Band 83 Caroline Lusin · Ralf Haekel (eds.) Community, Seriality, and the State of the Nation British and Irish Television Series in the 21 st Century Community, Seriality, and the State of the Nation herausgegeben von Anja Bandau (Hannover), Justus Fetscher (Mannheim), Ralf Haekel (Gießen), Caroline Lusin (Mannheim), Cornelia Ruhe (Mannheim) Band 83 Caroline Lusin • Ralf Haekel (eds.) Community, Seriality, and the State of the Nation British and Irish Television Series in the 21 st Century © 2019 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Internet: www.narr.de E-Mail: info@narr.de CPI books GmbH, Leck ISSN 0175-3169 ISBN 978-3-8233-8249-2 Umschlagabbildung: Still from Detectorists by permission from DRG/ ChannelX. Signet: Motiv vom Hals der Qinochoe des ‚Mannheimer Malers‘ (Reissmuseum Mannheim, Mitte des 5. Jh. v. Chr.). Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. 7 9 I. 27 51 73 II. 99 119 143 Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Caroline Lusin and Ralf Haekel ‘This is England’: Community, the State of the Nation, and Seriality in Contemporary British and Irish Television Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Family, Morality, and Communal Cohesion Sina Schuhmaier Tommy Shelby’s Modern Family Business: The Ethics of Community in Peaky Blinders (2013-) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kerstin Frank ‘If we are not a community of neighbours, then we are nothing’: Small-Town Moralities, Social Change, and Social Cohesion in Broadchurch (2013-2017) Ralf Haekel Families in Gangland: Dysfunctional Community in Love/ Hate (2010-2014) Nostalgia and the Search for Community Wieland Schwanebeck A Field That Is Forever England: Nostalgic Revisionism in Detectorists (2014-2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lisa Schwander ‘He’s one of us’: Community, Imperialism, and the Narrative of Progress in Indian Summers (2015-2016) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lucia Krämer The Rural Community as National Microcosm: The Great War and the Birth of Modern Britain in The Village (2013-2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. 167 193 213 IV. 239 261 281 Crime and Social Decline in Urban Communities Caroline Lusin Drugs, Sheep, and Broken Lives: Dysfunctional Families, Violence, and the Subversion of Nostalgia in Happy Valley (2014-) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Luis Özer Marginalised Tower Blocks: Crime and Community on the Council Estate in Top Boy (2011-2013) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Annika Gonnermann ‘With great power comes’… Nothing: Superheroes, Teenage Delinquents, and Dysfunctional Community Structures in Misfits (2009-2013) . . . . . . . . . Vice and Virtue in Capitalist Communities Stefan Glomb ‘You wonderful priest’: Community as the Essence of Christianity in Broken (2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monika Pietrzak-Franger Black Holes, Zombie Capitalism, and Communities of Care: Luther (2010-) as a 21 st -Century Psychomachia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Laura Winter Tweet Others How You Wish to be Tweeted: Digital Technology and the Sense of Community in Black Mirror (2011-) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Contents Acknowledgements Publishing in general and collections of essays in particular depend on the col‐ laboration of a whole range of people. At this stage, we would therefore like to thank everyone involved in this project most heartily. We would like to thank our contributors for sharing their fascinating insights into the rich material of contemporary British and Irish television series. Thank you for your time and patience - it was a pleasure to work with you! Besides, we are very grateful to Gunter Narr Verlag and its publishing team for providing a platform for this book series. Annika Gonnermann has done us a great service through her un‐ tiring efforts to acquire rights of image use. A huge thank you goes to Harriet Mahier, who proofread the entire volume with great care as a native speaker and made valuable suggestions that went far beyond the scope of this task. And finally, we are deeply indebted to the team of the Chair of English Literature and Culture at the University of Mannheim, especially - in alphabetical order - to Hanna Hellmuth, Sina Schuhmaier, and Lisa Schwander, who were a tre‐ mendous help in all stages of the editing process: you’re simply the best! Caroline Lusin and Ralf Haekel ‘This is England’: Community, the State of the Nation, and Seriality in Contemporary British and Irish Television Series Caroline Lusin and Ralf Haekel Yeah, this is England, and this is England, and this is England. And for what? For what now? Ey, what for? (This Is England, 2006) The title of Shane Meadows’ award-winning film This Is England (2006) leaves no doubt about its subject: the “era-defining drama” (Harvey) portrays working-class life in the Midlands in a way that strives to convey a realistic idea of England in the 1980s. The film, along with its spin-offs This Is England ’86 (2010), This Is England ’88 (2011), and This Is England ’90 (2015), exemplifies key tendencies in recent British and Irish television series. Set in 1983, This Is England flaunts a montage of iconic news snippets in the opening credits that firmly situate its plot in the political, social, and cultural climate of the time. Apart from repeated shots of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the credits include footage of Sting in concert, the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di, BMX bikes, Rubik’s cube, political protest, violent riots, fascist parades, and gruesome scenes of the Falklands War. This socio-historical context is closely entwined with individual lives from the start, as the political climate obviously determines the youth of twelve-year-old protagonist Shaun (Thomas Turgoose): the opening shot shows a photo of his uniformed father, a victim of the Falklands War, and his radio alarm wakes him to a speech which Margaret Thatcher gave to Wembley Youth Rally (Thatcher). Held shortly before the 1983 general elec‐ tion, this speech encapsulates key points of Thatcher’s policies, whose reper‐ cussions still make themselves felt in the 21 st century. In describing Thatcherism as “a kind of trauma or ghostly presence that the nation has yet to work through” (Su 1095), John J. Su highlights how “contemporary British literature”, and, one might add, television, “is defined in terms of responses to a set of political, eco‐ 1 Raymond Williams likewise distinguishes between “the more direct, more total and therefore more significant relationships of community and the more formal, more ab‐ stract and more instrumental relationships of state, or of society in its modern sense” (76). nomic, and cultural forces associated with Margaret Thatcher” (1083). This Is England and the ensuing drama series thus investigate the origins of many of the issues contemporary British and Irish society are struggling with today. The Concept of Community In centring on a group of young skinheads, This Is England addresses questions of identity, belonging, and community that figure prominently in the majority of contemporary television programmes. As a sociological concept, community goes back to Ferdinand Tönnies’ distinction between ‘Gemeinschaft’ and ‘Ge‐ sellschaft’ - ‘community’ and ‘society’. In Tönnies’ influential study, which was first published in 1887, community appears as organic and associated with ‘real’ life, whereas society represents an artificial, mechanical construct (see 3). 1 For Tönnies, the term ‘community’ contrasts with society in designating a group of people whose togetherness is based on interaction and mutual esteem. This is perfectly in line with the representation of the skinheads in This Is England, who set themselves apart from the remainder of society as a group whose particular “style helped reinforce a shared, systematic subcultural identity” (Bergin). At the beginning of the film, the skinheads embody the generally positive view of community highlighted by Zygmunt Bauman: Community, we feel, is always a good thing. […] To start with, community is a ‘warm’ place, a cosy and comfortable place. It is like a roof under which we shelter in heavy rain, like a fireplace at which we warm our hands on a frosty day. Out there, in the street, all sorts of dangers lie in ambush […]. In here, in the community, we can relax - we are safe […]. In a community, we all understand each other well, we may trust what we hear, we are safe most of the time and hardly ever puzzled or taken aback. We are never strangers to each other. We may quarrel - but these are friendly quarrels […]. (1-2) If community in this sense provides a feeling of warmth, security, and belonging, This Is England foregrounds this notion when Shaun first meets the group of skinheads, led by genial Woody ( Joseph Gilgun). The inclusivity and West Indian roots of skinhead culture come to the fore in the fact that a Black British youth nicknamed ‘Milky’ (Andrew Shim) is also part of this group. After a violent struggle which Shaun, clearly an outsider, has to face at school, Woodie invites 10 Caroline Lusin and Ralf Haekel 2 Rosalía Baena agrees with Belén Vidal in generally noting “a growing fascination with certain historical junctions and with defining cultural breaks that provide meaningful narratives, moments in which the present imagines itself to have been born and history forever changed” (119). the boy to join the ‘warm circle’ of the skinheads. However, critics like Zygmunt Bauman and Gerard Delanty emphasise that this positive sense of community has fundamentally been connected with a sense of loss since the arrival of mod‐ ernity, “a sense of passing of an allegedly organic world” (Delanty 15). The con‐ cept of community basically serves the purpose of projecting a holistic notion of togetherness not touched by the characteristics of the modern age: contin‐ gency, differentiation, and specialisation. This may also be one of the reasons why, within the past twenty years, there has been an “upsurge of TV dramas that deal with periods in recent British history: the final years of the nineteenth century and the Edwardian era” (Baena 119). Series like Downton Abbey (2010-2015), Parade’s End (2012), and Poldark (2015-) either show communities which, though touched by modernisation, are still largely intact, or they inves‐ tigate into the historical moments in which the ‘warm place’ of community was perceived to be lost. 2 As Zygmunt Bauman pointedly illustrates, the positive view of community as a ‘warm place’ at any rate tends to conceal its origins in an uncompromising division of insiders and outsiders, which “is exhaustive as much as it is disjunc‐ tive” (12). This Is England, too, emphasises the fragility, if not illusion of com‐ munity as a haven of security by focusing on how the group of skinheads dis‐ integrates. The original film traces the historical split of skinhead culture, rather unpolitical at the onset, into the far left and the far right when the nationalist sympathies of ex-convict Combo (Stephen Graham) turn into outright racist aggression, and he brutally beats up Milky to within an inch of his life. The title of the film and the series is borrowed from Combo’s impassioned diatribe against immigration, in which he evokes the xenophobic clichés and anxieties exploited by the National Front: his assertive claim of “this is England” refers to a proud history of Empire blighted by immigration. When Combo thus adopts nationalist stereotypes, this represents not just “the hijacking of an optimistic, celebratory working-class culture - one that revels in Jamaican music and influences - by an angry, bitter reactionary movement that wants to blame ethnic minorities and immigrants for their problems” (Butler); Combo’s embracing of nationalism and xenophobia poignantly highlights more generally how “the ostensibly shared ‘communal’ identities are after-effects or by-products of forever unfin‐ ished (and all the more feverish and ferocious for that reason) boundary 11 Community, the State of the Nation, and Seriality drawing”, as Bauman (17) argues building on the ideas of Norwegian anthro‐ pologist Frederick Barth. Most, if not all