaped both the values and agendas of the screen industries and their associated bodies, as well as the expectations and tastes of local audiences. In keeping with Denmark’s characteristic political approach, collaboration from above and from below encourages interaction and participation from both practitioners and the governing bodies. The way that film funding is administered reflects a great deal about Denmark’s political attitude to film production and goes some way towards determining the narratives that enter the public consciousness (Hjort and Lindqvist 21–22). The DFI’s method of funding prior to 1989 was solely administered through the Commissioner Scheme, where filmmakers worked alongside film commissioners (a changing body of experts employed by the DFI for up to five years) to develop their ideas and negotiate funding: “The advantage was, according to popular wisdom, that

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producers dealt with a single person and not with a committee or a faceless institution” (J.  Stevenson, “Dogme Uncut” 167). This process means that a project need not be reduced to a high-concept pitch delivered by a commercially successful producer; rather, it allows for the dynamic reification of a promising vision into a finished film. As former film commissioner Steen Bille informed me, there is a pool of funding that must be distributed across a range of projects: “As a commissioner, you’re always concerned with how you spread out your money. You want to, of course, fund the country’s great directors […] You also want to help the ones that are coming up into that league slowly but surely. You want to help newcomers to have a chance, also, in this” (Personal correspondence. 9 October 2019). The Commissioner Scheme ensures that viable and engaging ideas are enabled and supported by a qualified consultant who supports the project from beginning to end, though, Bille adds, “the option is never to be so directly involved that you tell them what to do […] because, as some film commissioners tended to forget, I’m told, you are not the ones shooting the film or writing the film”. Vinca Wiedemann, also a former film commissioner, explains that the influence of a single consultant allows this individual to follow the project through to completion, and she believes “this is done in a very considerate way […] the ambition is to optimise the project and not just to be like a handicap” (Personal correspondence. 20 June 2018). The 1989 Film Act introduced an alternative funding pathway, called the 50/50 Scheme (later the 60/40 Scheme, now referred to as the Market Scheme) where the DFI fronted 50 per cent (later 60 per cent) of a film’s budget if the remaining budget could be raised privately (Nestingen 69; Schepelern, “Danish Film History”; Strandvad 111). Because a decision is made based on the initial proposal for a film, rather than through ongoing conversations with a consultant, the 50/50 scheme was considered the commercial alternative for projects that were likely to attract larger audiences of at least 175,000 viewers (Strandvad 111). Syvertsen et  al. have astutely noted that “Media policy does not appear out of nowhere, but is instigated in response to problems—whether real or perceived” (123), and this funding revision recognised the need to consolidate a mainstream audience for Danish film and find a market outside of Denmark if the expensive industry was to survive (Schepelern, “Danish Film History”). For decades, Danish cinema was expected to address a united Danish public, but as technology became cheaper and access to equipment easier, film was increasingly used to challenge, rather than

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affirm, a vision of a culturally homogeneous nation with an unproblematic past. In recent years, concerns around the decline of film production and traditional viewing platforms, such as broadcast television and cinemas, have prompted content producers and distributors to innovate and adapt (Christensen et  al. 31–33; European Commission, “Creative Europe MEDIA” 66; P.E.  Nielsen 128). Both the Danish film and television industries have maintained their local audience shares and continued to attract international attention, though the country’s more recent television series have largely failed to elicit the level of acclaim that early 2010s dramas such as Forbrydelsen and Borgen precipitated (Christensen et  al. 6–7; “Facts and Figures  2020” 8). Katrine Vogelsang, TV2’s Head of Fiction, suggests that this could be due to the industry’s small size and possible weaknesses in the breadth of education offered to aspiring practitioners: First of all, the volume of series that we are able to produce has vastly increased which challenges our industry in every aspect […] Next, both the National Danish Film School and DR Drama have been challenged to keep their positions as “the best film school in the world” and “producer of world class drama”. If your identity is to be the best it becomes a problem when you are not anymore, and you have to reinvent your identity. Especially DR, [they] used to be the lighthouse of developing knowledge of how to make great tv-series, now NRK in Norway has taken that position, and in combination with great education at the Norwegian film school, some of the greatest shows in the world are from Norway. (Personal correspondence. 12 May 2021)

Vogelsang adds that the Danish film industry, in particular, “has never been sustainable from an economic point of view”. Although the audience share for Danish films screening in Denmark remains at a steady 27 per cent, the DFI’s proposal for the current 2019–2022 Film Agreement highlighted the need for the film industry to be flexible in a period of technological turbulence while “ensur[ing] the value and cultural significance of film” (“Facts and Figures 2020” 8). In the context of this current Film Agreement, “Value and cultural significance refers to Danish film as a shared cultural space of interpretation for different understandings of our existence, time and history” (“Towards a New Film Agreement”).

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By tracing the types of debates manifesting in fiction, we can better understand the struggles occupying society at the given time. As referenced in Chap. 2, the early era—characterised by silent films, educational shorts and Dansk kulturfilm, which aimed to unite the Danish public during the decades of the world wars and widespread economic depression— was followed by a wave of commercially successful erotic films that were part of a movement referred to as Scandinavian blue. 1960s Denmark was a site of bottom-up lifestyle changes and shifts in the public narrative, as well as top-down legislative changes that generated unprecedented opportunities for film production. The social action of the 1960s bled into the next decade, and the momentum of the Danish film industry did not slow down. Film scholar Andrew Nestingen provides a cogent summary of the years following the institutionalisation of film production in the 1960s, explaining that “Across Scandinavia, the 1970s and 1980s are usually characterized as a decadent moment in film culture. The art film foundered as the passion and commitment of the 1960s became instituted and stagnant, even if art-film leaders remained influential” (61). From the late 1970s onwards, rising unemployment and the election of a right-of-centre conservative government that cut funding to social security seemed to threaten and undermine the welfare state system; symptomatically, Danish films produced in the 1980s appealed to both the audience’s sense of humour and anxiety about the welfare state’s stability (Enli et al. 12–13; Siim “Feminist Challenges” 197; Syvertsen et al. 8–9). Enli, Syvertsen and Mjøs contend that this was “a period of unprecedented liberalization and influx of private capital” but one where, as noted above, cultural policies related to audiovisual media gained significance throughout the Nordic region and across the European Union (Enli et al. 13). These new policies would have little immediate impact, though, and directors and critics alike came to describe the period around the late 1970s into the 1980s as the most uninspiring and conservative in Danish cinema’s history. In the 1980s, two professors examining Danish national cinema asserted that “‘Danish films are nowadays generally considered to be horribly depressing. There is nothing new in this; as a matter of fact there hasn’t been anything new in Danish films since the glory days before World War I’ (Schmidt and Nørrested 1985, 135, author’s translation)” (in Copenhagen Business School 7). This remarkably conservative perspective discounts the contributions of Carl Theodor Dreyer and the entire body of Scandinavian blue films, discussed in the following chapter, yet similar

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attitudes have been echoed by critics and practitioners alike. Director Lotte Svendsen commented in her interview in the Danish Directors that “everything went wrong” in Danish cinema in the 1970s, while renowned filmmaker and Dogme 95 co-founder Thomas Vinterberg concurs, stating that very few “interesting” films were made in this period (Hjort and Bondebjerg 258, 271). Finally, film scholar Mette Hjort agrees that, for several years, even Danes were uninterested in their national cinema, and “Viewers, it seemed, had come to associate Danish film with slow-moving humanistic narratives in a realist style, focusing on humdrum welfare-state lives and problems” (“Small Nation, Global Cinema” 1). This seemingly stagnant approach to creative storytelling mirrored the transition from protest culture to neoliberalism across the Western world (Jørgensen 198; Rasmussen 73; Vitus 116; Young, “Responsibility for Justice” 10). In Denmark, the 1960s/1970s iteration of the welfare state was eventually displaced by the current version, which sees social problems as issues of individual and cultural conflict or dysfunction, more than as an issue of state resources (Rasmussen 73; cf. Young, “Responsibility for Justice” 13). Identified vulnerable groups, such as single mothers, immigrants and low-income families, were gradually reframed as un(der)-activated members of society, whose contributions could be strengthened if training, education or eradication of problematic behaviour was prioritised. As Rasmussen notes, in relation to domestic problems, “the solution is seen in the ability of the families themselves to make changes in parenting, family relations, etc.” (75). The reconciliation of women’s employment with family responsibilities was normalised in Denmark, with 80 per cent of Danish mothers employed in some paid work in 1978 (Danish Child Welfare Commission 8; cf. Leira, “Welfare States and Working Mothers” 41–42). When the widespread economic recessions and banking crises of the late 1970s and 1980s hit Denmark, though, single working mothers were among the most at risk (Andersen 34; Eriksson 1; Kiander 219–220; Polakow 247). The subsequent political attitude across the country was more moderate and less fervent than in preceding decades, and this was reproduced in the quality of feminist debate, which focused on the differences between women and better representation of women across different sectors of the labour market (Siim, “Gender and Citizenship” 130). In fact, despite the universalism of welfare support that Denmark and the Nordic region boast, the discourse around women’s employment in these countries is often grounded in economic terms. For example, the Secretary General of the

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Nordic Council of Ministers states, in an interview for the Nordic Co-operation branch of the Council, that “If women in the Nordic countries switched from part-time to full-time employment, this would boost the economy by an additional 15% to 30% per capita growth in GDP” (Nordic Co-operation). Although the Danish welfare system has prevailed and the economy recovered well from the 1980s recession, fears for vulnerable and neglected families and children seemed to linger in the collective consciousness and have become the subject of many film and television narratives. Since the 1990s, Meryl Shriver-Rice contends, “cinema has played a crucial role in negotiating public notions of ethnicity and national identity” in Denmark and across Scandinavia (“Inclusion in New Danish Cinema” 80). Issues high in the public consciousness in 1990s Denmark were concerns over immigration (Jönsson and Kamali 251), rights for children, and gender roles in the changing welfare state landscape, and, as such, film narratives about belonging, alienation and social problems subsequently proliferated (Neergaard and Thrane 90). Some of the more notable examples include Kærlighedens smerte (Pains of Love) (Malmros 1992), De frigjorte (Fish out of Water) (Clausen 1993), Pusher (Refn 1996) and Pizza King (Madsen 1999), the last two of which helped to launch international careers for their directors. As the twentieth century drew to a close, Danish cinema experienced a revival that was no doubt influenced by rebellious students of the NFSD. Though von Trier argues that he couldn’t identify what the Danish film tradition would constitute, he acknowledges that “when I was at the National Film School [from 1979–1982], we reacted violently against the Danish films that were being made at the time” (in Hjort and Bondebjerg 213), a sentiment echoed by Vinterberg (Hjort and Bondebjerg 271). It is these two directors who would launch the puzzling film movement that was Dogme 95, discussed in more detail in the following chapter. Dogme 95 took the gritty realism of films such as Nicolas Winding Refn’s depictions of Copenhagen’s drug-­ fuelled underworld in Pusher and Bleeder (1999) and Jonas Elmar’s slice-­ of-­life comedy Let’s Get Lost (1997) and added a layer of irony and a critique that extended beyond society and politics to the hegemonic filmmaking practices that pushed experimental cinema to the margins. Several of the filmmakers at the forefront of the reinvigoration of Danish cinema—including von Trier, Susanne Bier, Lone Scherfig and Annette K. Olesen—grew up in the wake of the cultural and political revolution of 1968, which manifested not only in new social, sexual and

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political freedoms but in filmmaking practices that participated in a culture of frisind, or “liberalism, libertarianism [and] broad-mindedness” (Badley 192; cf. J. Stevenson “Scandinavian Blue” 5). Having escaped the major downturns occurring in Sweden and Finland in the late 1990s, perhaps because they absorbed the majority of the impact earlier in the 1980s, Denmark began to experience widespread affluence (Andersen 34). Vogelsang explains, “The whole Dogme period came in a time where the Danish citizen had a lot of money and things were going well so you could actually handle to see stories about people who had a hard time” (Personal correspondence. 21 June 2018; c.f. Kiander 223). In an interview with Hjort, Svendsen contended that Danish society at the turn of the millennium no longer experienced poverty and that “problems that do exist are more psychological in nature; loneliness, a sense of inferiority, isolation” (in Hjort and Bondebjerg 261). Although poverty (interpreted as spiritual as well as material lack) does exist in Denmark, it is true that Danish cinema in the Dogme period and beyond focuses on individual social marginalisation and the victims of psychological trauma more than on systemic class divides or historical victories, channelling to welfare state’s new focus on the problems of individuals over the problems of limited resources mentioned above. Despite its anti-establishment rhetoric, the Dogme project gained support from the then minister for culture Jytte Hilden, as well as DR’s former director Bjørn Erichsen, who agreed to collaborate with its creators (Hjort and MacKenzie, “Introduction: Purity and Provocation” 2–3). As Hjort and MacKenzie note, “Erichsen’s concept of public service included support for cultural experiments, and especially for those initiated by the country’s artistic elite”, of which von Trier was considered part after his ambitious 1991 film Europa and the successful 1994 miniseries Riget (The Kingdom) (“Introduction: Purity and Provocation” 3). The DFI’s overall film budget was increased to accommodate the new Dogme films, a gesture that indicates the flexibility of the support system, but these funds were not actually made exclusively available to Dogme practitioners because of the violation to the DFI’s autonomy that this would pose (Hjort and MacKenzie, “Introduction: Purity and Provocation” 3; Christensen 193). As such, none of the Dogme “brethren” (which expanded to incorporate Søren Kragh-Jacobsen and Kristian Levring) sought or received state funding for their Dogme films (Hjort and MacKenzie, “Introduction: Purity and Provocation” 3). One could argue that it is precisely the patriarchal institution of the welfare state to which

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Dogme 95 and its projects reacted, but the movement did indirectly champion the ambition of the Ministry of Culture for practitioners to produce innovative and incisive cultural artefacts. As Mads Egmont Christensen suggests, Dogme may have been appealing to politicians and bureaucrats because it “was a formal (and relatively simple and inexpensive) scheme that meshed well with most film institute bureaucrats’ ideas of risk-minimised innovation” (193). Supportive policy scaffolding, interconnectedness between theory and practice, and artistic freedom has generated the ideal environment for creative experimentation in Denmark, resulting in Danish content’s remarkable success, both domestically and abroad (Bondebjerg, “Regional and Global Dimensions” 36). From the early masterpieces of filmmaker Dreyer to the contentious but irresistible 1960s “sex” films to Dogme 95, Denmark has been a fertile ground for artistic exploration in film and television, but the centralisation of the separate film institutions and organisations into the single umbrella of the DFI in 1997 was, not doubt, vital to the stronger and more consolidated film industry that Denmark could boast going into the twenty-first century (Bondebjerg and Redvall, “A Small Region” 19). Of equal significance was the National Film School, and, later, the non-traditional offshoot school Super16, which provided world-class education to a select few aspiring filmmakers. In the early 2000s, two initiatives were created to foster new talent: the first was Station Next, a film school for young people aged 13 to 18, and the second was New Danish Screen, a program to support emerging graduates to work within the budget constraints of a small industry. Despite this climate of free expression and artistic agency, which has the potential to result in a diverse range of styles and narratives, some remarkably similar themes and topics emerged in contemporary Danish screen fiction. The two inaugural Dogme films, Vinterberg’s Festen (The Celebration) (1998) and von Trier’s Idioterne (The Idiots) (1998), in many ways set the tone not only for the Dogme films that followed but for much Danish drama. Festen stages a large family reunion for the patriarch’s 60th birthday, where his adult son accuses him of sexual abuse. This theme of childhood sexual assault is subsequently present explicitly in Anklaget (Accused) (Thuesen 2005), Jagten (The Hunt) (Vinterberg 2012) and Der Kommer en Dag (The Day Will Come) (J.W. Nielsen 2016), and to a lesser extent in Se Min Kjole (Hush Little Baby) (Joof 2009), Små Ulykker (Minor Mishaps) (Olesen 2002) and Et Rigtigt Menneske (Truly Human) (Sandgren 2001). Likewise, the death of a child as the catalyst for the action is common to

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the Dogme films Idioterne, Et Rigtigt Menneske, Forbrydelser (In Your Hands) (Olesen 2004) and En Kærlighedshistorie (discussed in Chap. 4), as well as to the non-Dogme films Lad de Små Børn (Aftermath) (Steen 2004), Antichrist (von Trier 2006), En Chance Til (A Second Chance) (Bier 2014) and Den Skyldige (The Guilty) (Møller 2018). It would be misleading to suggest that only the mother characters are impacted by their child’s death in Danish screen narratives, but, in the above-mentioned examples, it is the women whose emotional responses to their loss form a central component of the plot, while the fathers are more rational or simply non-existent. What is particularly notable is the frequency with which female characters manifest feelings of failure, inadequacy and shame in relation to their performance of motherhood. Dogme 95 effectively launched an unofficial trend of films that engaged with conflicts of locating a sense of personal identity in a fragmenting society, the experience of loss, mental illness or social isolation, and reconciling difficult or traumatic family situations. Indeed, countless Danish film, and also television, projects since the late 1990s demonstrate a consistent preoccupation with dysfunctional family environments and neglected children. As cultural productions with broad appeal and strong traction, fiction films and television dramas provide ideal forums for a dialogue around citizenship, belonging and responsibility. In the Nordic countries, the media systems have historically played a crucial role in shaping and reflecting the values of the state and ensuring access to, and representation of, broad cross-sections of society (Syvertsen et al. 11–13). Since 1959, when television broadcasting began in Denmark, the media organisation Nordvision has been supporting content exchange and co-production between the Nordic countries to enhance the quality of local projects and encourage regional solidarity. Nordvision’s motto of “we share what we own” echoes the social democratic welfare state rhetoric of equal access and redistribution of assets (Hartmann et al. 12). As Syvertsen et al. write, “From the early days of broadcasting, public service institutions were obliged to provide comprehensive programming, enlighten the public, and produce programs important to society rather than to individual consumers” (80). Contemporary programming still centres around “objective” and comprehensive news and current affairs content as well as a range of fictional commissions that aim to engage and edify the audience, treating viewers as “active citizens” (Syvertsen et al. 81). The potent combination of state-­ supported media, political legislation, the actions of trade unions, and the

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women’s movements have helped to secure a foundation of gender equality and strong civil rights in the Danish nation’s consciousness (Nordic Council of Ministers 10; Siim, “Gender and Citizenship”, 34; Ravn and Rosenbeck 5; Richey 183). TV2’s Vogelsang suggests that these conditions are realised in the dramas the network commissions, explaining that “all of them [are] about being part of the society, and some sense of being part of the Danish society. Finding your place there, I would say” (Personal correspondence. 21 June 2018). The content of the state-owned television networks in Denmark—DR and TV2—produces spaces where a shared identity is reworked amidst a rhetoric of nationhood and social obligation. Both networks subscribe to the belief that television fiction has the capacity to enlighten and instruct its viewers through depicting relatable scenarios and characters. The at-arm’s-length principle championed by the Ministry of Culture ensures political parity in DR’s output, while the license fee funding model (replaced by a tax model as per the 2019–2022 Media Agreement) has provided DR with freedom from market trends and commercial objectives. DR’s relatively stable state financing and the creation of its own studios, TV-byen (TV-town), in which to shoot fiction have cultivated a high-quality, recognisable aesthetic which lends itself to social realist narratives that confront some of the most challenging social issues; these are conditions from which TV2 also benefit. As Vogelsang explains, she “could sell Danish drama [to international distributors] on the back of DR”, despite the network’s disparate branding and image (Personal correspondence. 21 June 2018). Unlike DR, though, TV2 does not have the capacity to produce television drama series in-house but, rather, outsources its projects to local commercial production companies such as Miso Film and Cosmo Film (Degn and Krogager 363–364). TV2 also sources its own budget through advertising and subscription fees and, therefore, is more inclined towards commercially viable stories and longer running series. Access to the DFI’s Public Service Pool fund, however, allows TV2 to commission series that may be of social interest without, perhaps, being as broadly appealing as their usual material. The Public Service Pool scheme was introduced in the 2007–2010 Media Agreement to assist networks such as TV2, TV3 and Channel Four to access state monies for drama production; this produces more variety and competition in public service media. Vogelsang explains that the scheme was created in response to structural changes that occurred in film financing in the 1990s: some funding to feature film production was cut and the

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state-owned television networks were obligated to fill this financial gap, despite the fact that TV2 was not receiving the same amount of state funding as DR (Personal correspondence. 21 June 2018). In essence, the Public Service Pool fund allows TV2 access to public monies without changing their semi-commercial mandate. TV2 still has a smaller budget for drama, Vogelsang notes, so its content generally needs to be “be less complicated, and more entertaining”. It still has to be high quality, she adds; “the audience demand is very high for that, luckily, in Denmark” (Personal correspondence. 21 June 2018). The launch of TV2 in 1988 was followed by TV3 and Channel 4 who broadcast from outside of Denmark; these additions resulted in more diverse production conditions and narrative options (Højbjerg 326–327). This shift, in turn, affected opportunities for employment and professional development in the film industry. As Vinca Wiedemann, formerly of the NFSD, explains, “it was a win-win situation where television gained more artistic input, and the film industry got much more practice, everyday practice, because there was not that much work in the industry” (Personal correspondence. 20 June 2018). With the introduction of new television stations with more commercially appealing content, though, DR began to lose some popularity and was forced to develop a distinct brand in contrast to its new competitor, TV2. Smaller broadcasters are often forced to manufacture a point of difference in their programming and content in order to retain their local market share and reach international audiences, and DR achieved this by specialising in in-house drama production (McElroy et al. 172). It is an essential element of DR’s drama productions to possess what the network’s former head of drama, Rumle Hammerich, called “the philosophical layer” (in Redvall, “Writing and Producing Television Drama” 68). Also referred to as “double storytelling”, the philosophical layer is a storyline that engages viewers in an ethical dilemma that warrants consideration and debate and which thereby justifies the state’s substantial investment (Redvall, “Writing and Producing Television Drama” 68). Hochscherf notes: Emphasizing this public service obligation, the Cultural Director at DR, Morten Hesseldahl (2013), clearly states: “[…] of course it is great that DR’s dramas have ambitions to influence the Danes. Influence them to participate in public debates. Influence them to involve themselves in society’s challenges. Influence them to think for themselves by putting relevant issues

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on the agenda. This has certainly always been our ambition. And not to provide glossy entertainment.” (160)

From their game-changing crime serial, Forbrydelsen, onwards, DR has produced more serious drama with an explicit double-storytelling function. The themes of its most successful and internationally popular series include corporate greed, dysfunctional families, Denmark’s involvement in high-conflict zones and waning religious devotion. Where the main cast of hit series from the late 1990s and early 2000s was likely to be white-­ skinned with a higher male-female ratio, such as in Taxa (Thorsboe 1997–1999), Rejseholdet (Unit One) (Thorsboe and Brostrøm 2000–2004) and Ørnen (The Eagle) (Thorsboe and Brostrøm 2004–2006), recent dramas are more likely to foreground women and feature more non-white Danes in lead roles, such as in Bedrag (Follow the Money) (Gram 2016–2019), Greyzone (Dragster et  al. 2018), Når støvet har lagt sig (When the Dust Settles) (Høgh and Rydén 2020) and the web series Sex (Mendes 2020–present). According to Vogelsang, both DR and TV2 dramas focus on instructing the Danish audience on “how to be Danish”, a notion that speaks to the political obligations of the networks and their primary target of local viewers. Hallsworth: What does that involve, telling people how to be Danish? Vogelsang: It involves looking at the world we’re living in, trying to make… trying to understand it. And how you’re feeling, and how you live as a human being. We are saying that our strategy is the big dilemmas in life, that’s what we want to focus on [at] TV2. (Personal correspondence. 21 June 2018) She maintains that TV2 takes a less righteous approach to fictional storytelling than DR, but there is still noticeable overlap in the themes and aesthetic across both networks, which share a proclivity for narratives with iconic females at the centre. I queried this high frequency of female leads in my interview with Vogelsang and she responded: One of [the reasons] is our biggest audience is women, they are the ones who choose what kind of television they want to see in the family. If you

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want to have a big audience, or a broad audience, then it’s good to have a female interest. That’s as a start. And I think in the Danish society, for many years women and men have been working quite equally, so I think it’s reflected in our stories. (Personal correspondence. 21 June 2018)

She pointed to the example of Norskov (Jensen 2015–2017) as one where the male character’s fatherhood is foregrounded. Even further back is the example of widowed police officer Christian Torp (Lars Bom) from TV2’s Strisser på Samsø (Island Cop) (Petersen 1997–1998), a father raising his young daughter by himself. The embedding of fatherhood in the male’s identity is most prominent in the television drama characters of Theis Birk Larsen (Bjarne Henriksen) and Robert Zeuthen (Anders W. Berthelsen) in Forbrydelsen and Martin Rohde (Kim Bodnia) and Henrik Sabroe (Thure Lindhardt) in Bron/ Broen (The Bridge) (Rosenfeldt 2011–2018); the latter two fathers are both indirectly implicated in the death of their own children on account of infidelity, vice or negligence. In Bron/Broen more than Forbrydelsen, these familial tangents become major plot points: Martin avenges his son’s murder by killing the perpetrator—similar to Theis in Forbrydelsen—while Henrik obsessively searches for his missing family, questioning desperately: “Who the hell would I be if I’m not a father looking for his children?” (episode 1, season 4 2018). In both of these examples, the mother characters can also be seen to contribute to the vulnerability of the home through their own infidelity and desire. Forbrydelsen season three, analysed in Chap. 5, centres around father characters as both the victims and perpetrators, with the mothers playing peripheral roles. Cursory reflection on these above-mentioned texts, however, reveals that, while absent or abusive fathers are framed as highly damaging, the conception of oneself as a “bad father” is not accompanied by the same self-admonishment and social regulation as being a “bad mother” is. For example, the protagonist of Anna Pihl, examined in Chap. 5, considers quitting the police force because she worries she spends too much time away from her son, while Martin Rohde cheats on his wife with a widow he is interviewing but remains present in both the family home and the workplace; the parameters for acceptable behaviour appear quite different depending on the gender of the character in question. The concepts of citizenship and shame, through which I frame my analysis of Danish mothers, would not, I believe, be as appropriate in an equivalent study of fatherhood in Danish film and television, yet these themes are particularly

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pertinent in a time of seemingly unparalleled gender equality and civil freedoms. While deficient on-screen fathers do warrant further analysis, father characters, more often than not, are transgressive not on account of their paternalism but on account of personal vice. Mother characters, on the other hand, are routinely shunned, belittled or shamed for their performance of motherhood. It is difficult to extricate female characters in Danish fiction from the broader political and cultural issues of the gendered division of labour and from the relative lack of female voices in positions of leadership and authority. Though several of Denmark’s most watched and most popular television series (for example, Dicte, Krøniken, Badehotellet, Arvingerne) were created or co-created by women, opportunities for women writers, directors and other crew members remain disproportionately low in the film industry. According to a 2020 report from the DFI, women are still underrepresented in screenwriting and directing (“Updated Study of Gender Distribution”). Women are also far more likely to receive funding through the Commissioner or New Danish Screen pathways (for low budget, niche or arthouse films) than through the Market Scheme (for bigger budget films with broader appeal); female applicants comprised only 14 per cent of funding recipients in the Market Scheme in 2020 (“Positive Gender Equality”). These figures point to the fact that films created by Danish women are assumed, consciously or otherwise, to attract smaller budgets and audience numbers. Across the world, the gendering of labour and industries sees men, women and other persons concentrated in particular careers and roles, and the media industries are no exception. According to a 2015 UNESCO report, “gender equality has not increased in either media content or decision-­ making, where women remain excluded to greater or lesser degrees” (“Re|Shaping Cultural Policies” 9). The European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA) has published a report based on survey data from seven European countries, which indicates that, between 2006 and 2013, female directors received an average of 16 per cent of available national film funding (EWA 22), even though they constitute roughly 24 per cent of active directors (EWA 19). The report states that, in 2013, female-directed films performed better at national and international festivals, yet women-led projects were still seen as risky to investors (EWA 9). Denmark was not one of the seven countries featured in the report, but Sweden was, and ranked marginally better than its counterparts, perhaps

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because of their sustained effort to foster more gender-equal conditions for women across Sweden, including in the film industry. All three Scandinavian film institutes began investigating the industrial conditions for marginalised demographics around 2013, though Sweden concentrated specifically on gender, with strong support from the head of the Swedish Film Institute (SFI), Anna Serner (Hjort, “Gender Equity” 137–138; Redvall and Sørensen 234, 238). The DFI concerned itself with promoting and maintaining diversity and equality, broadly conceived, in all aspects of film production, co-creating schemes and initiatives together with the film industry. Kirsten Barslund, project manager at the DFI, explains that Sweden focused solely on gender equality, rather than casting a wide net as Denmark did, because “they have a tradition for it [in Sweden], and we don’t” (Personal correspondence. 6 June 2019). “We think we do, but we don’t. We have a long way to go in some terms in Denmark, in gender equality […] we think we’re very equal […] but we still have to question everything we do instead of just falling into this ‘well, everything’s just fine’, because there’s a long way to go”, she expounds. The efforts undertaken by the SFI in 2013 to introduce mandates and initiatives to promote opportunities for women in the film industry produced compelling short-term results, but these could not be sustained. A similar trend occurred in Norway, where establishing rules and quotas proved insufficient for maintaining a culture of gender equality and high female representation (Dancus 9). It is on account of the difficulty sustaining this progress that the DFI has not adopted the same mandates as Sweden and Norway. Barslund explains that ingraining an awareness of how and why personnel and narrative choices are made, rather than placing demands on what these choices should be, will be more effective in creating long-term change. The prevailing ideology in Denmark is that “quotas do not change a production culture” and that motivating practitioners and organisational bodies to lead the charge towards equality is a more effective and sustainable option than only top-down decision-making (Redvall and Sørensen 240; cf. Dahlerup 146; Hjort, “Gender Equity” 140; Siim, “Gender and Citizenship” 39). The current initiatives and education around diversity and inclusion in the Danish film (and television) industry did not emerge in response to a distinct crisis, as such. They do, however, indirectly respond to concerns about the overrepresentation of white, middle-class male Danish filmmakers. The fact that the NFSD accepts only six students in each stream every

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two years means that the quantity of highly trained, industry-savvy film graduates is quite low. Although Danish stories about women are hardly lacking, and there are many important, major roles for older female actors (such as Trine Dyrholm, Bodil Jørgensen, Paprika Steen, Ghita Nørby, Sidse Babett Knudsen), there is a tendency for women characters to be plunged into dilemmas that have them questioning their morals, particularly in relation to their family obligations. I discussed the proclivity for male filmmakers to depict female suffering with actress Stine Stengade, asking, “Why do you think men are so concerned with how women are perceived in society?”. Stengade replied: “I think they’re quite concerned with how they perceive them, themselves. I mean, how you portray people, being a film director or a writer, well, it must reflect back on yourself […] I think that it’s the masculine look on the women that we see very much” (Personal correspondence. 22 October 2018). She highlighted the importance of the global #MeToo movement in raising awareness of the prevalence of discrimination, oppression and exploitation perpetuated towards women. “I think people will be encouraged to stand up, speak up”, she remarks, noting that this is positive not just for women but for all of society. #MeToo well and truly made it to Denmark, by way of allegations against Zentropa Entertainment’s Peter Aalbæk Jensen and his behaviour towards younger employees at the production company. Several women spoke out about Jensen’s discriminatory and unethical practices, eventually leading to his removal as executive producer after several partners threatened to withdraw funding and support for Zentropa productions (I.  Sørensen 503). For his part, Aalbæk Jensen does not seem to have conceded his own wrongdoing, and his alleged behaviour is not unanimously regarded to be harmful by his industry peers (Keslassy; Lundtofte; Pham, “‘It’s Painful for Lars’”; Pulver). Inge Sørensen asserts that the response to unveiling of discriminatory workplace practices at Zentropa needed to include policy mechanisms that protected and empowered employees (504). She remarks that It is no coincidence that Eurimages, [Film i Väst], and [the Swedish Film Institute] threatened Zentropa with funding stops, and the DFI did not. Eurimages is committed to the Council of Europe’s priority area of gender equality with its own Gender Equality Strategy. FiV and SFI are implementing the Swedish Film Law that has an explicit remit of 50/50 male/female cast and crew for all funded films (Inkoo Kang 2016) […] Their objections

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to Zentropa were effective because they extended and exerted their roles beyond a narrowly defined cultural policy remit, and linked the right to lever arts funding to satisfactory and lawful working conditions and the protection of workers’ rights. (I. Sørensen 503–504)

Sørensen’s comments illustrate the importance of viewing media production within the framework of social as well as cultural policy and of seeing institutionalised practice as indicative of broader cultural norms and ideologies. Her critique of the DFI points to an area that warrants further analysis—namely, the impact of state policy and cultural ideology on behind-the-camera activities and interactions. The DFI has the responsibility to ensure that the Danish film industry is operating in a way that enables a range of voices to be heard, and this includes decentring habitual approaches that might privilege particular perspectives. Broad representation in fiction is an important initial step in the mobilisation of marginalised groups into positions where their voices and perspectives can influence the cultural landscape (cf. Redvall, “Film and Media Production” 144). As Kirsten Barslund points out, there have been structural weaknesses in Danish film production that have resulted in an underrepresentation of female practitioners: We wouldn’t go into this if everything was working; we’re going into this because we can see that there are equalities on some levels, and then inequality happens. And sometimes it’s just people not applying for [funding] support: but why not? Could we do something? Do we have any barriers? Are we talking in a manner, in a fashion, that’s making barriers without knowing it? […] So, [a lack of diversity] is, of course, a problem, otherwise it wouldn’t be necessary to [raise] awareness of [it]. (Personal correspondence. 6 June 2019; cf. Redvall, “Film and Media Production” 144)

Such conditions are not endemic to the Danish industries, and indeed, the Danish industry may be more conducive to women achieving success in the media industries. Given the wide jurisdiction and social democratic agenda of the welfare state, however, countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Norway must acknowledge the barriers that might be preventing marginalised groups from entering certain professions or engaging in public debates. Barslund explains that raising awareness of potential biases and habitual decision-making impacts not only the people recruited and employed but

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also the characters and representations on-screen. She expounds that a scriptwriter may develop a story with a particular actor in mind or set a story in an area they are not personally familiar with, which reproduces patterns that do not reflect the lived experience of audiences: If a production is filming in this area of Denmark, it is common to ask: “have you ever been there? Have you tried going there? Do you think that your characters are actually reflecting the daily life?” And when they [the filmmakers] go, they come back like [looks shocked] and they often change [the script]. (Personal correspondence. 6 June 2019)

The implication here is that experiencing a social milieu first-hand prompts creators to rethink how they position their stories and characters. There is, perhaps now more than ever, a certain level of accountability in fictional storytelling—as if creative license is no longer a fair excuse for misrepresentation. The awareness of which Barslund speaks has emerged from research on how unconscious bias affects judgements and decision-making and for which the DFI’s film commissioners—amongst other practitioners—are being trained to account. She asserts that knowing that bias might be contributing to the marginalisation of certain groups or narratives imparts a responsibility on the gatekeepers and decision makers: “when you know that, you can see: ‘I’m controlled so much by my brain wanting to make patterns,’” she reflects (Personal correspondence. 6 June 2019). These patterns reinforce familiar or comfortable trajectories that can reproduce stereotypes and stigmatic imagery and exclude already-marginalised perspectives. Public funding to filmmaking and television production in Denmark is accompanied by obligations—namely, to produce fiction in a way that furthers the development of society and the connectedness between Danish citizens. Enabling all citizens to have a voice is, as Michael Walzer states, what underpins democracy and citizenship: “‘Democracy puts a premium on speech… Citizens come into the forum with nothing but their arguments’” (Walzer in Pateman, “The Disorder of Women” 13). As Carole Pateman retorts, though, “How are women to join in the debate between citizens if their words are meaningless?” (Pateman, “The Disorder of Women” 13). The DFI works directly with the industry to create and implement initiatives and schemes to ensure ethical and supportive working environments for emerging and established practitioners across the various

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professions (Redvall and Sørensen 240). The values that have become central to Danish film production—such as diversity, equality of opportunity and freedom of expression—are more deeply ingrained and palpable in the production when the filmmaker is engaged in discussion with the DFI. This is also the case with the Public Service Pool fund, administered through the institute; as Barslund explains, television content produced through this scheme is far more likely to challenge or resist dominant or stereotypical imagery (Personal correspondence. 6 June 2019). The steps taken by the DFI to investigate barriers to participation in the media industries point to a political concern with workplace equity and diversity, as well as the significance of accurate and equitable depictions of society in screen fiction. Though the Danish film industry will continue to improve the pathway from education to employment for women and other underrepresented demographics, comprehensive analysis of how female characters are actually pictured, and the implications of this, remains lacking. In my recent interview, Vogelsang responded to my query about the increasing need for media content to meaningfully engage with the stories and experiences of a more diverse range of people: Diversity and representation are part of a huge, endless and very important discussion. It is a broad question—from race, body, social status, gender, sex, age—and so forth, and as commissioners I believe we have a responsibility to pick up stories that reflect the outside world and give a true and honest representation of our society. However, that said, I also believe that it is important that these concerns do not compromise the quality of the story, and that it is a delicate balance to maintain. (Personal correspondence. 12 May 2021)

Women possess largely the same legal and political rights as men in contemporary Denmark, but on-screen depictions of women suggest that the role of mother is one that is complicated by the cultural obligation to be engaged in a successful career and in civic activities concurrent to raising a family. In addition, the historical tendency to problematise women’s sexuality, particularly in relation to their social or maternal commitments, is still present in Danish film and television, despite a culturally progressive production environment.

