Global Bridges, Local Bridges: Glocalization and Bron/Broen

Scandinavian detective shows like Bron/Broen (The Bridge 2011-) and Forbrydelsen (The Killing 2007-2012) are immensely popular in Western Europe, yet they do not fare so well in the American market. This is possibly due to the fact that Americans are not used to reading subtitles or because they simply do not understand the problems that are addressed in the series since they are not familiar with Scandinavian culture. So in order for these series to become a success in the States, they have to be ‘localized’, remade into their American counterparts. Both Bron/Broen and Forbrydelsen have been remade into stories told in American cities, with American characters and dilemmas. Some might consider this to be a bad practice, stating that these remakes harm the original; others admire the series for what they are: a qualitative retelling in a familiar setting. We like to propose that localized remakes are in fact an example of the television-format, in which a bareboned plot gets fleshed out through the addition of local themes, characters and places. Thus, American remakes of Scandinavian detective series can be seen as a creative take on the original, one that does not homogenize culture, but diversifies it.

Before we venture into the world of the remake, it is important to get a good understanding of what exactly a format is. Television programming has evolved from one or several channels to a complex network of global companies that sell programs all over the world. Media globalization boomed in the 1990s when show-formats from multiple countries were sold across the borders, instead of being limited to American game shows (Chalaby, 2011: 293-294). This already points at one of the main characteristics of the format: a TV show only becomes a format once it is adapted outside of its country of origins, which makes it inherently transnational (id. 295). This means that the format has a hybrid nature: as it travels, it adapts to the country it finds itself in. Thus, it is very important that the format has a distinctive narrative dimension, with clearly defined story arcs, trigger moments etcetera (id. 294), which work as a set of rules that function as universal qualities uniting all the different adaptations (Meizel, 2010: 194).

Chalaby mostly uses the concept of the format in her discussion of game shows and reality tv-formats that have been adapted by numerous countries, but it is also possible to use this concept when talking about quality television. Quality television is a concept that is used to describe series that have a high level of complexity in their narratives, often experimenting with narrative and plot devices. Breaking Bad and Mad Men are clear examples of this notion, but also Forbrydelsen and Bron/Broen can be called quality television. Their narratives are complex, weaving together multiple storylines and stretching the story arc over multiple episodes. The narrative of Bron/Broen follows two completely different police officers who are forced to work together when a body is found on the bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden. The whole first season is dedicated to solving this case, with subplots about family problems and the female cop’s Asperger complicating the plot.

So how can these complex stories be turned into a format-like structure? The format can be seen as a skeleton, that gets fleshed out by being adapted in order to fit into a specific culture. Without all the local details visible in the behavior of the characters, the landscape, even the dominant colors in the shots, Bron/Broen’s story is about a dead body and two police-officers that try to solve the crime. Adding local flavor makes the narrative complex and interesting: the problems arising when a body is found exactly on the border between two different countries, the landscapes the officers drive through and cultures clashing. In the original, the bridge of the title spans the sea between Denmark and Sweden. The colors are cold and blue-ish and the atmosphere is grim and urban-like.

The series changes in multiple ways when the bridge is placed on the border between the United States and Mexico, like in The Bridge (2013-2014). Placing the body on the border not only raises issues about whose case it is, it also addresses the troubled relationship between the States and Mexico, adding drugs smuggling, human trafficking and disappearing illegal immigrants to the plot. Several issues that are relevant for that specific location are added, making the problems recognizable for the American public. However, the plot is not the only thing that has been localized in the American remake; the atmosphere has completely changed as well. This is already apparent in the opening credits. The urban, grimy and dark opening sequence of Bron/Broen translates into its ‘desert’-equivalent: still evoking a somewhat dark atmosphere, but with shades of yellow and brown, typical Mexican/American border elements like cowboy boots, western-style towns and an Americana soundtrack.

In his article on glocalization in Asian television, Yu-li Chang describes how global media industries had to adapt their television programming to the local audience in order to get viewers. There are several multicultural, racial, religious and linguistic complexities that explain why this audience was not interested in the rebroadcasting of American television (Chang, 2003: 2). This is also the case with Scandinavian detective series. There is of course the issue of a language barrier, but the geographical distance also results in a lack of knowledge about the cultures that are portrayed in the original series. By remaking the series and localizing it, by making the themes, scenery and characters recognizable, the series is able to reach audiences on the other side of the world.

