Abstract
This chapter deals with cultural encounters as a creative dimension of co-production with the Swedish–Danish series The Bridge as an example. Focus is on reception in Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, on audiences and demographics, and cultural negotiations and discourses of reception in newspapers and social media in the different national contexts. Reception of the series shows a fascination with Nordic Noir as a genre, and the transnational cultural encounters with the series also involve social, political, and cultural themes and exchange of different norms and lifestyles. Such transnational mediated encounters relate to universal dimensions of stories, but also initiate a cultural encounter between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Cultural encounters are important, since they can help people understand each other in a deeper way and enhance global diversity.
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Notes
- 1.
The MeCETES project is an acronym for Mediated Cultural Encounters Through European Screens, which was a HERA/EU-funded research project (2013–16) that studied the production, distribution, and reception of European film and television drama. Three research groups collaborated: from York University (UK), Copenhagen University (DK), and the Free University of Brussels (BE), http://mecetes.org
- 2.
All in all, there were eight focus groups, with groups of different ages, educational backgrounds, and genders. Before the live session of roughly two hours, the groups were asked to complete a simple survey covering their viewing habits, backgrounds, and experience of the genres in question. Transcriptions of all sessions were coded with respect to certain themes, such as genre, characters, recognition, otherness, and social settings.
- 3.
Barker’s categories, based on a large-scale transnational survey, are called ‘vernacular categories,’ and there are ten of them: self-definition, experiential qualities, outcomes, envisioning, filmic qualities, the makers, filmic comparisons, reservations, recuperations, and significant others.
- 4.
The statements presented here are not verbatim quotes from actual focus groups, but they represent types of remarks heard in the focus groups. So, they are hypothetical examples with a background in actual focus-group interviews.
- 5.
The UK demographic categories used by the NRS are: A (upper middle class, higher managerial, administrative, or professional); B (middle class, intermediate managerial, administrative, or professional); C1 (lower middle class, supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional); C2 (skilled working class, skilled manual workers); D (working class, semi- and unskilled manual workers); E (state pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest-grade workers).
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Bondebjerg, I. (2020). Bridging Cultures: Transnational Cultural Encounters in the Reception of The Bridge. In: Waade, A., Redvall, E., Majbritt Jensen, P. (eds) Danish Television Drama. Palgrave European Film and Media Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40798-8_11
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