contemporary television series tend to approach community through what it is lacking. As Zygmunt Bauman points out, “[w]hat that word evokes is everything we miss and we lack to be secure, confident and trusting” (3). Community certainly comes in different shapes in these series, be it “a par‐ ticular form of social organization based on small groups, such as neighbour‐ hoods, the small town, or a spatially bounded locality” (Delanty 2), or a culturally or politically defined group. As Gerard Delanty explains, a closer look reveals that the term community does in fact designate both an idea about belonging and a particular social phenomenon, such as expressions of longing for community, the search for meaning and solidarity, and collective identities. (3, em‐ phasis in original) In practically all cases, however, community appears fragile at best, which cor‐ responds to the sociological observation that the “loss of community and family solidarity is precisely the substance of the changes theorized by many contem‐ porary social theorists” (Charles 452). Even those series set in places that rep‐ resent the ideal type of community in being distinctive, small, and self-sufficient (see Bauman 12), such as The Street (2006-2009), The Village (2013), Broadchurch (2013-2017), or Shetland (2013-), reveal cracks in their social fabric that identify community in the sense of “a source of security and belonging” (Delanty 1) as a nearly unattainable ideal. ‘Condition of England’ Fiction and the State of the Nation While many series thus have a pronounced local focus - one could substantiate the list above with Top Boy (2011-), Peaky Blinders (2013-), and Happy Valley (2014-), which are set in London’s East End, in Birmingham, and in West York‐ shire’s Calder Valley respectively -, many recent productions transcend locality in a move in which “the local is made metonymic of the national” (Piper 180). Individual, local phenomena become emblematic of the state of the nation or ‘Condition of England’ as a whole. The working-class skinhead culture of This Is England in particular harks back to the Victorian genre of the ‘Condition of England’ novel with its roots in the 19 th century critique of industrialisation, since “the boots, collared shirt and suspenders the skinheads chose to wear were all deliberate imitations of the kinds of clothing items worn by members of the English working class in previous decades” (Bergin 244). Originating in the ‘factory novel’ or ‘industrial novel’ of the 1830s, this type of fiction was designed 12 Caroline Lusin and Ralf Haekel 3 Carlyle first employed the term in his essay “On Chartism” (1839). to make the population aware of the atrocious conditions to which the workers, women and children among them, were exposed in the factories: hunger, disease, poverty, abuse, and the strain of unconscionably long working hours. At the time, this so-called ‘factory question’ was held to be largely synonymous with the ‘Condition of England’ question. Frances Trollope’s The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy (1840), for instance, managed to bring “the plight of the factory worker to mainstream Victorian audiences” (see Simmons 341). Today, however, the genre of the Victorian Condition of England novel (or alternatively, industrial novel, social novel, or social problem novel) is mainly associated with aesthetically more advanced examples like Benjamin Disraeli’s Sibyl; or, the Two Nations (1845), Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley: A Tale (1849), Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1854), or Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton: A Tale of Man‐ chester Life (1848) and North and South (1855). The problems of Victorian Britain may seem a far cry from the state of the nation today; the gap between rich and poor, however, which Victorian historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle considered the hallmark of his age has hardly diminished. In Past and Present (1843), Carlyle, who coined the term ‘Condition of England’, 3 harshly condemns the underprivileged position of the working class, which he sees barred from the country’s riches. The hardship in Victorian society reached such an extent that Benjamin Disraeli famously described Eng‐ land in his novel Sybil as split into “two nations”, divided into a rich upper class and a destitute working class: Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws. (33) The divisions Disraeli depicts reach far beyond mere matters of money into the spheres of mentalities, everyday culture, and education, and they are by no means a thing of the past: in his observations on Rewriting the Nation (2011) in contemporary British drama, Alex Sierz included a chapter on the “Two Na‐ tions”, diagnosing a similar split between rich and poor, between different eth‐ nicities, and different communities. Indeed, contemporary approaches to the Condition of England strikingly re‐ semble those voiced in the essays of Thomas Carlyle. In “Signs of the Times” (1829), Carlyle sees his era defined by an all-embracing process of mechanisa‐ 13 Community, the State of the Nation, and Seriality tion. Not only has machinery substituted the human workforce; apart from physical instruments, Carlyle also detects the dehumanising spirit of machinery in the bureaucratic spirit of regulation, institutionalisation, and economisation. In his vision of the “Age of Machinery”, political, spiritual, and social values have fallen apart: “The King has virtually abdicated; the Church is a widow, without jointure; public principle is gone; private honesty is going; society, in short, is fast falling in pieces; and a time of unmixed evil is come on us.” (“Signs”, 33) It is certainly tempting to compare Carlyle’s view of his time to contemporary indictments of Thatcherism and the politics of austerity. As director Ken Loach maintains, “[t]he consequences of Thatcher and Blair have eroded the sense that we are responsible for each other, that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper” (qtd. in Hattenstone). Contemporary screen writers have found many ways of juxtaposing individual responsibility with the corrupted, corrupting, and some‐ times even dehumanising power of institutions. Perhaps most strikingly, Ken Loach’s film I, Daniel Blake (2016) attacks the devastating failure of social insti‐ tutions, and the jobcentre in particular, to take account of and remedy individual ill fortunes. In a similar manner, Broken (2017) reveals the hypocrisy of the church, Silk (2011-2014) pinpoints the absurdities of the legal system, and Line of Duty (2012-) explores corruption up to the highest levels of the police service. As productions like these go to prove, the extensive framework of serial narra‐ tion - a device which itself originated in the Victorian vogue for serialised fiction - offers an especially suited medium for depicting the state of the nation today in much detail and from different angles. Serial Narration in Contemporary British and Irish Film Since the turn of the 21 st century, the television series has replaced cinema as the paradigmatic filmic medium by developing a new and different form of nar‐ rative. Like few other genres, serial narration lends itself to exploring society in its different layers. The topic of community described thus far underscores how contemporary television not only focuses on contemporary society at large, but also, via the connection to the state of the nation, emphasises British and Irish culture and society. Although this seems to be quite obvious in a volume that exclusively investigates British and Irish television series, it is nevertheless a point worth mentioning, because the most important innovations within the genre in the past decades originated in the United States. The principal devel‐ opments in the theory of television series as well as seriality likewise concen‐ trate on US American artefacts (see e.g. Mittell, Complex TV). This emphasis on the cultural industry of the US is slightly misleading because, especially in recent 14 Caroline Lusin and Ralf Haekel years, British television has been a driving force regarding originality and scope, a development that also has been mirrored in academic studies (see Kamm/ Neumann). Despite a number of similarities between the American and the British and Irish market, there are also striking differences which need to be addressed, especially regarding the genre and the format of the television series. Whilst an American ‘season’ consists of sometimes 22 or more episodes, a British ‘series’ only has six or eight episodes, or even, as in the case of Sherlock (2010-), only three. One merely needs to compare the 22 to 26 episodes of each season of The Office (2005-2013) to the six episodes of each of the two British original series (2001-2003) to see that. Furthermore, there are divergences regarding the dura‐ tion of each episode: “Episodes of American series are particularly inflexible in terms of their length; they are generally broadcast in half-hour or one-hour instalments, five to fifteen minutes of which are taken up by commercials.” (All‐ rath/ Gymnich/ Surkamp 11) An episode of a British television series, however, may vary in length and is hardly ever interrupted by commercial breaks because the majority is produced by and first broadcast on BBC. The reasons for these differences are not arbitrary, but rooted in the history of British and American television. What is more, this historical difference has also shaped the develop‐ ment of television theory, as one of the landmarks in the field, Raymond Wil‐ liams’ Television of 1974, as John Caughie remarks, is informed by Williams’s first encounter with American television. At a time when British television was still shaped by the principles of public service, American tele‐ vision in 1974, increasingly shaped by commercial principles, represented a possible future. (50-1) Although this strict opposition is no longer absolutely valid today, i.e. in the age of Netflix, Hulu, and other online streaming services, it is worth looking at this history as regards the development of the television series, before we will focus on most recent developments in the field of seriality studies. Currently, it is the genre of the television series which is held in the highest esteem by critics and viewers alike; a few decades ago, however, critical focus concentrated almost exclusively on the single play (see Williams, Television, 51-58). During the so-called ‘golden age’ of British television, i.e. the 1960s and 1970s, television was arguably more shaped by the theatre than the film industry. Some of the best dramatic works were produced not for the playhouses but for television within formats such as the BBC’s Wednesday Play. Aesthetically, this implied that the single play was much closer to theatrical performances than to movies produced for the cinema, a fact also determined by technical and pro‐ 15 Community, the State of the Nation, and Seriality duction circumstances: “[T]he shot length of British television drama in the 1960s and 1970s was considerably longer than that of cinema”, and “pace and dynamism were created by camera movement rather than by cutting” (Bignell/ Lacey 5). This led to a form of realism situated between techniques used in the cinema and the experience of witnessing a performance in the theatre. As a result, film teams shooting for television and those shooting for the cinema were not identical, and neither were their techniques, skills, and methods. This strict binary opposition began to disappear with the digital revolution at the turn of the Millennium, as it allowed for cheaper forms of production and much lighter filming equipment. Even today, though, there is still a line drawn between the means of production, even if the tendency to produce high-quality and more expensive television series increasingly blurs the boundaries between crew and equipment used for feature films or for television production (see Murphy/ Carolan/ Flynn 64). This change set in around the turn of the Millennium with shows like The Sopranos (1999-2007), The Wire (2002-2008), or Breaking Bad (2008-2013) in the US, but soon the UK followed with programmes like Wire in the Blood (2002-2008), Spooks (2002-2011), or