Series like Bron/Broen offer skeletons of plots that can be adapted to new cultures by adding local themes and problems. Instead of a homogenization of television programs, this leads to more diversity and creativity in that it creates local versions of universal stories. It can thus be seen as a format. Certain elements of the plot are universal and will appear in any remake, so as to create a certain unity between the adaptations. The body will always appear on the border, and will always kickstart the uneasy partnership between two police officers who are each other’s opposites: one a man with a family, the other a woman with Asperger. In the case of translocalized TV series like The Bridge, it is the details that link the adaptation to its ‘individual national character’, which makes the story local (Meizel, 2010: 194).

Thesis: The format functions as a bridge between countries.

BB, LB, YB, FM, MM

·         Jean K. Chalaby (2011), ‘The making of an entertainment revolution: How the TV format trade became a global industry’, in: European Journal of Communication, 26 (4), 2011, pp. 293-308.

·         Yu-li Chang (2003) ‘‘Glocalization’ of television: Programming strategies of global television broadcasters’, in: Asia, Asian Journal of Communication, 13:1, 1-36.

·         Katherine Meizel (2010), ‘The United Nations of Pop: Global Franchise and Geopolitics’, in: Idolized: Music, Media, and Identity in American Idol. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 192-219.  

·         Tasha Oren (2013), 'On the Line: Format, Cooking and Competition as Television Values’, in: Critical Studies in Television, 8 (2), pp. 20-35. 

Fandom: blessing or burden?

Twin Peaks and fandom in the Usenet days

Over the past few decades, fandom and the internet have become entangled to such an extent that it's almost impossible to talk about fandom without talking about the internet. Through this medium, we keep people up to date with what we watch, read and play, and communicate with other fans to relive our favorite moments and share theories.

A rather early example of a show with an “online” fan base is the show Twin Peaks, that had its original run between 1990 and 1991. While it aired, the show was immensely popular, and had millions of viewers attempting to solve the great mystery: who killed the well-loved Twin Peaks resident Laura Palmer? In the days before the World Wide Web, the show gathered an almost cult-like following that corresponded through a Usenet newsgroup. Usenet works through a series of servers, and when someone uploads anything to their server, each server exchanges information with all other servers in a network. In this case, that network was the newsgroup alt.tv.twinpeaks. The newsgroup emerged shortly after the pilot episode aired on April 8, 1990. During the show's runtime, over a hundred posts were made each day. Topics included episode recaps, the exchange of sound clips, analysis of the dialogue, discussion about the actors, discussions about director David Lynch's other works, the exchange of information about the geographical setting of Twin Peaks and the swapping of addresses for the exchange of VHS recordings of episodes.

In From Audiences to Media Subjectivities: Mutants in the Interregnum (2013), Jack Bratich describes how fans are more than “just” an active audience, and that they produce their own culture. Through the creation of a community, the audience has the opportunity to increase its power. In addition to creating a community in which people can interact with fellow fans, they also create their own “world”. In explaining his use of the word "world", Bratich argues that a fictional world is not generated by its original text, but by the fans that interact with it (Bratich 2013: 18). In the case of Twin Peaks, we can observe both this creation of a community and the creation of a "world". As mentioned above, the newsgroup allowed fans from all over the world to create a community and exchange data, and it allowed them to create and elaborate on their own theories and guesses regarding the mystery, fueled by the help and input of other fans. To an extent, the world created by the fans started merging with the “real” world: to fans, Laura Palmer's murder turned into a real case that needed actual solving, and they started completely picking apart every episode in a attempt to gather clues and evidence.

However, not even this powerful fanbase could render the show untouchable. ABC, the television network that aired the show, feared a loss of audience interest, and put pressure on David Lynch and his co-creator Mark Frost to reveal Laura Palmer's murderer halfway through the second season. Lynch and Frost were not too happy to oblige, wanting to stay away from this reveal until the show's finale, but they eventually gave in. As they feared, this decision did not have the desired effect: while the episode that revealed the solution to the mystery was one of the show's most-watched, it eventually ended up doing more harm than good. Rather than gaining in numbers, the show's audience started to shrink as interest decreased. To make matters worse, Twin Peaks was moved from its original time slot on the channel to a slot that was more inconvenient for viewers. This combination of factors lead to the announcement of an indefinite hiatus in February of 1991 (Connely 2011: 2).