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The DFI’s Chief Executive Officer Claus Ladegaard believes that the most recent 2020 statistics on gender representation on-screen and behind-the-camera are indicative of a positive trend. He states that for the third year running, we are seeing an almost equal distribution of men and women in leading roles. This means that we are experiencing more and more exciting and nuanced female characters in Danish films. For me, that’s probably the most important thing, because it’s about what audiences encounter and how they mirror themselves on screen. (“Positive Gender Equality”)

Ladegaard places a high value on the influence of fictional media content and its pedagogical function in creating exemplary imagery for audiences. We need not see our current or ideal selves in fiction for it to generate a meaningful interaction; it can be a space of critique and contemplation as much as identification and recognition. Though it is difficult to determine the precise ways in which female characters in newer fictions might be “nuanced” by comparison to their predecessors, it is clear that changes in the way media is produced and distributed have challenged the hegemony of mainstream content producers and distributors, resulting in greater representation of previously marginalised and silenced groups. I discussed the trends in Danish screen narration and the concomitant representation of women with all of my interviewees, including Stengade, who features in two of my six cases. I asked Stengade how she thinks the representation of women has changed in the last 20 years, to which she responded by highlighting the increase in prominent female leads but also the tendency to for women characters to be positioned as vulnerable: I think that there are many, many female parts, roles, where you have to cover the victim, you know what I mean? Women being represented or shown as victims of something […] Also, if you look on the classical repertoire—also [in] theatre, I know your angle is film and television, but if we look into drama—what kind of roles are there; how can we be represented? (Personal correspondence. 22 October 2018)

Stengade’s question is astute, and is one that this book asks in several different ways: can women be represented as women, and as citizens, without being situated in relation to maternalism? Who is the woman that is—inexplicably and without justification—not an

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embodiment of sacrificial maternalism, and where does she fit into the landscape of the contemporary welfare state? One should ask not just what kind of roles there are for women actors but what kind of roles there are for women. To make any claims about the significance of contemporary depictions of women in Danish film and television productions, an understanding of the interaction between society, culture, politics and the media industries must be established. These first chapters have provided the historical and ideological context for the thematic analyses and case studies that follow.

CHAPTER 4

Motherhood, Sexuality and Shame in Danish Cinema

Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Director’s Cut Volumes I and II (2014) totals more than five hours of cinema in an eight-chapter epic that grapples with female sexuality and transgression. It is by far the most controversial case examined in this book and the only one to have an English soundtrack. Though critically divisive, the film was extensively celebrated at the 2015 Danish Robert Awards, winning in the categories of Best Danish Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Editing, Best Sound Design and Best Visual Effects. Despite this industry recognition as a masterpiece, the widely screened theatrical release of Nymphomaniac (2013), which is 1.5 hours shorter, is considerably censored—a crucial chapter, “Chapter 7: The Mirror”, was heavily edited to remove the scenes where the protagonist Joe (Stacey Martin; Charlotte Gainsbourg) discovers she is pregnant for a second time and, denied a termination procedure, proceeds to conduct a home abortion on herself.1 In a striking exchange between Joe and the psychologist (Caroline Goodall) who will determine whether she will be allowed the medical procedure, Joe is asked: “What’s the most important thing in your life right now?” To this, she replies aggressively: “The most important thing for me right now is to get an abortion”. Though more often subject to academic and critical attention for its incendiary and 1  As Elbeshlawy points out, this chapter is the only one that is devoid of male characters, rendering its heavy editing intriguing in ways that there is not the scope to expound here (181).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Hallsworth, Danish Mothers On-Screen, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88579-3_4

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flagrant sexual content, this resolutely non-maternal statement encapsulates a crucial element of the story, namely, Joe’s performance of motherhood. In my analysis of this film, I note how Joe’s reflection upon her own sexuality is inextricably bound up in her maternal identity: the guilt and shame that define her character are connected to the abandonment of her first child and termination of her second pregnancy. The film’s framing of motherhood as necessitating the subordination of personal autonomy and sexuality opens a conversation about what it means to belong and how belonging is bound up in gendered embodiments of cultural identity— themes that this chapter interrogates by analysing the cases and positioning them within Denmark’s cultural history. The “Danishness” of von Trier’s English-language film might superficially appear questionable, but its inclusion in this book is justified by the recognition of von Trier as a Danish-born director, working within the Danish funding system: he and the film’s producer sought and received financial support from Danish Film Institute (DFI) film commissioner Steen Bille (with whom I spoke during my research). Bille described the film as “a major cinematographic work” that he was pleased to be able to fund (Personal correspondence. 9 October 2019). He acknowledges that von Trier is one of Denmark’s great directors but stresses that it is important to ensure that film funding doesn’t only go to “elderly white males, like Lars”. Yet the foundations established by Scandinavian (male) writers and filmmakers such as Henrik Ibsen, Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ingmar Bergman are visible in more recent Danish and Swedish fiction: these artists have influenced von Trier, in particular, and no doubt inspired many of his contemporaries. This chapter’s cases are contextualised within this historical trope of Scandinavian male filmmakers and playwrights engaging with themes of female suffering, persecution and marginalisation. Both cases in this chapter are occupied with the themes of transgression, provocation and a liberated female sexuality, and both feature mother characters who are emotionally unstable and abandon their children. The first case study is of Ole Christian Madsen’s Dogme 95 film En Kærlighedshistorie, which, more than any other Dogme film, foregrounds the struggle to reconcile motherhood with mental illness and social transgression. The narrative fares well in foreign contexts, devoid of culturally specific humour or references to regional folk tales and instead scrutinising a commonplace, familiar situation so closely that it becomes abject or, conversely, profoundly intimate. The central character, Kira (Stine

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Stengade), is the mother of two young boys and the wife of a successful, self-made businessman, Mads (Lars Mikkelsen), but she is quite obviously unhappy and unwell. As the film slowly and candidly unfolds it becomes clear that she is not a functional member of society; she has lost her ability to judge situations and behaves erratically. Kira is aware of her own hopelessness, though, and this reflexivity compounds her sense of shame and sadness. The film is one of many Danish narratives that explores the conflict between the state subsuming childcare under its social services, thereby liberating women from many domestic caregiver duties, and the internalised notion that motherhood is a necessary, desirable or expected facet of female identity. Akin to the character of Isa in Arvingerne (Chap. 6), severe emotional dysregulation obscures Kira’s capacity to be a reliable caregiver, and the shame associated with this apparent failure results in retreat and isolation. En Kærlighedshistorie and Nymphomaniac are two of many examples of Danish films featuring women whose experience of motherhood brings internal conflict that manifests as self-destructive or obsessive behaviour and an invalidation of the self.2 Both function as portraits of women whose behaviour is, however, recontextualised by the revelation of the loss of a child—Kira’s to death and Joe’s to a choice she is coerced into making. While their socially disruptive conduct is excused by these traumatic events within the respective worlds of the films, the women’s subsequent social isolation on account of this loss suggests that motherhood is central to a stable sense of identity for women. These female characters’ identities are constructed as being bound up in caregiving which, when rendered impossible, results in a rupture between the “ideal” self and the actual self (Daniluk and Browne 136; Dewitte et al. 703; Krishek 33; Probyn 27). Kira becomes almost impotent after the death of her infant, and Joe defends her right to not be a mother yet consequently admonishes herself as “a bad human being”. I interpret these behaviours as evidence of shame—an experience that is distinct from guilt and which it is important to define here. Shame relates to a failure of the whole self, whereas guilt is understood as a failure of doing (Potter-Efron 8, 15; cf. Brown 45). The 2  Other examples include Den Skyldige (The Guilty) (Møller 2018), Kvinden der Drømt om en Mand (The Woman Who Dreamed of a Man) (Fly 2010), Applaus (Applause) (Zandvliet 2009), Over Gaden Under Vandet (Above the Street, Below the Water) (Sieling 2009), Forbrydelser (In Your Hands) (Olesen 2004), Lad de Små Børn (Aftermath) (Steen 2004) and Et Rigtigt Menneske (Truly Human) (Sandgren 2001).

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central fear associated with shame is abandonment/not belonging, while guilt invokes the fear of punishment (Potter-Efron 9). For example, Joe’s guilt, I argue, emerges from her transgression of feminine norms and stereotypes, to which she openly admits. Her shame, though, emerges when her sexual exploits directly conflict with her maternal obligations. In her 2006 article, Brené Brown proposes a framework for identifying and conceptualising shame, which she terms Shame Resilience Theory (SRT). Her interviews with more than 200 women produced findings that indicate that the affect can be characterised by three interconnected experiences: feeling trapped, feeling powerless and feeling isolated. The female characters examined in this chapter’s cases, as well as those in Chaps. 5 and 6, embody these feelings, exhibiting the harmful consequences of normalising and internalising dominant, hegemonic ideas of femininity and motherhood. Drawing from Brown’s SRT, as well as Élisabeth Badinter’s work on maternal love, Michel Foucault’s discussion of the confession in The History of Sexuality and Elspeth Probyn’s theorisation on shame, this chapter examines how Joe and Kira negotiate their precarious and fractured interpersonal relationships alongside their conflicted sense of self-­ worth as women, mothers and citizens whose sense of belonging is determined by the discourse and ideology that define their respective communities. Interpreting Nymphomaniac, as Linda Badley does, as “retro Scandinavian blue” (191), I situate the representations in this text in relation to the Scandinavian blue film movement (discussed in Chap. 2), observing the commonalties between this oft-overlooked period in Danish cinema and the far more highly regarded Dogme 95. Indeed, both Scandinavian blue and Dogme 95 have influenced contemporary filmmaking in Denmark by setting a precedent for explicit, innovative and self-­ reflexive projects that react against mainstream cinematic production methods. The cases and the respective aesthetic movements in which they fit also speak to a legacy of nineteenth-century Nordic social realist theatre, which often depicted confronting scenes of domestic discord and female suffering (Haverty Rugg 352). The fact that many of the female characters discussed in the case studies were created by men suggests a tendency for Danish male writers and filmmakers to depict women as victims (this trend should not, however, be interpreted as evidence of writers and directors endorsing this view). Although this could be due to the higher proportion of male filmmakers in general, Linda Haverty Rugg posits that “Nordic film directors may see

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themselves as inheritors of an earlier cultural project, one in which Scandinavian authors broke upon the world stage with daring violations of the gender and sexual codes of their time” (352). Stories of deviant women transgressing social and cultural standards persist as objects of entertainment and study in contemporary Danish fiction. As actress Stengade notes, “this victimising [of] women [is] not something new […] many of the theatre roles I’ve played were also victims, on the classical repertoire; it’s been there for quite some time” (Personal correspondence. 22 October 2018). The most famous works of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen feature women who find themselves in impossible domestic situations: Nora from Et Dukkehjem (A Doll’s House) walks out on her family and the title character in Hedda Gabler kills herself (see Ibsen et al.). As Haverty Rugg notes, “both Ibsen and Strindberg create sacrificial female characters […] for whom death seems to be the only response to the strictures of their lives: Miss Julie, Hedda Gabler, Hedvig in The Wild Duck” (352), indicating a motif of female suffering and sacrifice in Scandinavian fiction as early as the nineteenth century. Following in the footsteps of the eminent Danish film director Carl Theodor Dreyer, Swedish writer and director Ingmar Bergman appropriated the social realist drama genre, instilling it with a sexual energy that had been missing in previous iterations. More than once, von Trier has cited Dreyer and Bergman as sources of inspiration (Hjort and Bondebjerg 214, 221; Björkman 92, 164). He flippantly comments in an interview with Stig Björkman that “people are always sacrificing themselves completely in Dreyer’s films—and in mine. It must be a particularly Danish characteristic!” (221), a comment that speaks to his conscious affiliation with Dreyer and the latent impact of his filmic legacy. In fact, Haverty Rugg asserts that it’s not possible “for Bergman to ignore Dreyer, for von Trier to ignore either Dreyer or Bergman: the work of the older director is the standard to which the younger must, in some way, respond, if he wants to be counted as part of the Nordic art cinema pantheon” (355). One of von Trier’s earliest acclaimed works was a for-television version of the Greek tragedy Medea (1988), based on the screenplay by Dreyer in which Medea (Kirsten Olesen) kills her children in an act of vengeance against her adulterous lover (Udo Kier). Dreyer emerged as one of the Nordic region’s most respected directors in the first half of the twentieth century; he is best known for La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc) (1928), a timeless narrative of female persecution, and Ordet (The Word) (1955), which, far more overtly than Nymphomaniac, draws upon

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religious ideology and practices to shape its plot, with the characters obsessing over what it means to be a “good Christian”. Relationship breakdowns and domestic discord are the focus of his other classics, Du skal ære din hustru (Master of the House) (1925) and Gertrud (1964). Though it is not particularly generative to engage with the reputation of Dreyer, Bergman or von Trier here, it is relevant to point out that all of these directors have “been labeled sadists and misogynists for their treatment of both female actors and female characters” (Haverty Rugg 351) and that similar criticism could be levelled at the male playwrights (Ibsen and Strindberg, in particular) preceding the film era, who grappled with the same topics of female oppression and sacrifice. The textual conversations between these Scandinavian writers and directors point to a connection that transcends the historical influence of earlier artists laying the foundation for the future; similarities in the characterisation of women and families throughout Scandinavian narratives suggest a pervasive cultural preoccupation with confronting psychological themes, often centred on conflict in the home and the repression of women. Emerging on the international stage in the mid-1990s, von Trier became notable for films that featured provocative and long-suffering female leads, from Breaking the Waves (1996), with its masochistic, pious heroine, to Melancholia (2011), whose protagonist is wilful, fatalistic and disempowered. Andrew Nestingen argues that von Trier ignores the complexities of race, class, gender, ability and other politicised aspects of identity and “subsumes his political questions to the aesthetic challenges he sets for himself” (121)—a valid critique but one that could be levelled at countless other artists and media industry practitioners who reinforce hegemonic imagery without posing the aggravating ethical questions that von Trier so often does. Pétur Valsson points out that von Trier “uses historically marginal groups [such as women and Jewish people] to express personal frustrations and psychological difficulties” (124), describing this appropriation of persecuted groups as “problematic” (126). Mette Hjort expresses a stronger sentiment, asserting that von Trier “diminishes himself as an artist” by assuming that moral responsibility is not relevant to his filmic storytelling (“The Problem with Provocation” 24). The ethics of these representations is difficult to evaluate in the current era of unprecedented cultural rights (throughout the West), deployment of the concept of intersectionality, and greater emphasis placed on recognising the ways that societies can disable people whose abilities fall outside of normative standards. Indeed, many Dogme films, and much Danish

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cinema since Dogme, present socially marginalised characters, including those who are seen to be disempowered or victimised. Some content that may be considered culturally acceptable in Denmark might, more recently or in other contexts, be construed as belittling (such as the representation of mental illness in Mifunes Sidste Sang [Kragh-Jacobsen 1999]), problematic (as in En Chance Til’s depiction of infanticide) or offensive (such as Dræberne fra Nibe [Small Town Killers] [Bornedal 2017]). My analysis of Nymphomaniac and the other cases is, however, primarily generative— concerned less with the reception of the texts as objects of entertainment and more with their potential, as cultural artefacts, to offer relevant, insightful or agitational representations. Like many of von Trier’s films, Nymphomaniac features an ambiguous spatial and temporal setting, which has the effect of presenting Joe as a metonym for woman—“your average Joe”, perhaps—signalling that her tale transcends individual experience to reflect the broader oppression and denial of women’s sexual autonomy. Assuming that the film’s release date coincides with the present day in the film, 50-year-old Joe grows up in the 1960/1970s during a period of censorship liberalisation in Scandinavia, when erotic cinema proliferated. Badley argues that Nymphomaniac can be interpreted as a “throwback” to the 1970s, comparing Joe to a number of female leads in protest-era Scandinavian cinema (191). She points out that, in these films, “the sexually adventurous woman is a loner abhorred by ‘good girls’, wives and mothers” (201), a description that sums up Joe. Nymphomaniac speaks to this generation of erotic cinema in its sexually playful yet ultimately melancholic content, as well as in its form, through the periodic instructive digressions that allude to documentaries such as Gade Uden Ende, Sexual Freedom in Denmark (von Hellen 1970) and Facts: Kopenhagen-Sex-Report (Facts: Copenhagen Sex Report) (Lenz 1971). Though Sweden led the charge in the 1950s with the ground-breaking Sommaren med Monika (Summer with Monika) (Bergman 1953) starring the youthful, voluptuous Harriet Andersson, Denmark’s contributions to Scandinavian blue mark important moments in Danish filmmaking. The films were consumed widely and, for better or worse, characterised Denmark’s international reputation. Jack Stevenson writes, in his study of Scandinavian blue, that “If to some this [sexual] revolution seemed like nothing less than the complete moral collapse of an entire society, to progressive thinkers, writers and filmmakers Denmark was a beacon of enlightenment and a sanctuary of free thinking” (“Scandinavian Blue” 4). It

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wasn’t just film that was playing with the boundaries of what was socially acceptable in the 1960s; notorious Danish Surrealist artist Wilhelm Freddie experienced renewed fame after being censured by an unforgiving public and press throughout the 1930s (Engmann). Many of Freddie’s daring, uninhibited paintings and sculptures were shunned as merely pornographic until the 1960s civil rights revolution; in 1970, Freddie was awarded Denmark’s Thorvaldsen Medal, the highest artistic honour in the country (Engmann). His influence was tangible in the 2019 Art and Porn exhibition at ARoS Museum in Aarhus and Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, where his piece Sex-Paralysappeal (1936) took pride of place (“Previous Exhibitions: Art and Porn”). Like Freddie’s work, Nymphomaniac has been dismissed as porn—as if this is the lowest form of art or, more likely, not “art” at all. The film’s cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro has commented, though, that if the audience is seeking an erotic experience they are likely to be disappointed (Silberg 26). It’s true that the sex scenes are far from sensual or even titillating. In the director’s cut, they are graphic and frequent, but to omit, censor, or enhance them would be inappropriate in a film that is expressly about the distress associated with seeking and having sex. For Joe and the overtly, overwhelmingly sexual women in many Scandinavian blue films, it is not simply a question of having more but of having different: a notion which Susan Sontag touches on when she says, “Without a change in the very norms of sexuality, the liberation of women is a meaningless goal. Sex as such is not liberating for women. Neither is more sex” (188). These provocative female protagonists attempt to exercise agency by occupying the masculine position as the pursuer of their object of desire, but this inversion of gendered norms is negatively presented as transgressive or even immoral, and the women at the centre of the narratives are often punished by themselves or others. Although it could be argued that Scandinavian blue cinema positions women as liberated and agentive, many contributions to the movement problematically conflate heightened sexual desire with immorality. The escape from the confines of urban life and familial demands common to blue narratives physicalises the delineation between normative and deviant. The illicit and passionate acts are often staged in a setting outside of the stable, everyday society, such as the country house, the archipelago, the nightclub. It is almost always summer, and temperatures are high (Badley 193). For example, one of the most popular Danish erotic films Jeg, en Kvinde, shot over the summer, claimed to depict “a woman’s point

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of view” filled with “authentic erotic confessions” (J.  Stevenson, “Scandinavian Blue” 61). The protagonist Siv (Essy Persson) pursues a string of relationships, refusing to settle down and get married. Eventually, she meets her match in a man who also resists monogamy and the film ends here, refusing to offer her a hopeful future (J. Stevenson, “Scandinavian Blue” 61). Like Joe, her sexual freedom, as it were, brings little satisfaction or contentment. Female deviance was equally prominent in Swedish films, such as Het är Min Längtan (Britta–The Artist’s Model) (Logardt 1956), where the female protagonist aborts the child she conceives during her promiscuous youth and when she finds she cannot conceive with her husband later in life she commits suicide. Bergman’s Persona (1966) and En Passion (The Passion of Anna) (1969) similarly feature strong themes of female transgression, sexual perversions and children dying (during pregnancy). Like the women of Scandinavian blue, who revel in and are exploited for their disruptive sexuality (until, perhaps, they are killed), Kira and Joe are demarcated as different in relation to gendered norms of sexuality, caregiving and femininity. Unlike their predecessors, though, they explicitly verbalise this difference, articulating their shame and despair. As if in a dialogue with these earlier films, Nymphomaniac and En Kærlighedshistorie offer up alternative versions of the events that transpire once the formerly carefree and alluring woman inevitably returns to the society that she denounced or out of which she was cast (cf. Hübner 111). Dogme 95 presented a stylistic and thematic intersection of the deeply provocative cinema of the 1960s with a contemporary reaction to the conservatism of Danish society in the 1980s and 1990s (Enli et  al. 11; Syvertsen et  al. 8–9). The Dogme 95 Manifesto and Vow of Chastity declare that “enough is enough” and mount an attack against films that function merely as an “illusion of pathos and an illusion of love” (von Trier and Vinterberg 6). What Dogme most blatantly reacts to is the unquestioning acceptance of production techniques that allow filmmakers to rely on shortcuts and “cosmeticization”, which appear to reproduce reality but achieve only “bourgeois romanticism” (von Trier and Vinterberg 6). More recently, the DFI has similarly admonished the perfunctory use of stereotypes and conventions in storytelling, as discussed in Chap. 2, signalling a shift towards what might be called responsible representation. Emerging from a social democratic political backdrop, Dogme’s hostility to elitism and the bourgeoisie is unsurprising; the rule in the Vow of Chastity that prohibits the director from being credited is an indirect

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condemnation of individualism which reflects the Danish state discourse of egalitarianism (Gaut 90). Although not so dissimilar to the film manifestos and film waves emerging in 1950s and 1960s Europe, such as French new wave and Italian neorealism, “Dogme 95 was also a profoundly Danish movement” (MacKenzie, “Films into Uniform” 418); it must be understood as a vision and a practice shaped by Denmark’s film and television history and the dynamic relationship between the government’s gatekeepers and the creative practitioners, many of whom were trained at the National Film School of Denmark (NFSD). Former NFSD principal Vinca Wiedemann reflects, “whenever we discussed the Dogme movement—which came as a surprise to the rest of the world—the people who knew the Danish film school would say ‘but this is just a continuation of what we did at film school’” (Personal correspondence. 20 June 2018). Dogme formalised the cinematic practices that emerged in Denmark in both the 1930s kulturfilm, which had an express public service obligation, and in the 1960s edgy auteur cinema: it enabled creative experimentation within the limits of the low-budget, publicly funded production climate. Birger Langkjær contends that the Dogme films fall across the three categories that he lays out in “Realism as Third Film Practice”: some are genre films, some are art films, and some are part of the category, or a sub-category, of realism. En Kærlighedshistorie, for example, centres on “inner character development” and, as such, he contends, employs psychological realism (“Realism as Third Film Practice” 52). Though the Dogme style was picked up internationally, the resulting Danish iterations interrogate the concepts of belonging and transgression in what was, by some, regarded as a stiflingly conservative welfare state society. Helga Hernes wrote in 1987 that “the state’s intervention in our formerly private lives has taken the form of a silent revolution—a revolution, that unlike previous ones, did not devour its children but smothered and perhaps bored them” (“Welfare States and Woman Power” 119). More recently, Hjort described a shared cultural attitude of apathy and indifference stemming from the welfare state’s universalist approach to entitlements and benefits, which rewards anything that might be construed as work (“Denmark” 37–38). While it is true that the wide reach of state subsidies and payments mostly compensate for lapses in employment—due to childcare, illness, study commitments or disadvantage— financial difficulty does not mitigate social isolation. According to the films of Dogme 95, difference and Otherness are marginalised in this

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society and can only be represented through forms that are as aesthetically unconventional as their content (Walters 23). The Dogme films’ premises are often banal and mundane, focusing on family tensions or social incompetence, yet the plots are rich with introspection, wisdom and curiosity. These projects depict individuals existing on the fringes of society, locating or redefining their sense of belonging. Whether this marginalisation is because of choice as in Idioterne, social ineptitude as in Italienesk for Begyndere (Italian for Beginners) (Scherfig 2000), mental illness as in Mifunes Sidste Sang, fate as in Elsker Dig for Evigt (Open Hearts) (Bier 2002), naivëtyas in Et Rigtigt Menneske, criminality as in Forbrydelser or abuse as in Festen, the world seen through these characters’ eyes is a difficult place to navigate. It makes sense for Dogme films to present stories that are better told through its disjointed style and not undermined by the minimalist technical approach, such as those rooted in the everyday experiences of individuals. As Scott MacKenzie highlights, “the aesthetics of the manifesto have lent themselves to films that often share broadly similar concerns: those of the dysfunctional family and the ways in which the psychical and mental harm done by families needs to be sorted out” (“Manifest Destinies” 56)—a statement that is more or less true for all Danish Dogme films. Dogme 95 co-creator Thomas Vinterberg asserts that this filmmaking approach is liberating: “Dogme breaks with the particular way of making films that has come to have the status almost of a given, and which you’re expected simply to accept without question when you’re about to make a film” (in Hjort and Bondebjerg 276). Rules, as Joke Hermes writes, “refer to norms and of necessity lead to inclusion and exclusion”; they are present in all forms of governance and community building (9). Dogme 95, perhaps by accident, built a community of (male) filmmakers who subscribed to its rousing rhetoric, which effectively inverted the rules of mainstream filmmaking at the time. Although female directors did make Dogme films, the initial group of filmmakers (von Trier, Vinterberg, Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen) was known as the Dogme Brethren—a gendered term that evokes a “boys club” culture where women’s contributions are undermined and silenced. Interestingly, the movement both undercuts and mirrors Denmark’s tendency to politicise public participation and cultural production; although Dogme rejects the way film was funded and produced at the time, it also proposes, albeit ironically, a structured approach that integrates top-down directives with bottom-up innovation. Although the Dogme projects are products of the

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Vow of Chastity’s rules and prescriptions, it is the notion of rule-following that Dogme 95 challenges. A function of the manifesto is to encourage active consideration of what happens when rules, boundaries and expectations are transgressed (MacKenzie, “Films into Uniform” 421). Accordingly, films such as Idioterne and En Kærlighedshistorie explore what happens when citizens as well as filmmakers transgress social norms. Dogme’s legacy is visible both in the way that confronting subject matter is dealt with in Danish screen fiction and through the signature itinerant camerawork that generates the kind of intimacy between character and viewer that led to recent Danish TV drama and cinema being applauded for its authenticity. When I asked actress Stengade whether she felt that Dogme 95 had left a legacy on filmmaking in Denmark, she replied: I think so, yes. It was interesting because it, sort of, took film back to the source. I mean, what is a good film? A good film is a good story, and how you tell it. And we could sit here and tell a good story—you and I, at a simple table, two cups of coffee—or we could do Lord of the Rings. (Personal correspondence. 22 October 2018)

Stengade’s comments allude to the importance placed upon developing a compelling narrative more than attracting high-profile actors, appeasing audience expectations through genre conventions or enhancing images and effects in post-production, feats that are also harder for small film industries such as Denmark. Dogme 95 cemented the value of honest storytelling into the psyche of emerging practitioners and legitimised the provocative, explicit and experimental approach adopted by directors such as von Trier and his Scandinavian blue predecessors. The liberating effect of resisting dominant standards and practices becomes particularly interesting when transposed to femininity and motherhood: it provokes the re-evaluation of female success, worth and citizenship rights as being dependent upon one’s ability to manifest culturally normative versions of femininity. Indeed, as outlined in the previous chapter, many Dogme films—and not least En Kærlighedshistorie—examine problematic mothers and families. If the Dogme movement challenged the form of cinema, En Kærlighedshistorie presents a woman who challenges the form of the domestic, familial environment through her resistance to the rules and standards that govern this space. From the first moment that the audience sees Kira it is clear that she is troubled: she is edgy, erratic and withdrawn.

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With two young sons and a devoted husband waiting for her, Kira is discharged from the psychiatric hospital, but she has obviously not recovered. As the striking and charismatic main character in En Kærlighedshistorie, she spends the duration of the poignant film locating her place in a society, and family, that seems to have left her behind. The narrative leads to a particularly heartbreaking conclusion where the film’s audience finally discovers “Kira’s reason” for her inexplicable behaviour: the death of her baby daughter. Following this tragedy, she has lost the ability to find meaning in her life and is no longer able to look after her family. In one of the final scenes, Kira reads aloud a long letter that she has written to her husband, Mads, where she admits: “It’s impossible to live with me, I know. I do unforgivable things. I’m ashamed. Especially for the boys. I can’t do the simplest things. They don’t need that kind of mother”. This moment communicates the tragedy of Kira’s self-perception: she is not enough, and it is her own fault. And, crucially, she believes her own children are better off without her. The shame that Kira acutely expresses is inextricable from her decision to abandon her family. In her study of the affect of shame, Elspeth Probyn summarises that Michael Lewis proposes a model of shame based in a behavioral framework of standards, rules, and goals (SRGs). Contravening SRGs produce shame, “indicating a failure of the self as both object and subject.” In another realm, the philosopher Bernard Williams suggests that shame involves an internalization of an idealized other to which the self has failed to live up: “The sense of shame is a reaction of the subject to the consciousness of this loss.” (27; emphasis added)

Consistent with these models, both Kira and Joe resist the latent pressure to do what is expected of them, struggling with the resulting feelings of despair and loneliness. Yet both women also take full responsibility for their behaviour, citing personal failure as the reason for their domestic conflicts and interpersonal discord. According to Brown’s SRT, a level of critical awareness is crucial for women to be able to move beyond the cognitive and physiological experience of shame to a place of acknowledgment, acceptance and assistance-seeking (47–48). The small signs of respite that follow Kira’s and Joe’s articulation of their grief and despair— a reflective letter and a lengthy confessional recount, respectively—point to the importance of vocalising one’s concerns and receiving some degree

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of validation in return. This effect isn’t just achieved within the fictional film worlds but can also be experienced vicariously through the act of viewing the films and identifying with their protagonists. My analysis of En Kærlighedshistorie frames Kira’s shame and isolation as a result of internalised cultural pressure to contribute as a care provider in order to fulfil her citizenship obligations, a role that is complicated by her debilitating emotional dysregulation. All of my female objects of study, to greater or lesser extents, take on feelings of responsibility for the harm or unhappiness of their families, exhibiting the behaviour that Iris Marion Young describes in Responsibility for Justice. In Young’s theory of how personal responsibility is conceived in the modern welfare state, individuals are largely responsible for their own actions and for ensuring they do not impinge upon the freedom of others; the assumption is that individuals engage in constant self-surveillance, displaying guilt should their actions not align with their obligations (“Responsibility for Justice” 10–11). This version of responsibility is based in the US versions of welfare, social reform and citizenship and contrasts with the ideology of the Scandinavian welfare model, which is why the manifestation of these behaviours in Danish characters is so intriguing. Kira’s relationship to motherhood provokes deep anxiety and an obfuscated sense of self, reflecting Rozsika Parker’s assertion that “becoming a mother inevitably entails encountering dissonances and disjunctions between the lived experience of mothering and the sometimes contradictory yet usually prescriptive or normative ideals that mediate mothering” (2)—a suggestion that echoes the disjuncture between the ideal and actual self mentioned above. The reduction of Kira to a shadow of her former self is hardly surprising following the tragic death of her three-day-old baby but this loss is clearly connected to her ability to find meaning in her life; the plot essentially comprises Kira’s reconciliation of her own grief as she navigates her now-unfamiliar existence. She precariously negotiates her surroundings with an almost-constant expression of naïve paranoia—her interior struggle expressed through the equally shaky camerawork—as if she doesn’t recognise her life anymore, as if it is both intriguing and perplexing. The film cuts between awkward scenes with her children whom she embarrasses, fraught moments of intimacy with Mads where she is sexually ambivalent, and uncomfortable social gatherings that provoke anxiety in Kira: she doesn’t fit in anywhere. When I discussed the film with her, Stengade summed up her character of Kira as having “this well off, material life but with these deep emotional,

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structural problems or disorders. And you know, somehow, it’s more hidden away that you are facing emotional, mental problems when you live in this perfect setting, perfect house, perfect family…”; Hallsworth: It’s more like there’s no reason to be unhappy, then, as well… Stengade: Yeah Hallsworth: You have to justify how you feel a lot more. Stengade: That’s right. And there’s a bigger, sort of, “why? What’s your problem? What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you just enjoy what you have?” (Personal correspondence. 22 October 2018) The troubling question of “what is the matter with you?” is one that Kira seems to have internalised, and which implies that her difference must be interrogated and rationalised in order for her to regain the right to participate in society. As Stengade recognises, Kira has “everything” except a job, which she does not need as a middle-class housewife with a successful husband. Yet these outward indicators of wealth and status mean little in the absence of a sense of purpose or contentment, which Kira is unable to locate when her identity as a mother is shattered by her child’s death. It is as though the system that promised stability and security in exchange for her maternal care and devotion has failed to account for the crippling isolation that accompanies an invalidation of the self. Little remains of Kira the housewife, and her family is replaced with an emptiness, signified by stationary shots of unlit, unoccupied rooms in the large family home. Kira cannot sustain the role of emotional care provider to her family: she embarrasses her sons and constantly fears that Mads will leave her because she has become too much to handle. More than just a “burden” to her family, Kira is a “burden” to the welfare state, given that she does not absorb her childcare responsibilities or have a career; she does not feel that she has anything to contribute as a citizen. Though the family’s male breadwinner model is now relatively unusual in the contemporary Danish cultural context, in the film it is Mads who provides the financial and care contributions, as he gently points out to Kira: Mads: I work. I make money. I make sure everything’s alright. [pause] Why don’t you get a job? Kira: I don’t know. There’s nothing I can do.