Downton Abbey (2010-2015). This goes hand in hand with an aesthetic change of television drama. As already mentioned, the television series has risen in esteem in recent years, and the aesthetically and narratologically most complex and achieved television shows today are arguably produced as series rather than as TV films or single plays. There are multiple reasons for this development, which set in roughly around 1990 with David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1990-1991; 2017) as one of the earliest and most significant examples. Recent research has tried to describe and analyse this phenomenon, highlighting a distinct aesthetics of seriality (see Kel‐ leter) and analysing the series as an open form as opposed to the closure char‐ acteristic of the single work. This process has been supported by the digitisation of television and especially the changes in viewer habits. Whilst viewers a few decades ago watched a programme at a given time during the week, digitisation, first with DVDs and more recently with media streaming services, has individ‐ ualised viewing habits extremely. Furthermore, a large scene of organised fol‐ lowers emerged on the Internet, ranging from fan sites to fan fiction. As a result, a television series in the digital world today can no longer be regarded as a passive artwork, but must rather be seen as one element of a network. The increasingly complex narratives of television series are closely connected to this network aesthetics. Recent theoretical investigations of the aesthetic cri‐ teria characteristic of this change have therefore not made use of traditional methods and theories stemming from the fields of film studies, semiotics, or drama studies to investigate this phenomenon, but very often turned to the 16 Caroline Lusin and Ralf Haekel 4 For a thorough analysis see Mittell, Complex TV. academic field of narratology (see Allrath/ Gymnich/ Surkamp; Mittell, “Narra‐ tive Complexity”). Jason Mittell, for instance, describes a number of distinctive characteristics in his formal and narratological analysis of what he terms “Com‐ plex TV”. He claims: In examining narrative complexity as a narrational mode I follow a paradigm of his‐ torical poetics that situates formal developments within specific historical contexts of production, circulation, and reception. (Mittell, “Narrative Complexity”, 30) In essence, his definition of the narrative complexity of television series is based on the collapse of the barrier between ‘series’, with recurring characters but where each episode finds closure, and ‘serials’, an ongoing, open, and potentially endless story (for the distinction see Williams 56-57; Allrath/ Gymnich/ Surkamp 5-10). Suggesting “a new paradigm of television storytelling” (Mittell, “Narrative Complexity”, 38-39), Mittell maintains that [a]t its most basic level, narrative complexity is a redefinition of episodic forms under the influence of serial narration - not necessarily a complete merger of episodic and serial forms but a shifting balance. Rejecting the need for plot closure within every episode that typifies conventional episodic form, narrative complexity foregrounds ongoing stories across a range of genres. (Mittell, “Narrative Complexity”, 32) 4 What distinguishes the most recent successful series in general is, furthermore, a return to a more authorial mode with a mastermind or showrunner who acts as the main writer, favouring the more recent American over the established European model of serial narration. Thus, the showrunner is more important than the director, which also explains the tendency to introduce narrative twists that at times come across as unforeseen and even shocking. In effect, sophisti‐ cated television series are, according to Mittell, increasingly metafictional in that they reflect on their own form and development as the programme pro‐ ceeds. The characteristic feature of selfor meta-reflexivity - i.e. “an intensive ten‐ dency toward self-observation in serial narratives” (Kelleter 18, emphasis in original) - links Mittell’s investigation of American television series to a more general theory of seriality. Seriality is opposed to, and contests, an aesthetics which considers art in terms of finite structures - in a word: as works. Set against this traditional and still standard way of looking at culture and art as distinct and complete structures, seriality highlights their open and performative char‐ acter, which also includes audience interference in the creative process: “[S]erial 17 Community, the State of the Nation, and Seriality aesthetics does not unfold in a clear-cut, chronological succession of finished composition and responsive actualization. Rather, both activities are intertwined in a feedback loop.” (Kelleter 13) Regarded from this perspective, television series are no longer passive ‘works’, but become part of a dynamic network of cultural practices. In a more general vein, i.e. not restricted to the genre of contemporary tele‐ vision series, seriality can thus be described as a key attribute of modern art’s focus on innovation and originality and even of capitalist modernity at large, as Frank Kelleter maintains: It is not a coincidence, then, that starting in the mid-nineteenth century, seriality has become the distinguishing mark of virtually all forms of capitalist entertainment. Se‐ rial storytelling seems to be a central praxeological hub in the shaky yet traditionally potent alliance between market modernity and the idea of popular self-rule. This is so because serial media, interactive from the start, embody what may well be the structural utopia of the capitalist production of culture at large: the desire to practice reproduction as innovation, and innovation as reproduction. (Kelleter 30, emphasis in original) According to Kelleter, then, the concept of seriality illumines key elements not only of popular culture but also of modern society and modern, i.e. post-Ro‐ mantic, art. This general observation leads us back to the topic of this volume: community in British television series. Seriality can be described as an apt form of discourse that highlights the openness and ritual nature of modern society, which is characterised by a structural contingency. The genre of the television series is therefore an ideal object to investigate the subject matter of community, which, on the story level, looks at modernity from a similar angle. Community often suggests a nostalgic and conservative view of society, which, in turn, em‐ phasises the fact that this notion of togetherness is an unreachable ideal and always already a thing of the past. Thus, the British and Irish television series investigated in this volume shed a light on contemporary society in flux - and they reflect this in their very form. That being said, there is of course a wide variety of serial formats and genres. Whilst some series like Top Boy or Happy Valley are openly critical of society, this criticism is merely a side effect in shows like Luther (2010-) or Love/ Hate (2010-2015). Despite their individual differences, all of them are characterised by narrative complexity and astonishing aesthetic quality. Many of them are revisionary; Broadchurch reinvents the traditional crime show, Peaky Blinders and The Village revise the genre of the period drama, Misfits (2009-2013) ques‐ tions the fundamental traits of the superhero genre, and the anthology format 18 Caroline Lusin and Ralf Haekel of The Street (2006-2009), Accused (2010-2012), and Black Mirror (2011-) under‐ mines the serial format by consisting of a series of television plays connected by a unifying topic. Aim and Structure of the Volume This volume proposes to investigate serial narration as an exemplary means of cultural, social, and national self-discovery and self-assurance. Focussing on questions of genre, narrative form, and serialisation, the individual essays ex‐ amine the variety of ways in which British and Irish television series broadcast after 2010 negotiate the concept of community as a key component of the state of the nation. The first part of the volume, “Family, Morality, and Communal Cohesion”, centres on the concept of the family, which functions in many series as a micro-unit of society giving revealing insights into contemporary conceptions of community. In her essay on the Birmingham-based Peaky Blinders (2013-), Sina Schuhmaier examines the position of community within the tension be‐ tween tradition and modernity that defines the 1920s setting of the series, ar‐ guing that Peaky Blinders pictures its protagonists, the Shelby family, as an open, non-normative community. The series thus answers the sense of upheaval of the interwar period with a caution against potentially totalitarian forms of com‐ munity - a lesson of renewed relevance today. Moving to a more contemporary setting, Kerstin Frank then shows how the crime drama Broadchurch (2013-2017) creates a traditional small-town community in the sense of Ferdinand Tönnies’ definition of the term, and how this community is threatened: by the crimes and the revelations during the police investigations, but also by more profound social changes that challenge the very core of the community’s values. In the final essay of this part, Ralf Haekel shifts the focus to Ireland by investigating the gritty crime drama Love/ Hate (2010-2014), which is set in gangland, i.e. Dublin’s criminal underworld. The massively successful programme’s five series depict Ireland as a society in which traditional forms of community, most prominently the family, are severely under threat. Focusing on the lives of petty criminals dragged down into the world of corruption and drugs, Love/ Hate, which is very much influenced by US American films and crime series like The Wire (2002-2008), sheds a bleak light on society in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. The second part, “Nostalgia and the Search for Community”, explores how a number of series - affirmatively or subversively - negotiate a nostalgic sense of Britain’s historical past as a repository of a more coherent sense of com‐ munity. The comedy programme Detectorists (2014-2017) presents the prosaic 19 Community, the State of the Nation, and Seriality life and conversations of a group of men as well as their mundane hobby, metal detecting, which functions in this series as a very literal means of searching the past. Focusing on the social underdog’s small-scale perspective on history, Wie‐ land Schwanebeck illustrates how the series presents a nostalgic and quite con‐ servative portrayal of community in England at the time of Brexit. The following essays then examine two period dramas from a revisionary point of view centred on the notion of plurality. Lisa Schwander explores the tensions that govern the narrative of community in Indian Summers (2015-2016), which is set in India in the last decades of the British Raj: while the series’ approach to colonial society demonstrates its desire to distance itself from community concepts based on essentialised notions of belonging, Schwander shows how by exoticising Indians as England’s inferior ‘other’, the series reinscribes the very notions of belonging and community it attempts to criticise. The essay contextualises this tension with fundamental shortcomings of a contemporary society that imagines itself as borderless and pluralistic. Set even further back in the past at the time of World War I, The Village (2013-2014) offers a revisionary look at heritage tele‐ vision and period drama. Focusing on the form and function of cultural memory in a rural setting, Lucia Krämer investigates how the series presents community from the point of view of peasants and the working class, which differs deci‐ sively from the upper-class perspective dominating many programmes that portray the same period, such as Downton Abbey. In her argument, Krämer con‐ centrates on the role of World War I as a catalyst in the transition of a modern form of civic community centring on individual autonomy and plurality. The third part of the volume draws attention to how a variety of series portray “Crime and Social Decline in Urban Communities” to pinpoint crucial features of contemporary society. Set against the backdrop of Britain’s industrialised North, the crime drama Happy Valley (2014-) completely subverts nostalgic no‐ tions of pastoral ‘Englishness’ by showcasing a small-town community riddled by dysfunctional families, exploitation, and patriarchal violence. In her reading of the series, Caroline Lusin elaborates on how Happy Valley uses crime to dis‐ play the break-up of traditional social structures and units, such as the family and the community, but ultimately celebrates the value of individual moral agency. The next two essays then shift the attention from the provinces to the metropolis. Starting from the premise that the council estate holds a stigmatised and marginalised position in the popular British imagination, Luis Özer dis‐ cusses the filmic depiction of a London tower block community in Top Boy (2011-2013). As Özer argues, this Channel 4 drama oscillates between clichéd images of council housing reminiscent of the black urban crime genre and a more nuanced, social realist portrayal of community attachment and lived re‐ 20 Caroline Lusin and Ralf Haekel alities on the estate. The concluding essay of this section opens up the question of genre by analysing the connection between dysfunctional community struc‐ tures in contemporary Britain and the figure of the ‘deviant’ teenager in Misfits (2009-2013). In this essay, Annika Gonnermann maintains that by caricaturing and subverting the conventions of the well-established superhero-genre, the series casts unsocial teenagers as unlikely superheroes: in its first two series, the protagonists fight villainous representatives of the system, such as ne‐ glecting parents, abusive social workers, or fraudulent priests, allowing the au‐ dience to explore the implications of community formation. The fourth part, finally, combines three series that address different forms of “Vice and Virtue in Capitalist Communities”. In his essay on Broken (2017), Stefan Glomb analyses this series with a view to establishing links between its criticism of contemporary British society and Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The targets of this critique are institutions and money, both of which are held responsible for the ever-widening gulf between system and life-world, as well as the increasing erosion of communal ties. In this reading, Broken performs an immanent critique of neoliberal capitalism, and, avoiding the extremes of meth‐ odological individualism and methodological holism, points the way towards a (partial) re-establishment of community. Focusing on the medieval concept of ‘psychomachia’, Monika Pietrzak-Franger then investigates the crisis of com‐ munity as characteristic of contemporary society in the detective series Luther (2010-). Crime in this series serves a mirror to a largely dysfunctional society in which community in the sense of a healthy ‘warm place’ is largely missing. In this setting, the detective is a highly ambiguous figure, brilliant but flawed, struggling for some sense of community within a society characterised by ne‐ oliberal capitalism. Finally, the perspective shifts to the digital age with Laura Winter’s essay on the episodes “The National Anthem”, “White Bear”, and “Nosedive” of the media-critical anthology Black Mirror (2011-), in which om‐ nipresent technology plays a similar role in terms of power relations as the state or the tyrannical corporation in the genre of dystopia. In revealing how a sense of community is only created through digital spectacle, and how individuals are addicted to online approval in an increasingly anonymous society, all three ep‐ isodes propose that community in the digital age exists increasingly only as a media phenomenon. All these recent productions are not just an excellent case in point for the popularity of the serial format; they also suggest that British and Irish television series are well established by now as a privileged medium for reflecting critically on issues related to community and the state of the nation. No doubt they will carry on with this task in the future. What with Brexit looming on the horizon, 21 Community, the State of the Nation, and Seriality and nationalisms on the rise all over Europe, there will surely be no shortage of topics. Bibliography Primary Sources This Is England. Written by Shane Meadows. Directed by Shane Meadows. Warp Films, FilmFour Productions, 2006. Secondary Sources Allrath, Gaby, Marion Gymnich, and Carola Surkamp. “Introduction: Towards a Narra‐ tology of TV Series”. Narrative Strategies in Television Series. Eds. Gaby Allrath and Marion Gymnich. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 1-43. Baena, Rosalía. “Performing Englishness: Postnational Nostalgia in Lark Rise to Candle‐ ford and Parade’s End.” Emotions in Contemporary TV Series. Ed. Alberto N. García. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 118-33. Bauman, Zygmunt. Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity, 2001. Bignell, Jonathan and Stephen Lacey. “Introduction.” British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future. 2 nd edition. Eds. Jonathan Bignell and Stephen Lacey. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 1-15. Butler, Mark. “This Is England remains a powerful indictment of racism 10 years on.” iNews: The Essential Daily Briefing. 15 August 2017. https: / / inews.co.uk/ culture/ film/ this-is-england-10-years-indictment-of-racism/ . Accessed on 24 September 2018. Carlyle, Thomas. “Signs of the Times.” The Spirit of the Age: Victorian Essays. Ed. Gertrud Himmelfarb. New Haven, London: Yale UP, 2007. 1-49. —. Past and Present. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897 [1843]. Caughie, John. “Television and Serial Fictions.” The Cambridge Companion to Popular Fiction. Eds. David Glover and Scott McCracken. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012. 50-67. Delanty, Gerard. Community. London, New York: Routledge, 2003. Disraeli, Benjamin. “Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), Sybil (1845).” Victorian Literature: An Anthology. Eds. John Shea and William Whitla. Malden, MA, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. 32-3. Harvey, Chris. “This Is England: Shane Meadows on his era-defining drama.” The Tele‐ graph. 13 September 2015. www.telegraph.co.uk/ culture/ tvandradio/ 11859462/ This-Is -England-Shane-Meadows-on-his-era-defining-drama.html. Accessed on 24 Sep‐ tember 2018. 22 Caroline Lusin and Ralf Haekel Hattenstone, Simon. “Ken Loach: ‘If you’re not angry, what kind of person are you? ’” The Guardian. 15 October 2016. www.theguardian.com/ film/ 2016/ oct/ 15/ ken-laochfilm-i-daniel-blake-kes-cathy-come-home-interview-simon-hattenstone. Accessed on 6 October 2018. Kamm, Jürgen and Birgit Neumann (eds.). British TV Comedies: Cultural Concepts, Con‐ texts and Controversies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Kelleter, Frank. “Five Ways of Looking at Popular Seriality.” Media of Serial Narrative. Ed. Frank Kelleter. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2017. 7-34. Mittell, Jason. “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television.” The Velvet Light Trap 58 (2006): 29-40. —. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York UP, 2015. Murphy, Conor, Stuart Carolan, and James Flynn. “Interview with the Creators of Love/ Hate.” Studies in Arts and Humanities 2.2 (2016): 62-70. Piper, Helen. “Broadcast Drama and the Problem of Television Aesthetics: Home, Nation, Universe.” Screen 57.2 (2016): 163-83. Sierz, Aleks. Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today. London: Methuen, 2011. Simmons, James Richard, Jr. “Industrial and ‘Condition of England’ Novels.” A Companion to the Victorian Novel. Eds. Patrick Brantlinger and William B. Thesing. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002. 336-52. Su, John J. “Beauty and the Beastly Prime Minister.” ELH: English Literary History 81.3 (2014): 1083-110. Thatcher, Margaret. “Speech to Wembley Youth Rally, 5 June 1983.” Margaret Thatcher Foundation. www.margaretthatcher.org/ document/ 105381. Accessed on 8 October 2018. Tönnies, Ferdinand. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft: Abhandlung des Communismus und des Socialismus als empirischer Culturformen. Leipzig: Fues, 1887. Vidal, Belén. Heritage Film: Nation, Genre and Representation. London, New York: Wall‐ flower, 2012. Williams, Raymond. Keywords. New York: Oxford UP, 1983. —. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London, New York: Routledge, 2003. 23 Community, the State of the Nation, and Seriality I. Family, Morality, and Communal Cohesion Tommy Shelby’s Modern Family Business: The Ethics of Community in Peaky Blinders (2013-) Sina Schuhmaier 1. Introduction Representations of past ages in contemporary television serve more than the historian’s interests. In fact, these re-imaginings of the past shed light on the present out of which they emerge, negotiating today’s concerns against the backdrop of a bygone period. In the course of, as yet, four series, covering the years 1919 to 1926, BBC Two’s Peaky Blinders (2013-) traces the rise of Birming‐ ham’s fictitious Shelby family in a decade that has recently sparked renewed interest: the 1920s. Notable examples on the television screen include HBO’s Boardwalk Empire (2010-2014), which invites further comparison with Peaky Blinders with regard to genre and style, and Sky 1’s Weimar Republic crime drama Babylon Berlin (2017-), whose director Tom Tykwer recounts in an in‐ terview that “whilst working on [the show], the present, so to speak, met us”, an experience he describes as “disquieting”. Tykwer draws parallels to contem‐ porary “England, with Brexit or, more generally, the whole European sentiment, which has changed in the last five years”, and diagnoses “democracy again at stake - all of which is a topic of the series” (Metropolis: Danzig, my translation). More than any other decade, the 1920s chart a tension between traditionally entrenched and modern ways of life, with the First World War - as symbol and reality - constituting the most violent caesura between these forms of life. Its aftermath is elaborately staged in Peaky Blinders. Created and written by Steven Knight, the show centres around the emerging criminal empire of the Shelby family, betting shop owners by trade, and the exploits of their eponymous Peaky Blinders gang, led by the brothers Thomas (Cillian Murphy), Arthur (Paul Anderson), and John ( Joe Cole). The storyline sets in shortly after the brothers have returned from the traumatising and trans‐ formative experience of the war, whose challenge to the previous family dy‐ namics is a major thematic strand in Peaky Blinders. Not only does the Great War in Peaky Blinders issue a warning against present-day belligerence, it more 1 In the following, references to Peaky Blinders will be given without repeating the title. broadly symbolises the mechanisation and alienation definitive of the rise of industrial labour and capitalist production in the modern age. The transition from ways of life retrospectively idealised as organically rooted to the indus‐ trialised routines of modernity is epitomised by the head of the Shelby family, Thomas. We encounter him in 1919 as an unflinching, ruthless businessman, whilst before the war, “[h]e laughed, a lot” and “wanted to work with horses” (Peaky Blinders, S1/ E6, 00: 28). 