The online fanbase feared for their show's life, and the Usernet newsgroup ended up gaining even more functions than before. The production of fanfiction and fan-made scripts skyrocketed in the shows absence, showing that the fans were now even more spurred on to expand their world. This interaction and exchange with others allowed them to be “outlaw fans” that created a narrative suitable to their own wishes and expectations (Thiel-Stern 2013: 6). The audience of the show now more than ever gained its own audience (Thiel-Stern 2013: 13), as people turned to these fanworks to fill the gap Twin Peaks left. Furthermore, Usernet users started rallying for the continuation of Twin Peaks. They formed a kind of committee, jokingly called COOP (Citizens Opposing the Offing of Peaks) and initiated a letter writing campaign to ABC, requesting the network to let the show continue (Harris 1991). Their discontent with the network's actions may be seen as an example of fan antagonism, a disagreement between the show's fans and its owners (Bratich 2013: 19). Their pleas were eventually heard, and Twin Peaks returned for another few episodes to conclude the season, and with it, the series. The communication between fans and the network turned out to be valuable (Bratich 2013: 19), and seeing as the fans were rewarded for their efforts. Not only were they empowered as fans, but they had a direct hand in the continuation of the show. They reached a hybrid state between being a passive audience and an active producer. However, many unfortunately felt that the show never returned to its former glory and quality.

Twin Peaks' online fanbase saved the show from its untimely end, giving a clear example of the power an audience can have. However, one could also make the point that the fandom was what endangered the show in the first place. Through their combined enthusiasm and interest, the fans always seemed to be at least one step ahead of Lynch and Frost. Fan theories got more and more complex as people put their minds together, which led to the fans having immensely high expectations. Over time, this likely made it more difficult for the show to keep its audience satisfied. Therefore, this might have been what eventually drove ABC to panic and play its trump card early.

In 2014, news broke that Twin Peaks will make its return to television in 2017. It will be interesting to see what the show's fanbase will look like in the Web 2.0 days. The fans from back in the Usernet days may return, but they will undoubtedly be joined by a new generation of fans as well. At this moment, two years before the show will air again, it is already a hot topic on several forums and blogs. Time will tell how the audience will partake in shaping the show this time around.

Thesis:

Though it might seem mainly beneficial, an active fan culture might pose a threat to content creators.

BB / LB / YB / FM / MM

Sources:

• Jack Z. Bratich (2013), ‘From Audiences to Media Subjectivities: Mutants in the Interregnum’, in: Kelly Gates (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Volume VI: Media Studies Futures. Malden & Chichester: Whiley-Blackwell.
• Thomas Connelly (2001), 'Twin Peaks: Surrealism, Fandom, Usenet and X-ray Television', in: Culture Critique, 2 (1).
• Mark Harris (1991), 'Saturday Night Dead', in: Entertainment Weekly, March 1991.
• Shayla Thiel-Stern (2013), ‘Beyond the active audience: Exploring new media audiences and the limits of cultural production’, in: Radhika Parameswaran (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Volume IV: Audience and Interpretation. Malden & Chichester: Whiley-Blackwell, pp. 389-405.

Online Life after Offline Death

The Internet has had various effects on modern life but it has also changed the way its three billion users confront the end of life. With so many people posting and sharing stories online the net becomes a kind of archive or global diary which is used by families, friends and even journalists to make sense and come to terms with death through the stories that are posted on both public and private web pages. This is done through either specific memorial sites such as forevermissed.com or through the major social media networks like Facebook.   In this blogpost we will show how the social media site Facebook is bringing death and grieving to a wider public and what ethical issues this might raise.

As of September 2015 the social network Facebook has over one billion active users (Facebook  2015). Every year it loses a portion of these users to death.  A number of things can happen to a Facebook page after a user dies. The three main options are: an account is permanently deleted, the content is downloaded and sent to a family member and then deleted or an account is memorialised. All of the content of a memorialised account remains online and visible to all people they shared it with in life. However, the content of a memorialised account cannot be deleted or changed. (Facebook 2015)

In Folker Hanusch’s article Representing Death in the Digital Age it is stated that as many as 91% of people who used the Internet as a part of the process of loss has found that it has helped them with their grief (Hanusch 2010: 158). This function of the internet becomes clear when we look at the example discussed above. Memorialised accounts serve as what Hanusch describes as an online shrine, or an interactive version of the written orbituary.The availability of a dead person’s Facebook profile allows the family and friends of a person to still hold on to bits of them instead of losing them completely. It provides a place to go and connect to someone without going to a place that is obviously connected to their death, like a graveyard or memorial website.

