Danish Television Research Articles

The influence of tight tongue-ties and tongue-tie clips on speech development

Ankyloglossia or tongue-tie is a condition where the anatomical variation of the sublingual frenulum can limit normal tongue function. In Denmark, as in other countries, an increase in the number of children treated for ankyloglossia has been described over the past years. Whether or not ankyloglossia and its release affect the speech has also been increasingly discussed on Danish television and social media. In this review, the possible connection between ankyloglossia, its surgical treatment, and speech development in children is discussed.

A History of Danish Cinema

A History of Danish Cinema

The Soundtrack of The Killing, its Orientalist Features, and the Implicit Other

Abstract This study focuses on the soundtrack of the Danish television series The Killing, and especially on its stylistic features that point to the Middle East. Moreover, it takes a critical look at the strategies used in the music and sound design of the series that relate to immigration and Islamic culture in particular.

Book Review: Danish Television Drama: Global Lessons from a Small Nation

Book Review: Danish Television Drama: Global Lessons from a Small Nation

Demand for TV Broadcasts of UEFA Champions League Games in Danish Television – The Impact of Uncertainty of Outcome, Stardom, and Local Heroes

Demand for TV Broadcasts of UEFA Champions League Games in Danish Television – The Impact of Uncertainty of Outcome, Stardom, and Local Heroes

Nordic satellite television as cultural defence in Denmark 1967–1988

ABSTRACT This article explores the ideas of what constituted Nordic television in discussions about the future of Danish television from 1967 to 1988. By the 1960s the Nordic countries already shared television programmes through the Nordvision cooperation. Satellite techno-logy offered a new dimension. The cultural bonds of the Nordic countries were able to be reinforced by sharing television programmes, and just as importantly, Nordic cooperation would shield Nordic viewers from a multitude of foreign channels in the future. The Nordic countries successfully negotiated the exceptional option of sharing a satellite beam across national borders at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) conference in 1977. Still, Nordic satellite television ultimately lost the battle to provincial Denmark in the early 1980s. In accordance with the dominant Danish national self-imagination, the Danish nation was to be defended from within, and regional television provided what was perceived as an authentic defence against West German television flowing across the border.

Cross-media, co-creative and current: New strategies for educating talent for Danish children’s film and television in the 2020s

This article analyses recent developments in Danish film and television education through a case study of a new training initiative for creating content for children and young audiences. Following an outline of traditional training and career trajectories in the Danish screen industries in general, and for working with children’s film and television specifically, the case study investigates the guiding ideas behind Manuskriptskolen for børnefiktion (‘The Cross-Media School of Children’s Fiction’), which was established in 2020. The school marks a new approach to Danish film education in several ways. First, by creating a training ground focusing on a specific audience, rather than on screenwriting or film-making more generally. Second, by thinking of content for this audience as fundamentally multi-platform and teaching students storytelling across different media from the outset. Third, by insisting that creating content for this audience calls for having knowledge about the current lives of young people and their media use, and encouraging strategies for engaging or even co-creating content with them. The article builds on qualitative interviews, document analysis and observations at industry events as part of the research project Reaching Young Audiences: Serial Fiction and Cross-Media Storyworlds for Children and Young Audiences.

“Down-to-Earth TV dramas”: The reception of authenticity, reality, and modality in Danish TV dramas

This article investigates how Turkish audiences conceptualize authenticity in their engagement with foreign television (TV) productions in the case of Danish TV dramas. The theoretical notion of authenticity is juxtaposed with empirical material from fieldwork interactions, focus group interviews, and one-on-one interviews conducted with Turkish audiences between 2016 and 2018. By employing a semiotic analysis of fieldwork data, I argue that Turkish audiences attribute authenticity to the Danish TV drama series according to a socially created modality (truth value of a sign). This article draws on accounts about modality markers in TV drama series such as authentic portrayals of Danish TV characters and plausible-realistic depictions as a verisimilitudinous representation of everyday life. In the context of cross-cultural television viewing practices, the way Turkish audiences attribute meaning to Danish TV series in terms of authenticity, realism, and modality reveals a distinct differentiation between Danish TV dramas and other nationally and globally circulating media products.