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Mads’ remarks, which verge on being accusatory, are imbued with concern, because what will become of someone like Kira in a society where there is no excuse to malinger? With a heavy overtone of despair, she insists that any talents she might have cannot be translated into leverage for her reintegration into the labour market. Kira’s deviation from social conventions is signified not just by her admission into a psychiatric hospital but by her expressed inability to find a sense of purpose and belonging in a welfare state society that purportedly exists to prevent people like Kira from falling through the cracks. Even her husband denounces her, insisting that she won’t last five minutes on her own without getting into trouble. Kira poses a challenge to this system by resisting the pressure to conform to social expectations, behaving in a way that is unpredictable and uncomfortable to watch. Her socially disruptive behaviour is not the result of an inherent compulsion, as Joe’s is, but of the sheer despair and emptiness at having lost their baby daughter. Unable to be a mother to the dead child, Kira is rendered unable to be a mother at all—she simply cannot cope—and the invalidation of this component of her identity is irreconcilable for her. The death, abuse and abandonment of children is common to all of the narratives discussed in this book, to varying extents, but in En Kærlighedshistorie, the revelation of the child’s death is at the near-end of the film, meaning the audience has little contextual information to guide their response to Kira as the plot unfolds. Like Joe, she is not initially established as a particularly sympathetic or relatable character; she could even be considered difficult and wilful. By revealing the child’s death so late, however, the film prompts reconsideration of Kira’s erratic behaviour in light of her external circumstances, challenging the audience to revise any hostility directed at her questionable actions. In many ways, Kira’s is the typical dysfunctional family of Dogme 95 described by MacKenzie above, given that she cannot seem to relocate her identity as Mads’ wife or as the mother of her sons because of her crippling grief and subsequent shame. She is kicked out of the local leisure centre for splashing too much in the kids’ pool, and ends up having a one-night stand with a stranger (Thomas W. Gabrielsson) in Malmö, ringing Mads the following morning to come and collect her. What might seem like amusing episodes are framed as bittersweet, because although Kira is acting candidly, without intentionally causing harm, she is quite aware of how her behaviour is negatively affecting her family and she simply does not know how to change it. What Kira wants, precisely, is to go back to

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who she was before—before she was admitted to the psychiatric hospital— but as she cannot erase the past she must sit with these feelings of loneliness and despair that characterise her existence after her child’s death—feelings that Mads as the stable working father, who contributes to his family and the economy, does not manifest. As she reads aloud from her letter to Mads in which she proposes to leave him, Kira says: “I guess I’m not the one you want anymore. You want the one I used to be. I’ll never be her again. I’ve tried. But it’s as if you miss me even when I’m there. So do I”. Similar to Arvingerne’s Isa (see Chap. 6) and Joe, Kira describes a version of herself based on how she believes she is perceived; the person she is now, she suggests, is entirely different to the woman Mads married. This scene encapsulates the experience of shame that Probyn describes, cited earlier, where the individual internalises the notion of an “idealized other to which the self has failed to live up” (27). For Kira, this “other” is a prior version of herself, from before she was unwell. The more she loses control and makes people around her uncomfortable, the more she questions why Mads stays with her. At times, it seems as if Kira behaves this way because she wants Mads to leave her; she pushes him, resisting against her affluent, domestic environment as the only way of gaining autonomy. This power struggle between the emotionally debilitated but headstrong Kira and her husband Mads, who feels increasingly emasculated and powerless, erupts in a distressing scene where Mads attempts to reassert his status (somewhat similar to the end of Nymphomaniac). After returning from collecting Kira in Malmö, Mads loses patience with his wife and drags her out of the café they have been sitting in. She becomes child–like, trying to resist his force by sitting down on the pavement and grabbing hold of a power pole. He takes her to a nearby hotel, forces her down upon the bed and tells Kira that he has had an affair with her sister (Camilla Bendix), while raping her. Kira simply cries, and afterwards Mads cries too, because such abuse of his wife is uncharacteristic and hurting her is ultimately futile. Mads admits that he had the affair because he wanted an ordinary life, which Kira, in her present state, cannot offer him. As Mads declares, after learning of her one-night stand, “a proper wife… if she has an affair nobody notices”, indicating the problem is not that Kira was unfaithful, but that she didn’t have the decency or awareness to keep it a secret as he had done. His attempt to strip Kira of all of her agency and humiliate her by confessing his affair while violating her speaks to his own feelings of hopelessness: it is his way of punishing her for being unable to

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live an “ordinary life” and also an attempt to prove his worth as a virile, authoritative figure. This scene could be interpreted as symbolic of the erosion of the “traditional” family in contemporary Denmark, which has undermined the hegemonic power of the man and alienated the woman from her domestic role. The fact that Kira seems to immediately forgive Mads, and even discounts the affair as an expected result of her absence, suggests that she views these occurrences as the punishment she deserves for being “useless”. When Mads refuses to leave her, though, she proposes to leave him, perhaps in a last-ditch attempt to create any sense of agency and self-­ worth. The film ends with Mads and Kira dancing in the ballroom of a hotel: the future of their relationship is unclear but whether Kira leaves Mads or not is less important than her proposal to do so as a way of dealing with her shame. When she ceases being able to be a (competent) mother to her children and a (presentable) wife to her husband, Kira is expected to find a job (to contribute), as per Mads’ suggestion to her. Her incapacity to fit into these internalised, readily demarcated positions renders Kira a burden on society—leaving her with a self-destructive sense of disillusionment that is only likely to inflame her deteriorating mental state—resulting in her confession to Mads that she feels like she will disappear. Despite their affluent existence, Kira and Mads’ relationship is a constant struggle, perhaps because Kira has lost sight of herself as Mads’ wife but perhaps also because of the complicated relationship between citizens and the state where the state absorbs many formerly privately negotiated care responsibilities. The fact that the film begins with Kira leaving the hospital suggests that she has been treated to a point of relative recovery, yet her disposition indicates pronounced discomfort and volatility. The support provided has, it seems, fallen short, and it is now the responsibility of her husband to assist Kira in reintegrating into an ordinary existence. As Stengade told me, “this movie is about intimacy, the difficulties of intimacy”, and interestingly, director Bille August’s comments on his 1978 film Honning mane (In My Life) about the effects of mental illness on a marriage quite readily map onto En Kærlighedshistorie: “The idea was to create an emotional portrait of two people, two individuals, which would comment indirectly on our welfare society” (in Hjort and Bondebjerg 185). When I explained my interpretation of Kira as a burden on the welfare state to Stengade, she commented: “what you’ve seen is a very interesting angle, I think. I never thought about it in that way, actually, that

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she, sort of, has no function […] you have to function in your priva[te life] or in your professional life, and if you don’t, who are you, then? Like, nobody” (Personal correspondence. 22 October 2018). Stengade’s reflection echoes an interaction between Kira and her father (Sven Wollter), who abandoned the family when Kira was young because of his own feelings of inadequacy and the resentment it caused. He describes himself as a “poisoned rat”, frantically trying to earn enough money for the family but feeling as though he was never quite enough. Her father admits he put himself first but explains that “with your mother I was just a nobody”, as if the confines and pressures of family life did not provide any personal satisfaction. He tells Kira that her mother was too emotional—with her, “the walls were painted with emotions”—flagging a predisposition that Kira appears to have inherited and one which renders the family home an impossible space. Reproducing the behaviour of her father, although out of concern for her family rather than herself, Kira also tries to begin a new life on her own; like other key female characters examined discussed herein, she is unable to participate in the narrative of domestic satisfaction and unable to reconcile her discontentment with motherhood, rendering her an outsider. As I continue to illustrate in the analysis of Nymphomaniac, this chapter’s cases make visible the stories of mothers who do not feel as though they belong in a domestic space defined by care provision but who are expected to manifest a desire for such an existence. The fact that they can no longer feign this desire results in a destructive sense of shame that leads to retreat and self-isolation. If Danish drama films have persistently centred around analysing and problematising human behaviour and interactions, the death of a child has very often been the catalyst for these portraits of despair and confrontation. Stengade suggests that this trope is so common because “[losing a child] is one of the most traumatic experiences, I think, for all human beings to experience. That’s my guess. And, of course, it’s a good [catalyst] for a big drama, a dark drama” (Personal correspondence. 22 October 2018). The loss in En Kærlighedshistorie relates less to the death of the child, though, and more to the loss of the mother’s identity in a conservative welfare state setting that marginalises illness and anomalous emotional displays. The implicit notion that it is Kira’s choice to let her marriage disintegrate—similar to the idea that Joe chooses to leave her family, discussed below—must be understood in relation to the cultural pressures that dictate what “good mothering” looks like and factors that erode the mother’s capacity to adhere to these standards.

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There are moments in both En Kærlighedshistorie and Nymphomaniac when the protagonists reluctantly admit to experiencing emotions that they recognise as unusual. In a therapy session, Kira is prompted to recount how she felt upon being admitted to the hospital: “I was just much too sad at that time”, she mumbles, as if there is a correct degree or expression of sadness. Amongst her conflicting feelings of pride, regret and frustration, Joe says that, even as a child, loneliness was her “constant companion”. In her work on shame, Brown expounds her study findings to demonstrate the relationship between (the perception of) a lack of choice and a sense of interpersonal disconnection, explaining that isolation is a result of feeling trapped and powerless. The historical denial of women’s autonomy in Western societies suggests that women are likely to be more susceptible to feelings of powerlessness, especially given the expectation that mothers should abandon their own desires and needs in favour of their child’s. Brown’s interview participants referenced the pressure that arises from “an unreasonable number of unrealistic expectations” communicated thorough family members and work colleagues to images in media and popular culture (Brown 46). To the extent that illness is pathologised difference, the scientific practices of nomenclature and diagnosis can also be a source of shame, imposing upon one an identity defined by transgression and abnormality. Though Kira accepts her behaviour as the consequence of a medical condition and undergoes psychiatric treatment, Joe refuses to identify as an addict, instead branding herself as a nymphomaniac and impugning psychological interventions. Her attitude suggests that the only way she can quell the powerlessness brought about by her shame is by resisting the institution of medicine, which seeks to reduce and classify her. Danaher et al. explicate that “as soon as you produce categories of what is normal, healthy and good, you produce other categories—the pervert, the deviant, the trouble-maker”, which necessarily marginalise those who do not meet the prescribed social criteria (79; cf. Foucault 37); Joe’s inability to adhere to maternal and other cultural norms produces the feeling of being deviant and troublesome. Her opposition to a medical discourse as a frame for her deviations serves a dual purpose: it reinforces the inadequacy of dominant institutions to rationalise or otherwise explain her identity and avoids reducing the film to a psychological portrait of addiction as an illness. What is significant about the term “nymphomaniac” is that it applies only to women and, therefore, imposes a gendered lens upon transgressive sexuality. As Jane Ussher writes, until recently “The dominant model […]

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was of sex and sexuality as a biological phenomena [sic], an instinct for reproduction or a drive that somehow must be released” (264–265). She asserts that “Female sexuality (if considered at all) is reduced to oestrogen and progesterone or to the biological components of reproduction” (258). This hegemonic view produces a paradox that assumes women have sex to become mothers but concomitantly should not desire sex because they are mothers, and no personal desire should interfere with the provision of care and devotion. Carol Gilligan articulates this dilemma when she writes that “while society may affirm publicly the woman’s right to choose for herself, the exercise of such choice brings her privately into conflict with the conventions of femininity, particularly the moral equation of goodness with self-sacrifice” (“Women’s Conceptions of Self” 285). Exercising choice between two given options cannot be conflated with the exercising of autonomy: choices are made according to delimited and internalised cultural criteria that respectively reward and punish the subject according to adherence to or transgression of the dominant norms. Nymphomaniac addresses the fact that the choice, whether conscious or unconscious, to refuse to manifest maternal love as the subordination of one’s own desires is still problematic for women, resulting in self-­ invalidation and withdrawal from civic participation. The film effectively blurs the boundary between voluntary, conscious sexual excess and involuntary, organic illness, and Joe is presented as simultaneously deviant and unwell (Elbeshlawy 183; cf. Badinter 261; Gilligan, “Psychological Theory” 278; Groneman 1078). The labelling of Joe, by herself and by the text, as a nymphomaniac suggests that her sexuality is inherent rather than learned—that she was born deviant—but the plot continues to challenge such essentialism by highlighting culturally conditioned ideologies to which she uncritically subscribes. Though she declares that her bold sexuality was present from the youngest age, her assertion that she is “ashamed of what [she] became” indicates that it is, in fact, Joe’s inadequate performance of motherhood later in life that incited her retreat from society, not her disillusionment with the conventions of marriage and monogamy. The source of Joe’s shame is, I argue, not so dissimilar to that of the other female characters analysed in each chapter: it emerges in response to the cognisance of her own maternal ambivalence and inability to perform motherhood in a socially acceptable way. The narrative comprises flashbacks of the prodigious sexual experiences of 50-year-old Joe, portrayed by Charlotte Gainsbourg and, in the majority of the flashback scenes, Stacey Martin. Joe’s recount of her life story

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binds the chapters of the film together and is prompted by her dedicated listener, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård), a stranger who found her beaten in an alleyway, refusing help from the police or a doctor. Seligman helps Joe back to his slightly run-down yet cosy apartment and queries how she ended up lying in the street, to which she responds that if she is going to tell him her story she must start from the beginning and that it will be “long […] and moral, I’m afraid”. Joe’s story begins roughly five decades prior, when she is two years old and already, by her own retrospective account, a nymphomaniac, because of her awareness of her reproductive organs and apparent inclination to use them for physical pleasure. When Seligman points out that her behaviour as a two-year-old can hardly be defined as sexually illicit and sinful, Joe declares that it could be, “perhaps according to a religion that doesn’t exist yet. According to a God that hasn’t yet manifested himself”, suggesting that she is relentlessly accountable to a potential set of values which constitute an impossible standard, given their non-existence. Her curious negotiation of morality demonstrates the troubling way that ubiquitous beliefs can permeate the consciousness of those who do not necessarily subscribe wholly to them. The setting of Nymphomaniac remains vague, but a sense of the presiding social and cultural expectations becomes clear through the ideology to which Joe subscribes. Her identity is informed by cultural institutions, rhetoric and belief systems that perpetuate stereotypes of femininity that can only serve to limit women, such as the twentieth-century discourse that declared that “Not to love one’s child [was] an inexplicable crime. A mother was loving—or she was not a real mother” (Badinter 178). As Daniluk and Browne write, “the sad irony for many women is that traditional religious teachings leave them to varying degrees guilt-ridden about, ashamed of, and disconnected from their bodies, their sexuality, and their sexual selves” (136), a statement that is true for Joe despite her secular background. She makes (perhaps unfair) assumptions about the purpose of the therapy group that her employer sends her too, dubbing the therapist as “society’s morality”, wanting only to “erase [her] obscenity from the face of the earth so that the bourgeoisie don’t feel sick”. Yet, despite resolutely defending her right to transgress, one could argue that Joe truly has, as Probyn phrases it, become overridden with shame to the extent that she is “left to starve outside the boundaries of humankind” (3), which the image of her beaten up in the alleyway in the opening scene suggests.

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Nymphomaniac features eight chapters, all of which explore a different facet of Joe’s sexual experiences: from competing with her teenage friend B (Sophie Kennedy Clark) to “fuck the most men” on a train, to the unexpected arousal that accompanies her beloved father’s (Christian Slater) death, to her attempt to regain her lost orgasm in Volume II by visiting “K” (Jamie Bell), a man who engages in sadomasochism with women for their mutual pleasure. These moments, which some critics have described as pornographic (Badley 192; Detrixhe 52; Elbeshlawy 179–180; Silberg 26; Williams 20), are used by Joe to punctuate her declarations about being a bad person: “I behaved reprehensibly”, she asserts; “I discovered my power as a woman and used it without any concern for others”; “I’ve consciously used and hurt others for the sake of my own satisfaction”. Joe’s blatant reproach of her personality and actions is imbued with a disdain towards seeking personal pleasure at the expense of others, reinforcing a sexist view of female pleasure as subordinate to that of men. In fact, this critique of individualism aligns this text with the Danish television dramas in subsequent chapters, especially the crime story in Chap. 5. To each of her deprecating judgements of her own character, the attentive Seligman provides a more sympathetic interpretation, insisting that Joe embodies the double standard that characterises the patriarchal society in which they live; he argues that a man who behaved in the same way would not be inclined to moralise or condemn his actions the way Joe has. Seligman—white, male, middle-aged and almost paternal, until he attempts to rape Joe in the final scene—seems to embody the feminist voice (Badley 201), rearticulating her behaviour as not only valid but as a reasonable expression of her desires and values. As a (non-practising) Jewish man, Seligman is the archetype of the Jewish sex therapist figure that often appears in fiction: “The aim of these therapists, consistent with a strong Jewish tradition, was to alleviate the persecution and resultant self-hatred of those minoritized by the dominant culture, in this case sexual minorities”, writes Carol Siegel in her analysis of Nymphomaniac and the loosely historical A Dangerous Method (Cronenberg 2011) (49). Seligman’s religious identity, coupled with Joe as a middle-aged woman, supports Valsson’s remark that von Trier uses Jewish stereotypes and female characters to depict aspects of his own personality in his films. I discussed the suggestion that von Trier uses his characters as vehicles to explore his inner struggles with Vinca Wiedemann, who was the film’s story supervisor. Wiedemann reflected that “like in a dream, you say all characters in your dream will be parts of yourself. I see his films the same

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way. And I’m sure there are some misogynist parts in that, as well as ordinary self-hatred […] And I believe you should be very careful about looking at the characters [only] from a psychological-realistic level” (Personal correspondence. 20 June 2018). While the debate between Joe and Seligman could be read as a narrativisation of the director’s conflicted psyche, it would, as Wiedemann hints, be a disservice to view the film in isolation from the cultural and historical narratives with which it interacts. The fact that Nymphomaniac was created by a male filmmaker, and that a male voice is constantly interjecting with feedback that undercuts the woman’s perspective, does somewhat destabilise the female voice through which the plot is mediated. In addition, despite her subversion of feminine norms and social standards, Joe’s character is still positioned in relation to motherhood, and her maternalism is problematised by her sexuality—a fact that speaks to the incompatibility between sex and motherhood common also to Anna Pihl (Chap. 5) and Borgen (Chap. 6) (cf. Schepelern “Forget About Love”). Wiedemann asserts that the gender of the filmmaker should not, in general, disqualify them from depicting a range of perspectives: “I hope that human beings are intelligent enough that they can even identify with animals or more complex matters than just me and myself and I”, she told me (Personal correspondence. 20 June 2018). In fact, Denmark’s most well-known female director Susanne Bier is known to foreground masculinity and conflicts between men, inverting von Trier’s apparent identification with women (Shriver-Rice, “Danish Privilege” 244; Valsson 123–124; cf. Hjort and Bondebjerg “Danish Directors” 247). Valsson claims that “Bier’s cross-gender authorial identification results in films that emphasize the positive aspects of masculinity. On the other hand, von Trier’s feminine alter-ego manifests in representations that degrade femininity” (124), but I do not believe that this statement captures the multiplicities in von Trier’s characters. His deployment of the female victim in his films does much to illuminate the very circumstances to which women frequently fall victim. If audiences are shocked, it should be with the society that repackages and markets female inferiority as biological determinism or benign cultural conditioning. Joe affirms a seemingly obvious association of immorality, sin and guilt with an autonomous female sexuality that prioritises short-term pleasure over romantic or intimate relationships. Christian ethics becomes the standard against which Joe measures her pathology, a pathology that scholar Marcos Norris as well as Joe’s group therapist (Kate Ashfield) suggest is compulsive and organic in origin (8). Joe’s conceptualisation, based upon

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the vague doctrines to which she alludes, defines her insatiable desire for sexual fulfilment as an inherent deviance for which she is somehow culpable. Daniluk and Browne, drawing upon the work of several authors who research religion and emotion, explain that guilt and shame are the common consequence for women, when the “real” self does not measure up or reflect the ideal sexual self supported by Christian doctrine […] the tension between sexual desire and religious norms leads to limited communications and anxiety related to sexuality, especially for women, with the most common feelings associated with sexual anxiety being “guilt, shame, tension or stress, as well as fear and pressure” ([Pick, Givaudan and Kline] p. 45). (136; emphasis added)

The perception of sex as dangerous, immoral or damaging now exists independent of the religious dogma from which it stems (Rubin 150). There is a clear connection between Kira’s despair over the loss of her vivacious former self and Joe’s scathing self-admonishment. Joe’s enunciations, coupled with Seligman’s defence of her character, suggest a discordance between her “ideal” self and her “true” self as outlined above, but it is unclear what “ideals” Joe actually values. Seligman queries why Joe has taken “the most unsympathetic aspect of religion, namely the concept of sin, and let it survive beyond religion”, stating that he doesn’t understand her self-hatred. To this, Joe declares, “that’s what I said: you wouldn’t understand”, as if the self-loathing she bears as a woman, and a mother, is naturally incomprehensible to a man. The idea that she has “sinned” becomes more pronounced in the film’s second instalment and is evident not just in the way Joe tells her story but in the very act of telling it. Her narration resembles a confession, with Seligman as her objective, virginal, asexual confessor—his white, male body as neutral and “default”—helping Joe to atone for the sins that she claims to have committed. The way the film presents Joe’s confession aligns with Foucault’s ideas in The History of Sexuality: For us, it is in the confession that truth and sex are joined, through the obligatory and exhaustive expression of an individual secret […] it is also a ritual that unfolds within a power relationship, for one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console, and reconcile. (61–62; emphasis added)

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To subscribe to Foucault’s concept of the confession is to bestow a power upon Seligman, which he vainly attempts to assert in the final scene (cf. Siegel 66). As Lois McNay highlights, however, Foucault’s theorisation on the relationship between power and the body assumes a gender-­ neutral subject, thereby silencing a feminist voice that calls for an acknowledgement of sexual difference and existing gendered power imbalances: “the reduction of individuals to passive bodies permits no explanation of how individuals may act in an autonomous and creative fashion despite overarching social constraints” (McNay 12). McNay’s observation is exemplified in the scene where Joe recounts her abortion, emphasising the subjectivity of the female body as a site of, in this case unwanted, childbearing. Seligman affirms that Joe, as a woman, had the right to intervene in the pregnancy, but she stresses to him that placing the burden of choice upon women allows men to negate the feeling of guilt that accompanies the invasive procedure. Noting the very valid feminist response to Foucault summarised by McNay, I assert that The History of Sexuality still provides generative commentary that is relevant to Nymphomaniac. Joe’s sudden decision to eradicate her sexuality at the end of the film suggests that the unburdening of her story to Seligman has, indeed, had a liberating effect; it “has put me at ease”, she affirms. This sentiment aligns with Foucault’s description of the confession as “a ritual in which the expression alone, independently of its external consequences, produces intrinsic modifications in the person who articulates it: it exonerates, redeems, and purifies him; it unburdens him of his wrongs, liberates him, and promises him salvation” (61–62). While the hint at a resolution provides temporary relief to Joe and the audience, it also reproduces the gendered power dynamic that sees women deferring to men for judgement, forgiveness and reconciliation. At the end of Nymphomaniac Volume I, Joe loses her ability to reach a sexual climax. This occurrence coincides with her first steady relationship, with a man called Jerôme (Shia LeBeouf) who reappears throughout her narrative and fathers her son, Marcel (Jacob Levin-Christensen). Joe’s sexual dysfunction compounds in Volume II, when Joe stays at home with the toddler and Jerôme is the family breadwinner. She regains her ability to orgasm only after leaving her family to visit sadomasochistic “K” on Christmas Eve, which implies an incompatibility between the activities Joe is expected to undertake to maintain a functional home environment and the fulfilment of the pleasure she compulsively seeks. Danish academic Birte Siim astutely points out that “Feminist scholars have noted that the

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private sphere is often contradictory for women because it is both a site of caring and mothering and a site of oppression and dependency (Yuval– Davis 1997)” (19). For Joe, these two opposing states—care/motherhood and oppression/dependence—are equally undesirable, rendering the family home an impossible space for her. Despite her disclosure that manifesting “maternal love was not a problem”, Joe is uncomfortable with the role of mother, and she reflects that when she “looked into the child’s eyes [she] had this unsettling feeling of having been found out”. This comment indicates the existence of maternal paranoia; Joe’s concept of her own personality conflicts with how she feels she is supposed to function in society, and she fears the child comprehends this discrepancy. In a moving scene where Joe finally breaks down crying and leaves the flat with no intention of returning, Jerôme tries to coerce her into staying, picking up their sleeping toddler from his cot: Jerôme: Let’s wake him up. Marcel, baby boy, say “bye mum”. Joe: Please put him back… Jerôme: Is this what you want? You see? You see, he wants you. [Joe goes to leave] It’s Christmas. It’s fucking Christmas. This interaction, where Jerôme dismisses Joe by telling her “you’re not a mother”, captures the impossible situation in which Joe finds herself: the close framing and darkened rooms present the home as a place of obligations and ultimatums that Joe does not feel she can meet, similar to how the empty rooms in Kira’s house symbolise her disconsolate family. Jerôme forces Joe to choose between her family and her obsessive drive to regain her orgasm, declaring: “If you leave here tonight, you’ll never see me or Marcel ever again in your life”. This is essentially a choice between maternal identity and sexual identity, as if these two facets cannot be reconciled, though it is what Carol Gilligan terms a “false choice”—when a woman is expected to sacrifice one of two equally important facets or values (“Moral Injury” 92; cf. Brown on the “double-bind” 46). More than simply an expression of insatiable desire, Joe’s sexual acts are used as instruments of resistance against the prescribed feminine roles (of mother, wife, homemaker) that she cannot fulfil. The idea that she lacks a “maternal instinct” is, however, one that deserves to be interrogated. Badinter’s significant first book, entitled Mother Love: Myth and Reality, traces the idea of a maternal instinct through several centuries, posing the question: “Instead of instinct, might it not be more accurate to credit the

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incredible social pressure that insists that a woman can fulfill herself only through motherhood?” (316). Badinter’s argument rests on the fact that the expectations of a (European) family, and particularly of mothers, have changed so much in response to religious, economic and class-related factors, as well as medical and technological advancements, that there is no consistently accepted version of “correct” motherhood and so there can be no inherent maternal instinct guiding it (cf. Allen 9–10). Yet, Joe’s mother, Katherine (Connie Nielsen), is characterised as lacking in any compassion or warmth and her indifference to her child is obliquely presented as problematic, or even traumatic. Neither Badinter’s work nor my own here seeks to imply that children do not require love, support and encouragement but, rather, that the wellbeing of a child does not begin and end with its mother. Interestingly, Joe’s father calls Katherine “K”: the same moniker given to the sadist and the first initial of the Danish word for woman, kvinde. Joe recalls her father fondly throughout her narrative, often cutting back to comforting moments in her childhood when he took her for educational walks through the woods (alluding to the phrase “nymph”, leaving the audience to the reference to “maniac”), but Joe’s mother is silent and contemptuous in her account. Her mother is the only person who appears noticeably repulsed by Joe; Joe, in turn, describes Katherine as “a cold bitch”. While neither Katherine nor Joe vilify or abuse their children, their lack of affection is in deep opposition to the Western norms of motherhood that Francine Du Plessix Gray describes: “the severance of love from instinct seems to threaten one of the most sacred premises of Western culture […] To be told that mother love is not an innate impulse but a free choice […] confronts each of us with a fearsome possibility that we might have been born into a void of indifference” (ix). Their strained mother-­ daughter relationship appears to inform Joe’s perception that her depravity developed from the earliest age, given that her mother is seen to be critical of Joe even when she is a child. Katherine’s hostile reactions also coincide with moments where Joe is sexually aroused, and thus, the disdain is connected to Joe’s embodied sexual experience. The resentment that Joe believes her mother feels towards her leads to a mutual dislike, epitomised when Joe tells her father that his wife is “a cowardly, stupid bitch” because she won’t visit him on his deathbed. This phrasing indicates that Katherine, too, is prone to retreat and isolation, producing a mirroring of mother and daughter. To some extent, Joe reproduces the behaviour of the emotionally absent Katherine when she

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abandons her own family, indicating a trend of problematic social inheritance common to several of the texts analysed in this book. As the narrative is presented solely through Joe’s eyes, the audience is granted no insight into Katherine’s perspective, but the existence of a problematic mother-daughter relationship that is compounded by the mother’s physical and emotional absence aligns Nymphomaniac with the other cases, wherein the main female character’s mother is either dead or has a tense relationship with her adult daughter. When she, too, becomes a mother, Joe struggles to reconcile her maternal identity with her voracious sexual identity, echoing Montemurro and Siefken’s assertion that “Motherhood and sexual appeal are rarely linked in Western culture” (367). The autonomy and independence that Joe strives for—finally culminating in her retreating to the fringes of society as a shady debt collector—is incompatible with what is expected from her as a mother and, by extension, it seems, as a woman. As Badinter writes: “Women gained no credit for being mothers, and that was their main function. They understood that to have the right to some esteem, they had to choose a path other than motherhood” (73). Joe embodies this dilemma: to hold onto her autonomy, she needs to remain childless, but the cost of Joe’s denial of feminine stereotypes in this conservative Western setting is social isolation and a deep, crippling loneliness. Her surprising resolution to eradicate her sexuality at the film’s end prompts Seligman to ask, “is that a life worth living?”, to which Joe deferentially concedes, “it’s the only way I can live it”. This exchange expresses the sacrifice she is willing to make in order to finally enable her own social participation. Her unruly, excessive and corrupted sexuality, as she conceives it, negates acceptance into a society governed by, according to Joe, both sentimentality and hatred, where relationships are based on heteronormative monogamy and domestic spaces are reliant upon gendered divisions of (emotional) labour. In such a society, Joe is left feeling isolated and alienated, unless she is able to destroy her sexual drive altogether. As her group therapy facilitator points out, though, sexuality is an “integral part of [one’s] personality. If one could imagine exterminating sexuality, then you’d be left with a severely reduced person”. Joe’s denouncement of her sexual identity indicates that, to reconcile her existence, she believes she must become “a severely reduced person”—a description that speaks to Kira who is nostalgic for her former self, Chap. 5’s Sarah Lund who “shut[s] everyone out” and Chap. 6’s Isa who feels that no one believes in her.

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Nymphomaniac presents a woman who can theoretically exercise her choice to not be a mother but faces recrimination for this decision. It is not an absence of love but an absence of personal sacrifice that complicates the mother role for women like Joe, who are not motivated to subordinate their own desires to those of their children. Amy Simmons is one of few scholars who recognise the significance of motherhood to Joe’s characterisation, stating that Nymphomaniac “engage[s] controversial issues surrounding women’s desires and parental responsibility in a culture imbued with excessive expectations of maternity, and the chauvinistic assumption of a mother’s obligation to love her child” (12). She suggests that the film “offers up a methodical analysis of patriarchal control, as a ‘system’ that Joe cannot simply fuck her way out of” (3). The gendered double standard is made plain in the film when Seligman points out that “when a man leaves his children because of desire we accept it with a shrug. But you, as a woman, you had to take on a guilt, a burden of guilt, that could never be alleviated”. (Indeed, he exploits this double standard in the final moments, expecting Joe to submit to his sexual advances.) Her “blame and guilt”, as Seligman terms it, affects Joe’s ability to conceptualise her sexual identity without associating it with the hurt she has caused others. Yet, she does not show any remorse or regret for her sexual interactions, either within the flashback scenes or upon reflection; the only event that she still ruminates on after her narration to Seligman is complete is the severed relationship with her son, Marcel. Some of the closing lines of the dialogue comprise Seligman asking Joe if, in her new life, she would consider seeking out her son, to which Joe replies that she might. To close the narration of her life story with this idea presents Joe’s distance from her child as the foremost concern to resolve, as if in her new life, free from personal (and sexual) desire, she can finally be a mother. Nymphomaniac dissects this notion, granting the central woman the agency to exercise her right to sexual satisfaction but using hegemonic, conservative ideas of motherhood and femininity to undermine her desires. Without holding Joe accountable for her own suffering, the film implies that her internalisation of patriarchal and heteronormative standards of behaviour is the source of her shame and isolation. The protagonists in En Kærlighedshistorie and Nymphomaniac experience conflicted relationships to motherhood that eclipse their existences and deteriorate their self-respect. The films, albeit in varying ways, grapple with the notion that marginalised women like Kira and Joe have a deficit that must be remedied before they can assume a position within their

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respective communities: there is not currently a place for them. Both Kira and Joe entertain the idea of leaving their families, feeling unable or unwilling to subscribe to the role of wife/mother—behaviour that, as I have identified throughout this chapter, is symptomatic of shame. Kira and Joe are vehicles for their respective stories of social marginalisation and maternal failure. Their stories examine the fraught relationship between personal autonomy and the morally imbued obligations experienced by women, and especially mothers, whose lives are complicated by transgression, illness or perceived deviance. Kira’s story is from the perspective of the isolated, despairing, invalidated mother common to Nordic theatre, Dogme 95 and many contemporary Danish drama films, and Joe gives a voice to the sexualised, jaded and occasionally hostile women of Scandinavian blue. En Kærlighedshistorie and Nymphomaniac speak to, without answering, my guiding question of “what becomes of a woman who cannot perform the role of mother?” These films present motherhood as a fraught terrain characterised by external conflicts and internal doubts, suggesting a cultural concern over the collateral and generational effects of inadequate mothering, a concern that lends itself to expression through art. What Kira and Joe represent—the marginalised, the vulnerable, the deviant—is, in many examples of Danish screen fiction including Scandinavian blue and Dogme 95, neither invisiblised nor silenced but foregrounded to produce a cogent social and political commentary. Their manifestation of shame, maternal ambivalence and social retreat aligns them with the female characters examined in the subsequent cases. To varying extents, all of these women struggle to reconcile their fractured senses of self in their environments and depart these spaces in search of a feeling of belonging elsewhere. En Kærlighedshistorie resists foreshadowing Kira’s future—only hinting at the regeneration of her and Mads’ relationship—and implies that her place in the welfare state is a work in progress. Nymphomaniac, too, has an ambiguous trajectory that is complicated by Joe’s shooting of Seligman—an act that aligns her with Chap. 5’s Sarah Lund. Concomitant to this trope of the problematic mother figure is the harm or neglect of children for which the mother character often believes she is accountable, upon which I focus in the following chapter.