 A memorialized facebook page can also be more public than traditional grieving spaces. Facebook’s network connects not only close family members but people from all aspects of a person’s life from all over the world. A facebook profile might not be totally public, but Facebook’s memorialised pages allow for many more people to confront and deal with ideas of death, without prioritizing one group of people over another and without requiring grievers to be in a specific location.  Facebook acts as democratizing force, everyone who was virtually connected is given the chance to participate in the process of grief. This accessibility and openness was not possible earlier in the 20th century when the experience of death and grieving were localised and private. (Hanusch 2010: 158)

The huge amount of content each Internet user produces means that there are more items available to construct memories and work through grief.  This massive amount of content is comforting to those grieving because, as Susan Sontag states, “memory is the only relationship we have with the dead” (Trend 2006:122). Online Facebook pages allow for people to still feel like they have a tangible relationship to the deceased because they continue to be part of people's online lives even if they are no longer with them in the offline world. This increases the emotional importance of online memorialisation.

However, remembrance online is not without its problems and ethical dilemmas. Facebook gives people choices regarding whether or not they remain online after death, but remains quite strict on what they will or will not do with dead user’s profiles. 

A recent example of when Facebook's strict memorialization policies have come under fire is the plight of the Father of a murdered woman named Hollie Gazzard. Hollie was stabbed to death by an ex-boyfriend in 2014. Her Facebook account was subsequently memorialised exactly as it was at the point of her death. This has resulted in photographs of Hollie and her murderer together and happy remaining visible on her memorialised profile. Hollie’s family has stated that the fact that the photos remain online have been causing them distress and turning the memorialised Facebook page from a place of refuge and grieving into a constant reminder of the violent nature of her death (BBC 2015). 

Photos posted by Hollie that were innocent and loving at the time of posting have had their meanings changed. The images of a happy couple are now inextricably linked to violence. Images once about love now serve to remind viewers that violent death is what ultimately resulted from the relationship. The person who died can have no way of knowing what images posted to Facebook would come to represent for friends and family after death and they are unable to change what they have posted. Does that mean that in dying they forfeit the right to tell their own stories? Family members can not change the events of the past but does that mean they should be given the option to alter a person’s memory of their past through their online presence? After all, if her Facebook page is truly an archive of Hollie’s life, the great tragedy of her life was that her ex-boyfriend was part of it, and erasing photos of them will not stop him from always being part of how she is remembered.

Facebook continues to state that they are unwilling to change their policies on these issues, though they acknowledged that in certain tragic circumstances their policy might leave painful reminders (BBC 2015). This raises several questions as to what is exactly the purpose of memorialized sites and who do they serve. The dead can not be asked permission for the use of their online content (Hanusch 2010 :155). Who then, does that right of use go to?  Does a person’s online memory belong to their families, to media corporations on on whom’s sites they shared content, or do they continue to belong to the users even after their death? Is it right that memorialised pages act as a repository for all memories, not only the good but the bad as well? 

Tweet- Should the living have the power to alter people’s  online profiles after death, what are the consequences for memory if they are allowed to do so?

BB, FM, LB, MM, YB

Sources 

BBC. "Facebook photos of Hollie Gazzard with her killer "causing distress "." bbc.com. October 26, 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-34618228 (accessed November 5, 2015).

Buck, Stephanie. "How 1 Billion People Are Coping With Death and Facebook." Mashable.com. February 13, 2013. http://mashable.com/2013/02/13/facebook-after-death/#tfqra95tdiqr (accessed November 5, 2015).

Facebook . "What will happen to my account if I pass away?" facebook.com. November 5, 2015. https://www.facebook.com/help/103897939701143 (accessed Novmeber 5, 2015).

Hanusch, Folker. "Representing Death in the Online Age." In Representing Death in the News, by Folker Hanusch, 145-160. London : Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Trend, David. "But We Can Understand It: Beyond Polemics in the Media Violence Debate." In The Myth of Media Violence: A Critical Introduction, by David Trend, 108-123. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.

Everyone's a Critic

With the diversification of media that is currently going on in the world, new ways of making sense of those media are emerging.  Raúl Rodriguez-Ferrándiz’s Culture Industries in a Post-industrial Age: Entertainment, Leisure, Creativity, in which he looks at the way that media and production are no longer separate categories but over lapping entities.  This overlap means that it is harder for scholars and others to theorize and critique works because one work can include many things. This idea is explored the the chapter “Remediating Creativity” from Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska’s work Life After New Media, this text stresses the idea that critiquing creative output is not necessarily anti-creative, but is just another vital step in the creative process, enabling the viewer or consumer to gain a better understanding of what they are viewing, express a concern about what they are viewing, or suggest ways for the type of medium they are consuming to evolve and grow. However, the multitude of media and variation means that the critics who are making these judgments are no longer an obvious cultural elite. Just as production is diversifying, so is the nature of critique.