Foreign Correspondents between the Hammer and the Anvil

For many decades, Egypt has been considered a distinctive society in which individuals from different nations with different backgrounds and ideologies can live. However, it seems that the Egyptian political, social, and media landscape has witnessed considerable shifts in the dimensions of such diversity. This study examines the contemporary Egyptian perspective on the presence of foreign correspondents and the radical change in Egypt’s regulations toward their work, and moreover, the repercussions of such policies that might be affecting the safety, level of freedom, and sometimes the whole identity of foreign correspondents in Egypt. Moreover, it examines the tactics with which the government seeks to accentuate the discourses of “Othering” in Egyptian public perceptions via whipping up hype in the media. Undoubtedly, the events experienced by Egypt between 25 January 2011 and the present have changed the idea the state and society have of foreigners, in general, and foreign correspondents, in particular. Some indicators confirmed that a state of “xenophobia” has been escalating over the past nine years. Foreign correspondents and journalists have been among the groups harmed by this sentiment, to the detriment of their working conditions. Results show that the transitional period that followed Hosni Mubarak’s toppling in 2011 until today has witnessed many transformations in the handling of foreign correspondents’ work in Egypt. There have been attacks on and expulsions of journalists from Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera, The Associated Press, the BBC, CBS, CNN, Danish television, and others.

National broadcasting, international audiences: How cultural difference is represented in the Danish television dramas Ride upon the Storm, Liberty and Greyzone

Denmark represents a noteworthy – and rather successful – example of where state-funded public service broadcasters have retained strong branding locally while asserting an online streaming presence and negotiating sustainable transnational partnerships for future collaboration, thus consolidating domestic and international markets. This article analyses the impact of the shift away from national broadcasting towards transnational production cultures on the Danish domestic market, historically dominated by local public service broadcasters: Danmarks Radio and TV2. Using the television dramas Ride upon the Storm, Liberty and Greyzone as case studies, the article examines the idea that trends towards harnessing global audiences and fostering transnational production collaborations may partially undermine the distinctive cultural and linguistic features of Danish television drama.

Interrogatives as a means to express politeness in the danish language

Despite the change in the Danish communication style caused by the transformation of the social-political and cultural life of the Danish in the late 1960s, which made a number of polite forms obsolete, the Danish language has various ways to express polite requests. One of the most common strategies congruent with the principle of politeness and efficiency is the use of conventional interrogative sentences with the verbs gide, ville, kunne, verbs in the present tense and a construction er du sød at. The article examines these interrogative sentences gleaned from dialogues in contemporary Danish television series. The most polite of all the conventional requests are questions with vil/ville, which can be used in a formal setting or in correspondence. They appeal to the addressee’s willingness to perform an action, to a greater extent than questions with kun/kunne, and they are meant to avoid encroaching upon the interlocutor’s freedom. The construction er du sød at is classed among the formulas of a high degree of politeness and often presupposes a significant status distance between the interlocutors. Questions with gide are used when social and status distance between the interlocutors is insignificant. Combinations of gide and vil with phasal verbs denoting the ending of an action indicate that these constructions perform a prohibitive function. In the case of questions in the present tense, the interlocutors, as a rule, are engaged in a common activity and the effect of the proposed action is in the interest of both parties. A characteristic feature of the speech act of requests is the use of modal particles, first and foremost, ikke and lige. The particle lige is a culture-specific lexical item which indicates that the favour done by the listener is insignificant, but in spite of a lesser threat posed by the speaker, his expressed will is imposed since it is the speaker who decides for the listener how insignificant his request is. The particles godt and nok are used in insistent requests, while combinations with bare imply a mutually satisfying way to solve the problem at hand.

Narrative Complexity and Cultural Relevance in the Name of Public Service Broadcasting: The Cases of Borgen and Herrens Veje

Abstract Danish television has been able to produce a remarkable number of successful primetime dramas over the last years from Forbrydelsen (The Killing, DR 2007-12) to Herrens Veje (Ride upon the Storm, DR 2017-). Many of them are Nordic Noir crime dramas, yet the list also includes political thrillers and family dramas. This article briefly summarizes main reasons for the prolific production environment at public service broadcaster Danmarks Radio (DR). Some of the exceptional circumstances of Danish television demonstrate why the relatively small country was able to produce shows that found devoted audiences around the world. While the DR production framework has received much attention, this article takes a closer look at narrative composition, issues of characterization and the presentation of themes. Analyzing the first episodes of Borgen (DR 2010-13) and Herrens Veje, the article proposes that it is specifically the combination of multiperspectivity of the leading protagonists and how their life is linked to wider cultural, social and political debates, that can be identified as one main outcome of the fruitful collaboration between DR and various creative personnel. While both shows adhere to the main characteristics of complex serial drama as identified by Jason Mittel and Trisha Dunleavy, there are also some noticeable differences, including their strong public service ethos, their unusual Danish settings, the avoidance of transgressive protagonists, character-centred storylines and their slow, indulgent pace.