CHAPTER 5

Crime Dramas and the Working Mother’s Sacrifice

The barely visible opening scene of Forbrydelsen season one takes place in a deserted forest, where 19-year-old Nanna Birk Larsen (Julie Ølgaard) is fleeing an obscured attacker. As this first instalment draws to an end, the audience learns that the man she is running from is a close friend of her family—“Uncle” Vagn (Nikolaj Kopernikus)—and this is not the first time he has attacked and killed a young woman. In these definitive frames, the tone is set and the viewer primed for a visually and thematically dark series that would change the global perception of Danish television and attest to the possibility of linguistically marginal content attracting an international audience (Agger, “The Development of Transnationality” 88; Dunleavy 201–202; Esser 414–415; Hansen et al. 11–12; Helles and Lai 396–397; Jacobsen and Jensen 125; Jensen, Nielsen and Waade 93; McElroy et al. 181–182; Redvall, “International Co-Production” 143; Bondebjerg and Redvall, “Breaking Borders” 220; Ward 252). Forbrydelsen remains one of the most successful television dramas, not just in Denmark but in the entire Nordic region (Stougaard-Nielsen, “Revising the Crime Scene” 89). In 2007, the same year that Forbrydelsen season one premiered, season two of TV2’s police procedural Anna Pihl was airing. In glaring contrast to Forbrydelsen, Anna Pihl is absent from the literature on the success of Danish television, rarely analysed as an important cultural product, yet its premiere attracted an estimated 1.2 million viewers in Denmark (“TV Pressemeddelelse” week 7 2006)—not so far from the 1.5  million that Forbrydelsen drew (“TV Pressemeddelelse” week 47 2007). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Hallsworth, Danish Mothers On-Screen, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88579-3_5

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In complete aesthetic opposition to DR’s formidable crime serial, Anna Pihl featured catchy pop theme music, sunny exterior scenes and a sit-­ com-­style focus on the love life of its protagonist, depicting criminal investigations from the everyday perspective of a suburban police station. As a more commercial version of the police procedural, Anna (Charlotte Munck) is eventually rewarded for her ability to subscribe to heteronormative ideas of success, and maternal devotion is presented as a form of moral goodness. The series utilises an integrative narrative type that promotes the sanctity of legal and ethical principles (Mandel; cf. Gregorek). Forbrydelsen, on the other hand, is a disintegrative narrative that positions the withdrawn single mother detective, Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl), and the justice system as a whole, as “in the long run ineffective and doomed to failure” (Mandel 124), trapped in “a political stalemate” (Gregorek 158). These two series constitute this chapter’s cases. To varying extents, they reflect the Nordic narrative trends of moral ambiguity and the interconnectedness between the sociopolitical landscape and the actions of individuals (Gregorek 156; Lindqvist 559; Robbins 159; Waade 384–385). They also, however, implicate absent mothers as contributing to the vulnerability of the home and feelings of abandonment in their children. In these texts, the (single) mother’s duty of care is problematised as she negotiates the conflicted terrain of administering justice in her role as a public servant and simultaneously caring for her dependent child. The central dilemma in these cases reflects a pervasive cultural concern with the displacement of maternal care and the impact of the complex state-citizen relationship on the family. This chapter is concerned with the ways that female characters are imagined as participating and finding belonging in their society when the objectives of child welfare and social justice are in discord. It analyses elements of narrative and characterisation in these Danish series, arguing that the crime drama is a forum where the ethical question of the mother’s absence from the home due to her professional obligations can play out with maximum moral ambiguity (cf. Parrot and Parrot 341). The fact that these characters are positioned as compromising their relationships to their children on account of personal issues or work commitments links these case studies to the earlier chapter on shame and sexual transgression and the subsequent chapter on belonging in family dramas. The analysis of the central female characters in these quintessential Danish crime dramas supports my assertion that women are often depicted in Danish screen

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fiction as mothers, lovers or workers but are rarely able to consolidate all of these roles to achieve a sense of personal satisfaction. The cases in this chapter frame the working mother as undermining the welfare state system’s ambition of universal care and security on account of her emotional absence, yet simultaneously positions this woman as possessing the qualities necessary to achieve “justice”, illustrated through her competence as a dedicated police officer. This argument is informed by Carole Pateman’s 1988 and 1989 studies on the ability of women to develop a sense of justice (contrary to the beliefs of eighteenth- and nineteenth-­century liberalists), herein understood as an attribute associated with political engagement and personal autonomy. Pateman’s studies are supported by theories of cultural citizenship discussed by Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, Nick Stevenson and Joke Hermes, which reposition citizenship as a question of access, participation and representation. I draw from the discourses of television crime dramas and the representation of working mothers on-screen, as well as interview material with TV2’s Katrine Vogelsang and empirical data, to demonstrate that women in Danish crime series are often positioned in relation to their maternal and professional responsibilities, which inevitably conflict. The resulting domestic and familial tension then leads to crime and social degradation, for which the absent mother is indicted. Anna Pihl is a marked departure from the cynical, alienated detectives of earlier Scandinavian crime narratives, while Sarah Lund carries the torch of her predecessors, from Martin Beck to Kurt Wallander, whose compulsive interventions appear to be the only light in a darkening welfare state. Existing scholarly work has addressed the on-screen struggles of the female cop from a feminist perspective, most frequently examining definitive British or American police procedurals such as Cagney and Lacey (Avedon and Corday 1981–1988) and Prime Suspect (La Plante 1991–2006); the prevailing observation is that “increased employment for women has not been accompanied by much in the way of a reduction of other responsibilities and demands” (Brunsdon 389; cf. Bondebjerg and Redvall, “Breaking Borders” 229; Forshaw 189; Hermes 54; Turnbull, “‘A Suitable Job’” 230–231). In her definitive article, “Television crime series, women police, and fuddy-duddy feminism”, Brunsdon identifies the trends of the female corpse as “the favoured starting point of many a story” and of the sexual abuse of children as the primary plot line and as the justification for depravity in modern crime serials (377; cf. Nestingen 6; Robbins 162). Forbrydelsen deploys both of these elements and

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reinforces the double vulnerability of female children, whose desecrated bodies are symbolic of concealed abuse and exploitation that is ignored and hushed up. If US and UK police procedurals routinely suggest that the female detective’s single (parent) status is the result of her long working hours and temperamental demeanour, Scandinavian dramas are more likely to frame these features as a social comment than a character device. Rebecca Feasey examines the omnipresence of “bad mothers” in television fiction, though in the genres of reality television and soap operas from the US and UK. She argues the unreasonably high standards for care and devotion that are imposed upon women, and which are reproduced and enforced in fiction, are sustained as narrative features despite the obvious injustice they represent (“Soap Opera to Reality” 31; cf. Feasey “Absent, Ineffectual and Intoxicated Mothers”; Feasey “Mothers on Mothers”; Thomas). Like Feasey, Hermes utilises reception studies methods and focuses on gender representations and crime fiction in her 2005 monograph Re-reading Popular Culture. She asserts that feminist crime narratives have the potential to offer “new (professional and personal) identities for women, as well as reflection on feminist questions to do with justice, anger, retribution, fear and the overcoming of it, the finding of strength, and the turning around of identities from victims into fighters” (66). Like Hermes, I am concerned with the generative potential for popularised narratives as tools for exploring identity and responding to internalised cultural beliefs. Though veiled by the label of “fiction”, film and television texts, and particularly public service dramas like those analysed in this chapter, are interwoven into the fabric of societies and in constant conversation with ideology. Recently, academic attention has turned to the emergence of the female investigator in Scandinavian fiction. Povlsen suggests that the Scandinavian crime story has co-opted features of popularised British and American series and imbued them with the local discourse of gender equality and social democracy (92). She suggests that the growing number of female officers in Scandinavian television police procedurals “build[s] upon the growing popularity of feminist crime narrative [sic] in the region” (89; emphasis added). Nete Schmidt, on the other hand, writes on Scandinavian crime fiction from a postfeminist/postmodern perspective, a lens of which I dispute the efficacy in Chap. 1. Schmidt asserts that the central female characters in her chosen cases (including Dicte, Forbrydelsen and Bron/ Broen) embody a postfeminist ideology as they “are subjects in their own individual right, and they also have a choice of marriage, motherhood, and

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career” (425). In the analysis of Forbrydelsen she does, however, implicitly concede that Sarah Lund can hardly be seen to exercise choice given that her options comprise either justice for the victims of crimes or cultivating personal relationships with friends and family—essentially, between collective and individual gain. Scandinavian studies scholar Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen’s extensive body of work on Scandinavian crime fiction includes rumination on what he terms “the millennial feminist crime novel” in Scandinavian Crime Fiction (174) and “deviant [postfeminist] detectives in the post-welfare state”1 in a later book chapter (“Deviant Detectives” 15, 17). Of all of the aforementioned scholars, Stougaard-Nielsen pays the most attention to the sociopolitical setting from which the texts he studies have emerged. He asserts that Scandinavian crime fiction, especially on TV, has developed a particular set of female detectives who bend the gender positions of the traditional police novel and explore the sacrifices needed to maintain a state that can guarantee justice, equality and social trust in the post-welfare society. (“Scandinavian Crime Fiction” 180; emphasis added)

Implied in this statement is the fact that sacrifices, in this Scandinavian welfare state context, are seen to fall under the jurisdiction of female detectives; so too, then, do justice, equality and trust. Although exceptions apply (for example, Bedrag, Grenseland [Gallagher 2017], Norskov, DNA [Hoppe 2019–present]), the frequent positioning of female characters in leadership roles and as committed to justice is more than affirmative action on the part of television producers: it can be interpreted as an exploration of the anxieties surrounding the increased visibility, power and agency of women. The cultural specificity of Forbrydelsen as a product of the Danish media industry is made apparent when the original series is compared to the US remake The Killing (Sud 2011–2014). Isabel Pinedo’s insightful comparative analysis of these texts highlights the thematic and representational shifts that occur when a narrative is transposed to a disparate economic 1  Though an intriguing concept, I do not deploy the discourse of a “post-welfare state” society, in part because I am unconvinced of its semantic value. Although the twenty-first century Danish welfare state contrasts, in manifestation and function, with the foundational late-nineteenth century version, I would argue that the state and its citizens value this system and consider it deeply embedded in national identity and shared cultural ideology.

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and political context (cf. Gemzøe). She problematises the US version’s co-optation of a postfeminist rhetoric that speaks to a neoliberal, capitalist set of values in conflict with the ideology of the Danish welfare state. As clarified in Chap. 1, the lens of postfeminism is not used here, not least because, as Pinedo notes, it subscribes to a set of beliefs that are incongruous in the Scandinavian context. She writes: Postfeminism reduces action to individual choice, unconstrained by any structural inequities. As with neoliberalism, postfeminism re-privatizes issues once politicized by the feminist movement. But choice discourse does not allow for women who choose work over childcare. To do so is to make the wrong choice, and women who make the wrong choice are vilified, as we see in [the US] The Killing. (11–12)

In contrast, Forbrydelsen, Pinedo asserts, is symptomatic of a production culture shaped by a social democratic setting that provides “indirect feminist creative input” by way of the cultural-political context in which the creators exist (11). That is, despite the all-male writing team, the series is infused with latent feminist ideology. Unlike Sweden, though, Denmark does not claim to have a feminist government, and scholars have dismissed Denmark’s version of state feminism as weak (Borchorst and Siim 218; Chacińska 99; Keskinen et al. 34; Leira, “Welfare States and Working Mothers” 26; Siim, “Gender and Citizenship” 126). Tess Sophie Skadegård Thorsen argues that contemporary Denmark is decidedly un-feminist, insofar as the term “feminist” is explicitly rejected (112). Only recently has Denmark caught up with Sweden and Norway and formed their own version of the political party Feministisk Initiativ (Feminist Initiative, or F!). In an interview for the online magazine Unearth Women, former leader of F! Muneeza Rosendahl states that “We’ve got politicians saying that in the ‘ethnically Danish’ population, there are no gender equality issues; they only exist in the ethnic minority populations, which we don’t think is the case” (Eilersen). F!, which was formed in 2017, was the only Danish political party to openly embrace the term “feminism” and advocate for women’s issues outside of the usual rhetoric of gender equality (Eilersen). Though the Danish branch of F! has not been active in recent years, their agenda is validated in a number of statistics and findings that indicate Denmark should be concerned with the representation of women (as well as gender nonbinary persons and those of immigrant backgrounds) in politics and

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throughout sites where power is negotiated. At an institutional level, the party expressed concern over the lack of a father’s quota for parental leave: a quota that all other Nordic nations have and which they believe would lessen the pay gap and allow women to strive for positions of authority and influence (Dellasanti; Eilersen). As mentioned in Chap. 1, freedom of choice was the motive behind the eradication of a father’s quota, but this hasn’t been without consequence in Denmark. A range of statistics available for public access on the Statistics Denmark database illustrate that mothers continue to take more parental and sick leave and are more likely to be single parents than fathers (Statbank, “Gender equality indicator of activity”; “Families 1. January by region”; “Absence by indicator of absence”; “Gender equality indicator on working hours”). The mobilisation of women into gainful employment does not alleviate the financial burden of parental separation because “the dual responsibility of caring for and providing for children causes work– family conflict for many single mothers, who tend to experience higher levels of financial stress than do non-single working mothers” (Bull and Mittelmark 563; cf. Stoltz 434–435). In 2019, 85 per cent of the persons claiming single parent supplement in Denmark were mothers, a statistic that points to the residual view of parenthood as a woman’s responsibility (Statbank, “Recipients of family benefits”). Although the Nordic countries, including Denmark, have traditionally been frontrunners in initiating social inclusion and dismantling gender norms, little attention has been paid to the pressure emerging from the rhetoric that declares work-­ life satisfaction is not only attainable for women but a moral imperative, given the substantial state investment in enabling supportive conditions. While many Nordic studies acknowledge the structural difficulties of consolidating motherhood with employment (see Ellingsæter and Leira; Esping-Andersen “A New Gender Contract”; Leira, “Welfare States and Working Mothers”; Kangas and Rostgaard; Neergaard and Thrane; Ravn and Rosenbeck; Weckström), few address the kinds of messages that women living in highly defamilialised welfare states receive through the media (see Dancus on Swedish and Norwegian female filmmakers). The dramas in this chapter, in fact, dismiss the notion of a choice between motherhood and employment and, rather, grapple with the dilemmas of women who are expected to have careers yet also provide uncompromising emotional support to their children. As Arnlaug Leira posits:

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Caring is an all-important element in social and cultural norms concerning “good motherhood”, but less so in the interpretation of “good fatherhood” […] In discussions of “parental choice”, more attention has to be given to the conditions under which parents make “choices”. Who has priority of choice in a two-person system, what is chosen first—childcare or job—and what real choices does the second chooser have? (“Childcare in Scandinavia” 100; cf. Hall 105–106)

Individual choices are made within a framework that is strongly influenced by a rhetoric of collective responsibility and the reduction of personal agency in favour of state regulation. The female characters of Anna Pihl and Forbrydelsen reflect the fact that, while the Danish social services theoretically support women’s labour market participant concomitant to their parental responsibilities (indeed, the government encourages this very dynamic), the welfare state relies on the taxes paid by working citizens, transmogrifying this right to work into a requirement to work (S.O.  Sørensen 297; Yuval-Davis, “Belonging and the Politics of Belonging” 209). The Danish crime drama problematises the state’s displacement of maternal care in two significant ways. Firstly, the high degree of commitment required by the central female in order to administer justice undermines her capacity to provide her child with the quality of emotional support required to mitigate maladjustment and social marginalisation. Secondly, the frequent representation of children as victims in the investigations of these central females positions these women, once again, as responsible for the welfare and security of children, suggesting that care is inevitably a female occupation. In my Danish screen fiction cases, the enduring feminist concerns about the ability of women to resist or redefine motherhood within the parameters of their profession is at the fore, and any notion that these female characters exercise choice in their careers and familial situations must, as flagged in the previous chapter, be understood in relation to civic obligations and social standards. The extent to which women can choose to raise a family and choose to pursue career success in Denmark is reliant upon the availability of childcare structures to enable and normalise this, rendering women’s actual ability to exercise choices about work and family dependent upon the state’s provision of the necessary scaffolding. The very existence of a female character in a lead role should not be taken as evidence of social and political progressiveness in the production

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context: the actions and framing of these characters require much critical attention. In this chapter’s cases—and countless other crime dramas, both Danish and international—it becomes evident that the greater the woman’s career workload, the more her familial relationships suffer. The Danish crime drama frequently presents a scenario where the female protagonist’s labour market participation—in a highly demanding job, no less—is directly bound up in ethics, lawfulness and morality through her career as a police officer. Even if their fictional male counterparts face similar professional demands, the ability of the female police officer to successfully negotiate her role as a mother, employee and, indeed, woman in a patriarchal workplace is still  often articulated as a gendered issue, both in the narrative and in its commentary (Agger, “Emotion, Gender and Genre” 117; Povlsen 89; Schmidt 427; Stougaard-Nielsen, “Deviant Detectives” 17; cf. Feasey, “Mothers on Mothers” 164; Thomas). This is arguably a reflection of the fact that parenting and household duties are still more likely to fall to the mother in Denmark (Andersson, Kreyenfield and Mika 97; Badinter 308; Neergaard and Thrane 91; Sanandaji 76). For the female police officers examined in this chapter’s case studies, the objectives of social justice and maternal support are seen to conflict in a way that invokes the belief of liberal philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau: that women are incapable of possessing a sense of justice (Griffiths 341). According to these theorists, women’s inherent lack of justice and morality means that “the basis of civil association is threatened; it contains within itself a permanent source of disorder” (Pateman, “The Disorder of Women” 21). This Enlightenment-era thinking dictates that the servitude of women complements—indeed, makes possible—the equal and total independence of men upon which social justice is premised (Berns 129–130). Anna Pihl and Forbrydelsen challenge the idea of gendered biological determinism by foregrounding competent, agentive women who actively respond to their environments to create change, rarely deferring to, or relying upon, their male counterparts. Yet the notion that injustice leads to disorder permeates both Forbrydelsen and, in the reverse fashion, Anna Pihl: in the former, violence that can be traced back to vulnerability in the domestic space triggers widespread social disruption, while in the latter, the resolution of the episode’s conflict is often punctuated with a scene of domestic contentment upon which the episode closes, reinforcing the relationship between domestic satisfaction and social stability.

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Both series frame their lead women as mobilised into senior positions in their workplace, yet persistently accountable to a nagging sense that their family and home are threatened as a result of their career choices; they can be seen to do an “injustice” to their families. In this sense, the dramas suggest that women do present a threat to the cohesion of the just and stable society that Rousseau envisioned in the eighteenth century, unless they wholly commit themselves to supporting their family (Berns 146; Georgieva-Stankova 12). The liberal belief that women should be relegated to the private sphere to complement the masculine public sphere did not go unchallenged by feminists at the time, who criticised this logic in the nineteenth century: The one-sided dominance of men in public life, they claimed, had led to a catastrophic neglect of the values associated with the family—nurture, compassion, concern for the weak and dependent. And only the entry of women into public life could remedy this injustice […] If the state now aspired to be a parent, were not mothers its most qualified agents? (Allen 12)

Although it often characterised women as inherently maternal, early feminism promoted feminine virtues as essential societal assets that should not be confined to the so-called private sphere. This was the case in Denmark as well as throughout the West, where women’s movements, in particular the Danish Women’s Society, were influential in improving the rate of female representation in politics and promoting the collective voice of women (Dahlerup 150; Siim, “Gender and Citizenship” 34). One could infer that the very notion of a welfare state is founded on what were traditionally considered female occupations: caregiving, socialising and maintaining a safe and comforting domestic space. Scandinavian welfare state policy aims to provide universal support for citizens, particularly the most weak and dependent, by reimagining seemingly individual issues as public responsibilities, echoing the feminist voices that declare that “the personal is political”. The rhetoric of the Scandinavian model is in line with Iris Marion Young’s social connection model, outlined in Responsibility for Justice, which “finds that all those who contribute by their actions to structural processes with some unjust outcomes share responsibility for the injustice” (96). Denying the contributions of women in political leadership and decision-making in the contemporary welfare state is simply not feasible, yet the legacy of a gendered division of labour is not entirely absent from modern Danish society; the biological role of

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women as child-bearers has continued to invoke the association of womanhood with motherhood (Deding and Lausten 253; Keetley 58; Lahad and Madsen 183; Polakow 257; Scally). While my film and television cases are implicitly critical of this association, they do stage scenarios where the mother characters who embody or subscribe to the stereotype of the devoted mother have abundant lives while those that subvert or resist conventional maternity are prone to suffering. These female characters’ fraught relationships to motherhood speak to a cultural climate that rewards familial and career success (demonstrated in Anna Pihl as well as Borgen in Chap. 6) while other qualities, such as maternal ambivalence, emotional volatility and sexual voracity, are marginalised and often punished. Élisabeth Badinter has astutely pointed out that, despite diverse manifestations of maternal care across culture, class and milieux, “We have been unable, or unwilling, to make use of [any] ‘exceptions’ for the purpose of calling into question our own norms”, preferring to believe that maternal responses are natural and inherent (xx–xxi). Far from neutral, the given dominant cultural ideology is a political discourse that, when absorbed and reproduced, can serve to invalidate individuals who are unable or unwilling to meet the cultural demands of employment and motherhood (Beckett 51; Georgieva-Stankova 8; Young, “Justice and the Politics of Difference” 165). The internalisation of cultural values is common to many of this female protagonists examined herein, who voice concerns that reflect how they anticipate they will be judged. Anna Pihl, for example, entertains the idea of quitting the police force several times when she feels she has breached her own values and those which govern her profession: she holds herself to impossibly high standards as if she has to constantly earn the right to participate and must punish herself if she does not. Sarah Lund similarly retreats from personal relationships, perhaps believing herself to be undeserving or incapable of emotionally supportive connections. These two contemporaneous cases offer contrasting versions of the possibility of belonging, which can be defined as “not just about social locations and constructions of individual and collective identities and attachments but also about the ways these are valued and judged” (Yuval-­ Davis, “Belonging and the Politics of Belonging” 203–204). As discussed in Chap. 1, citizenship transcends legal and political entitlements, encompassing a range of privileges that facilitate access to, and representation and belonging in, the community; such opportunities and degrees of

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access can be conceptualised as cultural rights, relating to cultural citizenship (Pakulski 80). Povlsen submits that cultural citizenship “involves the right to know and speak, a feeling of personal identity and community membership—a sense of belonging”, and she notes that the crime drama frequently debates the parameters of such membership (90). In such narratives, the police are tasked with enforcing a distinction between right and wrong, just and unjust, and identifying these transgressions so that they might be punished. The ultimate punishment is to take away one’s freedom, one’s citizenship rights and one’s sense of belonging. Yet, as we can discern from Scandinavian crime dramas, such transgressions do not have to manifest as crime or illicit behaviour. They can also be imagined as the transgression with which Lund, Joe, Kira and Isa identify—the inability to function as a contributing member of society. Hermes contends that detective and crime fiction is a site where cultural citizenship can be fostered and practised by audiences. This space is governed by cultural rules and standards, Hermes writes, such as “not read[ing] the last page before coming to the end of the book” (71) to avoid undermining the carefully constructed narrative. This is not a rule that any individual or group is tasked with policing but is an unspoken standard of a given community. Indeed, the scheduling of DR dramas on Sunday nights at 8 pm reproduces the community of, say, a book club or reading group; the habitual broadcast of new episodes at the same time unites Danish viewers, albeit symbolically and temporarily. As Yuval-Davis highlights, though, “entitlements and belonging do not always automatically constitute features of citizenship” (“Belonging and the Politics of Belonging” 207), adding that “some political projects of belonging can present themselves as promoting more open boundaries than they actually do” (209). Indeed, it is, overwhelmingly, white-skinned Danes that feature in popular Danish television dramas, despite the mandate for public service broadcasting to address the whole nation. The rhetoric of egalitarianism and gender equality that permeates the Danish political landscape has, for the most part, produced middle-class heteronormative investigators who solve crimes against the most “innocent” members of society. An attack on an immigrant is an immigrant crime; an attack on a drug user is a drug-related crime; an attack on an ethnic Dane is an inexplicable crime. Part of the international attention of Forbrydelsen stems from the fact that crime stories usually travel well because the familiar genre features compensate for any linguistic or cultural differences (Agger, “Mapping the Times” 335; De Vinck and Pauwels 221; Stougaard-Nielsen 5).

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Stougaard-Nielsen, however, states that Forbrydelsen’s broad popularity is also on account of “its blend of recognisable generic forms and its somewhat exotic local anchoring” (“Nordic Noir in the UK” 3). He asserts, similarly to Ben Pitcher in Consuming Race, that Nordic dramas are appealing to audiences in the UK, and perhaps the US, Australia and New Zealand, because of their “exotic” depictions of whiteness, which provide a “safe” foray into a seemingly foreign yet culturally proximal environment (cf. Bondebjerg et al. 25–26; Hansen and Waade 40; McElroy et al. 181–182). This tolerable difference inverts the usual “cultural discount” that subtitled, foreign content usually endures, resulting in what Jensen and Waade call a “cultural mark-up” (261). Yet it would be remiss to suggest that the crime dramas studied here present a culturally homogeneous Denmark; despite the majority of main characters being white, heteronormative, middle-class Danes, issues of racial discrimination and prejudice are made apparent in both series. Season three of Anna Pihl, for example, examines a conflict surrounding a Pakistani family, which is complemented by the ongoing story of a prejudiced white-skinned Danish officer working alongside a first-­ generation Dane from Iran (episodes 5 and 6, season 3 2007). The series depicts a wider cross-section of Danish society than Forbrydelsen, perhaps because of its setting at a suburban police station and the format that enables the exploration of a different issue each episode. While Anna Pihl’s plot traverses a range of crimes, varying widely in severity, Forbrydelsen focuses on extreme and aberrant killings committed by a perpetrator who, each time, is revealed to be close to the investigation—“one of us”—rendering the threat even more menacing. This revelation highlights the discriminatory views espoused by the fictional society, who automatically suspect immigrants, the homeless and those who look or sound different. It also, however, reinforces the distinction between those who “belong”— including the perpetrator, hiding in plain sight—and those who do not: the suspicious, although largely guiltless, “outsiders”. Forbrydelsen seasons one and two demonstrate the implicit bias of the police force and the community in suspecting an immigrant person for the killing, reflecting the political debate in Denmark during the time these narratives were created (Agger, “Urban topographies of a crime” 239). Anna Pihl offers an optimistic perspective on the working mother narrative, where the mother’s patience, conviction and hard work are rewarded. The series, based around the suburban Bellahøj police station in north-west Copenhagen, highlights, problematises and eventually

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celebrates a cultural backdrop where “family policies enabling citizens to reconcile work and family life are cornerstones”, ultimately presenting a happy family life as attainable (Abrahamson 399). The series adopts a chirpy, upbeat tone that is tempered with poignancy and solemnity during the investigation of the more serious crimes, rendering the series broadly accessible without being frivolous. As TV2’s Vogelsang explains, the semi-­ commercial network does have an obligation to produce drama that serves the public interest. Such productions are enabled by the Danish government’s Public Service Pool funding scheme, upon which Vogelsang reflects: “it turned out that it was quite good to make the commercial broadcasters take more risks on public service projects, instead of going totally commercial. Then you actually have a possibility to do better quality and more public service-relevant projects” (Personal correspondence, 21 June 2018). The format of shorter, semi-contained episodes favours a reading of social justice as an ongoing project requiring continuous attention, to which Anna contributes as part of a team. Anna Pihl exemplifies Gunhild Agger’s statement that “crime fiction on television has often demonstrated that it is capable of encouraging public debate, both in Denmark and Sweden, asking questions about the representation of gender and ethnicity in the police force and in real life” (“Emotion, Gender and Genre” 113). Each episode contends with issues ranging from racial tensions, drug abuse and black market trading in prison to difficulties in intimacy and fidelity, animal rights and child discipline. The use of energetic montages accompanied by English-language pop songs in the opening credits signifies the highly constructed nature of the series: the audience sees, essentially, a highlight reel, not the confronting day-to-day reality that recent DR dramas are more likely to invoke. The overall representation of women balancing work, family and romance in TV2’s series is typically positive, in keeping with the network’s more commercial brand and akin to Lærkevej (Park Road) (Heeno 2009–2010), Rita (Torpe 2012–2020) and Dicte (Høgh and Rydén 2013–2016). Anna is distinct from the other women studied in this book and, indeed, from most other women in Danish crime fiction, as she never views her parenting responsibilities as a burden and considers what is best for her son when making professional or personal decisions. Despite its upbeat tone and proclivity to quickly resolve conflict, Anna Pihl is not devoid of a generative social commentary, though, and effectively addresses the barriers that a female police officer might face.

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From the early days of the Scandinavian crime drama, the struggle for gender equality was present on-screen. Anna Pihl, Rejseholdet, Anna Holt and Höök each make blatant the criticism levelled at female police officers on account of their gender. For example, when the new Chief of Homicide Ingrid Dahl (Charlotte Fich) is controversially promoted to this position in Rejseholdet, it is made clear that “no woman has ever had that job”, and even Ingrid expresses self-doubt, asking her colleague Gaby (Trine Pallesen) if she would “prefer a man as [her] boss” (episode 2, season 1 2000). In concert with the social commentary on gendered workplaces, though, is the fact that female characters pictured as leaders in many Danish (and often Swedish) crime dramas are often stern, unmarried workaholics whose children may be estranged or dead; key examples are Anna Pihl’s Eva Fabricius (Tammi Øst) and Forbrydelsen’s Ruth Hedeby (Lotte Andersen), both of whom are antagonistic to the leading women and pursue relationships with male colleagues. The implication is that these women have achieved career success but sacrificed personal relationships, finding intimacy only within the confines of their profession. This older generation of women reflect the stereotype of female investigators as possessing a “real or more often imagined lack of professionalism in a hostile, male environment”, which coincides with the presumption that their emotions will compromise their integrity (Agger, “Emotion, Gender and Genre” 117). Such characters assert their authority by co-­ opting certain traits that are gendered as masculine, such as the unwillingness to negotiate on procedural issues and a tendency to speak at, not to, their colleagues. Interestingly, these women’s private lives are not explored except in the context of the revelation of an intimate relationship. Although writing on US cinema, Erika M. Thomas’ reflections are relevant to these female characters: “While many single women are portrayed as having personal choices in recent films, the demise of the family is still attributed to married or single women who choose personal values such as passion and work over their responsibility to their family”. The young, attractive Anna Pihl represents a new (ideal) generation of working mother: Anna recognises that she does not want to become a self-interested and emotionally absent parent like her detective father (Kurt Ravn) but, ironically, faces a backlash from some of her colleagues for prioritising her child and believing she can balance everything. The series concludes that Anna can, in fact, reconcile her career ambitions with her maternal responsibilities, mostly because she insists upon an existence that prioritises care, compassion, self-sacrifice and other traits that are gendered as feminine.