1 It is crucial that Peaky Blinders is set at this cross‐ roads between old and new, tradition and modernity, for what allows the show to reflect contemporary concerns is a shared sense of crisis: “Then as now, people are afraid of the new”, the curator of a recent exhibition on “Splendor and Misery in the Weimar Republic” at Frankfurt’s Schirn Gallery has aptly reasoned (Pfeiffer, Metropolis: Danzig, my translation). Yielding such fear “of the new” as a result of profound disorientation, the firm grip of a dynamics of acceleration that seized the whole of modernity (see Rosa 274) has only intensified under the impact of globalisation in the late-modern 21 st century. Almost one hundred years after the period covered by Peaky Blinders, propa‐ gated solutions to such fundamental uncertainties remain alarmingly similar. According to this narrative, the ills of modernity have conditioned the corrosion of communal bonds, the only remedy to those ills being the recovery of com‐ munities (see Delanty 10-1; Gertenbach et al. 54-6), which then bestow meaning and orientation onto modern existence. The basic misapprehension of such an over-simplification is not that modernity drastically changed the structure and organisation of social formations. As sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has pointed out, the expansion of capitalist manufacturing conditions in the wake of the Industrial Revolution has indeed displaced traditional forms of community, tearing apart pre-industrial, domestic work structures into disciplinable “human units” (27). The “promise of autonomy and freedom” which Hartmut Rosa has located at the “core and centre” of the “project of modernity” (272, my transla‐ tion) entails the atomisation of individuals who abandon traditionally institu‐ tionalised communities on their quest for personal fulfilment. Community, however, is not naturally inherent in traditional or pre-modern forms of life and absent in modernity (see Delanty 30). Such a demonising view of modernity, tied to a conservative insistence on the preservation of tradition, erects an unattain‐ able ideal of community, which endows community with a highly normative status (see ibid. 18-9). In his theory of The Inoperative Community, originally published in 1986, Jean-Luc Nancy emphasises that “we should become suspi‐ cious of the retrospective consciousness of the lost community and its identity”, 28 Sina Schuhmaier given that “the thought of community or the desire for it might well be nothing other than a belated invention that tried to respond to the harsh reality of modern experience” (10). Nancy’s deconstructionist approach thus reconcep‐ tualises community as follows: Society was not built on the ruins of a community. It emerged from the disappearance or the conservation of something - tribes or empires - perhaps just as unrelated to what we call ‘community’ as to what we call ‘society.’ So that community, far from being what society has crushed or lost, is what happens to us - question, waiting, event, imperative - in the wake of society. (11, emphasis in original) The major fallacy of a ‘loss of community’-narrative (Delanty 15; Gertenbach et al. 54), then, resides in the notion that community can be regained, since such community is an idealised projection of a totalitarian claim. “It has”, writes so‐ ciologist Gerard Delanty, “been the source of some of the greatest political dan‐ gers, giving rise to the myth of the total community that has fuelled fundamen‐ talist, nationalist, and fascist ideologies in the twentieth century” (11). Community, according to Nancy, cannot be regenerated; it occurs. And yet, the promise of community is most enticing in times of crisis (see Delanty 29; Gertenbach et al. 35, 54). The historical setting of Peaky Blinders does not incidentally coincide with a European-wide rise of fascism. 1919 alone was felt to be “a pivotal year for the country as a whole. […] [T]here were genuine fears of a Bolshevik-style revolution in the UK […] as well as the rise of the suffragette movement and the situation in Ireland” (Stubbs). This histor‐ ical moment, as Tom Tykwer has noted, is not dissimilar to ours. The appeal of the resurging nationalisms of today lies precisely in the attraction of the nation as a community that fosters stability and belonging. A concept of community so redemptive is inevitably bound by normative rigidity, that of nationalism steering towards homogeneity and exclusion. Peaky Blinders prominently por‐ trays two groups whose promise of salvation takes recourse to such a concept of community (see Delanty 18-20) despite their axiomatically diverging politics: the IRA and the Communist movement. The Peaky Blinders themselves, a crim‐ inal organisation, are exempt from such normativity. In particular, the Shelbys defy idealised conceptions of the family, which has undergone normative reg‐ ulation more than any other form of community. Investigating the fundamen‐ tally modern experience of a growing tension between old and new, tradition and modernity, Peaky Blinders challenges the narrative of a ‘loss of community’ by dismantling the concept of a normative community. It thus unmasks ‘com‐ munity’, as soon as yearned for, as a modern construct (see Gertenbach et al. 38), which only becomes what it is when it appears to be gone. Finally, when 29 Peaky Blinders (2013-) 2 Such as television programmes otherwise comparable to Peaky Blinders: ITV’s White‐ chapel (2009-2013) or BBC One’s Ripper Street (2012-2016) and Luther (2010-). 3 The Peaky Blinders’ effective protection services for Billy Kimber have earned them the license as an agreed upon reward. the family is read as a metaphor for the nation, the Shelby family represents a nation whose community is conceived non-normatively. 2. Revising History: The Setting and Genre of Peaky Blinders With Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ title track “Red Right Hand” setting in, Peaky Blinders’ very first episode introduces Thomas Shelby on horseback, over‐ looking a Molochian urban environment of smoking chimneys, bursting flames and fires, clanking metal, ant-like workers covered in sweat and dirt, disabled veteran beggars, prostitution, and gambling (00: 02-3). A caption reveals: this is Birmingham in 1919, at that time “the biggest industrial city in the world” (Stubbs). Its setting and depiction of industrial working conditions locate Peaky Blinders within a primarily literary tradition of investigating the Condition of England, inviting comparison with industrial novels such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (1848) or Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1854), both, notably, not set in the perennial centre of attention London, 2 but in the industrial North of England. Peaky Blinders’ localism, devoted to a city that “has always been considered deeply unfashionable when it comes to set‐ tings for TV drama” (Stubbs) and has hence been “almost invisible” on television screens, as writer Steven Knight put it (qtd. in ibid.), has earned the series a loyal fan-base in Birmingham and the Midlands, “with [first series] audiences in this region almost trebling the national average” (Nagra). The show is predominantly set in Small Heath, a working class district controlled by the Peaky Blinders gang. Their criminal activities, enforced, if need be, by means of facial mutila‐ tions inflicted by razor blades sewn into their trademark peaked caps, mostly serve to facilitate the Shelbys’ business undertakings, which soon expand from the family’s race betting shop and bookmaker protection services. Series one witnesses the foundation of Shelby Brothers Ltd., later the Shelby Company Ltd., which comprises a growing division of legitimate dealings, such as a (dubiously acquired) 3 legal betting licence and thereby legal racetrack pitch (S1/ E4, 00: 28). Peaky Blinders thus revises history with a distinctive focus on that which has long been under-represented on British television: the working class milieu, Birmingham, and the gangster. While the show shares some concerns with the Condition of England genre, in particular its attempt to come to terms with the nature of community in 1920s’ 30 Sina Schuhmaier 4 For instance, the fight between the Shelby and Lee brothers in series one (E2, 00: 03). 5 As does Peaky Blinders, as I have argued in the introduction (see Shuster 6). as much as today’s Britain, Peaky Blinders conspicuously lacks the social realism that is normally a hallmark of the genre. Worldwide, the show has been met with critical acclaim (see Long 166), and after it won two BAFTA Television Craft awards in 2014, it was nominated for a BAFTA award as ‘Best Drama Series’ in 2015 (see IMDb), but more remarkable is the show’s “pop culture im‐ pact […] à la shows like ‘Mad Men’” (Egner). Similar to Mad Men (2007-2015), Peaky Blinders owes this cult status to the aesthetic appeal of its mise-en-scène, as evidenced by the categories for which it was awarded a BAFTA Television Craft award: ‘Director - Fiction’ and ‘Photography and Lighting’ (see IMDb). The series’ iconic opening sequence, discussed above, establishes the stylistic tone of the show accordingly. Although displaying hard physical labour, dirt and poverty, the images evince a cinematic devotion to aesthetics that manifests itself in an eye for composition and elaborate camera work. The ashes that pol‐ lute Birmingham’s streets fall white and soft like snow, and the noises of the city blend with the extradiegetic title track which further frames the scene. “Red Right Hand” is only the most notorious track on Peaky Blinders’ generally dis‐ tinctive score characterised by an exceptional stylistic consistency and fusion with the diegetic world of Peaky Blinders (see Shine 53-4). Peaky Blinders’ rather frequent, close-up depictions of violence are similarly aestheticised, often dubbed by heavily stylised music and white noise and screened in slow-mo‐ tion. 4 It is in this vein that Peaky Blinders has been accredited with a seal of quality (see Long 166-7) and classified as another instance of this current ‘golden age’ of television (see Shine 48). As so many other contemporary television series, it thus follows in the footsteps of Twin Peaks (1990-1991 and 2017) and The Sopranos (1999-2007), shows usually quoted as having initiated the “com[ing] of age” of television (Shuster 1-2). Martin Shuster has usefully clas‐ sified these series as the distinctively novel genre or mode (see 170) of ‘new television’ (see 5-6), which comprises a wide range of television styles and genres that exemplify this qualitative turn and, moreover, “exhibit a contem‐ porary world 5 as entirely emptied of normative authority” (6). That Shuster explicitly denominates Peaky Blinders as ‘new television’ (see 6), whilst otherwise focusing on US-American television, is no surprise given that the genre Peaky Blinders operates in is a classically American one. The gangster is an essentially American creation, argues Robert Warshow in his seminal 1948 essay on Hollywood gangster films, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero”. Steven Knight, too, has observed how “[u]nlike the US, where that thing is mythologized and be‐ 31 Peaky Blinders (2013-) comes part of the culture, in England, it gets buried” (qtd. in Landau 3). “[T]he gangster speaks for us, expressing that part of the American psyche which re‐ jects the qualities and demands of modern life, which rejects ‘Americanism’ it‐ self”, Warshow contends (130). As such, the gangster might not so much be an American phenomenon as rather a response to a typically US-American modern capitalism. Warshow further argues that “[t]he gangster is a man of the city” that is at the same time the reality of his physical surroundings and a metaphor, “not the real city, but that dangerous and sad city of the imagination which is so much more important, which is the modern world” (131, my emphasis). The gangster movie is usually set in a working-class environment, negotiating the dashed hopes and dreams caused by a (US-American) promise of the individual success of those marginalised by society on the grounds of class and ethnicity (see Munby 3-5). The same applies to Peaky Blinders, whose ganglands are populated by ‘Gyp‐ sies’, Italians, and Jews. Ambitious Thomas similarly has to “f[i]nd out […] that no amount of money allows [him] to pass through the steel sheets that separate class from class” (S4/ E5, 00: 49). Knight thus explains the absence of the gangster on British screens, his being a “working-class history”. He reasons: “[T]he idea that there was a functioning, working class community of people who were ar‐ rogant, in control, amused, funny, in power, it doesn’t compute with the English view of history [...].” (qtd. in Landau 4) Paul Long accordingly finds that “[t]he urban milieu [Peaky Blinders] references is one which is largely absent from dra‐ matic representation and rarely licensed for imaginative exploration in British television” (166). This distinguishes the series from other British historical period dramas such as Downton Abbey (2010-2015), towards which Peaky Blinders assumes an almost antithetical stance, albeit covering a similar time period. While the bright, neat diegetic world of Downton Abbey “celebrat[es] a hierarchical social structure” (Cooke 218) in a nostalgic longing for ‘times more simple’ than that of the 21 st century, Peaky Blinders tackles the absence of authoritative structures, a “nor‐ mative breakdown” (Shuster 6) as a hallmark of 1919’s as much as today’s (late-) modernity. The world of Peaky Blinders is exemplary of this breakdown, as will be further illustrated below. But there is one exception to this pattern of “nor‐ mative emptiness” (ibid. 7). “[T]he institution of the family consistently appears exempt from this predicament and such a portrayal”, so Shuster’s central thesis pertaining to ‘new television’ as a whole (6). Crucially, as in Weeds (2005-2012), discussed by Shuster in more detail, ‘new television’ depicts the family “without any pretense [sic! ] of ideality: the family structure is not perfect […], and it does not guarantee a world, an alternative to the desert that is modernity” (169). It is thus community that ‘new television’ formulates as a reply to modernity - but 32 Sina Schuhmaier 6 Both The Sopranos and Ray Donovan furthermore probe the conventions of the gangster genre, and Peaky Blinders and Ray Donovan are akin in several respects: negotiating the paradigm of the family (however - and precisely because it is - dysfunctional) against the backdrop of a normative vacuum, the two series feature the stock characters of the unreliable Irish father and the child-molesting priest whilst also employing the boxing ring as a metaphor for family conflicts. 