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A “Cult-like” Following: Nordic Noir, Nordicana and Arrow Films’ Bridging of Subcultural/Neocultural Capital

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Abstract

Work on “Nordic Noir” in the UK has focused on channel brands such as BBC Four whilst downplaying Arrow Films’ participation in Nordicana and its distribution of TV shows on DVD/Blu-ray. I will re-open the question of Arrow’s agency as a distributor (Wroot 2015), addressing how Arrow Films has sought to materially channel fan affects via Nordicana and DVD signings. Arrow’s involvement in Nordic Noir as well as B-movie/genre cinema suggests that the label needs to be theorised as multi-discursive in terms of its “cult positioning” (Mathijs and Sexton 2011: 238). Arrow’s championing of Nordic Noir can be read as a mode of “cult-art” TV that combines emergent cultural legitimacy and fan-cultural appreciation through distribution and branding, yet without clear subcultural capital.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, HD1 3DH, UK

    Matt Hills

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  1. Matt Hills
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Correspondence to Matt Hills .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Greenwich, London, United Kingdom

    Jonathan Wroot

  2. University of Salford, Salford, United Kingdom

    Andy Willis

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Hills, M. (2017). A “Cult-like” Following: Nordic Noir, Nordicana and Arrow Films’ Bridging of Subcultural/Neocultural Capital. In: Wroot, J., Willis, A. (eds) Cult Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63679-5_4

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