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Season one of Anna Pihl begins with a rather blunt and heavy-handed impression of the difficulties of balancing work and parenthood, with Anna arriving late on her first day as a constable because she had to take her son, Mikkel (William Hagedorn Rasmussen), to kindergarten. Later, she receives a call saying that Mikkel has an eye infection, and she has no choice but to have him dropped off at the police station while making arrangements. She is labelled as “unprofessional”, and her superior, Eva, levels accusations at her suggesting that her negligence caused a fight to break out during an arrest: Eva:

Perhaps you’d concentrate better without your child? [She turns to leave the lunchroom] Mikkel: Aren’t I allowed to stay, mum? Anna: Of course you are. Wait a moment. [Anna follows Eva into the hall] That was a bit indiscreet. Eva: [disparagingly] Do you know who I am? Anna: Yes, and right now you’re talking to Mikkel’s mother. (Episode 1, season 1 2006) This scene establishes Anna as confident and headstrong but also signposts her willingness to forgo her career to protect her child. Anna faces reproach for allowing her personal life to seep into her workplace; her commitment to Mikkel seems to automatically undermine her dedication to her job. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that it is illness that forces Anna to adapt her workday around her son’s needs: Denmark has had variable rules around taking absence, which has not always been permitted on the first day of the child’s illness (Danish Child Welfare Commission 11; Krane et  al. 690; Polakow 257). In their study of the wellbeing of single mothers in Scandinavia, Bull and Mittelmark comment that “Work–family conflict arises when the demands of the home domain are in conflict with the demands of the work domain, and for many, it reduces life satisfaction, among other indicators of wellbeing” (563). Women are disproportionately affected because they are more likely to be single parents than men (Statbank, “Children by region, time and family type”) and because work practices continue to be “grounded in a male model of work that positions the ideal worker as someone who can work as though they have no social or caring obligations outside work (Acker, 1990; Lewis, 1997, 2001; Kugelberg, 2006)” (241; cf. Hall 104). As a single working mother, Anna has neither the option nor desire to dismiss

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her maternal identity; in fact, the commitment she demonstrates to her son also manifests as professionalism in her work. Anna Pihl follows Anna’s progression from rookie constable to training as a crisis negotiator to achieving her goal of working for the Homicide Division, all the while trying to raise her young son. Unlike many other police officer characters in Danish (and many international) crime series, Anna accepts that her career may suffer if she prioritises her child; she always chooses her family, though not without some distress. The difficulties Anna faces are not just on account of her professional inexperience but are presented by the writers as gendered prejudice levelled at her by both colleagues and the community she strives to protect. Although the viewer is encouraged to empathise with Anna, the sexist and discriminatory behaviour of her colleagues is retroactively excused when they develop into more likeable characters as the show evolves. Anna is mostly targeted by Eva and her male colleague Kim (Paw Henriksen), both of whom develop into agreeable characters by season three. Early in season one, though, Anna is patrolling with Kim when he declares, “There are several talented women officers. But they don’t belong on patrol”, to which Anna retorts, “How dare you say so?” (episode 2, season 1 2006). With the exception of his Iranian partner, Karim (Said Chayesteh), Kim’s colleagues dismiss his discrimination as harmless banter. This work environment reflects Denmark’s universal breadwinner system which, according to Borchorst and Siim, “intends to turn women into citizen workers like men”, and it is as if the female police officer is integrated on the provision she resembles the male police officer (“Woman-Friendly Policies” 211; cf. Ericsson 177; Jónasdóttir and von der Fehr 12; Neergaard and Thrane 99; Stoltz 429). In these early episodes, Anna is framed as idealistic, questioning professional procedures if they do not align with her values—a tendency that particularly annoys Eva. Eva resents Anna’s attempt to rigorously uphold her morals, saying spitefully: “Women who want to save the world fuck everything up. Do you know that?”—a comment that suggests that Anna’s integrity and empathy are misplaced and unnecessary but also that women are incapable of “saving the world” (episode 4, season 1 2006). Anna is consistently committed to doing what she believes is right by her peers and her community as well as by her son, determined not to seem indifferent to parenthood, like her father. Her uncompromising commitment to being a dedicated mother eventually warrants Eva’s respect, and it transpires that Eva’s iciness may be due to the death of her own daughter for

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which she feels responsible. In a sense, Anna represents the woman Eva regrets that she could not be, the protector of her child, and initially this causes Eva to treat Anna as if she is naïve and even a liability, echoing Kim’s belief that female cops are too emotional. Despite the criticism she faces for transgressing gender norms in this fictional environment, the ambitious working mother is ultimately positioned as empathetic and relatable. Though Anna emerges as a well-rounded person by the series’ conclusion, closer analysis of her character reveals a lack of true agency: she is never presented as having any sense of taste or any hobbies, and her best friend (and, apparently, only friend apart from her flatmate) is her colleague Mikala (Iben Hjejle) whom she meets in the police force. Anna is a mother, a worker, a daughter and a lover, but despite her strong opinions and principles she is rarely presented as an individual. While Anna may be the most attractive blueprint for work-life balance in Danish crime fiction, she is not the iconic heroine that Sarah Lund is, which may account for the series’ lack of international success. The conflict between Anna’s job and private life has less to do with the demanding hours and commitment to justice at the expense of her personal relationships and more to do with being a single working mother, a role almost defined by its ordinariness. As in the previous case studies and in my analysis of Borgen in the following chapter, women’s sexuality and desire become a source of concern throughout all three seasons of Anna Pihl, though not because Anna is emotionally volatile or irrational as feminine stereotypes suggest. While Nymphomaniac and, to a lesser extent, En Kærlighedshistorie present women as inherently and destructively sexual to the detriment of their political autonomy and social relationships, the crime drama cases present the relative subordination of sexuality in the main characters. Anna Pihl does endorse the idea of balancing a successful career with parenthood, but then complicates this dynamic by problematising Anna’s sexual desires, and although Anna does pursue romantic relationships, she is relentlessly conscious of how these will affect her son. Writing from the US context, Montemurro and Siefken state: “the ideal mother in our culture is one who is self-sacrificing and whose primary concern is her children, rather than herself. Thus, it may be difficult for women to justify or reconcile their images of mothers and sexual women” (370). Anna’s characterisation reflects the US version of the self-sacrificing “ideal mother”: if required, she represses her sexual and romantic desire in a way that her male counterparts are not seen to do, latently aware of the extent to which

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mothers are held accountable for their children’s wellbeing. Indeed, examination of the Danish cultural context as depicted in screen fiction reveals that it often tends towards representing the sexualised mother characters as problematic, as the previous and following chapters illustrate. Outside of the criminal investigations, many scenes take place in Anna’s bright and airy flat which she shares with her gay housemate Jan (Peter Mygind), and the pair are often in the kitchen cooking together: a feminine stereotype as well as a mainstay of the sitcom genre, which signals that political critique is not the primary function of this series. Although she begins the series as a single working mother, Anna’s home dynamic becomes increasingly normative, eventually resembling a nuclear family. As her flatmate, Jan, who shares custody of the baby he fathered through IVF, comments to Anna: “We’ll be a proper family every other week”, given that the household will comprise a mother, father and two children. Anna, laughing, replies: “But without sex”, to which Jan quips, “Oh? Well, once you have kids you don’t have sex” (episode 8, season 3 2008). This interaction, again, implies that motherhood and sexuality are incompatible but also that “a proper family” is one with two (working) parents—preferably a mother and a father (cf. Stoltz 426). Anna is careful to make her home a safe space for her son and tries to create stability in his upbringing. She refuses to allow multiple strangers into Mikkel’s life, whether they be her partners or those of Mikkel’s father (Kasper Leisner). It appears that Anna believes that sex and romance that do not lead to a steady, ongoing relationship pose a threat to the child’s sense of security, perhaps because of the complicated nature of a step-­ parent and the ambiguous responsibilities this role presents. She is hesitant to introduce her two serious partners, Martin (Claes Bang) and later Daniel (Ola Rapace), to Mikkel, and when these intimate relationships end Anna seems most upset about how disappointed Mikkel will be when the promises these men have made to him cannot be fulfilled. She continually vocalises her concern about her young son’s wellbeing and the strain that giving time and energy to dating will have on her relationship with him. There are times when Anna’s façade of independence and strength appears to be masking fear, and this is highlighted by her housemate when Anna seems apprehensive about Martin:

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Jan:

[poking his head around the bathroom door] You’ve found the most wonderful boyfriend. Why not just enjoy? Are you in love with him? Anna: Yes Jan: Right then. [He goes to close the door but opens it again] You’re so scared of getting hurt that you’re prepared to end it before it has even begun. (Episode 6, season 1 2006) Jan’s comments point to the pre-emptive behaviour of Anna (and my other female cases), which functions to avoid the denouncement she anticipates based on internalised cultural norms. If they believe they have transgressed the dominant standards, these female characters retreat in order to avoid further criticism: Sarah Lund becomes increasingly reserved and uncommunicative the more she encounters structural barriers in her police work; Kira and Joe try to leave their families when they feel they cannot achieve the domestic satisfaction their partners desire; Borgen’s Birgitte calls an election on account of unfavourable press about her ill daughter; and Arvingerne’s Isa determines that her child is better off without her. Anna’s deep concern with Mikkel’s stable home environment threatens the possibility of a relationship with Martin, and her concern over being an inadequate parent causes her to relentlessly perceive herself as primarily a mother, and secondarily as a woman. Despite Anna’s strong emotional bond to her child and her passion for her job, Anna Pihl effectively contests the perception of women as necessarily prone to erroneous judgements informed by intuition by positioning Anna’s lovers, Martin and Daniel, as the cause of relationship conflict. In season one, Martin’s actual dedication to Anna is presented as conditional, and he virtually demands that she commit to him and invite him into the private life which she adamantly protects. Anna’s insistence that Martin take things slow with her, particularly as they work at the same police station, prompts a haughty reaction from him, which frames Martin as emotionally immature compared with Anna. When she suggests they keep their affair private, Martin retorts that it would be “easier to just drop it” (episode 5, season 1 2006). Anna is coerced into proving her love for Martin as he continues to suggest that their relationship is not worth the trouble if she insists on proceeding gradually, even though she is protecting her young son from a potentially conflictual situation. The fact that they work together means that Anna’s hesitance frustrates Martin even more as he does not want to keep their situation a secret from his

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co-workers, whereas she does not want to undermine her profession by allowing intimate relationships to impinge on it. Though Martin effectively advocates for a dissolution of any dichotomous public/private self, Anna’s hesitance is understandable when she has already been called unprofessional for allowing her personal life to filter into the workplace. In the same episode, when they are patrolling together, Martin turns their receiver off in order to explain something to Anna about his ex-­ girlfriend, Laura (Laura Drasbæk), and their lack of response to a call delays their arrival to the scene of a rape (episode 5, season 1 2006). One of the next victims turns out to be Laura, who is killed because she tipped the police off about the identity of the rapist. Laura tries to call Martin at the time she is attacked, but he is with Anna and refuses to answer to prove his loyalty and trustworthiness to her—qualities that he has hitherto failed to foster. Again, in season three, Anna is faced with the challenging situation of either defending her fiancé, Daniel, against an assault charge levelled at him by Anna’s precinct or exposing his unethical representation of the actual events which he has reframed to protect himself. She eventually chooses the latter, disappointed with Daniel’s incapacity to take responsibility, thereby sacrificing her marriage to maintain her personal and professional integrity. These scenarios frame Anna’s intimate relationships as a potential threat both to her son’s sense of security and to her career and to the (female) victims of crime whom she and Martin might have saved. Her sexual desires and relationships are thus positioned as inextricable from her domestic stability and professional judgement. If Anna, at times, struggles to reconcile her romantic relationship with her (perceived) professional and maternal obligations, Forbrydelsen’s Sarah Lund negates all personal connections in favour of her work. Her relentless presence at police headquarters in central Copenhagen or out in the field is tantamount to her emotional distance from her family and from the feeling of being “at home”: of belonging (Yuval-Davis, “Belonging and the politics of belonging” 197; “Power, Intersectionality” 369). Belonging, according to Yuval-Davis, comprises three main analytical levels, concerning social locations, “individuals’ identifications and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings” and the “ethical and political value systems with which people judge their own and others’ belonging/s” (“Belonging and the politics of belonging” 199; emphasis added). Thus, belonging, like cultural citizenship, can be understood as an ongoing project of interpersonal and intercultural negotiation that involves active participation and self-awareness. It is also premised on the existence of a safe

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and inclusive public space which, in crime narratives like Forbrydelsen, is undermined both by individual perpetrators and by systemic weaknesses. Stougaard-Nielsen discusses the crime story, as it has emerged in Nordic fiction, as a response to and realisation of alienation with the (potential) failure of the welfare state and its conflicted relationship with consumerism and neoliberalism. Several scholars have noted the political critique that Swedish authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö mount in their formative series of books featuring the phlegmatic detective Martin Beck, which are collectively titled Roman om ett brott (Story of a Crime) (Agger, “Emotion, Gender and Genre” 111–112; Grydehøj 119; Hansen and Waade 206; Keetley 54; Stougaard-Nielsen, “Scandinavian Crime Fiction” 203). The later iterations in this series, published in the early to mid-­1970s, are heavy-handed in their promotion of socialism and their rebuke of the industrialisation of Stockholm, but the earlier books featured sexual crimes that were, at the time, perceived by critics as the actions of perverse individuals and largely devoid of political commentary (Keetley 55). Such interpretations “display a rather obvious blindness to the fact that sexual crimes can be political” and, in fact, symptomatic of male disenfranchisement in Western countries following the civil rights revolutions of the 1960s (Keetley 55, 58). As Keetley explains, “Some of the tangled roots of these serial sexual murders lie in men’s perceived loss of power—a loss that is taken out on women and girls” (56). Forbrydelsen recreates the despondent urban environment from the Martin Beck series, and the killings in the first two seasons (and arguably the third) appear motivated by compulsion or intense feelings of impotence in much the same way as the crimes in the first and third Beck instalments. Though sexual crimes against women and children are hardly unique to Scandinavian fiction or these societies, their continual depiction in popular narratives speaks to unresolved issues related to gender inequality, the tension between individualism and communitarianism, and the exploitation of power. Scandinavian crime fiction from the 1990s builds upon the foundations established in prior decades and articulates a perspective that is nostalgic for an earlier version of the welfare state. Stougaard-Nielsen writes that “this next generation of crime novels […] expresses a persistent lament for a better, more solidaristic, more authentic, perhaps more sentimental society of close and trusting relationships perceived to having been [sic] forgotten in the wake of modernization and globalization” (116). The tone in the works of many Scandinavian crime writers, from Henning Mankell to Karin Fossum, is melancholic and regretful, as if crime is a tragic

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outcome of countless interconnected mistakes and abuses. Yet it is not just the crime story that recalls an idyllic, united welfare state of an elusive bygone era. As Agger points out, the historical drama is the most popular and enduring genre in Denmark, with a number of series harking back to definitive periods from the 1920s onwards (335; cf. Hansen and Waade 167). The earliest example is Matador (Clausen 1978–1982), which continues to run on DR’s broadcast channels. A more recent iteration is TV2’s Badehotellet (The Seaside Hotel) (Lundblad and Thorsboe 2013–present), which could, as Vogelsang informed me, run forever, because “it’s good for the industry” and exceptionally well received (Personal correspondence. 21 June 2018). As I have noted elsewhere, it is these series that continue to draw the largest audiences to Denmark’s broadcast channels (Hallsworth 126–127). Yet the crime story, more than most genres, is a space for audiences to negotiate ideas around ethics and responsibility. More than historical dramas, crime stories “[stage] a struggle between collective norms and individual transgression”, depicting the full extent of the damage that can be caused by greed, vengeance and depravity (Nestingen 79; cf. Helles and Lai 396–397). The assumption that such social blights that emerged out of mid-century industrialism increased immigration and the spread of capitalism runs the risk of glorifying the early days of the welfare state and “hides a more problematic, exclusive and ‘sanitizing’ discourse about social values as if entrenched in national characteristics derived from specific locations and deep pasts” (Stougaard-Nielsen, “Scandinavian Crime Fiction” 121). It is this discourse that is called upon to justify racial, cultural and religious intolerance and the rise of neofascism in Scandinavia in recent decades (Hervik, “The Annoying Difference” 76–77; Siim, “Feminist Challenges” 197; Stougaard-Nielsen, “Scandinavian Crime Fiction” 121). As Mart Kuldkepp has noted, with particular reference to Sweden, the myth of homogeneous national identities in the Scandinavian countries produced an aversion towards those who emigrated in the mid-­ nineteenth century, as if they were rejecting or abandoning their nations (187, 189). The sharp uptake of immigrants to Scandinavian countries in the 1950s and 1960s also coincides with the period of political unrest and the widespread disillusionment mentioned above (Kuldkepp 181). The racial Other entered Scandinavian crime fiction in the 1990s through the stories of Mankell, Holt and Jo Nesbø, and their discernible difference is a tangible reminder to the central characters of everything that has changed over the last 50 years.

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Aside from the exclusion of cultural minorities, the welfare state also tolerated widespread injustice up until relatively recently, by way of cruel institutions for disadvantaged persons. For example, the Svendborg “Poor House”, located on the Danish island of Fyn, was operational until 1974 (“The Danish Welfare Museum”; Rytter and Rasmussen 10). Inhabitants were divided into two categories: the worthy poor and the unworthy poor (“The Danish Welfare Museum”). The worthy poor comprised those who were elderly, mentally ill, disabled or otherwise unable to looks after themselves, whilst the unworthy poor were those who were believed to have brought about their own destitution and deemed to be “lazy and failed” by the poorhouse inspector. The latter group were sent to the workhouse, while the worthy poor resided in the relief section of the poorhouse. This significant distinction between those who were seen as culpable for their impoverishment and those who were absolved of responsibility shows an early preoccupation in Denmark with rewarding citizens for fulfilling society’s expectations of them and punishing those who “fail”. I visited the site of the former Svendborg Poorhouse, which was renamed the Viebæltegård Workhouse in 1933 and is now the Svendborg Welfare Museum, in April of 2019. A plaque inside one of the buildings, which are now exhibition spaces, states that the revolutions of the 1960s didn’t reach this archaic institution: although the barbed wire along the fencing was removed in 1961, the exits remained locked and the inhabitants physically and symbolically isolated. There is a palpable feeling of melancholy surrounding the Svendborg Welfare Museum, but it can hardly be characterised as a yearning for an earlier time. It is more akin to the desire for an alternative history, free from suffering and torture, and the simultaneous need to immerse oneself in the very fabric of this troubling institution: to feel it for oneself. The cognitive dissonance was troubling. Anne Marit Waade’s discussion of melancholy in relation to the Nordic noir aesthetic provides a thoughtful commentary on the historical basis for the despondent tone in so many modern, popularised Nordic crime stories, including Forbrydelsen. She references Norwegian philosopher Kjersti Bale, positing that “melancholy as a literary configuration is about topos and longing. The melancholic ambiguity involves being simultaneously part of something and yet outside it as well: out of place (displacement) and out of time (nostalgia)” (“Melancholy in Nordic Noir” 382). Stougaard-Nielsen similarly describes Scandinavian crime fiction from the early 1990s as set against a social backdrop that is “fundamentally conditioned by decomposed traditions, restless mobility and changeable

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communities made up of fluid, anxious identities” (“Scandinavian Crime Fiction” 116). Implicit in these analyses by Waade and Stougaard-Nielsen is the connection between Forbrydelsen, as Denmark’s breakthrough crime drama that attracted unprecedented global attention, and a long history of Nordic art that reified the anxiety, desire and deterritorialisation that emerge from a liminal existence across ever-shifting communities. Though widely celebrated for its originality, Forbrydelsen shares several features with other Scandinavian crime narratives, as Karsten Wind Meyhoff recognises: Whilst preoccupied with the solving of the crimes, Scandinavian police procedurals also paint a detailed portrait of the disenchanted everyday lives and problems of the protagonists. A strong social realism reveals problems with relationships, all sorts of abuse, loneliness and depression, to mention but a few of the classic themes. (64; cf. K. Bergman 292–293)

Forbrydelsen offered audiences a female detective who subverted the maternal qualities epitomised by Anna Pihl and who was troubled, brooding and insubordinate in keeping with the aesthetic and themes of the complex narrative. Embodying courage and independence, Detective Inspector Sarah Lund superficially fulfils the role of the “strong female character” that Nordic drama series are applauded for featuring (Agger, “The Golden Age” 35; Eichner and Esser 200; Esser 414–415; Helles and Lai 397; Hochscherf 172; Hochscherf and Philipsen 52; Povlsen 90; Redvall, “Writing and Directing Television Drama” 3; Waade, “‘Just follow the trail of blood’” 240). Helles and Lai even posit that such female characters are major factors in the success of Danish series across borders and cultures (405–406). Lund is, however, as Meyhoff references, constantly struggling with the expectations of her colleagues, her family, and the society in which she was raised. In light of Lund’s evasive tendencies and brusque demeanour, I posit that, in general, the criteria for labelling women characters as “strong” warrants much greater consideration. Indeed, the female characters in Danish television that continue to be celebrated as role models of independence, strength and autonomy demonstrate persistent concern with how successful they are at doing what is expected of them: they appear to have internalised a sense of duty. For Anna Pihl, this is her ability to be an attentive mother, and for Sarah Lund, her fixation is upon solving the case in her professional capacity.

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With their committed and talented female police officer leads, Anna Pihl and Forbrydelsen both present the Danish state as reliant upon the role of mothers in maintaining the cohesion of families. Lund, however, forgoes motherhood to pursue her work-related ambitions, implying an incompatibility between motherhood and female agency. She resists almost all traits commonly associated with femininity, embodying a female detective that stands in for the sultry male common to the film noir style from which the series borrows. In a sense, she is more akin to the male leads in Scandinavian crime fiction from earlier decades, such as those in the work Sjöwall and Wahlöö, Mankell and the Danish writer Anders Bodelsen, than she is to her female contemporaries. Agger summarises Forbrydelsen’s gender shift, writing that It is my basic understanding that The Killing [Forbrydelsen] undertakes a revision of the traditional social and gendered positions of crime fiction by (1) performing a reversal of masculine and feminine stereotypes, complicating the role models for a female lead presented in previous crime series, (2) exhibiting the invalidation of family life in the process and (3) making the genre mix (police procedural, political drama and melodrama) and the style (film noir) essential ingredients in conveying this to the viewer. (“Emotion, Gender and Genre” 114; emphasis added)

This deterioration of the home and of the family that Agger references is realised through the genre conventions of melodrama, which emphasise the emotional experiences of the characters, and film noir, which establish a backdrop of systemic weakness and urban decay. This intersection of genres allows Forbrydelsen to co-opt the melodrama’s emphasis on morality and eternal human flaws and film noir’s distinctive critique of modern society and the greed that underpins it (Langkjær, “Realism as Third Film Practice” 50). Unlike the Danish police procedurals that preceded it, such as Rejseholdet and Ørnen, Forbrydelsen season one weaves the thread of the grieving family through its portrait of a failing political system (Hansen and Waade 169). It effectively captures the emptiness and isolation caused by such a tragedy by focusing on the victims as much as upon the investigation team or the perpetrators. In the multiple layers of plot—for which DR is reputed and which is understood as double-storytelling, discussed in Chap. 3—are multiple layers of impact. An entire community, even city, becomes entangled among the tendrils of the crime, but it is the

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vulnerabilities within the institutional systems, as well, that create weaknesses. In darker, more introspective dramas like Forbrydelsen, crime is a symptom as much as a cause of social unrest, and the series advocates for justice for victims of crime as much as for the whole of society by interrogating the actions of politicians and other powerful figures. The interconnectedness between individuals, the political environment and cultural ideology dates back to the earliest iterations of welfare state policy. Having accessible and (as far as possible) impartial communications technologies was a cornerstone of the Scandinavian welfare state’s commitment to egalitarianism and towards fostering a society of informed citizens (Syvertsen et  al. 17–18). In the early twentieth century the state invested in social support that would alleviate the burdens that work outside the home placed on families; the “healthy” family took precedence above all other social units (Ravn and Rosenbeck 12–13). The symbiotic relationship between communities of citizens and the political system was again underscored in the Danish Child Welfare Commission’s report from 1981, which promotes a holistic conception of society. It was the position of the commission that “politicians are under an obligation to try and alleviate the inequalities which [industrial and social] development has brought about. This obligation is of course even more obvious at a time of economic crisis, which will always hit the weakest and most vulnerable” (Danish Child Welfare Commission 7). Season three of Forbrydelsen expresses this sentiment most acutely: written during the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, it challenges the accountability of corporations and powerful businesspeople, not only in economic stability but in engendering trust and community between citizens (Agger, “Urban Topographies” 239). It is common for Scandinavian crime narratives to problematise the dichotomy between the victim and the perpetrator, rendering this relationship ethically complex. As Bruce Robbins notes, “in Scandinavian social democracy it is recognized, and even recognized by the victim, that the perpetrator is himself a fellow victim” (162). Although Bron/Broen— the Danish-Swedish co-production between, among other organisations, DR and the Swedish national broadcaster, SVT—most cogently engages with moral ambiguity and political accountability, Forbrydelsen, too, provokes active consideration of the ways in which prevailing systems of governance and workplace cultures might enable corruption and exploitation. The series suggests that crime is the end result of many deliberate and incidental choices spanning across social strata, and which is, thus, a

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collective responsibility of the welfare state and its citizens to prevent and resolve. When the welfare system is compromised by greed and individualism, and the remedying of crime is seen to be the task of a mere few dedicated individuals, this produces more familial alienation and despair. Sarah Lund is a case in point: her family life suffers on account of her seemingly interminable workload. The crime drama does not conclusively endorse the actions of the self-sacrificing mother-cop, though, as she is often implied to be individualistic, selfish or negligent, supporting my inference that female characters are routinely presented as compromised or problematic in Danish screen fiction. The catalyst for Forbrydelsen season one and the upheaval of Lund’s life is the killing of Nanna Birk Larsen, daughter of distraught parents Theis (Bjarne Henriksen) and Pernille (Ann Leonora Jørgensen), whose grief forms a major part of the plot. This first season utilised a format and aesthetic that was unprecedented in Danish television, stretching the case over 20 episodes. Its pensive tone became metonymic of Nordic television drama, and particularly the sub-genre of Nordic noir, while its extended length provides ample time for the intersecting plot-lines to be fleshed out in order to build a credible lifeworld. As Bondebjerg and Redvall write, “A crime series like The Killing doesn’t just fascinate viewers because of suspense, but also because it illustrates moral and social conflicts in a very strong way” (“Breaking Borders” 230). The steady pace and multilayered plot produced a much more cinematic and, ultimately, internationally appealing drama that mounted a broad-reaching critique of and cynicism towards Denmark’s major institutions of the government, the military, corporate conglomerates and the justice system (Bondebjerg and Redvall, “A Small Region” 102; Redvall, “Writing and Producing Television Drama” 177; cf. Mills 60–61). In season two, the murders are related to an unprovoked killing of an Afghani family by a rogue Danish lieutenant, and the daughter is the victim upon whom Lund focuses. For Lund, the murder of the local civilians by the Danish military in Afghanistan is not simply an avoidable result of the war but a crime, and she derides the Afghani police officer who dismissively tells her: “People around here die every day, in case you haven’t noticed”. Lund vehemently retorts with: “When people die it’s important. What the hell is wrong with you? […] Is that uniform just a joke?”—a statement that illustrates her unwavering commitment to protecting the vulnerable (episode 9, season 2 2009). This storyline not only implicates the Danish political and military spheres in corruption and deceit but

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highlights the moral ambiguity of foreign peacekeeping efforts, thereby mounting a much broader political critique than season one. In season three, the kidnapping of the influential businessman Robert Zeuthen’s (Anders W. Berthelsen) daughter Emilie (Kaya Fjeldsted) is part of a complex plot to raise awareness about the unsolved cold case of the murdered foster child Louise Hjelby (uncredited), who is suggested to have been killed by Zeuthen’s long-time executive assistant, Niels Reinhardt (Stig Hoffmeyer). These girls and young women are not the exclusive victims in each season’s grisly plot, but their unequivocal innocence and the injustice they suffer drives Lund, eventually prompting her to sacrifice her own freedom to stop a killer. It is significant that crimes involving children (or young women, in the case of Nanna) are the ones that Lund obsesses over, and which she feels that only she can resolve. In fact, her ruthless dedication to each case evokes the selflessness that is often associated with motherhood and femininity (Gilligan, “Women’s Conceptions of Self” 285). Forbrydelsen presents the obsessive, determined woman (and mother) as squaring up against the manipulative, father-figure characters who turn out to be the killers: “Uncle” Vagn, army lieutenant-turned-police detective Ulrik Strange (Michael Birkkjær), and respected senior businessman Niels Reinhardt. These perpetrators seem overcome by sadistic urges, killing not as a strategy for personal gain but, rather, asserting their authority and virility by punishing innocent victims, suggesting the welfare state has failed to protect those at risk. When Lund abruptly shoots Reinhardt at the end of season three, she does so because she doubts that he will be apprehended and charged by the police on account of lack of evidence and internal corruption. Lund’s actions point to a society where saving face is valued over duty of care—perhaps because care is so displaced that accountability is impossible to enforce—where a murderer and rapist might only be stopped by the actions of a person who feels as though they have nothing to lose. The representation of women throughout Forbrydelsen consistently frames integrity, sacrifice and morality as female characteristics, confounding the prevalent Western liberal association of womanhood with passivity and subservience (Pateman, “The Disorder of Women” 123). It is striking to note that in seasons two and three it is the female off-sider of the central politician who maintains her integrity when her male superior doesn’t. There is a scathing irony, for example, in the fact that Justice Minister Thomas Buch (Nicolas Bro) ultimately shelves his inquiry into the civilian deaths in Afghanistan in the final moments of series two, ignoring

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encouragement from his assistant Karina Munck Jørgensen (Charlotte Guldberg). He literally closes the door on the stunned Karina in a symbolic shot that places her, a single mother with her job now on the line, outside the room full of self-serving politicians in which Buch has chosen to remain (episode 10, season 2 2009). This moment is mirrored in season three when Prime Minister Kristian Kamper (Olaf Johannessen) leaves his executive assistant Karen Nebel (Trine Pallesen) waiting for him, confused and frustrated, in his office. Karen incites the prime minister to make public the photos that could link Reinhardt to the death of Hjelby, and possibly more foster children, but a shot of Kamper leaving parliament surrounded by colleagues and looking unconcerned indicates that he is not willing to sabotage his leadership by implicating his powerful corporate ally (episode 10, season 3 2012). Whether the integrity of these female characters is intended to reinforce the stereotype of women as empathetic or compassionate is questionable, but there is an intriguing continuity in the depiction of highly placed female characters as inclined to defend the vulnerable, despite the concomitant personal sacrifice this inevitably entails. The physical and figurative space of the home is pivotal to the spread of crime in Danish dramas, whether a broken home is positioned as the root of societal disruption or whether the family is collateral in a struggle between more powerful entities. This feminised space—the site of maternal caregiving, of belonging, and where one should feel safe to display their emotionality and vulnerability—is empty and deteriorating in Forbrydelsen. Across the three seasons, the family, a symbol of stability and regeneration, is indirectly rendered vulnerable through the displacement of parenthood by the institutionalisation of caregiving, which normalises parental absence. Forbrydelsen implicates over-worked and emotionally distant citizens as a symptom and cause of individualist greed, social alienation and political injustice, with Sarah Lund embodying the paradox of displaced maternal care; she fights the epidemic of children and other vulnerable groups falling victim to greed and corruption, but she does so to the detriment of her family relationships. Agger contends that, throughout the series, “attention is directed away from the home, out in society and political engagements, but it is obvious that this leaves a great emptiness, represented by the collapse and even lack of homes and the invalidation of the families” (“Emotion, Gender and Genre” 120). Each season depicts the breakdown of the family home in literal and symbolic ways: the Larsens risk losing their home due to financial

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difficulties, and it is this space that Vagn infiltrates and where he meets Nanna. The unfinished site of the family’s new house is also abandoned and is revealed to be the location of Nanna’s murder. In season two, the murdered Afghani family’s house is in ruin, and the bodies are found hidden inside the brick structure. The crimes underpinning the plot of season three are related to broken homes, where children are vulnerable on account of parental conflict or absence. In all three seasons, family relationships are threatened through murder, infidelity and abandonment, instilling tension and fear into the domestic space. Existing scholarship frames the welfare state as “the home of the nation”, and this symbolic domain, too, is undermined through acts of duplicity, greed and brutality in Forbrydelsen (Hansen and Waade 174; Stougaard-Nielsen, “Scandinavian Crime Fiction” 171). Andrew Nestingen writes that As the predictability and certainty on which the [welfare] system rested give way, confidence in the state also erodes […] an increase in an experience of self that is rootless and borderless occurs. Homes become fluid—not least the folkhem or kansankoti (“folk home,” the colloquial term for the welfare state). (33)

In Forbrydelsen, the welfare state backdrop is characterised by long working hours, empty homes and alienated citizens, which give rise to the despair and fear that proliferates when the vulnerable are exploited. A deterioration of confidence in the state and its institutions is captured not just in the storyline but in the dim interiors, shadowy exteriors, pensive long shots and taut, subtle soundtrack. The series utilises longer takes and handheld shots to create an uncomfortable sense of intimacy in the scenes inside homes, as if the viewer is witnessing something they shouldn’t. As the pensive observer, Lund embodies the rootlessness and borderlessness that Nestingen describes: her authority as an inspector enables her to move fluidly from restricted spaces in parliament and military bases to disused buildings, victims’ bedrooms and cordoned-off crime scenes. She is tirelessly and relentlessly an investigator, but peripherally to the main crime focus Forbrydelsen subtly asks if a woman, indeed a mother, can, or should, behave in such an emotionally dissonant way. That is, at what point does she stop being a strong detective and start being a neglectful mother? Women pursuing career ambitions or personal goals are, in several of my cases, seen to contribute to the invalidation of the home and

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subsequent social unrest, speaking to a double-bind whereby the state promotes women’s employment as a means of self-sufficiency and simultaneously passes moral judgement on working mothers for not emotionally supporting their families. As a senior detective, Lund’s duty of care is problematised in Forbrydelsen to the extent that she appears to feel a broad responsibility to society rather than to those closest to her, judging by her comprehensive and self-defeating efforts to administer justice. Though single working mothers are not unusual in Denmark, the gradual severing of Lund and her son Mark’s (Eske Forsting Hansen) bond implies that whatever welfare state support is available it cannot, and is not intended to, replace maternal affection. Lund’s relationship with teenage Mark grows increasingly tense, and he retorts to his mother on one occasion: “You don’t give a damn. You only like dead people” (episode 5, season 1 2007). In a rare glimpse into Lund’s backstory, her former boyfriend Mathias Borch (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is introduced as a special agent in season three, and, frustrated at Lund’s persistent emotional dispassion, he angrily declares: “You just shut everyone out. Me, us that time, your son… You won’t let anyone into your life”, which prompts her to storm out of the room, demonstrating her emotionally avoidant personality (episode 5, season 3 2012). As highlighted in Chap. 4, isolation is a by-product of feeling trapped and powerless, which are states that are further perpetuated by an inability to comprehend the emotion one is experiencing (often shame, an emotion that is less readily discussed) (Brown 46). Lund is presented as incapable of reflecting on her emotions: a characteristic for which she might be considered, by audiences and other characters, personally culpable. Highly effective and successful in her work, though, she values her contributions in the sphere of policing above her contributions to interpersonal relationships. In fact, the choice that Lund makes at the start of Forbrydelsen season one to stay in Denmark to work on a case instead of following her fiancé (Johan Gry) to Sweden might be better understood as a choice between individual desire and collective good. That is, a barrier preventing Lund from attaining the contented family life is the structural deficiency within the justice and political systems that hinders and prolongs her investigation. As each case progresses, it becomes clear that Lund cannot function independent of the institutions in which her work is rooted, yet those with whom she must cooperate have personal agendas and compromised ethics. Though dogmatic in her detective work, Lund rarely defends herself against censure or critique. Her absence in Mark’s upbringing is

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noted by her mother and again by Mathias Borch, but little is made of Mark’s father’s disinclination to step in; as with Anna, as well as Joe, Birgitte and Isa, Lund’s contributions as a parent are held to a higher standard than those of the child’s father. Akin to the Scandinavian crime stories cited earlier in this chapter, Forbrydelsen presents the secure family home as a nostalgic vision from a different time, highlighting the “failed and corrupted” nature of the contemporary welfare state (Stougaard-Nielsen, “Scandinavian Crime Fiction” 171). Lund’s favouring of work over her family is flagged in the first season, when her mother Vibeke (Anne Marie Helger) tersely enquires, “Did I really bring you up to be such a mother?” (episode 5, season 1 2007). This rhetorical question implies that Lund’s mothering abilities were learnt (or not) during her own upbringing but also that Vibeke is somewhat responsible for the behaviours of her adult daughter. Such social inheritance is discussed in greater depth in Chap. 6. By season three Mark (now an adult) has, unbeknownst to Lund, moved in with his pregnant girlfriend Eva (Neel Rønholt), who is aware of Mark’s fragmented upbringing but who enthusiastically insists on inviting Lund into their lives. Mark’s alienation from his own family very nearly causes him to abandon Eva and the baby, because he believes they will be better off without him. Mark disappears temporarily and Eva ends up staying with Lund; while they are chatting, Eva makes unintentional criticisms of Mark’s upbringing, for which she quickly apologises. When Lund asks if the baby was planned, Eva replies no, but declares that when he found out about the pregnancy, “Mark was so happy. He said that most of all he wanted a real family, because he’d never had one. He didn’t want to end up like you” (episode 4, season 3 2012). The sense of rejection that Mark experienced growing up is clearly internalised in seasons one and two and reproduced in season three, and the series privileges a view that parents are heavily accountable for the behaviour their children normalise. Eva’s comments also betray Mark’s idealisation of what a “real family” looks like, implying that a single working mother is in some way inadequate, similar to Jan’s comments about “a proper family” in Anna Pihl. In the penultimate episode, Lund finally confronts her son about the shortcomings of her parenting, telling him: “I know full well I’ve let you down. And if I could do it over again I would…” but to this Mark declares: “No! That’s exactly what you wouldn’t do. That never interested you” (episode 9, season 3 2012). While she concedes that her absence was difficult, Lund implores

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Mark to draw on the strength and independence that his childhood fostered in him; to resist his social inheritance; to consciously avoid reproducing the behaviours he learnt from his mother. Like Arvingerne in the next chapter, Forbrydelsen gives a voice to the emotionally neglected child, and this voice is largely unforgiving towards the mother who fails to effectively balance her interests with those of her child, in spite of the equivalent absence of the father. Without directly asking for it, Lund appeals for his forgiveness, displaying a self-awareness that does, however, eventually soften Mark’s hostile demeanour. To reduce Lund to an emotionally absent mother is to undercut her resolute investment in social security and her role in targeting corruption and injustice. The way that Forbrydelsen conceptualises the obsessive female police detective reflects less on Lund as “a clever police officer, but a bad mother” and more on a justice system that is undermined by deficiencies that force Lund to take a defiant approach (Povlsen 97). The remedying of injustice in Forbrydelsen is ultimately conflated with the gendered act of self-sacrifice: in the final episode Lund gives up her freedom to prevent further acts of abuse towards children occurring at the hands of the perpetrator. The possibility of contentment is made available to Lund in the finale, but she sees past her own life into her corrupted society. Like the other women analysed here, her decision must be understood within the cultural rhetoric that normalises working parenthood and that presents child welfare as an institutionalised project of the state. DR’s confronting, innovative serial Forbrydelsen depicts crime as a sad and unnecessary outcome of the failings of society, while TV2’s domestically popular but less politically probing series Anna Pihl presents crime as inevitable and manageable. Both series foreground talented female police officers, and the lives of these women mirror the respective series’ tones and aesthetics. The protagonists’ priorities see them essentially rewarded or punished, in that Anna attracts icons of success (a job promotion, a boyfriend) whereas Lund is incited into killing the suspected perpetrator in an act that will cost her the freedom to participate in civil society. Anna builds a family and is imagined as having a bright future beyond the finale; her sense of belonging is consolidated in the final episode of season three when she is rewarded with the promotion she wanted but also with the romantic partner she wanted. This trajectory, however, reinforces a rather heteronormative, patriarchal view of success, where Anna is defined in relation to her (male) partner and her (masculine) job, reflecting the more commercial agenda of TV2 to appease mainstream audience tastes. The reverse occurs in the finale of Forbrydelsen where Lund severs her

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connection to the state by flouting her position as a police officer and shooting Niels Reinhardt at point blank range. She is, thus, cut off from her family, and her future—and, by extension, the future of the welfare state system—is ambiguous. Anna Pihl isolates the work-life dilemma as a problem that Anna eventually overcomes, with the support of her family and community, but these resources are available to her because of her more active civic engagement—a fact that conflates belonging and citizenship with the ability to participate. Forbrydelsen indirectly suggests that Lund’s emotional ineptitude is acceptable only because she is professionally successful, further implying that women are unable to have an impact in their careers and maintain healthy personal relationships. Their contrasting approaches to motherhood are further mirrored in the representation of each woman’s home: Anna’s well-lit, occupied space of gathering and Lund’s dimly lit space of transience. The home as symbolic of the (feminised) welfare state is similarly examined in the following chapter’s case studies, Borgen and Arvingerne, and betrays an intriguing concern in Danish drama with the impact of absent mothers on the security of the family, the community and the welfare state. The broken, empty or threatened home is common to all of the cases, but the crime drama, in particular, makes blatant the crisis of the mother torn between her responsibilities to her child and to her society. The idea of these characters as absent mothers might, however, be reframed to reflect their presence as the major characters in the series. Both Anna and Lund dominate their stories as the unambiguous main characters, driving the plot and enticing viewers to continue watching, suggesting that, whatever critique they face within the series, they are ultimately compelling characters whose lives and dilemmas are intriguing and entertaining. These cases are less about working mothers striving for professional success (as is grappled with in the following chapter) and more about single mothers who find themselves conflicted between rectifying societal injustice and caring for their children, because the state has fallen short of providing adequate support in both cases. As the next chapter continues to explore, the lingering presence of the absent mother in Danish films and television speaks to a cultural concern with the accommodation of women, particularly mothers, in positions of leadership, authority and power, in lieu of their role in the domestic space. As Sarah Lund, as well as powerful matriarchs in the Borgen and Arvingerne demonstrate, the higher the woman’s professional status, the less present she is in the home—a pattern that implicitly discourages women from attaining influence and authority.