7 All of which Shuster cites as examples of ‘new television’. He does not include British shows except for Peaky Blinders, but I would argue that Luther, for instance, classifies similarly. not as a solution. Peaky Blinders accordingly fashions the family as a ‘last resort’, and at the same time not as a resort at all, rejecting the normativity entailed by the concept of community and, in particular, by that of the family. 3. “What Family? ” Family as Business and Business as Family The Shelby family bears considerable resemblance to Shuster’s delineation of the family “without any pretense [sic! ] of ideality”. The family under attack - often by internal forces - is a major theme of numerous contemporary television series, among them shows that Peaky Blinders is much more closely related to than Downton Abbey: The Sopranos, Ray Donovan (2013-), 6 or The Americans (2013-). 7 Precisely because it is constantly on the brink of falling apart, however, the family proves to be the last remaining benchmark in a world void of guid‐ ance. The Shelby family appears permanently bound to disintegrate. Yet, its instability does not constitute a symptom of the culturally pessimistic diagnosis which identifies modernity as an ailment that has eradicated tradition and thereby induced a loss of community. Quite the opposite, the Shelby family’s unsteadiness testifies to the lasting significance of the community of the family, regardless of its particular constitution. Peaky Blinders thus paints a nuanced picture of the status quo of community under the impact of modernity. This becomes evident when considering what exactly engenders the Shelby family’s disintegration. At first glance, it appears plausible to assume that tendencies towards indi‐ vidualisation, as pursued by the main characters, should exert a disruptive effect on the cohesive ties between family members. Underlying this inference is, however, the conservative misconception of a pristine and hence intact family structure assaulted by the processes of modern emancipation which Delanty has identified as “a narrow evolutionary view of modernity replacing tradition and with it community”. “This view”, Delanty argues, “fail[s] to appreciate how tra‐ dition is produced by modernity, and that much of our view of tradition is a product of modernity” (34). The Shelby family does not comply with the de‐ 33 Peaky Blinders (2013-) mands of tradition from the outset. Decisions are made according to democrat‐ ically held family votes. In lieu of a patriarch, Thomas, the second-born son, operates as the head of the family and business, or rather, the family business. His closest ally and harshest critic is his aunt, self-determined and outspoken matriarchal company treasurer Polly (Helen McCrory), on whose views and demeanour the First World War has left an imprint as formative as Thomas’, Arthur’s, and John’s war experiences. Not only does Polly “run[] the business of the heart in this family” (S1/ E6, 00: 29), she repeatedly reminds the male Shelbys that their “whole bloody enterprise was women’s business while you boys were away at war” (S1/ E1, 00: 17). Her status as equal to, or, rather, domi‐ nating the family’s men finds expression in her work clothing, black, white, and pinstriped tailor-made woman’s suits, often accompanied by collars or scarves that resemble ties in series one, and short hair, ties, and a weapon holster in series four. The tension between old and new negotiated in Peaky Blinders manifests itself most visibly in the conflict between male dominance and female empowerment. Polly’s exemplification of the modern, emancipated woman clashes drastically with Tommy’s leadership of the family and business. Countering Thomas’ somewhat opportunistic declaration that “[t]his company is a modern enterprise and believes in equal rights for women” (S2/ E1, 00: 23), Polly clarifies that “when it comes to it, you don’t listen to a word we say” (00: 28). Her struggle is drama‐ tised in the shift from series one’s preoccupation with male authority and vio‐ lence, featuring a soundtrack comprised of male artists such as Nick Cave, to series two’s focus on female empowerment, accompanied by a score made up most notably of PJ (for Polly Jean) Harvey tracks. This shift is anticipated in the last episode of the first series when the Shelby sister Ada (Sophie Rundle), “wearing black in preparation”, ends a foreseeably bloody confrontation be‐ tween the Peaky Blinders and a rivalling gang by intruding their Western-esque standoff, pushing her way through the belligerent men to occupy the “no man’s land” with her baby in a pushchair (00: 38). It is then unequivocally established by the first scene of series two in 1921’s Birmingham, when two female figures dressed in mourning, later revealed to be IRA-fighters, blow up the Garrison pub by means of explosives deposited in prams (00: 01-2). Series three witnesses the Shelby women joining a city-wide strike of the female factory workers, fo‐ mented by the union convenor Jessie Eden, and, finally, a powerful shot of these women walking united into battle towards the camera previously reserved for similar male formations (see fig. 1). This staging of women’s rights and female revolt with historical reference to Britain’s suffragette movement of the late 34 Sina Schuhmaier 8 This changes in series three when she joins Shelby Company Ltd. 19 th and early 20 th centuries once again situates Peaky Blinders at a distinctively modern point in time. Fig. 1a (on the left): the Peaky Blinders ‘band of brothers’ (from left to right: Curly, John, Thomas, unknown, Arthur, Jeremiah) going into battle against Billy Kimber’s army, ac‐ companied by a rock piece from the Peaky Blinders score produced by Mearl (see Shine 50) (S1/ E6, 00: 35). Fig. 1b (on the right): the Shelby women (from left to right: Linda, Esme, Lizzie, Polly), accompanied by PJ Harvey’s “Meet Ze Monsta” (S2/ E4, 00: 13). Other family members, such as Ada, who leaves Birmingham and describes herself as “not a Shelby anymore” in series two 8 (E1, 00: 04), or Arthur, who seeks redemption in religion guided by his wife Linda, similarly insist on their personal autonomy liberated from obligations to the family. How, then, does the modern individual’s striving for self-fulfilment affect community, that is, the family, in Peaky Blinders? In order to answer this question, I will further examine the factors responsible for the disintegration of the Shelby family. In fact, the family members’ tendencies towards individualisation do not so much jeopardise the family per se as the conception of family maintained by Thomas Shelby. “For me, family is my strength” (S3/ E1, 00: 23). Thus Thomas summarises the immeasurable value family assumes for him. Accordingly, the family serves as a rationale implied in every decision made by Tommy, who then acts for ‘the good of the family’. This is a characteristic of ‘new television’s’ preoccupation with the family, which “is marshaled as a reason for action, as in: ‘I did it for (my) family’” (Shuster 125, emphasis in original). As to what precisely is best for them, however, the family members tend to disagree with Thomas. His ab‐ solutist control over and manipulations of family members cause considerable ruptures in the fabric of their community. In series one alone, he decides over the fates of his sister Ada and her husband, the communist agitator Freddie 35 Peaky Blinders (2013-) 9 John quickly acquiesces, though, when he meets his bride. 10 Disapproving of this ‘solution’, the boy’s mother eventually takes her revenge in series four. Thorne, and his brother John, whom he marries off to Esme (Aimée-Ffion Ed‐ wards), offspring of the then-rivalling Lee family. “Tommy and his parliament of one” (S1/ E2, 00: 28) eventually alienates Ada from the family and earns re‐ sentment not only from John, whose protest “[y]ou have no bloody right, Tommy” (S1/ E4, 00: 48) remains unnoticed. 9 “Everyone in my family hates me”, Tommy observes in series one (E5, 00: 03). “What family? ”, Esme pointedly in‐ quires at the low point of series two, when Tommy’s leadership has led to the arrest of Arthur and Polly’s son Michael (Finn Cole) and the remaining family members question Tommy’s strategy and motives (E5, 00: 18). Given his authoritative demeanour, it is significant that Tommy’s decisions are not motivated by an ideal of the community of the family based on tradition. He arranges the marriage between John and Esme in order to seal a peace-agree‐ ment with the Lee family and gain them as dependable allies, and he urges Freddie Thorne to leave the city since he does not want his business associated with the Communist movement. “Tradition will just fuck us up”, Thomas puts it bluntly in series four (E3, 00: 14). What determines Tommy’s policy, then, is business. The disintegration of the Shelby family is mostly prevented by their enormous success. Disillusioned after the war and finding himself in an envi‐ ronment void of normative authority, Tommy does not believe in ethics, but in capitalism. Having accidentally acquired a load of guns meant for Libya, Tommy reasons: “If they want them back […] they’ll have to pay. That’s the way of the world” (S1/ E1, 00: 46). To Grace (Annabelle Wallis), a secret agent assigned with retrieving the guns and Thomas’ later lover and wife, he maintains that “[e]ver‐ yone’s a whore […]. We just sell different parts of ourselves” (S1/ E3, 00: 49). Indeed, Peaky Blinders repeatedly raises the question of morality, exploring the characters’ conscience plagued by their deeds. Arthur, most notably, struggles to align the integrity of his self-image with his actions. Upon having killed a boy in the boxing ring in a fury induced by unprocessed war trauma, Arthur has a mental breakdown (S2/ E2). Tommy’s response is not only pragmatic; it is the only response available to him: he compensates the boy’s family financially. 10 Money, Thomas realises in the final episode of series three when paying out his family, “is all I can give you for what you’ve given me. Your hearts and your souls” (00: 48). 36 Sina Schuhmaier 11 Thomas moves up so far as to pursue philanthropist ambitions (S3); he is furthermore awarded an Order of the British Empire and finally elected as a Member of Parliament for the Labour Party (S4). 