A place where the diversification of critique is really noticeable is in the film industry. Not only are there traditional professional movie critics who write for magazines and other official publications, but there are also amateurs who express their opinion of cinema through blog posts, tweets and even YouTube videos. Critique of film is important because film is such a massively influential medium that it is seen as a way of judging the state of the world and the thoughts and ideas of the mass culture.  In spite of its constant evolution there is the fear that it relies on static stories. Stories that follow the same traditional narratives and use the same types of characters and filmic devices.

This is surprising in an era when the technology used to create films is rapidly advancing. The nature of film production is changing at such a quick rate, yet the stories that are told are still holding to the old standards and values. For example, James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) was a technological marvel, but the story was not anything new.  For a film to be truly effective content and production should both be improving and not just the technological aspect. New types of critique have been emerging to address these concerns

It is not official movie critics such as Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) or Leah Greenblatt (Entertainment Weekly) who are headlining this important critical movement or trying to effect change in how stories are told or what stories are told on film. People from outside the world of film are developing new ways of looking at and understanding its content.

Ones of the most influential new(er) ways of critiquing movies is the Bechdel Test. Created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in the 1985, the Bechdel Test evaluates the role of women in movies according to three criteria:  

1.Are there two named female characters?

2.Do they talk to each other?

3.Do they talk about something other than a man?

They seem like very simple criteria and yet once a viewer becomes aware of these questions he/she can’t help but notice how many movies fail this test, even films with female leads.

 The Bechdel Test has been highly influential over the years and even inspired others to create their own movie critiquing tests. Another examples is comic writer Kelly Sue DeConnick’s “Sexy Lamp” Test developed in 2012. This test asks can your female character be replaced by a sexy lamp with out having any effect on the plot of the film? If so either replace the actress with a sexy lamp (more cost efficient) or change the script. Further Bechdel inspired movie tests provide the viewers with frameworks to examine the representations of other marginalized groups in film, such as people of colour and the LGBTQ community

The Bechdel test is not a flawless test, and there are critiques of this system of critique particularly the idea that a pass/fail system can accurately judge a movie without examining the individual plot or storyline. The Bechdel Test might not be a perfect judge of the representation of women in movies, but it does allow viewers to create a new awareness of the way the stories they are consuming are hiding traditional standards but also with a way to frame their critique of a film.

The Bechdel Test is not saying that any movies which do not pass that test are bad, anti-women or not worth watching. It makes the viewer think critically about the content and how that content might be affected by the male gaze of the Hollywood Camera. It is not a “be all and end all” way of looking at movies, but rather a way of highlighting problems that exist in the system.

This awareness of how the system works is important for a viewer to understand how the content they are viewing may be biased. It also provides future filmmakers with evidence of a creative problem and a direction for development of new creative content.

This one test has provided film researchers with a way to examine how films are changing, but Allison Bechdel is not the only non-professional commenting on the state of film.  There are thousands of people across many platforms and from many walks of life and viewpoints that critique films and some who, despite their amateur status, are able to generate their own followings and wield some influence (see moviebob’s review of “Pixels”).

This huge number of critics means that the usefulness of a critique is being called into question. People might have issues with a film but content producers will not be able to please everyone, especially if thousands of people have differing opinions.  If everyone is talking over each other it is easier to block out what people are saying than if it is just one voice saying one thing. This multitude of critics also means that producers will probably be able to find someone who agrees with them and only listen to that voice and ignore the others.

  Social issues in film and media will not be solved overnight.  With the multitude of voices, the issue is now if the problems that are being highlighted in critique will be able to reach an audience and cause change. There is a danger that critique will not be able to play its part in the creative process due to the sheer volume of it.

THESIS TWEET “If everyone is a critic what is the value of critique?”

BB, FM, LB, MM, YB

Sources

Kember, Sarah, and Joanna Zylinska. "Remediating Creativity: Performance Intervention and Critique." In Life after New Media, by Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska, 173-200. New York: MIT Press, 2013.

Rodríguez-Ferrándiz, Raúl. "Culture Industries in a Postindustrial Age: Entertainment, Leisure, Creativity, Design." Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2013.

Sarkeesian, Anita. "The Bechdel Test for Women in Movies ." feministfrequency.com. 2009. http://feministfrequency.com/2009/12/07/the-bechdel-test-for-women-in-movies/ (accessed 2015).