CHAPTER 6

Powerful Women and Forgotten Mothers in Danish Public Service Drama

In the first half of season one of the extremely well-received political family drama Borgen (Price 2010–present), it is difficult to gain a grasp of where the story is headed; each episode shifts focus several times, traversing various social, political and moral issues that contemporary Denmark faces. By episode five, though, the theme of the suitability of women, and, in particular, mothers, to positions of leadership and power is blatantly accented (season 1 2010). As the fictional Danish prime minister Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen) becomes accustomed to the persistently demanding nature of her role, she inevitably neglects many familial responsibilities—in particular, the emotional support of her children. In this episode, the political storyline uses the bill on gender equality on managerial boards across Denmark as a vehicle for delivering some concerning statistics about the state of affairs for women and the resistance they should expect to encounter as professionals in the Danish corporate sphere. The episode suggests there is no favourable outcome for women, because if they succeed society is progressive enough already and if they fail it proves that women are not cut-out for high-pressure roles or are compromised by their femininity. Although all of the cases in this book challenge the idea that women in Denmark experience complete freedom of choice and equality of opportunity, Borgen provides the most comprehensive denunciation of this suggestion, staging the debate in the influential spheres of parliament and the mass media. Deploying, though not necessarily advocating, a postfeminist © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Hallsworth, Danish Mothers On-Screen, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88579-3_6

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discourse, Borgen is discussed here in relation to postfeminism and neoliberalism, but the validity of these frames in the welfare state context is questioned. I draw from scholarship on the discourse around female politicians and female sexuality, as well as commentary on the series, to evaluate the ways that the female protagonists are positioned in relation to motherhood and professionalism. Woven into the examination of the crises and tensions affecting contemporary Danish society is Borgen’s exploration of the criticism that Birgitte as a woman, a wife and a mother faces when she becomes the prime minister. Rich with sociopolitical commentary and intriguing depictions of ambitious working mothers in contemporary Denmark, Borgen constitutes one of the two major cases of this chapter. The other case is DR’s next widely successful drama Arvingerne (The Legacy) (Ilsøe 2014–2017), a three-season narrative focusing on the conflicts that ensue when (fictive) renowned artist Veronika Grønnegaard (Kirsten Olesen) dies unexpectedly and leaves her vast estate to her estranged daughter Signe (Marie Bach Hansen), who grew up believing her father’s wife to be her own birth mother. This complicated family dynamic sets the stage for a drama where questions of birthright, belonging and the definition of “family” are debated. Both case studies are modern-­day family dramas where fractured relations and absent parents characterise the domestic landscape. Like Borgen, Arvingerne weaves the conflict of the physically and/or emotionally absent mother into the plot in each episode, complicating the boundary between public and private caregiving and depicting the sources of pressure upon women as arising from an internalised and expressed belief about what constitutes “good” parenting. As in the other texts analysed herein, these public service dramas suggest a cultural preoccupation with women whose manifestation of maternity is problematic on account of their inability or unwillingness to sacrifice certain facets of identity, such as sexual or career-related ambitions. This chapter analyses dramas that feature an emotionally strong and influential matriarch who continues the trend of dominant, compelling female characters established in Danish crime dramas from the previous chapter. The main agitator in Borgen is Birgitte’s election as prime minister, and the series proceeds to mark out how this impacts her family relationships. In Arvingerne, Veronika’s sudden death is the catalyst for the events that proceed. Rather than undertaking a comparative analysis of Birgitte and Veronika, though, the reading of Arvingerne pays special attention to Signe, as the first outsider in the Grønnegaard family, and

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then Isa (Josephine Park), the young mother of baby Melody (Naya Sejling Beck) who suffers from mental health issues. The introduction of Isa fuels the plot of season two of Arvingerne on account of her problematised care of Melody—the child she has with Veronika’s ageing former lover Thomas (Jesper Christensen) and whose existence incites the Grønnegaard family to reconsider their roles and responsibilities as carers. Isa is the only woman to give birth in the series and her baby has a considerable impact on the family dynamic, yet Isa is effectively silenced and erased both by the family and within the series when her performance of motherhood proves ambivalent and inadequate. Equally, the study of Borgen acknowledges the significance of Birgitte’s compelling character to the success of the show, but it also casts attention to the oft-overlooked reporter Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) who navigates her desire for a child alongside her compulsive work ethic. Scholarship thus far has negated Borgen’s commentary on sexism and the way that sexuality impacts women’s authority and agency, which is examined later in this chapter and connects Borgen to the previous cases. Building upon the analyses of motherhood in previous chapters, I argue here that the performance of motherhood by the characters in Borgen and Arvingerne determines the extent to which these women can participate in society and in their respective communities. In the reading of Borgen, I illustrate the depiction of the fictional television network TV1 as mediating shared cultural narratives and setting the political agenda, expanding on the discussion of cultural citizenship from earlier chapters. The study of Arvingerne goes into greater detail on the concept of belonging, drawing from Nira Yuval-Davis and Angharad E. Beckett, as well as from Rozsika Parker’s work on maternal ambivalence. In both texts, I argue, women’s citizenship is presented as bound up in culturally determined values and shared narratives that govern motherhood, sexuality and femininity. Critically analysing the depiction of motherhood in Borgen and then Arvingerne, this chapter unpacks these narratives of absent or inadequate mothers to understand how these media images interact both with Denmark’s cultural ideology and television drama production practices. Borgen and Arvingerne reflect an investment by DR in stories about how the modern family negotiates contemporary issues and perennial conflicts related to infidelity, moral responsibility and social pressure (cf. Hjort, “Themes of Nation” 105–106; Lamarque and Olsen 406, 425). DR has the obligation and capacity to speak to the whole nation as part of their public service mandate, and this requirement has manifested a kind

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of narrative and aesthetic style that might be characterised as Danish social realism (cf. Paterson 47 on “new realism”). In his theorisation on realism as “third film practice”, Birger Langkjær contends that “The social world in social realism is not only society at large, but also the micro-social world of close relationships” (“Realism as Third Film Practice” 49). How these close relationships are formed, undermined and severed is the subject of social realist fiction, which studies situations and people that are presented as both intensely unique and individual, and metonymic of the larger macrocosm: they are both relatable and politicised. Credibility is a trait for which series such as Borgen and Arvingerne are lauded and is a huge part of their appeal; audiences express appreciation for how innovative, original character and narrative devices are mapped onto recognisable social settings (Bondebjerg, “Dogma 95” 70; Bondebjerg and Redvall, “Breaking Borders” 230; Hochscherf and Philipsen 150; Paterson 46–47; cf. Shriver-­ Rice, “Adapting National Identity” 11). Despite their obvious aesthetic and thematic departure from Nordic noir, neither series could shake this label, and Tobias Hochscherf even contends that they form a new category called “family noir”: The way family matters are coalesced with a more general theme is one of the main characteristics of what can be labelled family noir. In Borgen it was the look on politics and how it affects politicians’ lives, in Arvingerne the various psychological problems of one artist’s family was used to speak more generally about the legacy of the 1968 generation and generational conflicts. (170)

It is difficult for scholars and critics alike to resist conflating television drama content from Denmark, or even the whole of the Nordic region, under a new nomenclature. The Nordic nations, too, subscribe to this cultural branding for the sake of their global reputations (Kythor 210). While it may fit into various regional and aesthetic categories, Arvingerne is best appreciated with some contextual understanding of the impact of the 1968 social movement in Denmark. The upheaval of the late 1960s was broad-reaching, affecting gender roles and family dynamics through to the education system, and the establishment of cultural institutions, and the influence of this historical and political context, through which the artist-mother Veronika Grønnegaard lived, is crucial to Arvingerne’s plot. As in previous chapters, the dramas analysed here are stories about families that are Danish by origin, heritage and culture—white, “ethnic”

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Danes not problematised by race, religious difference or socioeconomic disadvantage (cf. Hjort, “Small Nation, Global Cinema” 237–238). These groups represent a limited cross-section of upper-middle-class Denmark, from the political elite in Copenhagen to the artistic communities and conservative families in the countryside of Fyn (Helles and Lai 403). In Arvingerne, the main plot-line is explicitly about wealth: gaining it, losing it and using it ethically. Yet it is not a series that delves into class struggles but, rather, uses the metaphor of the legacy to address the tension between individualism and communitarianism. By contrast, economic concerns do not play a role in the familial conflicts in Borgen at all; there are very few instances where poverty or disadvantage are depicted, some of which do not even occur in Denmark but in its colony of Greenland (episode 4, season 1 2010). On account of their relatively comfortable and secure social status, I attribute the mother characters’ behavioural shifts and feelings of shame to the internalised perception of their maternal failings, informed by normative ideas of family and Danish cultural identity. Identity, according to Nira Yuval-Davis, can be understood as “narratives, stories people tell themselves and others about who they are (and who they are not)” (“Belonging and the Politics of Belonging” 202). Implicit in Yuval-Davis’ assertion is the assumption that identity is shaped and determined by the self, on (to some degree) a conscious level, reified through linguistic enunciation. The “narrativisation” of experience, as Carole Pateman writes in The Sexual Contract, “is the major way that human beings have endeavoured to make sense of themselves and their social world” (1; cf Bondebjerg et  al. 28; Bondebjerg and Redvall, “Introduction” 11). Identity and the concept of the self are in constant flux, spilling across various spheres of existence: mediated and moderated through institutions and interactions. Fictional narratives, particularly drama serials that encourage sustained consumption in a world defined by verisimilitude, shape memory, fantasy and everyday existence into a kind of logic that is, at its best, remarkable and challenging while still familiar and comforting. If individual identity emerges as a personal narrative, as Yuval-Davis contends, public service media can be understood as constituting and reifying the narrative of the nation, of a dominant national identity. In the context of the European Union, concepts of nationhood have been superseded by the regional narrative of unification and cooperation; citizens belong to an abstract European community as much as they belong to a given nationality. As I explore elsewhere, Danish fiction

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interacts with the EU narrative of “unity in diversity” and, while there is a marked trend towards greater transnational collaboration in production and on-screen, the better performing Danish series are those that have maintained the linguistic, geographical and cultural specificities of the Danish context (Hallsworth 123–125). Katrine Vogelsang identifies the haunting miniseries Efterforskningen (The Investigation) based on the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall as a text that, despite travelling across borders extremely well, is quintessentially Danish: “It is a story about our legal system, and the fundamental right that you are innocent until proven guilty. It tells the story of how difficult it is for the police force to prove someone guilty. It is very much a story about our society”, she remarks (Personal correspondence. 12 May 2021). The act of creating and engaging with both fiction and non-fiction narratives is a particularly effective way of cultivating shared cultural identities. This process is not only depicted in Borgen but is one that Borgen and Arvingerne, as state-supported dramas created for primetime broadcast television, enable for their audiences. More than any other case study, Borgen explores cultural citizenship through the plot-line that centres around the fictional network TV1, a network loosely based on DR. This enables the series to self-reflexively comment on the relationship between the media, politics and Danish society, demonstrating how each sphere filters into and informs the others. As the mediator between the politicians and the general public, TV1 constitutes a powerful space in which Danish cultural values and discourses are generated. By interspersing the personal dilemmas of Birgitte Nyborg, as well as political reporter Katrine Fønsmark, into Borgen’s plot, the accountability of these women as public spokespeople, romantic partners and mothers is complicated; like Anna and Lund from the previous chapter, their duty of care spans the private/ domestic and public/professional spheres. While Borgen stages the contestation of cultural belonging and participation from the perspective of political agents and media gatekeepers, Arvingerne problematises familial and legal entitlement, focusing on a family in rural Denmark. The theme of who has the right to participate in the narrative of the Grønnegaard family is foundational to season one, where Signe is overjoyed to discover she has siblings but angered by her adoptive mother, Lise (Anette Katzmann), for refusing to tell Signe about her estranged family. What it means to be a mother—biologically, symbolically, ethically—is debated in this Danish production and several others, from the films Skytten (The Shooter) (Olesen 2013) and En Chance Til

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to the dramas Bron/Broen and Dicte. What Arvingerne slowly unveils is a family divided by upbringing, values and lifestyle but united by a fierce loyalty to each other that eventually (in season three) turns the Grønnegaarden estate, an extended metaphor for the welfare state, into an abundant and generative environment where care and responsibility is shared. Before the siblings can reconcile their differences, though, they must confront “the legacy” that accompanied their mother’s death: as Hansen and Waade have noted, the legacy refers not just to the Grønnegaarden estate but to the social inheritance of being raised in the 1970s by a volatile, self-interested artist (166). The reproduction of adults’ behaviour by children is raised in earlier case studies of Nymphomaniac and Forbrydelsen and is prevalent in the discourse on child welfare in Denmark, as mentioned in previous chapters (Esping-Andersen, “A Child-Centred Social Investment Strategy” 27; Højlund 113–114; Lister, “A Nordic Nirvana?” 247; cf. Danish Child Welfare Commission 16; Krøijer and Sjørslev 95). This theme occupies an especially central position in Arvingerne, as Hochscherf and Philipsen discuss: the family drama offers a critique of recent trends in society by showing a selfishly narcissistic, decadent world […] More than any of the previous DR dramas, [Arvingerne] paints a very bleak picture of how a normal modern family rather than sick serial killers can turn life into hell, leaving everyone uprooted and lonely. (177)

Borgen and Arvingerne, and then Herrens Veje (Ride Upon the Storm) (Price 2017–2018) and Liberty (Leth 2018), appeared to mark a shift away from the crime trend that characterised Denmark’s drama output (from an international perspective, at least) for a decade. In my 2018 interview with TV2’s Vogelsang, she highlighted the fiction department’s emphasis on characters over themes and a likely trend towards series that are in conversation with the topics of, for example, sharing resources, the value of material assets and prioritising health over wealth (Personal correspondence. 21 June 2018). Although many of Denmark’s major series from the last decade are still based around crime and mystery (for example, Norskov, Mord Uden Grænser, Greyzone, Gidseltagningen, DNA, The Lawyer, Hvide Sande, Darkness—Those Who Kill, The Sommerdahl Murders, The Investigation), Vogelsang reinforced this agenda in a recent interview with Nordisk Film

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and TV Fond (Pham, “‘Our Vision’”) and in my follow-up interview with her. I asked whether she believes there is, or can be, a united collective, global community and what values would underpin this. “I do believe there is a global and collective tendency”, Vogelsang responded; despite significant differences across societies and cultures, she suggests that “We all have an emotional spectrum in common”, pointing to the seemingly universal experiences of loving one’s children and fearing death or illness (Personal correspondence. 12 May 2021). She is quick to reinforce, though, that “the Danish audience is and will always be our main focus [at TV2]”. Adam Price’s original conceptualisation of Borgen was considered too niche in its political focus to warrant funding from DR, and he was required to revise it to ensure the content fulfilled the network’s public service function. When Price resubmitted the project with the theme “can you hold on to the power and still hold on to yourself?” and the central politician framed as a mother, “DR saw the potential of a show that was not merely ‘pointing fingers at politicians or at political parties’, but dealing with ‘the state of our democracy and of its importance’ (Gabold in Redvall 2010)” (Redvall, “‘Dogmas’ for television drama” 231). Borgen is not just the story of a female leader, but rather, her story is the vehicle through which the negotiation of Danish politics and legislation can be seen to affect the lives of both politicians and citizens. The everyday impact of public policy is relatively high in a welfare state society like Denmark, where citizens invest their trust and labour in the government in return for social security and the right to participate in civil society. While all of the cases challenge this reciprocal relationship, the content of Borgen explicitly highlights how political decisions filter into the attitudes and behaviour of citizens. The series effectively moves politics out of being exclusively located at parliament and shifts it into the home, demystifying the procedures surrounding government decision-making and reinforcing the impact that political debate, and the subsequent media response, has on individuals and families. The broader issue occupying Price’s narrative is the defective family. Beneath the study of the Danish political system is the question: to whom is the leader of the country ultimately accountable? The citizens, whose lives she shapes as the prime minister, or her family, whose lives she shapes as a mother and wife? The constant tension between doing everything that is required of her and being above reproach is presented as a lose-lose scenario for Birgitte, as the new prime minister and a mother, because she

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cannot prioritise the needs of her own family and the “family” that is the Danish nation equally, all of the time: as she laments early in season two after her marriage to Phillip (Michael Birkkjær) has crumbled, “I’m at war at the office. I’m at war at home” (episode 1, season 2 2011). The scrutiny directed at Birgitte as a female politician within the show is a considered choice by its creators and speaks to Danish society’s concerns about the ability for women to integrate leadership duties into their assumed position as primary care provider in the home. Price contends that Borgen was “‘very much a feminist project and very much dealt with a strong central female character’”, and this ambition is evident in the foregrounding of inspiring and agentive women like Birgitte and Katrine (in Hochscherf 172). Yet, as I mark out in this analysis, the series isn’t wholly effective in its feminist agenda. Borgen gained significant local traction when Helle Thorning-Schmidt was elected as Denmark’s first female prime minister in 2011, as the series seemed to have predicted the actual election outcome. Following Thorning-Schmidt’s victory, she attracted some attention over her appearance, particularly her taste in expensive clothes (“Profile: Danish PM-elect Helle Thorning-Schmidt”). According to the BBC’s profile of Thorning-­ Schmidt, “Analysts say little has been made of Mrs [sic] Thorning-­ Schmidt’s gender during the election campaign and she is not expected to use her post to make any significant changes to the country’s already well-­ advanced equality laws” (“Profile: Danish PM-elect Helle Thorning-­ Schmidt”). This tendency to simultaneously highlight and dismiss the significance of the female politicians’ gender is mirrored in Borgen, where any attempt to discuss gender inequalities is rebuffed by other politicians and by the conservative media as no longer relevant. This paradoxical response is often discussed in relation to postfeminism: a postfeminist attitude declares that harmful gender stereotypes are a thing of the past. Writing from the Australian context, Henderson and Taylor contend that “the public performance of gender is especially complicated for political women (Johnson 2015; Trimble 2017), and has become even more so in the context of postfeminist presumptions of gender’s (and feminism’s) irrelevancy” (188). This paradox is manifest in Borgen, and, though it is not appropriate to label Denmark a postfeminist society for reasons outlined in previous chapters, it’s true that there is an absence of overt feminism in the social landscape depicted in the series. A parallel can be made between the visibility of characters such as Birgitte and Katrine in the world of Borgen, which seems to negate action

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to improve gender parity, and the acclaim of Danish film director Susanne Bier, whose success on the international stage similarly points to (apparently) fertile conditions for ambitious women in Denmark. In a 2018 edited volume on Bier, Mette Hjort notes that her “success had served to create the impression that policy-style interventions are unnecessary” (“Gender Equity” 139; cf. Redvall and Sørensen237). Bier, who has previously stated that she has not felt constrained by her gender (Hjort and Bondebjerg 247), has worked abroad as much as in Denmark, directing English-language films such as Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) and Birdbox (2018). She is similar to Lone Scherfig in this respect: both are well-regarded female directors who began their careers in Denmark before making films overseas. I raised this with the Danish Film Institute’s Kirsten Barslund, suggesting that female directors need to work abroad to find success. Barslund countered by stating that it’s not a gendered trend and that success does not only mean international acclaim (Personal correspondence. 6 June 2019). Borgen illustrates Danish society’s slow transition from a “traditional social interventionist to a neoliberal welfare state ideology” which promotes the agency of the individual, often to the detriment of a sense of community (Vitus 115). This neoliberal welfare state ideology is, in the series, seen to produce a kind of postfeminist discourse that suggests that any existing gender inequality can be addressed through mobilisation and activation of women as individuals rather than through systemic change (Rasmussen 73). Gender inequality is depicted both through episode plot-­ lines and through the way that TV1 and other news outlets are seen to mediate political news throughout the series: they routinely suggest that disadvantage is an individual problem rather than a systemic one, to be countered by hard work and compromise (cf. Rasmussen 73). The series makes blatant Denmark’s resistance towards quotas and similar affirmative action in episode five, season one, when male reporter Ulrik (Thomas Levin) queries whether “women [still] need a bill to get ahead”, in light of the country electing a female prime minister (Dahlerup 146; Redvall and Sørensen 239–240; Siim, “Gender and Citizenship” 131). The existence of gender stereotyping is made plain in episode five, season three, where TV1’s new head of programming (Christian Tafdrup) declares that “Women like all the domestic, intimate stuff, right? Put all that on the 6:00 [news] and keep the heavyweight foreign stuff for the men [at 8:30]”.

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As Adam Price has remarked, even in contemporary Denmark women are more likely to be relegated to domestic, family-related responsibilities: Price recalls a conversation with [Helle] Thorning-Schmidt before she became prime minister. She was fuming about a political rival who said he would devote himself 100 percent to the job and sacrifice his family life. Men who say that are praised as dedicated, she complained; by contrast, a woman who said the same would be castigated as a bad wife and mother. “Even in a progressive society like Denmark,” Price says, “we still have this little gene of natural conservatism, believing that women should always be closer to the family.” (Scally)

Many elements of Borgen, which was conceived several years before Thorning-Schmidt’s victory, do mirror the state of affairs in Danish politics, including the steady leadership of a centre-right bloc led by a male (Lars Hesselboe in Borgen, Lars Løkke Rasmussen in reality) and the fact that both Birgitte Nyborg and Helle Thorning-Schmidt diplomatically called elections to consolidate their public support but lost to a right-wing coalition. Despite the parallels between reality and fiction, Borgen is not simply a precise reflection of Danish politics but, rather, is a cultural product shaped by the Danish television industry and informed by the personal experiences and expectations of the practitioners involved in its creation. This analysis examines Borgen as an example of a public service drama that contributes to the vital conversation about the gendered nature of citizenship and civic participation. Season one of Borgen introduces the audience, and the fictional Danish public within the show, to the optimistic and refreshingly honest Birgitte Nyborg, the leader of the political party the Moderates—a party loosely based on the existing Danish Social Democratic Party, which, since the 1970s, has featured strong female representation (Dahlerup 158). Birgitte unexpectedly rises to power when the Liberal prime minister Lars Hesselboe (Søren Spanning) is embroiled in a scandal involving his government credit card, signposting that the values of transparency and integrity are regarded highly by the Danish public within the lifeworld and, presumably, in the audience. When Labour Party leader Michael Laugesen (Peter Mygind), who publicly shames Hesselboe in the telecast of the final debate, is ousted from his party, Birgitte becomes the natural choice to lead a centre-left minority government.

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After the tumultuous formation of her cabinet and the initial challenges the prime minister elect faces, the series subtly shifts the focus to Birgitte’s private life. The sacrifices she makes in order to build a stable government impacts Birgitte’s seemingly happy family, comprising her husband Phillip and her children Laura (Freja Reimann) and Magnus (Emil Poulsen). Tension is mounting between Birgitte and Phillip, though, captured in the discussion they have about their agreement to prioritise each other’s careers every five years: Birgitte’s five years are up, but her election into power means Phillip’s career will have to be put on hold for longer than he would like. Initially proud of his wife, Phillip soon begins to make throwaway comments about his scepticism and even dislike towards “the prime minister”, as he calls her, suggesting that this facet of Birgitte’s identity is undesirable because of the changes it has brought to their family dynamic. Eventually, Birgitte sacrifices this romantic relationship, as do Anna Pihl and Sarah Lund (albeit in varying ways) from the previous chapter; like these women, Birgitte’s duty of care is complicated by her choice of career, which leaves her family feeling rejected and invalidated on account of the time she must spend resolving work-related issues. Birgitte’s initial inability to discern the impact of her physical and emotional absence is a major factor in her and Phillip’s increasingly disharmonious relationship: she doesn’t see that even when she is present, her attention is divided. Amidst this period of marital difficulty, Birgitte is under constant scrutiny because of her apparently weak leadership: if she shows compassion, she is being too feminine; if she is too firm, she is defying her party line or overcompensating to assert her authority. Again, Henderson and Taylor’s commentary on the modern female politician is relevant to Borgen; the authors draw attention to the limited discursive frames being mobilised to report on women in power, suggesting—not simply that political institutions need to be further transformed—but that the language for publicly making sense of such powerful women also needs to be fundamentally overhauled. (213)

Birgitte’s gender is paramount to her political reputation: she represents a maternal figure, an image that both strengthens citizens’ trust in her and leaves her vulnerable to ridicule for being compromised by emotions and intuition. She is also relentlessly accountable to her family as the mother, the glue that holds the family together. Birgitte’s continual, and arguably very necessary, prioritisation of political meetings and trips

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abroad to maintain political control and mitigate attacks on her leadership results in Phillip beginning a relationship with another woman, called Cecilie (Mille Dinesen), in season two—an injustice for which he accounts by highlighting Birgitte’s divided attention. It’s no mistake that Cecilie is a paediatrician, an authority on child welfare who provides a type of professionalised caregiving. It is when Phillip moves out and Birgitte is left living alone with the children in the family home that the impact of her absence becomes noticeable. Magnus, who is aged roughly nine years, repeatedly wets his pants because of the positive reinforcement provided by Birgitte, who comforts him when he does; this is Magnus’ way of getting his mother’s attention. Laura becomes more withdrawn and irritable, but Birgitte writes this off to her age (she is roughly thirteen). Birgitte’s failure to notice her daughter’s increasing sensitivity and resistance to social interaction contrasts with Cecilie’s medically informed view that Laura is suffering from anxiety, which paints Birgitte as an inattentive mother, and even one who appears to cause her daughter’s illness. Although it does make sense for the children to remain based in the family home rather than relocate to their father’s apartment, this arrangement necessitates that Birgitte also remain the primary caregiver, even though Phillip’s career is relatively less demanding. Despite her hard work and ambition, Birgitte’s personal life—and, increasingly, political life—suffers because her husband is dissatisfied with being the stay-at-­ home parent, a role that is routinely gendered as feminine and which the mother is expected to assume. Though Birgitte is not shamed specifically for the breakdown of her marriage, she is routinely targeted by the media in ways that make blatant her status as a woman and a mother. She endures critique from all directions, but it isn’t until her career is implicated in her daughter’s ill health that Birgitte steps back from her post and adjusts her participation in the political sphere, as if the mother’s physical presence in the home is directly proportionate to the wellbeing of her children. Because of her outward-­ facing role, it is Birgitte who is publicly chastised for Laura’s anxiety, in contrast to Phillip who is not mentioned in the press even though he is the parent who committed infidelity and left his family. This is more than likely because the media cannot make moral demands of an ordinary citizen as they do with the prime minister and also because the role of fatherhood doesn’t imply the same level of nurturance and responsibility as motherhood. Writing in 1970s France, Élisabeth Badinter asserted that “we are less shocked by the male’s behavior because no one has ever, even

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up to the present day, claimed that a father’s love constitutes a universal law of nature” (114; cf. Feasey “Mothers on Mothers” 164). Even in the contemporary Danish context, scholars have contended that certain life and parenting trajectories are privileged, while “moral outrage” is directed at others (Lahad and Madsen 185). Laura’s illness occupies an increasingly central part of the plot throughout season two and culminates in a major anxiety attack and hospitalisation, which forces Birgitte to re-evaluate the impact of her job on her children’s wellbeing. In a very poignant moment towards the end of this season, Birgitte, Phillip and Magnus wait outside Laura’s hospital room, and a television in the hallway is reporting on Birgitte’s recent victory in facilitating peace between the conflicting (fictional) nations of North and South Kharun. Political commentator Torben Friis (Søren Malling) comments that “for once, we can be proud of our PM here in little Denmark” but this is a bittersweet achievement for Birgitte when it occurs alongside her daughter’s relapse (episode 8, season 2 2011). Birgitte begins to cry, acutely aware of the contrast between the backhanded praise of her professional role and the apparent failure as a mother; this moment makes blatant the intersection between the public perception of Birgitte as an inadequate leader and her internalised feeling of being an inadequate parent. The dilemma between appearing professional and authoritative in her work and devoted and responsive to her family is, of course, not specific to the character of Birgitte Nyborg or the Danish sociopolitical context but is a widely acknowledged gendered double standard that is commonly examined in fiction and in scholarship alike. For example, Grebelsky-­ Lichtman and Bdolach note the dual expectation for female politicians in Western democracies to appear both competent (considered a masculine trait) and likeable (an apparently feminine trait) (277), while Brown et al. propose a similar dichotomy of warmth and competence in the US system, with warmth traditionally considered feminine (106). Superficially, Borgen challenges the idea that “Women are constructed as either mothers or workers, but not both” by foregrounding mothers that are highly successful, visible and influential in their jobs (Dilloway and Paré 438). Closer scrutiny of both Birgitte and Katrine, though, highlights the internalised and external pressure to be devoted mothers and the impact this has on their wellbeing. Katrine Fønsmark’s status as a mother is easy to lose sight of in the first two seasons of Borgen. She has an abortion in episode three, season one, an event which highlights her relative social and sexual emancipation, but

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this is soon overshadowed by other storylines. The neglect of this fleeting plot point arguably functions to normalise and legitimise abortion as a realistic and manageable choice for women, but it also indicates the incompatibility between her career goals and starting a family. Though Katrine plans to follow through with the pregnancy, despite the father being a married politician who unexpectedly dies in the first episode, she soon decides otherwise, given that she is promoted to lead anchor on TV1. Throughout Borgen seasons one and two, Katrine is coded as a “career woman”: she prioritises work and keeping fit and has little interest in anything domestic, admitting at one point that she doesn’t even know how to use the fancy coffee machine that sits on her kitchen bench taking up space (episode 2, season 2 2011). Katrine’s reluctance to separate her work life from her personal life indicates how her identity is completely bound up in her profession—a lifestyle enabled by the fact she has no children (yet) and no steady romantic partner to whom she feels accountable. In season one, Katrine is in her late 20s, focusing on her successful media career and entertaining the idea of mending the impassioned but broken relationship with her ex-boyfriend Kasper Juul (Pilou Asbæk), who is also Birgitte’s shrewd media advisor. Determined to uncover and report on controversial, hard-hitting or risky stories, even at the expense of her job, Katrine forms a bond with her senior colleague Hanne Holm (Benedikte Hansen), a top political reporter with an alcohol problem. Although Hanne initially blames Katrine when she is demoted (which is actually due to her drinking), both women share a fierce desire to confront difficult topics in the interest of raising public awareness and eventually become friends and allies. Additionally, Hanne has an estranged daughter in her 20s and Katrine does not see eye to eye with her own mother, so at times the women’s friendship bears some resemblance to a mother-­ daughter relationship, a subtle parallel to the displacement of biological parenthood in Arvingerne. Hanne regrets focusing on her career when her daughter was young, and it is suggested that this shame and regret has led to her problem with alcohol. Though she is a respected political journalism, Hanne’s apparent choice to choose her job over her family must be understood in relation to Western gender roles and cultural expectations of success and professionalism. As Siri Sørensen cogently remarks, “choices and priorities in work– life balance are often included as parts of the explanation for gender gaps in management or other high-commitment careers (Halrynjo, 2015; Halrynjo and Lyng, 2009)” (298), suggesting that women “opt-out” of

