0000000001154978
AUTHOR
Helen Mäntymäki
From Mobile Crimes to Crimes of Mobility
Piipponen, Mäntymäki and Rodi-Risberg suggest that many contemporary crime narratives across the globe host a heightened interest in diverse and ambiguous mobilities, border crossings and borderlands. They propose that such mobilities and crossings reflect on recent sociocultural developments on local and global levels and communicate specific geopolitical anxieties. They position their own mobilities research perspective within existing crime fiction scholarship, especially within the so-called transnational and spatial turns. Introducing some key observations of mobilities research, they suggest that mobility can be considered both as an object of study in its own right and a critical len…
Perpetrator Trauma in Television Crime Series We Hunt Together
Crime fiction scholarship increasingly focuses on trauma in contemporary crime narratives but has largely neglected to investigate perpetrator trauma. This article contributes to filling this gap by exploring perpetrator trauma in We Hunt Together (2020), a British television crime series written by Gaby Hull, that portrays the consequences of perpetrator trauma on a former child soldier from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Babeni (Baba) Lenga, waiting for permanent residency in the UK. Viewers learn about his violent past through flashbacks and his involvement with Frederica ‘Freddy’ Lane which precipitates Baba’s present return to violence. Informed by crime fiction studies, l…
Affective Estrangement and Ecological Destruction in TV Crime Series Fortitude
Koistinen and Mäntymäki examine how graphic violence evokes affect in the context of ecological destruction in the UK-produced TV crime fiction series Fortitude (2015–17). They argue that the series mobilises generic exchange by incorporating speculative elements into a traditional crime narrative structure, thereby creating space for affective estrangement. They show how the amalgamation of violence, ecological destruction and affect serves as an entrance into socioecological critique with a strong cautionary element through the negotiation between the human and nonhuman and the ethics of violence. Theoretically, the chapter relies on Sara Ahmed’s view of affect as social processes produce…
Epistemologies of (Un)sustainability in Swedish Crime Series Jordskott
nvironmental themes have invaded Nordic TV crime series over the past few years. In this paper, the epistemological starting points of a Swedish series, Jordskott, are examined. The paper argues that the series criticizes the traditional humanist paradigm on which realistic crime narratives are based. It does so through the introduction of fantastic non-human beings with the help of which the boundaries of ‘nature’ and ‘human being’ are set mobile. In the series, subjectivities are rendered volatile and the humanist epistemological paradigm is questioned as a sustainable ground for defining what counts as a subject. Theoretically, the paper draws on posthumanist theory and ecocriticism. The…
Epistemologies of (Un)sustainability in Swedish Crime Series Jordskott
ABSTRACTEnvironmental themes have invaded Nordic TV crime series over the past few years. In this paper, the epistemological starting points of a Swedish series, Jordskott, are examined. The paper argues that the series criticizes the traditional humanist paradigm on which realistic crime narratives are based. It does so through the introduction of fantastic non-human beings with the help of which the boundaries of ‘nature’ and ‘human being’ are set mobile. In the series, subjectivities are rendered volatile and the humanist epistemological paradigm is questioned as a sustainable ground for defining what counts as a subject. Theoretically, the paper draws on posthumanist theory and ecocriti…
Polar Bear in 'Fortitude'. Affective Aesthetics and Politics of Climate Change
In the first season of the television Eco Noir crime series “Fortitude” (2015) the polar bear appears as a sticky object that embodies an ambiguous affective charge as an icon of global warming. This article discusses the ways in which the polar bear evokes viewer affect in the series through two discourses. The first one relates to violence, essentially present in crime narratives, and how the human and nonhuman animal are positioned in relation to global warming, violence and each other. It raises questions of place and belonging in a local and global context and examines how the polar bear is constructed in terms of stranger danger and victimization in relation to human animals and the t…
Ympäristöuhkia ja tunnistamatonta vierautta
Tutkimme artikkelissamme ekologista ja affektiivista outouttamista suomalais-ruotsalaisessa spekulatiivista fiktiota ja Nordic noiria yhdistävässä televisiosarjassa White Wall (2020). Väitämme, että sarjan affektiivinen kokonaissävy muodostuu spekulatiivisen fiktion ja Nordic noirin lajityypillisten elementtien yhdistyessä, mikä rakentaa outouttavaa katsojakokemusta, jossa fiktiivisen maailman outous yhdistyy tosimaailman ekologisiin kysymyksiin. Tämä affektiivisen ja ekologisen outouttamisen yhdistelmä toimii lähtökohtana sarjan, etenkin sen keskeisen oudon ilmiön, valkoisen seinän, posthumanistiselle luennallemme. Hyödynnämme analyysissämme affektitutkimusta, eri genreteorioita sekä posth…
Feministisiä luentoja naiseuden ja väkivallan representaatioista
Sanna Karkulehto ja Leena-Maija Rossi, (toim.): Sukupuoli ja väkivalta. Lukemisen etiikkaa ja poetiikkaa. Helsinki: SKS, 2017, 329 s.
”Kaikki paha tulee Skandinaviasta” : Sukupuolittuneen ja seksualisoituneen väkivallan affektiivinen poetiikka ja politiikka Nordic noir -televisiosarjassa Modus
Tarkastelemme artikkelissamme, miten ruotsalainen rikossarja Modus (2015–) rakentaa sukupuolitetun ja seksuaalisen väkivallan kuvauksia sekä poeettisella että poliittisella tasolla. Tulkitsemme väkivaltafiktion kutsumia affekteja suhteessa Sara Ahmedin affektiteoriaan, lajityypin konventioihin, audiovisuaalisen kerronnan keinoihin ja kulttuurisiin normeihin. Väitämme, että Modus mobilisoi affekteja toistamalla ja toisin toistamalla konventionaalisia rikos- ja kauhugenrejen sukupuolittuneita ja seksualisoituneita kuvastoja sekä kulttuurisia sukupuoli- ja seksuaalinormeja. Esittämällä erityisesti homoseksuaaleihin kohdistuvia viharikoksia, sarja kommentoi ajankohtaisia keskusteluja seksuaaliv…