Book Review: Beyond the Bridge: Contemporary Danish Television Drama

Book Review: Beyond the Bridge: Contemporary Danish Television Drama

Replotting Marriage in Nineteenth-Century British Literature ed. by Jill Galvan and Elsie Michie

Reviewed by: Replotting Marriage in Nineteenth-Century British Literature ed. by Jill Galvan and Elsie Michie Sarah Gates Jill Galvan and Elsie Michie, eds. Replotting Marriage in Nineteenth-Century British Literature. Columbia: Ohio State UP, 2018. Pp. i – 269. Correction: The first line of this review should read "Jill Galvan..." It mistakenly went to print as "Julie Galvan". The online version has been updated. Jill Galvan and Elsie Michie articulate an ambitious goal for the widely ranging and innovative essays in this collection: nothing less than "to prompt a rethinking of this literary historical period, and, in turn, of long-nineteenth-century studies as such" (2). One might be hard put to identify a vehicle more suited to such rethinking than marriage, so long assumed to be the domestic foundation of a modern civilized society and provider of the central organizing plot of such a society's narratives about itself. And indeed, reading the essays, one feels windows and doors opening, fresh winds blowing through a venerable but somewhat musty edifice. The collection is divided into three parts, "The Forming and Transforming of the Marriage Plot," "Marital and Other Loyalties: Cultural Contexts for the Marriage Plot" and "Beyond Coupling: Queer, Communal, Tertiary." An Afterword by Mary Jean Corbett about marriage as symbol (via Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse) suggests ways its "representativeness" can continue to supply "multiple meanings in different historical moments" (236, 237). The chapters in Part I focus on the earliest and latest decades of the nineteenth century, examining the marriage plot in negotiation with Romanticism, Darwinism and anthropology. Ian Duncan opens this section with readings of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Scott's Waverly and Staël's Corinne, or Italy. While Wilhelm Meister illustrates the "drive toward an unrealized horizon of universality" of the German Bildungsroman (24), Waverly illustrates the English "plot of national formation" (25). Corinne, he demonstrates, "challenge[s]" both these Bildung forms by making the artist-hero a woman whose marriage plot "betray[s]" her Bildung (17). Duncan concludes with a brief reading of Daniel Deronda, which includes a "viable synthesis of Bildung, marriage, and national destiny" in Daniel's story and a "vehement protest against this solution" by Daniel's actress mother (34). Elisha Cohn and Kathy Psomiades examine how authors respond to Darwin's Descent of Man (1871) and Edward Tylor's Primitive Culture (1871), respectively. In her reading of Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm and Caird's The Daughters of Danaus, Cohn explores the tension between the characters, who expound "the renovation of women's powers of choice in explicitly evolutionary terms," and the plots of the novels, whose "deep structure" does not necessarily coincide with their arguments or choices (38). The "long evolutionary view" instead "disentangle[s] plottedness from the act of choosing" because plot dilutes the power of [End Page 272] any individual choice (36). Psomiades, looking not at New Woman novels but at the late-century male writers' "turn to romance" (56, n. 6), brings to light a "new plot" that appears in the wake of the anthropological study of myth (57). The "Goddess plot," which "means the sexual union of goddess and […] mortal or part-mortal lover," becomes the marriage plot's "other and double" (57), turning the latter into "a late attenuated version of itself" (59). After discussions of Haggard's She and Frazer's The Golden Bough, Psomiades turns to a smart analysis of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which "works by holding mythic and realist plots side by side" (72): Tess and Alec inhabit simultaneously the roles of "Victim and Tyrant" and "Goddess and Doomed Mortal Lover" (74). The four chapters of Part II contextualize the marriage plot within the social institutions of politics (Lauren Goodlad), women's education (Kelly Hager), criminal law (Marlene Tromp) and empire (Sukanya Banerjee). Like Ian Duncan, Goodlad addresses the tensions between Bildung and marriage, individualism and civic responsibility, as those tensions are dramatized in Felix Holt, a novel that "strives to imagine collective civic life beyond the dominant individualism of its time" and in the Danish television series Borgen (103). Because the series features a "charismatic leader who can unify an entire...