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high pressure roles to achieve some sense of balance or, more realistically, to allow time to fulfil the many unpaid and unrecognised obligations associated with femininity. These three central female characters–Birgitte, Katrine and Hanne– present subtly similar models of parenting: all are seen to prioritise their careers when their children are young, and all separate from their child(ren)’s father. Hanne’s suppressed sadness over her flailing relationship with her adult daughter is an outcome that Birgitte and Katrine both realise they want to avoid but, like Hanne, they find themselves subjected to latent pressure to prove their dedication to their careers despite the cost to their personal relationships. When Katrine is re-hired by TV1 at the end of season two, after a hiatus at the commercial outlet Ekspres, it is on the provision that she won’t get pregnant and take time off work (episode 10, season 2 2011). Despite her promise to her boss, Katrine’s dream of having a child is fulfilled at beginning of the third season: after her and Kasper’s long-awaited reunion, they welcome baby Gustav (Ricard Lawrence), and then split up again, rather inevitably. Katrine’s optimistic idealisation of motherhood clearly misaligns with the reality of it, though, and she relies upon her own mother, Kasper and public childcare to supplement the limited caregiving she is able to provide as a dedicated “career woman”. As in the other case studies in previous chapters, the symbolic value of the home and the absence of the mother is a feature of Borgen, where living spaces are extended metaphors for the characters’ interior states. When the audience first meets Katrine, she has a tiny two-room flat which is almost always messy and has no private space to retreat into: guests see straight in her bedroom, which doubles as her workspace. This arrangement signifies the lack of distinction between work life and private life for Katrine and foreshadows her conflicted relationship towards motherhood through her lack of interest in creating a homely atmosphere. The same can be said of Kasper, who is almost never seen in a domestic environment, let alone his own home, which might be read as a sign that he struggles immensely with personal relationships. Kasper’s childhood house, which he has to revisit when his father dies, awakens distressing memories of abuse, which could account for him being more comfortable in the workplace. Their shared discord with domestic environments is palpable in the scenes in which Kasper and Katrine are viewing an enormous apartment situated, as the real estate agent points out, in the embassy district: she is

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presumably referring to Østerbro, an affluent region in north Copenhagen populated by young middle-class families (episode 10, season 2 2011). The argument that erupts during the viewing foreshadows the fact that Kasper and Katrine will not create a stable and content family together. Even when Katrine upgrades to a pricey apartment in season three, the season in which she becomes Birgitte’s media advisor, her home is often dark and messy, with children’s toys strewn across the floor; the impression is one of a lack of transparency, as if the dimly lit, disordered interior of Katrine’s flat mirrors her own ambivalent feelings about her personal integrity and ability to hold her family together. In contrast, Birgitte, coded as warm and maternal, occupies a modest family home in seasons one and two: the kitchen and open-plan lounge are sites of conversation and conflict resolution. Birgitte and Phillip’s bedroom is almost part of this common living space given that their doors curiously open out into it, which foreshadows their diminishing intimacy. When Birgitte is struggling most with the divorce, this conflict is symbolically mirrored in the clogging up of the kitchen sink, which she has no time to resolve. In season three this homely house is forsaken for the now-­ divorced Birgitte’s modern apartment, which, with its warm lighting and welcoming breakfast bar, encourages guests and dwellers to informally gather around and share a meal. If Katrine’s messy and chaotic personal space betrays the difficulty she will have separating her hectic work life from the domestic space her child occupies, Birgitte’s comfortable home depicts the contentment her family experiences in season three and foreshadows her successful re-entry into politics, which she undertakes with her (now slightly older) children’s support. A stable home is, thus, conflated not only with accomplishment and satisfaction but with the wellbeing and security of the family. As signposted in the introduction to this chapter, season one of Borgen is, at times, blatant in its depiction of gendered prejudice. Midway through season one, the audience is introduced to the attractive new minister for economic affairs, Henriette Klitgaard (derogatorily nicknamed “the clit” by male journalists), played by Stine Stengade, who is headhunted by Birgitte. Klitgaard’s impressive education and experience, along with her respect in the corporate sphere, makes her the ideal candidate to help promote the government’s contentious proposal for gender equity quotas on boards throughout the nation. Klitgaard’s apparently promiscuous past, however, makes her a target for personal attacks which aim to undermine her credibility by suggesting she has “slept her way to the top” (a remark

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also levelled at Katrine throughout season two). The hypocrisy of this treatment is made blatant when Michael Laugesen, now editor-in-chief of the tabloid publication Ekspres, is interviewed on TV1 and boasts of his own sexual encounters while simultaneously shaming Klitgaard for hers. Both her colleagues in parliament and the media express concern that Klitgaard’s sexual attractiveness will eclipse her professionalism and leadership and, even more banally, she presents a distraction to the men in her workplace and, by extension, their wives and families (Haavio-­ Mannila 199). Birgitte appears undeterred by Klitgaard’s reputation until it is revealed that her own husband has had sex with her many years ago; this fact prompts Birgitte to revise her opinion. Instead of being Birgitte’s ally, Klitgaard becomes a liability because of the male attention she receives and her apparent complicity in soliciting this attention. Karen Klitgaard Povlsen’s reflections on Anna Pihl are relevant to this episode of Borgen: “the suggestion [is] that identification with other women leads to incorrect conclusions” (96). A parallel scenario unfolds in Nymphomaniac, when Joe presents a threat to the cohesion of her workplace because of her multitude of sexual partners. “They say you can’t be trusted. All of them”, announces Joe’s boss (Sarah Soetaert) referring to Joe’s colleagues. For both Joe and Henriette Klitgaard, their identities as sexualised women are seen as inextricable from their capacity to carry out their work. They also alienate other women around them on account of their seemingly uncontrollable sexuality; as Joe’s boss indicates, trustworthiness and integrity are undermined by promiscuity. Klitgaard is also a mother, but concern for her children during the media scandal is not enough to prompt resignation from her ministership (although this is the official line when she is forced to resign). She is characterised as manipulative and disruptive to the script that prescribes femininity as passive and maternal. Ultimately, it isn’t the scandal surrounding her personal life that results in her dismissal as minister, but, rather, the inaccuracy of her CV. As Klitgaard argues in her defence, “I only did what hordes of incompetent men have always done. I embellished the facts”, to which Birgitte replies, “Yes, but I don’t need an incompetent man. I need a competent woman” (episode 5, season 1 2010). The reality is that Klitgaard’s fraudulent CV, which misrepresents her education but not her professional experience, would not have been revealed without the unscrupulous press surrounding her sexual history.

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Klitgaard embodies the sexualised female that Catherine Hakim envisions when she promotes the merit of exploiting one’s “erotic capital”. Hakim contentiously asserts that “Women generally have more erotic capital than men because they work harder at it” (499). She subscribes to the rhetoric that “Anglo Saxon feminism” is ill-equipped to reconcile women’s desire to be sexually attractive with their right to not be objectified (Hakim 511; cf. Kangas and Rostgaard 240–241). In this episode of Borgen, it is clear that Klitgaard’s sexuality does, in fact, undermine her professionalism and competence; her attractiveness is an impediment, and she is reduced to a sex object in the media and by some of her colleagues. As Natasha Walter explains, “it is seen as unproblematic that women should be relentlessly encouraged to prioritise their sexual attractiveness. The assumption is that this is a free choice by women who are in all other ways equal to men” (119). This assumption ignores gender stereotyping, unconscious bias and the widespread inequality that still exists throughout a lot of the world (cf. S.O.  Sørensen 297). The plot-line surrounding Klitgaard encapsulates the tendency for female leaders to be objectified in a way that “undercut[s] women’s agency by reducing their power to mere sex appeal and rewarding their attractiveness with heterosexual male approval rather than respect” (Sheeler and Anderson 138). She embodies the paradox central to the sexualisation of women: privately, she is admired for successfully cultivating a desirable appearance, but publicly, she is shamed by a media system that justifies itself by declaring that the public has “the right to know”. Stengade reflected on her character in my interview with her, stating that she wasn’t entirely satisfied with how Klitgaard was written: I thought it was a bit of a cliché to be honest. But a cliché is only a cliché because it is a bit true. So, in that way it was relevant. But the bit at the end, when she had actually been faking her CV, it was a bit of a shame […] I thought—and I’m sorry Adam Price—it was very much written by a man. That’s what I thought, when I did that part. (Personal correspondence. 22 October 2018)

In fact, the Klitgaard story echoes the true case of Anna Castberg, former director of Danish modern art museum Arken, who was revealed to have fabricated qualifications on her CV (“Gallery Investigates Artistry of Director’s Qualifications”), which Klitgaard is also revealed to have done. As an article in the UK Independent notes, “One tabloid said she [Anna

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Castberg] was so ‘beautiful, charming and intelligent’ that the male-­ dominated hiring committee might not have been looking at her curriculum vitae” (“Gallery Investigates Artistry of Director’s Qualifications”). The shots of Klitgaard early in this episode of Borgen certainly reflect a male gaze: the viewer sees her bare, tattooed ankle and a medium close-up of her running her hand through her hair in a meeting. Although these images capture how Kasper is seeing Klitgaard, it is also how the audience is positioned to view her. As the action in this episode perpetuates, ideal femininity remains synonymous with the nurturing, “warm” traits associated with motherhood, while vivacious female sexuality upsets the status quo and must be contained. The conflict between the sexualisation of women and simultaneous denial of their sexual autonomy features again in episode five of season three, which focuses on the debate surrounding the criminalisation of sex work in Denmark. This episode also showcases the problematic notion of women sacrificing their sexual identity in lieu of their maternal identity. By this point in the narrative, Birgitte has re-entered politics, inaugurating her own centre party called the New Democrats. The trafficking of young foreign women in a house in Vesterbro, a suburb formerly known as Copenhagen’s red light district, sparks the call to implement a more conservative approach towards the sex industry by criminalising the purchasing of sexual services—a campaign headed by Pernille Madsen (Petrine Agger) of the Labour Party. Madsen’s refusal to acknowledge perspectives in favour of legal sex work betrays her personal opinion on the topic: that sex work is not a legitimate profession, despite the fact that sex workers pay tax that entitles them to equivalent access to state benefits. The character of Helene (Laura Bro), from Sex Workers Denmark and a sex worker herself, champions the idea of an autonomous female sexuality that can exist outside the confines of heterosexual monogamy, arguing that a ban simply “expresses a moral view held by certain members of society” (episode 5, season 3 2013). In response to Birgitte’s party’s refusal to sign the bill without adequate facts, Madsen arranges a hearing for the media with a panel comprising apparent experts including Helene, who is completely derided and shamed. She is told that a well-functioning woman does not sell her body, that she cannot enjoy her work, that she must be deluded. Swedish expert: it’s precisely the same as when adults have sex with children and claim that the child was party to it.

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Helene: You are equating women with children. Women are as capable of genuine consent as men. (Episode 5, season 3 2013) The panel discussion illustrates the deeply concerning tendency for women to be likened to children—underdeveloped and lacking in judgement. Carol Gilligan’s work on women’s difference and development in In a Different Voice targets such gendered discrimination: “as long as the categories by which development is assessed are derived from research on men, divergence from the masculine standard can only be seen as a failure of development. As a result, the thinking of women is often classified with that of children” (69–70). Rather than working to break down a power divide between women and the men who oppress them, the actions of the politicians and the media in this episode reflect the assumption that women are not equipped to be sexually autonomous. In fact, this debate occurred in reality as well as on-screen in Denmark, as Jeanette Bjønness discusses: “By reducing the women in prostitution to victims, the media and the social system in the last instance can be said to rob them their status as ‘citizens’” (192; cf. Larsson, “The Death of Porn?” 567). The plot of this episode is critical of the highly interventionist approach of the Danish government in legislating without any understanding of the lived experiences of those marginalised groups it purports to protect, including tax-paying women whose labour is not recognised as valid. It challenges the widespread conflation of female sexual autonomy with emotional or mental deficiency, dismantling the assumption that a woman who engages in sexual activity outside of a relationship is necessarily being exploited. Helene manages to convince the sceptical Katrine, who is researching the issue on Birgitte’s behalf, that sex work is not, by definition, degrading or abusive but is a trade. Helene’s reflections on sex indirectly prompt Katrine to raise the topic with Kasper to discover if their lack of intimacy after the birth of Gustav was the cause of their relationship split. During an amicable chat about the interesting research Katrine has been doing for the New Democrats, Katrine surprisingly interjects with the question, “did we split up because of no sex?” Kasper doesn’t respond, and she continues: Katrine: It did take me a long time to get back into action. I should have made it a priority.

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Kasper: You didn’t turn me on anymore. The sexual side died for me when we became a family […] I couldn’t figure out how to reconcile your being… a mother and a lover. (Episode 5, season 3 2013) Although initially shocked, Katrine is reassured by Kasper’s revealing intimation that she is not deficient, unattractive or blameworthy: quite simply, she can be Kasper’s lover or the mother of his child but not both. Katrine’s ready acceptance of Kasper’s reduction of her to a mother and the apparent incompatibility between sexuality and maternity is not expanded upon in the series but marks an intriguing point of similarity between Borgen and Nymphomaniac (cf. Schepelern, “Forget about love”). Despite undercutting the morally judgemental view of sex work in Denmark, the episode suggests that the social climate is not entirely emancipatory: the positioning of Katrine as the jilted lover on account of her maternalism reinforces rather than challenges the antiquated beliefs around ideal femininity. There is not the scope here to further dissect the semantics of the composite phrase “sex work” and how it traverses the seemingly incompatible fields of sex and work. As such, this analysis of Borgen concludes with the assertion that its representation of female sexuality and motherhood is multifaceted and generative but imagines successful women as those with high-profile jobs, children and romantic partners. The series problematises women whose manifestation of motherhood or femininity depart from the conservative ideal, implicating the institutions of the government and the media in (re)shaping the cultural terrain in which moral and cultural demands are made. After the unexpected appeal of Borgen, the next Danish family drama to amass a wide following was Arvingerne. Similar to the other dramas discussed in this research, Arvingerne accentuates the conflicted, unstable home environment and the repercussions of the mother’s absence, this time examining the consequences of the problematic mother’s death. The three-season drama centres around the maladjusted Grønnegaard siblings and their tense relationship to their recently deceased mother, who dies suddenly of a stroke brought about by the cancer that none of the children knew she had. The grown-up children consist of Gro (the eldest sister and daughter of the maverick Thomas; played by Trine Dyrholm), Frederik (the middle brother, whose father committed suicide when he was young; played by Carsten Bjørnlund) and Emil (the youngest brother, who shares a father with Frederik; played by Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), as well as Signe,

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the baby sister who grew up with her father, John (Jens Jørn Spottag), instead of at Grønnegaarden, believing John’s wife Lise to be her birth mother. Set on the island of Fyn between Sjælland and Jylland, this situated in-betweenness in Arvingerne is significant: there is an unfinished quality to Grønnegaarden that is symbolic of the transitional stages in which all the characters find themselves. Full of eclectic rooms, old junk, half-finished art pieces and forgotten renovations, the Grønnegaarden manor is emblematic of Veronika and her family’s stubbornness; they will change their environment before they change themselves, as becomes clear in the scene where Veronika has a hole cut into the ceiling to accommodate the tall Christmas tree she has chosen (episode 1, season 1 2014). As Redvall and Sabroe write in their article on production design in Arvingerne: “[Production Designer Mia] Stensgaard suggested that as a visual design concept for The Legacy [Arvingerne], Veronika’s works would never be truly finished. They would all be works in progress” (307). The fact that Gro, with the eventual complicity of her siblings, finishes some of Veronika’s pieces according to old sketches indicates her envy of and admiration for her mother and highlights the way that all the siblings adopt and adapt elements of their mother’s narrative. Joke Hermes writes: “To be human is to be subjected to continuous training and reforming; to be invited to find both individuality and a social sense of self, to be a never-accomplished project” (5). Arvingerne’s cast of complex and often frustrating characters, with their shifting allegiances and impulsive behaviours, embody Hermes’ description of human existence; they are symptomatic of the tensions between generations, between growth and stasis, and between the individual and society. The fight over who will inherit the grand estate speaks to the unfinished business among the Grønnegaard family, and of the children of the 1968 generation as a whole. Once again, the notion of the maternal sacrifice is present: in Veronika’s case, she resists sacrificing her sexual and artistic freedom, instead embodying the attitudes of resistance and emancipation that defined the 1960s and 1970s (similar to Joe in Nymphomaniac and the women of Scandinavian blue cinema). The series implies that Veronika’s parenting style involved leaving her children to entertain themselves while she engaged in creating her art and having affairs with various men, including the children’s respective fathers. Like Sarah Lund, Veronika proceeds in her career with the assumption that her children will be cared for by other family members, but the fact that this care does not come from their

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mother leaves the children feeling neglected and confused, as these now-­ adults verbalise throughout Arvingerne. Despite her indubitable demeanour, Veronika feels unrelenting, internalised guilt over her abandonment of Signe and, on her deathbed, wills the estate to her, thereby denying the other children their share of her wealth. Season one of Arvingerne explores the conflict that emerges from the bequest and Signe’s enthusiasm towards her newfound siblings, which blinds her to their resentment over her seemingly undeserved inheritance. Her siblings do not recognise Signe as family because she did not endure the emotional turbulence and maternal ambivalence that Gro, Frederik and Emil did. Following Veronika’s death, Gro steps in to occupy the position as the matriarch. Middle-aged Gro is childless and unmarried, focusing her energy on her successful career in the visual art world and entertaining an affair with the married Robert (Trond Espen Seim), the manager of Veronika’s work. It becomes clear, though, that Gro is harbouring memories of the fraught power dynamic between herself and her mother: in the first episode, Veronika maliciously refers to Gro as “her little secretary”, insinuating that Gro has nothing better to do with her life than live vicariously through her mother (episode 1, season 1 2014). To this, Gro, on the verge of tears, reminds Veronika of the fact that Frederik won’t speak to her, Signe doesn’t know her and Emil only calls from Thailand when he wants money; her children have never been Veronika’s first priority, and as a result, they have little respect for her. Despite their fractured childhoods, different biological fathers and varying lifestyles, the elder siblings exhibit a fierce allegiance to each other when Signe enters the picture, as if they have to protect what little sense of stable family life and belonging they share. Part of the discord stems from the perception of Signe as an outsider. The elder siblings’ chaotic upbringing is one from which Signe was largely exempt, given that Lise prevented her from visiting her birth mother once she learned that her husband and Veronika were becoming intimately involved again. Although Signe very suddenly becomes a Grønnegaard, she does not immediately find belonging in this community; rather, belonging is something that has to be cultivated, according to the unspoken rules of the community. When the siblings try to settle the case over the inheritance out of court, Signe optimistically questions whether their bond will remain intact. It is Frederik who denies Signe this opportunity, declaring: “We’ve known each other only a few months. No, I don’t think you’re part of my family” (episode 5, season 1 2014).

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Frederik and Signe clearly possess differing ideas of what defines family and belonging, and they maintain a distant relationship throughout the series. Unintimidated by Frederik’s attempt to undermine her, though, Signe fights for and wins the house that she was bequeathed but continues to let the family spend time on the estate, eventually mending the damage done by the resentful court proceedings. Signe also reaffirms her broken relationship with her adoptive mother, Lise, realising that this is the woman who raised her and who chose to be her mother. What this first season illustrates is how family is determined by birth but reified by the conscious choice to participate. Signe is successful at uniting her siblings because of her ability to negotiate her degree of participation and rewrite the rules for belonging. An unprecedented shift occurs in both central families in Borgen and Arvingerne which alters the way that each family is conceived: Birgitte’s identity becomes embedded in her role as prime minister, and Signe is declared the sole heir of the Grønnegaard estate. The introduction of Isa, however, brings a crucial dimension to Arvingerne, as she is a stranger to the family and lends a more distanced perspective to the behaviour in the insular environment of Grønnegaarden. Season two of Arvingerne further articulates the grounds for belonging by staging the exclusion of Isa on account of her inadequate performance of motherhood, to which the Grønnegaards are clearly sensitive. After the birth of Melody, Isa, who is suggested to be somewhat emotionally unstable when she appears late in season one, suffers from debilitating depression and doubts her ability to raise her daughter. She is a woman, similar to Kira and Joe, for whom motherhood proves impossible to manage and who internalises her sense of failure, blaming herself for her shortcomings. Isa and Veronika have little in common, though they share an ambivalent approach to motherhood that manifests in very different ways: Isa is overcome with shame and retreats, while the fiery Veronika maintains her wilful attitudes shaped by the “activism and protest culture of the 1960s and 1970s” (Warring 356). Redvall and Sabroe note that “[Head Writer Maya] Ilsøe was interested in the world of art and in the way that artists of the 1960s had led chaotic family lives while following their passions and in some cases finding international acclaim” (305). Like Joe, Veronika is unwilling to surrender her livelihood and her desires, behaviour with which motherhood became associated around the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As Badinter writes, “Requiring that women devote themselves to tasks neglected for [the past] two centuries would

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necessitate nothing less than the subordination of their self-interest to their children’s” (131). In an entirely different way, Isa presents a similar problem: unable to relinquish her own emotional and psychological needs in favour of Melody’s, and unable to find a sense of belonging in the Grønnegaard family, Isa eventually abandons her child and renounces motherhood. Further analysis of Arvingerne below interrogates the ways that the family—as a space represented by Grønnegaarden and a concept defined by inheritance—is constructed in the series and how belonging is modulated according to ideas about who has the right to participate. When the struggling Isa retreats at the end of Arvingerne season two, it is on account of the shame she harbours for being unable to fulfil her role of mother adequately—a feeling to which the Grønnegaard siblings’ projection of “good” parenting, informed by their conflicted relationship with their own mother, contributes. Isa’s sense of belonging and self-­ worth erodes during her time at Grønnegaarden, which is legally owned by Signe but where Thomas still resides and where Gro spends most of her time, and she is undermined by the judgements made about her ability to care for her baby. The series implies that the “minimum common ground”, as Yuval-Davis terms it, for familial belonging is heredity, yet acceptance within the given community is still conditional upon certain qualities and contributions that I will examine below (“Belonging and the Politics of Belonging” 207). Consciously or not, the Grønnegaard family subscribes to values and ideas that leave Signe and then Isa feeling excluded and ashamed. Adriana Dancus writes that shame is intensified when the Other has “a deep desire to fit in”; the stronger the interest, the more acute the shame when access to the community is denied (39; cf. Probyn 27). Signe is presented as being better able to combat the antagonism she faces, perhaps on account of the caring parents she grew up with and to whom she can, if necessary, defer. Conversely, Isa admits at Melody’s name-giving ceremony that her own mother is dead and her father doesn’t understand her lifestyle; she optimistically announces to Signe’s parents that “we’ll be like family now. I mean now that Signe will be [Melody’s] godmother” (episode 1, season 2 2015). These moments illustrate that Isa, like the crime drama’s cynical detective, is rootless and transient, searching in vain for a family in which to belong. Unlike the stoic Sarah Lund, though, Isa has an explicit need to find a sense of belonging within the family as she does not have a career to occupy her or any other outlet in which to find success and satisfaction.

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Despite its discordant and fractured nature, belonging to the Grønnegaard family is presented as desirable to the extent that participation in a given community is an indication of success in comprehending the unspoken rules and having the agency to enact them. Isa embodies the difficulty of participating in a space where she feels inadequate, not least because she is confronted with the idea of manifesting unconditional love for her child under the critical gaze of the Grønnegaards. In addition to this pressure is Isa’s pre-existing mental illness, which aligns her not only with Joe and Kira but with Birgitte Nyborg’s teenage daughter Laura, who is the victim of nasty media attention in season two of Borgen. These women’s emotional and psychological states prove problematic to those around them who are unsure of how to respond to their emotional dysregulation, resulting in the women becoming more anxious and withdrawn. Rozsika Parker’s comments on maternal ambivalence are especially applicable to these mother characters: “Society’s wariness of maternal ambivalence […] provides a context which inflates maternal guilt, rendering ambivalence at times unmanageable” (21). Their pathologised difference as sufferers of mental illness is compounded by the accompanying difficulties these women have in performing motherhood; thus, they are marginalised as not only socially disruptive but emotionally deficient. Rather than being treated with empathy or concern, the Grønnegaards, particularly Gro, conflate Isa’s maternal shortcomings with an unwillingness to function productively and responsibly. For Isa, the difficulties associated with motherhood produce feelings of shame, which push her to retreat and eventually abandon her child—similar to Joe, Kira and, to an extent, Sarah Lund. When Isa first absconds, Signe contacts Isa’s father (Bo Carlsson) in an attempt to locate her, but Gro insists that Isa’s emotional dissonance means she is ill-equipped to look after Melody: Gro:

What do you want with her? She neither can nor wants to take care of her child. Signe: But she’s still the child’s mother. Gro: Yes! So, where the hell is she? (Episode 2, season 2 2015) Isa’s physical absence and emotional disturbance lead Gro, and later Signe, to believe she is unfit to be a mother. But more than this, the framing of her as unskilled and lacking the inherent ability to perform motherhood suggests she does not deserve the chance to raise her daughter and that a better alternative is to leave Melody in the care of Gro, Emil and

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Signe who band together as a family on account of their shared ancestry and history. Arvingerne’s narrative suggests that the absence of a dutiful mother has directly resulted in disillusioned children who carried their inner turmoil well into adulthood; they project their ideas onto the fragile Isa, who then reproduces the maternal absence that the Grønnegaards malign. Like Kira who finds herself out of place in most situations, and Joe who isolates herself according to her self-professed deviance, Isa’s suffering eclipses her ability to contribute to the satisfaction of her community. As Angharad Beckett discusses, stigmatised conditions including (but not limited to) severe mental illness are often assumed to involve the renouncement of one’s citizenship rights on the premise that one is unfit to participate: a vicious cycle emerges in that where there is stigma, there is also an assumption of “incompetence” with regard to citizenship. The implications of this assumption of incompetence then prevent those experiencing this stigmatized identity from achieving those goals associated with being a “good citizen”, thus perpetuating their images as “failures” within society. (165)

Beckett’s comments flag another paradox of femininity: that competence is, as highlighted earlier in reference to female politicians, antithetical to feminine, maternal warmth. In addition, incompetence is grounds for social or political exclusion. In her work on citizenship and disability, Beckett examines theories of citizenship and the ways in which they exclude or ignore the needs of persons with disabilities. She identifies a through-line in the liberalist tradition between the earlier works of economist Alfred Marshall through to the ideas of philosopher John Rawls and sociologist T.H.  Marshall: “T.H. Marshall was greatly influenced by the writings of Alfred Marshall, the economist, who provided a very similar definition of citizenship to that of Rawls, in the respect that he regarded citizenship to be a status that expressed the ability, or the competence, to be a member of society” (Beckett 37; emphasis added). This liberal framework promotes the agency of the individual—in an almost neoliberal ideology—but fails to account for those who, like Isa, possess a strong desire for belonging but do not appear to have the necessary abilities. She is unable to fulfil the expressed requirements of citizenship through either motherhood or employment, and the shame of inadequacy—based on internalised standards and external criticism—results in a breakdown of the mother-child relationship.

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Interestingly, the female siblings that initially step in to assist with Melody neither have nor particularly want children of their own, but care and maternalism still become central to their characterisation. Gro asserts herself as the best-equipped to look after Melody, although only when it suits her schedule, and makes dismissive statements about Isa’s maternal abilities. Isa internalises Gro’s scepticism and ostentatious displays of devotion to Melody and regularly makes comments about how Melody would be better off without her birth mother. Even Signe becomes frustrated with the apparent incompetence that prevents Isa from performing basic tasks such as preparing Melody’s food: Signe: Take her and let me do it. Isa: This is typical of me. Signe: Stop it. Take your daughter and feed her. She’s very hungry. Sit down and feed her. [Signe takes over preparing the food while Isa hovers, looking worried] Signe: Isa! Isa: I think that she doesn’t like me. Signe: She likes you. She’s just hungry. Sit down. (Episode 6, season 2 2015) In a striking inversion of the question of inherent maternal love, Isa vocalises a fear of her own child’s lack of love for its mother, somewhat similar to Joe identifying that, when she gave birth, her impression was that the child was laughing at her—a response that prompts feelings of humiliation or shame. Isa’s maternal paranoia speaks to her immense anxiety over performing motherhood correctly, not because she identifies strongly with her maternal identity but because this aspect of her self is what connects her to the Grønnegaard family. Invalidation of her maternal identity is akin to being shunned from the family. In the final conflict between Isa and the family, she is stopped by Emil and Signe as she tries to leave the estate with Melody. Signe encourages her to stay, prompting Isa to ask: “Don’t you believe in me either?” Signe, at first reluctant, declares: “No, I don’t think you can take care of Melody on your own. No, I don’t think so. You squash her when you’re changing her. You drink and drive. She senses all of it. You’re not well” (episode 7, season 2 2015). When she realises that even Signe has no faith in her, Isa disappears. Thomas, similar to Veronika,

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is too distracted with his own creative projects to pay serious attention to Isa’s concerns, yet, despite his immaturity, the siblings advocate for him, suggesting that a father’s emotional disconnection is more excusable than a mother’s. Thomas is largely absent from these decisive discussions between Isa and the family, and he eventually passes away from poor health. Emil takes over the primary care of Melody in season three, but it is crucial to note that he chooses to do this rather than having this duty thrust upon him as a biologically determined necessity; he also has few competing opportunities following the sobering experience of being incarcerated for marijuana possession in season two. The adoption of Isa and Thomas’ child into the Grønnegaard family illustrates the ethics and practicality of displacing parenthood from being a mother’s responsibility to being a communal activity, but it also demonstrates the family’s readiness to exert influence on account of shared ancestry. Arvingerne continually complicates the idea of maternal affection necessarily overlapping with biological motherhood given that many of the characters seek nurturance from people other than their biological mothers. The opinions of the characters vacillate between rigidly suggesting a birth mother is the most appropriate person to raise a child and advocating for the dynamic that most suits the individuals involved. Even Isa’s father Henrik presents conflicting ideas about how Melody should be raised and is determined to keep his granddaughter away from the chaotic Grønnegaarden, while Gro defiantly ensures Thomas is present in the upbringing. Henrik initially tells Thomas: “Isa will never be able to look after her child”, to which Thomas flippantly replies: “That’s a very strange thing to say” (episode 2, season 2 2015). Later in this episode, Henrik returns to the property with Isa and tries to take Melody from Signe’s care; Signe tries to intervene but Henrik dismisses her, saying, “you aren’t Melody’s mother. You don’t have any rights. Isa should be with her child”. This rhetoric of who has the right to look after the child continues throughout this season, mirroring the fight for the estate from season one, and is imbued with a moral undertone that also presupposes obligation— as if the mother has the right to custody ahead of any other family member but only if she takes responsibility, and possesses the ability, to look after her child. When Henrik and Isa return in episode five to discuss shared custody, Henrik tells Gro: “[Melody’s] sleep pattern was disturbed at first and she wasn’t eating properly. It was obvious she’d experienced too much commotion and chaos […] But she had her mother. The most important

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person for a baby” (episode 5, season 2 2015). To this, Gro says, “It depends on the mother”—a scathing remark that could refer to her relationship with her own mother. What Gro’s statement also expresses, though, is the belief that a third party can determine whether or not the mother is capable and has the subsequent right to intervene. The Grønnegaard family is symbolic of the welfare state paradox that situates child welfare as a shared, collective responsibility but for which the mother will be held accountable (cf. Rasmussen 75). Similar to how Birgitte Nyborg is blamed for neglecting her children despite her husband’s equivalent responsibility, Isa is subjected to the alienating rhetoric that she both should want to and should be able to look after her child, and her lack of ability results in her being inexplicably written out of the Grønnegaard family narrative both by the siblings and the series writers; after handing the baby to Signe, she is not seen or heard from again. Like Joe, Kira and Sarah Lund, the troubled and ambivalent mother Isa is not presented as having a clear, hopeful future and exits the narrative harbouring the unresolved conflict arising from her emotional difficulties. Both Borgen and Arvingerne critically examine the topics of family disintegration, shared parenting, the gendered division of labour and the individual’s struggle for influence and autonomy, concluding by hinting at regeneration and progression. These public service dramas engage in the process of cultural citizenship by exploring the concept of belonging within the series and symbolically uniting a cross-cultural audience within Denmark and abroad. Both series implicate the emotionally or physically absent mother in the conflict that ensues, whether her absence is justified on account of career success (Birgitte, Katrine), problematised on account of competing sexual desires (Veronika) or pathologised due to mental illness (Isa). Unlike the disintegrative narrative style of Forbrydelsen, Borgen and Arvingerne present the possibility of reconciling the past and actively shaping the future but only for characters like Birgitte that manage to perform their social (maternal, professional, sexual) functions adequately; for characters like Isa, who struggle to contribute as either mothers or workers, the narrative is not only unfinished but abandoned. By scrutinising the modern Danish family and the space it occupies, Borgen and Arvingerne expose the types of political and cultural messages that inform the characters’ and, indeed, the audiences’ attitudes, particularly in relation to “good parenting”, or, more accurately, “good mothering”. The internalisation of shared narratives is central to how the female characters in the cases perceive themselves: Birgitte and Katrine are both

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invested in the story of being high-achieving professional women, and demands are made of them according to this identity, but for each woman a shift occurs as she learns to integrate the narrative of the working mother into her identity. Birgitte retreats from her powerful role when she can no longer lead the country and provide high-level emotional support to her children; like Anna Pihl, she chooses her family and is eventually rewarded for this by earning back her political career. Season three of Borgen concludes with Katrine also pursuing a new romantic relationship, as if compensated for adhering to the heteronormative script that stipulates women should have a career and a child. The same occurs for Signe, whose relationship, which seemed to be on the rocks, is renewed by the discovery of her pregnancy. In stark contrast to these women, Veronika Grønnegaard is an enigmatic figure who seems to have created a world for herself to exist in, outside of the confines and practicalities of mainstream society, using abstract art as a form of self-expression. Her script is set against the backdrop of the 1968 cultural revolution which lives on in her attitudes and approach to parenting. In the first two seasons, it appears that Veronika’s rebellious attitudes are a source of discord that must be laid to rest along with her body, but in season three, the creative, prolific, liberal ideas for which she was also regarded are reignited in unexpected ways, and the estate becomes a thriving space for experimentation, cooperation and innovation. It is telling, then, that, in this space where misfits and contrasting personalities can find solace, Isa is still excluded. Rather than negotiating rights and responsibilities in government offices or the open forum of news media as in Borgen, Arvingerne stages the familial conflict almost exclusively in the home—a site where belonging can be conferred or denied. For Isa, belonging and participation are denied to her, and the story she tells herself is one of her own failure and inadequacy as a mother and, by extension, as a person.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion: Manifesting “Good People” Through Fiction

State-funded film and television drama production and consumption is a process of creating and re-creating spaces where citizens and other viewers can shape and project beliefs about themselves and their communities. In Denmark, the film and television industries are subject to state regulation and are explicitly required to harness public issues, articulating them as matters with which individual citizens and their shared communities should identify. This cultural landscape is dominated by public service content, which has the express agenda to incite debates around belonging, transgression and citizenship rights. This active process of “making” cultural citizens through collective engagement is an ongoing, dynamic process through which (ideally all) members of society become active and interactive and one that is enabled by a pluralistic, democratic media system (Hermes 3; Syvertsen et al. 12). As a social democratic welfare state, the ability for all citizens to participate in Danish civil society and partake in political decision-making is foundational to the nation’s cultural values. By examining the relationship between the Danish social policies and political conditions, and the narratives of cultural belonging and shared identity as they manifest in screen media, we can better understand the critical role of fiction in reifying or undermining the values that underpin the welfare state. As cultural artefacts, fictional media texts not only stage narratives about belonging and participation but foster social engagement through their depiction of politically topical conflicts and complex, relatable characters. It is undeniable that social conditions impact the types of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Hallsworth, Danish Mothers On-Screen, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88579-3_7

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narratives and characters that appear on-screen, and that these constructions play a powerful role in generating a sense of belonging and proximity amongst and between audience groups. Yet, the more closely I analysed the representations of women across the cases, the more I noticed how crucial their internalised sense of belonging is to their success in the depicted community and how their sense of belonging gives way to or hinders participation. Each case featured herein exhibits a distinct set of themes and conflicts embedded in an aesthetic style that speaks to a major Danish screen movement: Dogme 95, Scandinavian blue, the crime drama/police procedural and the political family drama. Despite their variations, each case poses similar questions: who is responsible for the breakdown of a family, can maternal ambivalence be reconciled, and how do desire and obligation coexist? Beyond my six examples are countless Danish films and television dramas that explore similar dilemmas and could potentially have featured in this study. Had I elected to write only on film, this research might have included Kød & Blod (Wildland) (Nordahl 2020), Dronningen, Den Skyldige, En Chance Til, Kvinden der Drømt om en Mand (The Woman Who Dreamed of a Man) (Fly 2010), Applaus (Applause) (Zandvliet 2009), Over Gaden Under Vandet (Above the Street, Below the Water) (Sieling 2009), Forbrydelser and Et Rigtigt Menneske, all of which feature ambivalent or problematic mother or mother-figure characters. Equally, a study of television dramas could have featured some combination of Riget, Greyzone and Bedrag, where children are threatened by greed and crime. What unites the chosen cases, however, is their construction of mother characters whose maternal care is explicitly called into question and who are framed as more or less successful according to their ability to manifest maternal devotion and femininity. Unlike some of the examples mentioned above, though, these women have not, at least for the majority of the plots, actually committed any crime: none of them physically harm their children, as in Den Skyldige, En Chance Til and Forbrydelser, or have an ongoing affair, as do the mothers in Kvinden der Drømt om en Mand, Over Gaden Under Vandet and Dronningen.1 The embodiment of guilt and shame by female characters demonstrably results in social retreat and 1  Nymphomaniac could be considered an exception, but I do not treat it as one here because of Joe’s partner’s knowledge and encouragement of her non-monogamous approach to their relationship. Additionally, although Joe does commit illegal acts later in the film, her internalised sense of failure and immorality seems to emerge long before these acts commence.

