Abstract
Early on in the filmed version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor, dir. Niels Arden Oplev, 2009), investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) jostles through a busy Stockholm square.1 He has just lost a libel case against corrupt industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström, and is sentenced to prison. Keeping close to the stooped journalist as he walks, the camera gradually arcs around, edging in an enormous building-mounted screen. The screen shows footage of the court case, announcing Blomkvist’s fate to the world, on a TV news broadcast. Private affairs become instantly public, pressing upon the journalist’s personal anxieties as he shuttles through the crowds.
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Notes
For a more comprehensive understanding of the Swedish strand of Nordic noir, its origins and its contemporary status, see Steven Peacock, Swedish Crime Fiction: Novel, Film, Television (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming). See also Barry Forshaw, Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction ( London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011 );
Andrew Nestingen and Paula Arvas (eds.), Scandinavian Crime Fiction ( Bangor: University of Wales Press, 2011 );
Gunhild Agger and Anne Marit Waade (eds.), Den Skandinaviske krimi. Bestseller og blockbuster ( Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2010 );
Michael Tapper, Snuten i skymningslandet. Svenska polisberättelser I roman och på film 1965 till 2010 ( Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2011 );
Daniel Brodén, Folkhemmets skuggbilder. En kulturanalytisk genrestudie av svensk kriminalfiktion i film och TV ( Stockholm: Ekholm & Tegebjer, 2008 ).
Jonas Frykman, ‘Nationalla ord och hangligar’, in Billy Ehn, Jonas Frykman and Orvar Löfgren (eds.), Försvenskningen av Sverigedet nationellas förvandlingar ( Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1993 ), p. 123.
Cited in Alan Pred, Recognizing European Modernities: A Montage of the Present ( London: Routledge, 1995 ), p. 257.
Paul Britten Austin, On Being Swedish: Reflections towards a Better Understanding of the Swedish Character ( London: Secker and Warburg, 1968 ), p. 59.
Francis Sejersted, The Age of Social Democracy: Norway and Sweden in the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 352.
Int. citation Urban Lundberg, Juvelen i kronan. Socialdemokraterna och den allmänna pensionen ( Stockholm: Hjalmarson och Högberg 2003 ), pp. 1–6.
Alan Pred, Recognizing European Modernities: A Montage of the Present ( London: Routledge, 1995 ), p. 217.
Mankell presents a characteristic scenario in the novel One Step Behind (Steget Efter), as the murderer makes his move through the expansive woodlands surrounding the town Ystad: ‘He stepped out and shot each of them once in the head […]. It was over so quickly that he barely had time to register what he was doing. But now they lay dead at his feet, still wrapped around each other, just like a few seconds before. He turned off the tape recorder that had been playing and listened. The birds were chirping. Once again he looked around. Of course there was no one there. He put his gun away and spread a napkin out on the cloth. He never left a trace’, Henning Mankell, One Step Behind, trans. Ebba Segerberg ( London: Vintage Books, 2008 ), e-book, Kindle Location 194.
A similar set of stylistic decisions can be seen at work in the US serial drama House (NBC/Universal Media Studios 2004-ongoing) and, more overtly, in serial-killer drama Dexter (Showtime, 2006–ongoing). As I note in Dexter: Investigating Cutting Edge Television, ‘Some of the most compelling designs of the series stem from the way the surface materials of the external world-settings, decor, landscapes, look–reflect Dexter Morgan’s synthetic sensibility.’
Steven Peacock, ‘Dexter’s Shallow Designs’ in Douglas L. Howard, Dexter: Investigating Cutting Edge Television ( London: I.B. Tauris, 2010 ), p. 49.
Henning Mankell, The Pyramid: The Kurt Wallander Stories, trans. E. Segerberg and L. Thompson ( London: Harvill Secker, 2008 ), p. 115.
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© 2013 Steven Peacock
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Peacock, S. (2013). Crossing the Line: Millennium and Wallander On Screen and the Global Stage. In: Peacock, S. (eds) Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230390447_6
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