Does subtitled television drama brand the nation? Danish television drama and its language(s) in Japan

This article explores the relationships between nation branding, authenticity, language and their ideologies by considering two themes. First, how language ideologies and language practices texture the transnational production, distribution and viewing of subtitled television drama. Second, the extent and ways by which subtitled television dramas, in languages other than English, brand the nation to which they are associated. Using the context of increasing exports of Danish television drama to other nations, the article draws its empirical material from fieldwork interactions with industry professionals and viewers in Japan to consider both themes. The article proposes that there are different intensities by which Danish television dramas brand Denmark and the Nordic region; it discusses the implications of the use of English, and how branding the nation involves processes that are intrinsically fragile and require symbiotic relations with other languages and other nations to be successful. This article forms part of the Theorizing Media in Nation Branding Special Issue.

Travelling or not? A content analysis mapping Danish television drama from 2005 to 2014

The article presents a quantitative content analysis of the first episode of the 32 Danish drama series produced between 2005 and 2014. Some of these, such as Borgen (2010–2013) and Forbrydelsen (The Killing) (2007–2012), have experienced unprecedented, international success. The article shows that there are systematic differences in terms of formal characteristics, themes and characters’ communicative style between the series that travel and those that do not. The analysis finds that the presence of strong female lead characters is systematically linked to the positive travel patterns of the series and that this cuts across different genres of series.

Danish television drama series

In recent years, Danish television drama series have become an internationally acclaimed export success. This article analyses the development on the domestic market lying behind this international recognition. A change in production dogmas has formed the characteristics of these successful Danish drama series, and over the last 20 years, state-owned public service provider DR has successfully developed a Sunday evening slot, within which their television drama series attract ‘the entire nation’. This success has also inspired other Danish broadcasters/production companies. We investigate the characteristics of these productions and the development of their audience profiles across age, gender and educational level.

A dark imaginarium: The Bridge, Malmö and the making of a ‘non-existent’ place

Abstract The article assesses the role of (hyper-)mediatized placemaking on the city of Malmö, Sweden, contextualizing the creation of an imaginary ‘southern Scandinavian city’ on top of a real urban zone with exceptional attributes and serious challenges. Paying close attention to Malmö’s image within and beyond Nordic Europe, I draw on three sets of artefacts to interrogate this phenomenon: (1) the visual and narrative content of the Swedish Danish television series The Bridge (2011–present), (2) tourism development strategies and tactics employed by the city of Malmö and (3) museological interpretations of the interplay between the conceived, lived and perceived spaces and places of Malmö. In doing so, this article seeks to advance and deepen of the discussion of screen tourism in influencing geographical imagination and place branding.

‘Generation Conviviality’

Abstract This article is a production study of two talk shows for the Danish television channel, TV2 Charlie: Meyerheim’s Talk Show (2006-) and Cecilie’s Book Show (2015-). TV2 Charlie is a niche channel (part of the TV2 network) that set out to target a mature and elderly audience when it started in 2004. The aim is to bring together mediatization research with production studies and cultural gerontology, and I argue that media logic is a useful analy tical concept that allows us to describe production processes in concrete ways and, at the same time, understand the context-specific ways in which media play a role in societal changes. Thus, through a logic of operationalising conviviality at the channel level, the production level and the programme level, the programmes contribute to perceptions of ageing and old age that emphasise an increased need for stability and safety, on one hand, and a desire for feel-good moments, on the other. Furthermore, the programmes promote positive and active ageing in some instances while keeping old age invisible in other instances.

The archive, the auteur and the unfilmed film: Reflections on Dreyer’s and von Trier’s Medea

Abstract This article engages with Lars von Trier’s 1988 television adaptation of Carl Th. Dreyer’s screenplay Medea to explore the concept of the unfilmed film. Beginning with von Trier’s adoption of Dreyer’s tuxedo, the article asks how the notions of auteurship and the archive itself produce the unfilmed film as ‘unrealized’, and probes the concept of the ‘unfinished’ film. Some examples of unfilmed films, and documentaries about them, are discussed as examples of archival practices in the mediation of unfinished, unrealized and unfilmed films, sometimes by directors themselves and sometimes by their successors. Dreyer’s research materials and methodologies for his screenplay Medea, preserved in the Danish Film Institute, are discussed as an intertext to the later adaptation for Danish television by Lars von Trier.