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isolation in En Kærlighedshistorie, Nymphomaniac, Forbrydelsen and Arvingerne; in Anna Pihl and Borgen, the central women vocalise their concern with being “bad” mothers and struggle to reconcile their professional success with their familial obligations. Mapping the vocabulary of these characters onto the existing political discourse of motherhood and child welfare in Denmark is a generative project, not because it claims to reveal the authenticity of the representations but because it reveals the very existence of a maternal discourse in Danish cultural productions and one that misaligns with the social policy that shapes contemporary Danish society. The discourse around parenting and child welfare in Danish society is shaped directly by existing parental and child welfare policies and indirectly through media imagery and narratives that stimulate public and internal debate. The case studies are clear examples of where creative practitioners have used the forum of public service broadcasting and state-­ supported cinema to realise and/or challenge shared cultural preconceptions about what it means to make a meaningful contribution to society, based around the welfare state rhetoric of collective responsibility. The notable outlier is Nymphomaniac, which is set against an ambiguous backdrop that bears little resemblance to Denmark. Joe’s continual declaration that she is a “bad human being” on account of her deviance, however, speaks to an internalisation of the ethics and civil obedience upon which the Danish welfare state is founded: the proliferation of (sexual) freedom to the point of excess accompanied by self-moderation invokes a cultural landscape of relative political autonomy tempered by the ideological critique of individualism (cf. Nestingen 53). To be sure, the dilemma between personal desire and the symbiotic citizen-state relationship in Nymphomaniac and the other cases underscores countless screen narratives across nations and industries, but what is distinctive about the rendering of this existential conflict in the Danish context is the culpability attributed to and absorbed by parents and the way in which parenthood frequently features as a central facet of identity. As the ungendered notion of a “good person” that appears throughout the cases inadvertently suggests, the exploration of familial dynamics in Danish fiction is, in fact, not limited to mothers: problematic, ambivalent and sacrificial father figures also feature prominently in film and television. However, a study of fatherhood in Danish film and television would not, I, be framed through the concepts of citizenship and shame but perhaps through power and individualism.

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This research has not endeavoured to evaluate the influence of male screenwriters’, directors’ and producers’ gender on the representation of scenarios and characters; not only is it a largely impossible task, it would ignore all of the other variables that contribute to an individual’s subjectivity, such as socioeconomic status, upbringing, racial background and belief system. That is, to suggest that a male practitioner inevitably produces stories that speak only to men, or are somehow intrinsically masculine, is needlessly reductive. It is, however, striking that the majority of the more prolific screenwriters and directors are male, and that, according to the 2016 Danish Film Institute (DFI) Study into Sex Ratios2 in the film industry, men are more likely to seek and receive funding for their projects (Møller et al. 6–11). Additionally, as flagged in Chap. 1, the majority of the cases were created by men. Sex and gender, and the intersection of these categories with other human characteristics, have a considerable impact on one’s opportunities and experiences in the world; to speak of what it means to be a genderless, sexless human being is to undervalue the salience of gender-based expectations and cultural norms. Even in the egalitarian Danish context, the experiences of men, women and non-­ binary people cannot be conflated: motherhood is an acutely female state and one which influences the possibilities for and discourse around women. The DFI continues to publish data from its research into diversity in the film industry, creating transparency around the distribution of selected demographics across professions. Aside from the responsibility to counteract bias and prejudice, the institute’s ongoing attention to diversity and equality opens up a conversation about the practices and conditions that might be impacting women’s careers and opportunities. While this book does not directly engage with this off-screen dilemma, the resources dedicated to the DFI’s research into the screen industries speak to key concerns in my research: namely, the recognition of narrative media’s role in constructing a space for self and collective expression as well as the historical underrepresentation of the female voice. A limitation of the DFI’s gender diversity report is the reductive notion of gender, which subscribes to a man/woman binary—a binary that, indeed, I have not challenged to any significant degree in this book. As I reinforce in each chapter, the women characters that I study are problematic and transgressive in relation to a heteronormative, patriarchal standard. They are not Othered according to 2  The original title is Undersøgelse af Kønsfordelingen i Dansk Film. Kirsten Barslund generously helped me translate the content of this report.

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race, ability or socioeconomic status; they are unequivocally defined as women, albeit unfeminine women in some cases, and manifest their womanhood through the act of childbirth. I have referred to these characters as women and to male characters as men because this is how they are presented in the texts and in all commentary, not because these are the only two possible manifestations of gender. Though there are a few Danish films and television dramas that feature same-sex couples as parents, such as Anna Pihl, Bron/Broen and Okay (J.W. Nielsen 2002), I have not come across any Danish cases where non-binary or transgender persons are parents,3 meaning this study of motherhood does not have the scope to explore various gender identities to an extent that does justice to the topic. Meryl Shriver-Rice does investigate inclusion and on-screen diversity in her book Inclusion in New Danish Cinema but traverses a breadth of topics rather than closely scrutinising identified motifs. Similarly, this book is unable to conduct a quantitative analysis of the proportion of female or non-binary persons working in the film and television industry in addition to teasing out the nuances in on-screen representation. Ideally, the DFI-led initiatives towards enabling equal and unbiased access to resources and funding will reduce the need to label and demarcate screen professionals and practitioners according to gender and background because equity and fairness will become embedded in the industrial and political culture in Denmark. Until then, supporting the production of unique and unconventional narratives remains imperative. A dominant trend that emerged in my analysis of Denmark’s state-­ supported film and television texts is the proclivity for narratives to explore what it means to be “a good human”. The contestation of “goodness” is most blatant in Nymphomaniac, where Joe recounts a story steeped in morality and judgement: she insists that she is “a bad human being”, though neglecting to outline what, precisely, an upstanding person would look like. En Kærlighedshistorie’s Kira, too, admonishes herself, announcing that she is not the kind of mother that her children need. The concept of being a decent, moral person is embedded in the taglines of several DR dramas: Borgen asks, “Can you hold onto power and hold onto yourself?” (Redvall, “Writing and Producing Television Drama” 70); in Forbrydelsen 3  This is not to say that such texts do not exist, simply that the possibility of acquiring them online or for purchase in Australia is extremely limited; I am not aware of any such texts based on my extensive consumption of and research into Danish screen material.

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season two, the question “‘How much do you bend democracy to defend it?’” is central (Bernth in Hochscherf and Philipsen 106). Similarly, “The tagline for Ørnen was ‘How do you survive as a human being at a time of total (economical) cynicism?’” (Hochscherf and Philipsen 186), and in Herrens Veje, the “dilemma [is] ‘How can Christian ethics and morals survive in a world of personal conflicts, human faults and everyday constraints?’” (Hochscherf 163). The double-storytelling for which Danish television drama, and film to some extent, is renowned is often deeply concerned with exploring ethical and equitable participation in society. These themes are also present in academic commentary on Danish media and featured in my interviews with media professionals cited throughout this book. Katrine Vogelsang asserts that all of TV2’s dramas are about “being part of the Danish society” (Personal correspondence. 21 June 2018), while Stine Stengade described the space between an actor and their audience as being a place “where we share what it is like to be a human being” (Personal correspondence. 22 October 2018). Kirsten Barslund from the DFI explains that the institute’s work on increasing opportunities for a broader range of Danes is “a question of diversity, and being a human and having equal possibilities” (Personal correspondence. 6 June 2019). Discussing Borgen, Soetaert and Rutten have suggested that the series explores “how to be a good human” (715), implying, perhaps, that Birgitte Nyborg’s righteous effort to maintain her values and integrity renders her an embodiment of goodness. Noting, in a cursory manner, that Birgitte is not simply a human being but is very much defined as a woman in the series, Hochscherf and Philipsen contend that Borgen’s guiding premise asks: “is it possible to combine family life and career in a meaningful way for a modern human being—or, more radically, a modern woman?” (151). I contest the idea that a woman combining work and family is radical, suggesting that, rather, images of men dividing their time between their jobs and their children are often considered more revolutionary and modern. While the language that conflates all people under the category of “human” points to a desire to break down and delegitimise labels and stereotypes that can either marginalise or privilege particular demographics, it also silences existing inequalities. There is no neutral gaze that looks beyond race, religion, gender, sex, ability, age, sexuality and skin colour to the “human” beneath. As Iris Marion Young has so succinctly put it:

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the ideal of a universal humanity without social group differences allows privileged groups to ignore their own group specificity. Blindness to difference perpetuates cultural imperialism by allowing norms expressing the point of view and experience of privileged groups to appear neutral and universal. (“Justice and the Politics of Difference” 165)

Cultural rights are differentiated according to expectations and responsibilities, which are very effectively influenced and communicated through popular cultural content. This content, in turn, interacts with policy, practice, dominant discourses and ever-shifting social norms. Creating a fictional world in which the viewer can immerse her- or himself is arguably screen fiction’s most enchanting feature. Each of my cases creates an environment for viewers to invest both time and emotion, reflecting the cast and crew’s exceptional skill in generating bonds between characters and audiences. At the end of each of these narratives, the viewer is prompted to consider what will happen beyond the final frame; Nymphomaniac and Forbrydelsen provoke the most curiosity, both closing with the protagonists shooting dead their antagonists. The future for these women—Joe and Sarah Lund—is left entirely unresolved and open to speculation, though one might postulate that they will live out their futures in isolation, on the boundaries of society. Nymphomaniac considers the role of sex—as gender, sexuality and intercourse—in constructing a subjectivity that is susceptible to shame, marginalisation and demarcation as the “Other”. In an effort to validate Joe’s actions, Seligman tells her, “you fought back against the gender that has been oppressing and mutilating and killing you and billions of women in the name of religion or ethics or God knows what”, as if Joe stands for billions of women throughout history who have befallen hegemonic oppression. Presumably his statement refers to Joe’s retaliation against men, but it could also be read as implicating the act of imposing gendered expectations as damaging and problematic. The film complicates the notions of accountability and moral goodness by presenting Joe’s story as a dialogue between herself and the ethically ambivalent Seligman, whose apparent “purity” as an asexual virgin is confounded in the final scene. As a sexually and socially transgressive figure, Joe embodies the impossibility of the sexualised mother and the contradiction of the female body as both an object of desire and reduced to its maternal function. And yet the voice of reason is a highly problematic man whose apparent sympathy is truly undermined by his sexual advance on

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Joe in the film’s final minutes. Joe, and not Seligman, is granted the possibility of a future, but the audience is left puzzling over what she and the hostile world in which she exists could possibly want from each other. If at first glance Joe appears disinterested in her community and peers, somewhat like Sarah Lund, she betrays her emotional investment in those around her by self-consciously modifying her interaction with and participation in society. Where Sarah Lund is seen to invest her livelihood in protecting her community, perhaps in lieu of protecting her son, Joe’s story effectively demonstrates her acute awareness of how she might be received by others. In her writing on shame, Elspeth Probyn, elaborating on the ideas of Hegel and Piers, contends that “it is a capacity for shame that makes us such fragile beings” (3). Shame, she explains, emerges in response to interest—an emotional investment that, if undermined or unreciprocated, leaves us vulnerable to feelings of unworthiness or humiliation. To varying extents, each female character deconstructed here is subjected to humiliation or invalidation, often on account of how they demonstrate femininity and maternalism. The way they respond varies according to their proficiency in particular prescribed feminine roles: wife, mother, working mother. It is as if the women who perform effectively in one role are granted immunity for their inadequacy in the others: Anna Pihl, Sarah Lund, Birgitte Nyborg and Katrine Fønsmark are exceptional in their jobs, rendering their maternal shortcomings more acceptable to their peers and the series’ viewers. Kira is one of the few characters who is seen to have the support of friends outside of work and family relationships; this support circle is immaterial, though, as she has internalised the idea that any contribution she makes necessarily falls short. Isa is similarly marginalised by her own self-doubt, though her paranoia is perhaps justified on account of the Grønnegaard siblings’ growing disparagement towards her. Isa, more than Kira, displays her desperate desire to belong, but her longing is not enough to overcome the barriers of her mental illness, the death of her mother and the Grønnegaards’ lack of affinity to those not related by blood. In a dialogue with the other cases, Arvingerne presents a portrait of the result of childhood abandonment and trauma, visualising the conflicts experienced by grown-up children of problematic parents (though the mother’s actions are questioned more than the father’s). The Grønnegaard siblings and Isa each attempt to repair this damage by marking out a space of belonging—the estate—but Isa’s difficulties in providing

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uncompromising nurturance and care to her baby aggravate the siblings and lead to her exile from the estate and from the narrative. Both Isa and Joe suffer in a way that manifests as frustration, alienation and a loneliness that is compounded rather than alleviated by the birth of an ultimately unwanted baby. Like Kira and Sarah Lund, they resign to the fact that they cannot care for their children, each leaving (or proposing to leave) them with fathers that are more or less problematic, immoral or absent. Forgiveness, as the acknowledgement and reconciliation of past actions, is explicitly cited by Nymphomaniac’s Joe as the foundational concept upon which she believes society should be based, as opposed to hate, which, she asserts, is the current cornerstone. Indeed, many Scandinavian crime dramas—most famously, Bron/Broen—visualise the violent consequences of individuals internalising the pain of past traumas when they are denied the possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness. Forbrydelsen season three deploys this plot strategy, depicting the morally ambiguous father who tracks down those complicit in his daughter’s death because justice was not served by the authorities. Although audiences may feel he is justified, the father’s hatred unleashes a series of crimes that create more suffering and upheaval. Yet, there is the sense that Joe’s passing reflection might refer to forgiving oneself, as if she is advocating for the reconciliation of the internalised shame and blame that the women discussed in the case studies harbour. “I do unforgivable things”, remarks Kira in En Kærlighedshistorie, as she proposes to leave her family. It seems that it is not her husband that cannot forgive Kira but Kira herself. The self-­ awareness that Joe, Kira, Anna Pihl and Sarah Lund vocalise and display is largely absent from the characterisation of the wilful matriarch Veronika Grønnegaard, whose children consequently struggle to come to terms with their memories of her. Unlike the other women upon which the case studies focus, Veronika is not seen to take responsibility for her actions, rendering her, arguably, the most unsympathetic of all the female characters I examine. At the time that this research commenced in 2017, there was no suggestion that any of the cases would be commissioned for remakes or sequels. By mid-2020, however, there was word of a fourth season of Borgen. Reinvigorating a DR series almost a decade later—with the same cast, no less—is unprecedented and testifies to the possibility of Birgitte

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having a future beyond the last episode.4 Like Anna Pihl, Birgitte as a mother character is rewarded for her commitment to her children, evidenced when she calls an early election because she doubts her ability to support her family and run the country simultaneously. Anna Pihl, written by the same screenwriter as Borgen, does not insinuate that lone mothers, which Anna, Birgitte and Katrine Fønsmark all become, are necessarily inadequate but concludes by positioning Anna, like Birgitte and Katrine, in a heterosexual relationship that suggests a happy trajectory for these families. In part, this is a generative plot development, as it permits the hard-working mother to pursue her sexual and emotional interests. What is intriguing, though, is the fact that these characters are socially well-­ adjusted, enthusiastic mothers who are interested in maintaining committed, monogamous relationships and that they aspire to a largely patriarchal, heteronormative standard. Conversely, Kira, Joe, Lund and Isa, whose narratives end abruptly and without resolution, are unable or unwilling to subscribe to the script of femininity that is premised on emotional and, increasingly, professional labour. Each female character is provided a minimal backstory wherein their own upbringing is fraught or fragmented through parental separation or conflict: Kira’s father left the family and her mother is suggested to be emotionally unstable; Joe’s mother resents her and her father dies when she is a young adult; Lund’s father is never mentioned and her mother is critical of her; and Isa’s mother is deceased and her father “doesn’t understand” her. Anna Pihl’s and Birgitte Nyborg’s mothers are also dead at the start of these series. Fractured families that pass their conflicts onto the next generation are normalised in the cases but do not escape the critical gaze of the texts’ creators: alternative family arrangements might be socially normative in Denmark but the framing of children in fiction as threatened by infidelity, abuse and abandonment suggests a different story. What these select few films and television dramas say is as important as what they do not say; the silences and ambiguity for which Scandinavian content is acclaimed and which epitomises En Kærlighedshistorie, Nymphomaniac and Forbrydelsen, in particular, speaks to the uncertainty that pervades the welfare state system and the future of state-supported creative production.

4  A third season of Riget is, however, in the pipeline, more than two decades after the last season aired.

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The narratives and characters that I have examined are not just fictional entities, conjured up within the minds of the writers and production teams, but are assemblages that produce discrete affects and effects in each viewer. The connection that we, as viewers, form with characters and situations on-screen speaks to a desire to form relationships and experience emotions—arguably, features that define the human experience. Probyn writes, “Hegel and Piers suggest that shame may provide a key to the question that is now again gaining urgency: what is it to be human?” (3; cf. Piers and Singer on the significance of guilt and shame). Danish screenwriters, producers and directors iterate this ontological query in a more culturally specific manner, asking, repeatedly, what is it to be Danish? “Danishness” is not simply the state of being a Danish citizen from a legal perspective but refers to some distinctive, recognisable set of attributes that produce acceptance and belonging within the cultural community. I ask, then, what does it mean to be a woman existing in a sociopolitical space informed by state interventionism, a mandate of maternal accountability and the rhetoric of free expression and social equity? How do sexual difference and femininity alter the criteria for cultural belonging, and what are the consequences for transgressing the rules that govern the symbiotic citizen-state relationship? The cases each provide a response to these questions, collectively demonstrating how shame, isolation and ambivalence are the defining features of motherhood, particularly when mothers are torn between their families and other duties or desires. This research offers a unique perspective on the intersection between shame and citizenship in fictional texts produced in a state-supported and state-moderated industry where the foundation of gender equality and egalitarianism is strong. By scrutinising the way mother characters are positioned in relation to sexuality, professional work and familial bonds, I conclude that, for the future of Danish women on-­ screen to present the multiplicities of feminine experiences, practitioners must resist the urge to conflate femininity with motherhood and motherhood with devotion, sacrifice and moral goodness. Rather, we should engage in a conversation motivated by a curiosity about how norms are (de)constructed, including through policymaking, and how power might be destabilised to equalise opportunities and possibilities for all, regardless of gender, sexuality and ability.

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Elmer, Jonas, director. Let’s Get Lost. Dansk Novellefilm, Per Holst Filmproduktion, 1997 el-Toukhy, May, director. Dronningen (Queen of Hearts). Nordisk Film, 2019. Fly, Per, director. Kvinden der Drømt om en Mand (The Woman Who Dreamed of a Man). Zentropa Entertainments, 2010. Gallagher, Megan, creator. Grenseland (Borderliner). Monster Scripted, 2017–2018. Gram, Jeppe Gjervig, creator. Bedrag (Follow the Money). DR, 2016–2019. Heeno, Mette, creator. Lærkevej (Park Road). Cosmo Films, 2009–2010. Hoppe, Torleif, creator. DNA. Arte France, Nordisk Film Production, TV2, 2019. Høgh, Dorte Warnøe and Ida Maria Rydén, creators. Dicte. Miso Film, 2013–2016. ———. Når støvet har lagt sig (When the Dust Settles). DR, 2020. Ilsøe, Maya, creator. Arvingerne (The Legacy). DR, 2014–2017. Jensen, Dunja Gry, creator. Norskov. SF Film production, 2015–2017. Joof, Hella, director. Se Min Kjole (Hush Little Baby). Fine and Mellow Productions, 2009. Kazinski, A.J., creator. Hvide Sande. Deluca Film, 2021–present. Kragh-Jacobsen, Søren, director. Mifunes Sidste Sang. Nimbus Film, 1999. La Plante, Lynda, creator. Prime Suspect. Granada Television, 1991–2006. Lenz, Werner M., director. Facts: Kopenhagen-Sex-Report (Facts: Copenhagen Sex Report). Centrum Film, Panorama Film A/S, 1973. Leth, Asger, creator. Liberty. DR, 2018. Lindblom, Peter and Malin Nevander, creators. Höök. SVT, 2007–2008. Lindholm, Tobias, creator. Efterforskningen (The Investigation). Miso Film, 2020. Logardt, Bengt, director. Het är Min Längtan (Britta  – The Artist’s Model). Europa Film, 1956. Madsen, Ole Christian, director. En Kærlighedshistorie (Kira’s Reason: A Love Story). Nimbus Film, 2001. ———. Pizza King. Nimbus Film, Zentropa Entertainments 1999. Malmros, Nils, director. Kærlighedens smerte (Pains of Love). Per Holst Filmproduktion, 1992. Mendes, Clara, creator. Sex. Profile Pictures, 2020–present. Meyer, Russ, director. Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! RM Films International, 1965. Möller, Gustav, director. Den Skyldige (The Guilty). Nordisk Film, 2018. Newihl, Mikael, creator. Advokaten (The Lawyer). SF Studios, 2018–present. Nielsen, Jesper W., director. Der Kommer en Dag (The Day Will Come). Zentropa Entertainments, 2016. ———. Okay. Peter Bech Productions, 2002. Nordahl, Jeannette, director. Kød & blod (Wildland). Snowglobe Films, 2020. Olesen, Annette K., director. Forbrydelser (In Your Hands). Zentropa Entertainments, 2004.

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Works Cited

———. Skytten (The Shooter). Nordisk Film, 2013. ———. Små ulykker (Minor Mishaps). Zentropa Entertainments, 2002. Persson, Leif G.W. and Jan Guillou, creators. Anna Holt. SVT, 1996–1999. Petersen, Eddie Thomas, creator.Strisser pa Samsø (Island Cop). Per Holst Films, 1997–1998. Price, Adam, creator. Anna Pihl. Cosmo Films, 2006–2008. ———. Borgen. DR, 2010–2013. ———. Herrens Veje (Ride Upon the Storm). DR, ARTE France, SAM le Français, 2017–2018. Refn, Nicolas Winding, director. Bleeder. Kamikaze, 1999. ———. Pusher. Balboa Entertainment, 1996. Rijbjerg, Klaus, director. Weekend, Rialtofilm, 1962. Rosenfeldt, Hans, creator. Bron/Broen (The Bridge). Nimbus Film, Filmlance International, 2011–2018. Sandgren, Åke, director. Et Rigtigt Menneske (Truly Human). Zentropa Entertainments, 2001. Scherfig, Lone, director. Italienesk for Begyndere (Italian for Beginners). Zentropa Entertainments, 2000. Sieling, Charlotte, director. Over Gaden Under Vandet (Above the Street, Below the Water). Nimbus Film, 2009. Sjöman, Vilgot, director. Jag är nyfiken — en film i blått (I am Curious — a film in blue). Janus Films, 1968. ———. Jag är nyfiken — en film i gult (I am Curious — a film in yellow). Janus Films, 1967. Steen, Paprika, director. Lad de små børn (Aftermath). Nordisk Film, 2004. Steihm, Meredith and Elwood Reid, creators. The Bridge. Shorewood Inc., 2013–2014. Sud, Veena, creator. The Killing. Fox Television Studios, 2011–2014. Sveistrup, Søren. Forbrydelsen (The Killing). DR, 2007–2012. Thorsboe, Peter and Mai Brostrøm, creators. Ørnen (The Eagle). DR, 2004–2006. ———. Mord uden grænser (The Team). Lunanime, Nordisk Film, Network Movie Film-und Fernsehproduktion, Superfilm, C-films, 2015–present. Thorsboe, Peter, creator. Rejseholdet (Unit One). DR, 2000–2004. Thorsboe, Stig and Hanna Lundblad, creators. Badehotellet (The Seaside Hotel). SF Films, 2013–present. Thorsboe, Stig, creator. Krøniken (BetterTimes). DR, 2004–2007. ———. Taxa. DR, 1997–1999. Thuesen, Jacob, director. Anklaget (Accused). Nordisk Film, 2005. Torpe, Christian, creator. Rita. SF Film Productions, 2012–2020. Vemmer, Mogens, director. Gade Uden Ende (Street Without End). Hermes-Film GmbH, 1963.

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Vinterberg, Thomas, director. Druk (Another Round). Zentropa Entertainments, 2020. ———. Festen (The Celebration). Nimbus Film, 1998. ———. Jagten (The Hunt). Zentropa Entertainments, 2012. von Hellen, M.C., director. Sexual Freedom in Denmark. Horizon Images, 1970. von Trier, Lars, director. Antichrist. Zentropa Entertainments, 2009. ———. Breaking the Waves. Zentropa Entertainments, 1996. ———. Europa. Obel Film, Telefilm, Gérard Mital Productions, Nordisk Film, 1991. ———. Idioterne (The Idiots). Zentropa Entertainments, 1998. ———. Medea. DR, 1988. ———. Nymphomaniac. Zentropa Entertainments, 2014. von Trier, Lars and Morten Arnfred, creators. Riget (The Kingdom). Zentropa Entertainments, 1994–present. Zandvliet, Martin, director. Applaus (Applause). Nordisk Film and TV Fond, 2009.

Index

NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS 50/50 Scheme/60/40 Scheme, 43 1964 Film Act, 41 1968/‘68, 21, 47, 52, 134, 153, 162 1989 Film Act, 41–43 #MeToo, 57 A Academy Awards, 1, 2, 40 Anxiety, 4, 6, 34, 45, 76, 87, 99, 119, 143, 144, 159 August, Bille, 15, 40, 80 B Bergman, Ingmar, 22, 23, 64, 67–69, 71 Bier, Susanne, 3, 47, 50, 73, 86, 140 Bodil Awards, 2, 23 British “kitchen sink” realism, 23

C Commissioner Scheme, 42, 43, 55 Creative Europe, 41, 42, 44 D Danish Child Welfare Commission/Bø rnekommissionen, 25–27, 46, 110, 121, 137 Danish Film Institute (DFI), 4, 6, 8–10, 39–44, 48, 49, 51, 55–61, 64, 71, 140, 166–168 Danish National Film School, 21 Danish People’s Party (DPP)/Dansk Folkeparti, 7 Danmarks Radio (DR)/Danish national broadcaster, 2, 5–7, 15, 16, 20, 40, 44, 48, 51–53, 96, 106, 108, 117, 120, 121, 128, 132, 133, 136–138, 167, 171 DR1, 40 DR2, 1 Dansk kulturfilm/kulturfilm, 20, 45, 72 Defamilialisation, 24, 25, 33

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Hallsworth, Danish Mothers On-Screen, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88579-3

205

206 

INDEX

Depression, 45, 119, 155 Dogme 95/Dogme, 3, 5, 15, 40, 46–50, 64, 66, 68, 69, 71–74, 78, 93, 164 Double-storytelling/philosophical layer, 52, 53, 120, 168 Dreyer, Carl Theodor, 23, 45, 49, 64, 67, 68 E Enlightenment, 26, 69 Entrepreneur/ entrepreneurship, 12, 31 Eurimages, 42, 57 European Commission (EC), 7, 8, 14, 28–31, 33, 41, 42, 44 European Institute of Gender Equality (EIGE), 32, 33 European Union (EU), 8, 28, 29, 31–34, 41, 45, 135, 136 European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA), 55 Exceptionalism, 8 F Family noir, 134 Femikrimi, 11 Femininity/feminine, 4, 9, 28, 29, 32, 66, 71, 74, 83, 84, 86, 89, 91, 92, 104, 110, 112, 113, 120, 123, 131, 133, 142–144, 146, 148, 150, 152, 158, 164, 170, 172, 173 Feminism/feminist, 8, 10–14, 17, 24–26, 28, 29, 46, 85, 88, 97–100, 102, 104, 139 Feministisk Initiativ/Feminist Initiative/F!, 100 Film Agreement, 37, 44 Film noir, 120 Foreign policy, 7, 8 French New Wave, 23, 72

G Global Gender Gap Report, 7, 25, 30 H Hollywood, 22 I Ibsen, Henrik, 15, 64, 67, 68 Ilsøe, Maya, 5, 132, 155 Immigrant/immigration, 7, 8, 29, 46, 47, 100, 106, 107, 117 Implicit bias, 107 Italian neorealism, 23, 72 L Liberalism/liberal, 16, 21, 48, 103, 104, 123, 158, 162 M Madsen, Ole Christian, 4, 47, 64 Market Scheme, 43, 55 Masculinity/masculine, 11, 12, 36, 57, 70, 86, 104, 109, 120, 128, 144, 151, 166 Media Agreement, 19, 37, 51 Ministry of Culture/Ministry of Cultural Affairs; Culture Ministry, 6, 8, 20, 21, 39, 40, 49, 51 Ministry of Economic Affairs, 34 Ministry of Education, 21 N National Film School of Denmark (NFSD)/National Film School, 9–11, 21, 39, 47, 49, 52, 56, 72 National identity, 20, 47, 99n1, 117, 135 Neoliberalism/neoliberal, 13, 46, 100, 116, 132, 140, 158

 INDEX 

New Danish Screen (NDS), 40, 49, 55 Nordic Council of Ministers/Nordic Council, 7, 14, 24–26, 29, 30, 34, 47, 51 Nordic noir, 3, 7, 107, 118, 122, 134 Nordisk Film and Television Fond, 137–138 Nordvision, 50 Norwegian national broadcaster/ Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK), 6, 44 O Olesen, Annette K., 47, 49, 50, 65n2, 136 P Pornography/pornographic, 22, 70, 85 Postfeminism/postfeminist, 11–13, 98–100, 131, 132, 139, 140 Price, Adam, 5, 131, 137–139, 141, 149 Public Service Pool/Public Service fund, 51, 52, 60, 108 R Racism, 8 Realism/realist, 6, 15, 23, 41, 46, 47, 51, 66, 67, 72, 119, 134, 145, 146 Refn, Nicolas Winding, 47 Religion/religious, 9, 22, 23, 37, 53, 68, 84, 85, 87, 90, 117, 135, 168, 169 Robert Awards, 2, 5, 63 S Scandinavian blue, 5, 6, 15, 22, 45, 48, 66, 69–71, 74, 93, 153, 164

207

Scherfig, Lone, 47, 73, 140 Sexism, 133 Shame Resilience Theory (SRT), 66, 75 Social contract, 35 Social Democratic Party, 141 Station Next, 49 Strindberg, August, 15, 67, 68 Super16, 49 Sveistrup, Søren, 5 Swedish Film Institute (SFI), 56, 57 Swedish national broadcaster/Sveriges Television (SVT), 6, 121 T Transnational, 3, 41, 42, 136 TV2, 5, 10, 13, 15, 40, 44, 51–54, 95, 97, 108, 117, 128, 137, 138, 168 U United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), 8, 55 V Video streaming on-demand (VSOD), 3 Vinterberg, Thomas, 1, 40, 46, 47, 49, 71, 73 von Trier, Lars, 3, 4, 15, 40, 47–50, 63, 64, 67–69, 71, 73, 74, 85, 86 W Western/West, 6, 17, 22, 24, 26, 32, 36, 46, 68, 82, 90, 91, 104, 116, 123, 144, 145 Woman-friendly, 14, 25, 28, 29 World Happiness Report, 7