12 The latter does, of course, not necessarily exclude the former. As will be shown below, patriarchal hierarchies serve capitalist purposes rather well. Fig. 2: Thomas the capitalist watches the workers go on strike (S4/ E2, 00: 48). Tommy therein again corresponds to the American movie gangster, whose ghettoised origins simultaneously deny and promise him the rise to the top that is the quintessence of the capitalist myth of success (see Munby 50, 56). The gangster’s unconditional quest for success, then, a quest instituted as an ideo‐ logical tool within a liberal economic system, is that of an individual. As War‐ show argues, “the very conditions of success make it impossible not to be alone, for success is always the establishment of an individual pre-eminence” (133, emphasis in original). What is more, the gangster is essentially an (aspiring) capitalist, and effectively, his tactics do not deviate substantially from the ruth‐ lessness of legitimate businessmen. This is exemplified by Thomas’ origins as a bookmaker, his inexhaustible work ethos, and, most of all, his unyielding will “to move up in the world. Become a legitimate businessman” (S1/ E3, 00: 45). 11 In the end, Thomas, head of the Shelby family, is not driven by patriarchal struc‐ tures, but by capitalist ones. 12 He runs the family not with recourse to tradition, but with strategy, profiling himself in the very first episode as the one in the family who “think[s]” (S1/ E1, 00: 06). His status becomes most evident in series four, when he owns and manages several factories. Episode two tellingly shows 37 Peaky Blinders (2013-) him elevated on the second floor of a factory building, overseeing a panoptically organised workshop (see fig. 2). Like his American colleagues on the big screen, Tommy is thus a creation of modernity. He shares with them a longing for legitimacy that is paradoxical in nature. On the one hand, Tommy the gangster believes in, as Ada puts it, “[j]ust one last push […]. Then you’ll go legit. Just one more obstacle to get round. Then it’ll all be straight” (S2/ E4, 00: 34). On the other hand, the gangster considers himself to be above society and its constraining norms of right and wrong. Le‐ gitimacy, that is, final success is inaccessible for the gangster, though not because the gangster’s intent of eventual legitimacy and his unlawful means of obtaining the said are ultimately bound to clash: ‘lawful’ means might be as unjustifiable in the shark tank that is modern capitalism. The gangster’s, that is, Tommy’s endeavours are doomed to fail because the system that simultaneously refuses and attracts him lacks the normative authority it invokes, set in the “environ‐ ment of normative emptiness” of new television (Shuster 7). His quest for success is therefore predestined to remain incessant, the very idea of success becoming a chimera. What sets Thomas apart from the American gangster is the impact of the First World War, in itself lived reality and symbol of modernity. A longing for legiti‐ macy also signifies the returned soldier’s attempt to re-integrate into society (see Smith 279, 285), an attempt that will not be accomplished. What is more, Tommy’s ambition is most decisively spurred by his inability to leave behind the war. Struggling to make it to the top, Thomas indulges in a ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality, maintaining a perpetual state of war. A planned expansion south in series two, for instance, is met with reservations by family members such as John, who objects that “[i]n the past year, the Shelby Company Limited has been making 150 pounds a day […]. So what I want to know is why are we changing things? ” (E1, 00: 22) Esme adds: “London […]. It’s more like wars be‐ tween armies down there […].” (00: 23-4) Thomas concludes the argument by insisting on the bond of his family: “[W]e have nothing to fear from the proposed business expansion so long as we stick together […]. [T]hose of you with am‐ bition? The expansion process begins tomorrow” (00: 25). This conversation is instructive in two respects. First, it demonstrates that Thomas is lured by war and that an end of battle will never be in sight. “If winter comes, then can spring be far behind? ”, Thomas quotes from Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” in the same episode (00: 51). Yet, “spring” remains unattainable for Thomas Shelby. During a short period of peace and holiday in series four, he sinks into depression 38 Sina Schuhmaier 13 Note how the time span during which the Shelbys retreat to Small Heath to hide from Luca Changretta in series four is described by Linda as “[j]ust one winter” (E5, 00: 18). 14 They acquired that habit in the war, as is explained in series four (E2, 00: 14). It is also sung at Thomas’ and Grace’s wedding (S2/ E3). (E6). His is the “Bleak Midwinter” 13 of Christina Rossetti recited when he or his war comrades face death. 14 Secondly, it becomes evident that Thomas conceives of his family in terms of war comrades, whose strength rests in their absolute loyalty, that is, the cohesion of their community. The good of the family, then, prevails over that of the in‐ dividual. Thomas confiscates the medicine prescribed to Arthur to treat symp‐ toms of his post-traumatic stress disorder (in the 1920s not diagnosed as such) in order to keep him ready for battle (S2/ E1, 00: 39), and he sacrifices his family members at the very end of series three when Arthur, John, Michael, and Polly are arrested due to a deal Tommy has arranged (E6, 00: 53-4). They are released only seconds before their execution (S4/ E1, 00: 05), and the family remains shat‐ tered. Their reunion in series four occurs only through the bond of a common battle to fight. Instead of a traditional family ideal, then, Tommy ‘runs’ his family according to the parameters of business, understood - and practiced - as warfare. Tradi‐ tion, employed by Thomas where beneficial, thus enters the equation through the backdoor of capitalism. Thomas does not oppose gender equality per se, but he is sceptical of women’s rights where they might damage his business. Mar‐ rying John to Esme, he exploits the Lee’s loyalty of kin. “Trust only kin”, Arthur instructs “Tommy’s army” in series one (E3, 00: 40). In fact, what the show refers to as ‘family’ is, mostly, a business. This is captured by the double meaning of ‘family business’ as either the commercial business managed by the family or as private family concerns since the latter ‘business’, as denoted by the very term, always implies the dimension of the former. This business dubbed family is nourished by a traditional family ideal; it constitutively relies on the en‐ trenched normativity of the family, which, as a holy sacrament, has been en‐ dowed with more value judgments than any other type of community. A similar equation of family and business is characteristic of the mafia, whose structures are more thoroughly explored in series four of Peaky Blinders when Luca Chan‐ gretta (Adrien Brody) arrives from America to avenge the murder of his father in an elaborate ‘vendetta’. The family business of the mafia is sustained by a strict, hierarchical, and patriarchal Catholic family ideal demanding absolute subservience to the collective good. Stretching to non-blood members, it has proven highly successful. Thomas does decidedly not honour such an ideal of the family, and yet, he eventually conceives of ‘family’ (that is, business) simi‐ 39 Peaky Blinders (2013-) larly, because, when it comes to leading his family, tradition, “produced by mod‐ ernity” in the words of Delanty, constitutes an advantage for Thomas. The beginning of this section posed the question of how the modern indi‐ vidual’s striving for self-fulfilment affects the community of the family. In the end, not the Shelby family per se, but a normative family ideal the Shelby busi‐ ness draws on threatens to disintegrate on account of the family members’ modern tendencies towards individualisation. In other words, modernity’s “promise of autonomy and freedom” does not infringe on the community of the family, but it potentially harms the business. This business exploits a culturally conservative, idealised conception of the community of the family, which thereby becomes a farce, deconstructing the “myth of traditional community” (Delanty 39) as well as the “phantasm[] of the lost community” (Nancy 12). It is all the more interesting that the Shelby family as such rejects the normativity of such a conception. “What family” remains of the Shelbys and in how far “the family” is nonetheless “the sole remaining site of anything that might resemble normative authority” in a world void of such (Shuster 122-3) shall be discussed in what follows. 4. Peaky Blinders and the Non-Normative Community It appears counterintuitive to argue that the Shelby family, head of a criminal empire, should be the only paradigm left in a world “emptied of normative au‐ thority” (Shuster 6) when the diegetic world of Peaky Blinders abounds with groups and institutions that claim such authority. In doing so, these organisa‐ tions all draw on a particular promise of salvation, namely that of community. While the IRA ultimately resorts to the potent common bond of a desired inde‐ pendent Irish nation, the Communist movement promotes an international community of the ‘workers of the world’. Needless to say, the English nation, represented by the King, in whose name the First World War was fought, could be worth dying for only as a community. The church, in Peaky Blinders per‐ sonified by Father Hughes (Paddy Considine), similarly provides for lost souls a community of believers. The police, finally, gain their authority to a significant degree from a deliberate mission to protect community. The world of Peaky Blinders witnesses the consistent failure of the institutions traditionally providing orientation and guidance. In the Shelbys’ Birmingham, the police are on the payroll of the Peaky Blinders, taking orders from the gang. Tommy’s major opponent in series one and two, Chief Inspector (later Major) Chester Campbell (Sam Neill), sent from Belfast to retrieve the stolen guns and, self-appointedly and in a fit of Victorian rhetoric, to cleanse the city of its “puss 40 Sina Schuhmaier of […] corruption” (S1/ E1, 00: 29), is an exception. Yet, his double standards thwart any pretension of moral superiority - in the course of two series, he has intercourse with prostitutes, rapes Polly (S2/ E5) and willingly condones the death of his opponents. The Irish priest Father Hughes, who stars as one of Tommy’s adversaries in series three, is a busy figure of ‘The Odd Fellows’, a right-wing secret organisation with members of high social standing, and an operative of a conspiracy that licenses blackmail and murder. Moreover, Michael reveals that “when he was with the parish”, “in the care of the holy fathers” (S3/ E5, 00: 53, my emphasis), he suffered under Father Hughes’ child abuse (00: 02). A strategic burning of the King’s picture, bought from every household in Small Heath, illustrates the Peaky Blinders’ and population’s fading loyalty to the head of state (S1/ E2, 00: 12), which is further diminished by the information that upon his return from the war, Thomas “[t]hrew” the medals he won for gallantry “in the [river] Cut” (S1/ E6, 00: 28), as did other returned soldiers (S2/ E3, 00: 10). The “normative breakdown” (Shuster 6) of the above institutions is apparent. What is more, their promise of community is exposed as a fraud. The same eventually holds true for the IRA and the Communist movement, gaining momentum at a historical point in time when the processes of modernity render community an auspicious alternative. As has been shown above, such an opposition is flawed. Any recourse to community as a promise of salvation is based on the illusion of an ideal pre-modern community to be recovered. Such a community is a feeble cure, and, moreover, potentially dangerous due to the rigid normativity and potentially totalitarian scope it entails. The Peaky Blinders offer no such promise. Admittedly, though, Thomas Shelby is stylised as a saviour. Major Campbell forcedly recruits him to work for the British government with the words: “You’ve been chosen, Mr Shelby […].” (S2/ E4, 00: 05) This is already conveyed by the show’s introduction. The whole sequence lacks the social realism its setting suggests because it foregoes the mode’s sense of despair and contingency. Thomas Shelby, with his detached attitude and stylish dress, is at the centre of attention, and it is he who holds this world together; all its elements relate to him. This, finally, is the reason why Peaky Blinders is not about the working class. It is about the man on whom this community relies, who, as a represen‐ tative of Small Heath’s working class community, maintains it. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” in turn declares Thomas as such: “he’s a god, he’s a man/ he’s a ghost, he’s a guru”. The bartender whom Thomas has dis‐ possessed of the Garrison aptly puts it as follows: “Everybody round here - they want you to win […] you’re bad men, but you’re our bad men […].” (S1/ E6, 00: 33, my emphasis) Crucially, however, Tommy’s status does not rest on the promise 41 Peaky Blinders (2013-) 15 As part of his strategy, Tommy declares his loyalty to the King to a reporter (S1/ E2, 00: 14), but the symbolic act speaks for itself. 16 With the exception of Catholic Polly, who prays and goes to church. Faithless Thomas consults ‘Gypsy’ rites (as, increasingly, does Polly), in themselves an amalgam of insti‐ tutionalised religions (Polly, for instance, wears a necklace of the ‘Black Madonna’ in series two (E1)). of anything; rather, the Peaky Blinders trade the absence of liability. Placing themselves above society’s rules like “ghost[s]”, they are founded on non-nor‐ mativity. Community, then, no longer serves as the promise of salvation. The com‐ munity of the family, conflated with business, is invaded by a rationale of profit. This does not preclude the possibility of community, but it warns of the pitfalls of community exploited. What Peaky Blinders pictures instead is an open, almost paradoxical community exempt from the normativity a conceptualisation of community hardly ever escapes. Thomas is profoundly distrustful towards ‘grand narratives’ of community. When asked by Grace whether he “ha[s] sym‐ pathies” with the IRA men who purposed to buy the stolen guns, Thomas replies: “I have no sympathies of any description […].” (S1/ E3, 00: 05) Thomas’ alliances thus shift according to the benefits they offer, regardless of allegiance. The burning of the King’s picture is a case in point. 15 Thomas does not profess loyalty to any larger community; what matters to him is the experienced community of war comradeship and his family, the latter often equated with the former. As a community, the Shelby family resists easy classification. Tradition, re‐ placed (or artificially erected) by business calculations, is no determinant in their case. Their identity is, in fact, under-determined; the Shelbys are defined more by what they are not than by what they are. Common identity categories do not apply. They are not part of the working class; they are not religious, 16 and they are not English. The Shelby siblings lack both mother and father, and the exact origins of the Shelby family, apart from their denomination as ‘Gypsy’, remain obscure. The audience learns that on Thomas’ “mother’s side, [they] are kin” to the Romani Lee family (S1/ E4, 00: 12). Thomas, Polly, and the other family mem‐ bers furthermore speak Romani. “Their granddad was a King”, the second epi‐ sode of series one reveals, “but [Thomas’] mother was a Diddicoy whore” (00: 03). Of their father’s side little is known except that Arthur Shelby Senior and his sister Polly are presumably of Irish and ‘Gypsy’ origins, too; they might thus descend from Irish Travellers, although Polly speaks Romani. Polly instructs Michael in series four that his “grandmother was a Gypsy princess. Name of Birdy Boswell” (E5 00: 21), which possibly relates them to Madame Boswell, a ‘Gypsy’ sage Thomas sees in Wales (S3/ E3). All this renders the family a “Did‐ 42 Sina Schuhmaier 17 In several respects, this parallels Victor Turner’s investigations into the ‘liminality’ of moments of communitarisation (see Delanty 44-6). dicoy razor gang” (S1/ E2, 00: 53), ‘diddicoy’ being a pejorative term that denotes a non-purely Romani descent (see Long 173). This intricate line of ancestry all the more defies definition of the Shelby family in terms of an essential identity. Quite the opposite, and in contrast to all other groups in Peaky Blinders which invoke an ideal of community, that is, Royalists, the IRA, and Communists, the Shelbys are conceived through non-identity. Thereby, the family exemplifies a re-conception of community commenced by the French Collège de Sociologie in the 1930s. The Collège was founded in 1937, at a time when fascism had perverted the ‘cure’ of community in Italy, Germany, and Spain. Advocating a ‘sacred sociology’ (Moebius 13), their work, in particular that of Georges Ba‐ taille, focuses not on what determines and confines communities, but, inspired by Emile Durkheim’s sociology of religion (see Gertenbach et al. 155), on ritual-sacral processes of communitarisation. The aim of this ‘sacred sociology’, according to Stephan Moebius, was to “study and revive the vital elements of communal ties such as collective experiences and effervescences - initiated by rituals, festivities, or games - in modern society” (13, my translation). While such communitarisation is conceived as an antidote to modern atomisation (see ibid. 14), Bataille deems any attempt to restore a ‘lost’ community hazardous (see Gertenbach et al. 157-8). As Moebius puts it, “[a]gainst a reanimation of traditional, communitarian values and a consolidation of the social order, the Collège opts for the creation of new values qua elective communities, which transcend the social order” (151, my translation). This moment of transgression is captured in Bataille’s emphasis on the ‘ecstatic’ of communities, which thus transcend themselves as closed formations, invalidating a conception of com‐ munity based on identity and homogeneity (see Gertenbach et al. 157). 17 In a deconstructionist vein, Jean Luc Nancy picked up on Bataille’s thoughts to reformulate community as an, in Heidegger’s terms, ontological ‘Mit-Sein’, a ‘being-in-common’ that precedes any articulation of community (see Gerten‐ bach et al. 160-2). Such articulation cannot escape normativity; it produces a conception of community that is afflicted with expectations and presuppositions (see ibid. 164). As Nancy asserts in The Inoperative Community, the thinking of community as essence […] assigns to community a common being, whereas community is a matter of something quite different, namely, of existence inasmuch as it is in common, but without letting itself be absorbed into a common substance. Being in common has nothing to do with communion, with fusion into a body, into a unique and ultimate identity that would no longer be exposed. (xxxviii) 43 Peaky Blinders (2013-) 18 This should not hide the fact that most ‘Gypsies’ depicted in Peaky Blinders are petty criminals (a problematic representation in itself). While there is the risk that Nancy’s theory of community deconstructs the con‐ cept up to the point of non-applicability, it exposes and revokes the normativity of community in a manner analogous to Peaky Blinders’ assessment of com‐ munity. As ‘Gypsies’, the Shelbys revise “the lack of representation of such fig‐ ures in the media” (Long 173), normally obliterated as society’s other. Their “liminal status” (ibid.), though, is maintained, emblematic of the community they form. Tommy’s ‘Gypsy’ heritage is stylised as a pastoral, enchanted alternative to the ills of modernity, rendering Tommy a ‘wanderer’ between seemingly apart worlds. In particular, a natural connection with horses is repeatedly spotlighted by the show as representative of a harmonically pre-modern, 18 organic way of life as practiced by the Shelbys’ ‘Gypsy’ kinship and set in sharp contrast to Peaky Blinders’ urban setting. As if to illustrate this - stereotypically flawed - opposition, Curly, a character of presumably ‘Gypsy’ origins who works in the scrap yard of Thomas’ uncle Charlie, bemoans that there is “[n]o heart in motor cars. I can’t talk to them” (S1/ E3, 00: 38). When Thomas’ family and business are under attack towards the end of series two, Esme prompts him to “[i]magine riding away […]. Living the real life, you know? Your Gypsy half is the stronger. You just want to ride away. France is the new place for us, they say” (E5, 00: 17). Fig. 3: Thomas ‘talks’ to his horse (S1/ E2, 00: 21). 44 Sina Schuhmaier Thomas’ “Gypsy half ” comes forth in a number of scenes: a close-up shows him soothing a shying horse by pulling near his face and whispering into his nostrils in episode two of the first series (see fig. 3); in series two, he asks Curly for “black powder” to cure his wounds (E2, 00: 06), and in series three, he consults Madame Boswell after the death of his wife (E3, 00: 28). Yet, returned from the war, he is irreversibly embedded in and subject to the fundamentally modern way of life of the city. “I’ve been to France”, he answers Esme (S2/ E5, 00: 17), referring to the battlefields of the Great War. Rather than offering an escape into pre-modern tradition, this ‘Gypsy’ heritage allows an experience of the ‘sacred’ in the here and now of Thomas’ existence as a creation of modernity. He is acutely aware of his disbelief in curses and nonetheless comforted by Madame Boswell’s (coerced) confirmation that a cursed sapphire caused the death of his wife. His chosen method of solving conflicts, the toss of a coin, is a “sacred” (S4/ E3, 00: 27) act not because it is based on tradition, but because it creates a ‘sacred’ experience in the sense of the Collège de Sociologie, one which “transcends to social order”. Fig. 4a (top left): Thomas prompted to “[g]et out of the grave [dug for him], tinker! ” (S2/ E6, 00: 54). Fig. 4b (bottom left): Arthur attempting to commit suicide (S1/ E5, 00: 50). Fig. 4c (top right): John, Arthur and Michael at their execution (S4/ E1, 00: 04). Fig. 4d (bottom right): Polly at her execution (S4/ E1, 00: 04). 45 Peaky Blinders (2013-) The Romani Lee family in Peaky Blinders still travels the country, professing a (symbolic) sense of non-belonging. Apart from horse wagons, the ‘Gypsy’ means of travel is on the liminal space of the water of rivers and canals, on boat. What is more, the Shelby family, in particular Thomas, are methodically situated between life and death. “It’s in our Gypsy blood. We live somewhere between life and death”, reasons Polly in series four (E6, 00: 46). Thomas is declared dead countless times. He narrowly escapes his own grave in the finale of series two (see fig. 4a), and he is resurrected after beaten half to death twice. In episode two of series two, his recovery is effected by a journey back to life on a boat steered by Curly, in turn linking this passage to ‘Gypsy’ ways of life, and in the fifth episode of series three, Thomas’ hospital recovery from a fractured skull is accompanied by David Bowie’s “Lazarus”. Arthur’s suicide attempt in series one fails (see fig. 4b), and his death is faked in series four (E6). He, John, Polly, and Michael have already been escorted to the noose in the first episode of series four when the news reaches them that they have been exonerated (see fig. 4c and fig. 4d). The list could be continued. What it highlights is the family members’ socially unacknowledged status and, by extension, their non-normativity. As that which the establishment represses, the Shelbys prove that established norms are un‐ tenable under the conditions of modernity. The endeavour of grasping the Shelbys by means of an essential conception of identity remains futile; the family embodies the paradox of a community that can only exist if not too insistently articulated (see Bauman 11-2). This is what ‘new television’ has to offer: flawed, open, dysfunctional families. This is all there is in the midst of “normative emp‐ tiness” (Shuster 7), and yet, this is something. For the family, Shuster states, maintains the possibility of possibility, that of new life. Hence ‘new television’: “in addition to being novel aesthetic objects these shows are conceptually linked by a genre or mode that explores the ‘newness’ that emerges from human na‐ tality, indeed, every human birth” (6). Family, then, is explored as the site for potential political renewal, albeit in a manner where the contours and parameters of the family stay - perhaps necessarily - amorphous or empty, suggesting that the best hope to be had […] is politically - if not ethically and aesthetically - to cultivate and maintain a conceptual space for novelty [...]. (6-7) Accordingly, Peaky Blinders highlights the scenes of Ada giving birth to her son, when even Thomas permits to himself show “a heartbeat” (S1/ E4, 00: 53), and Grace’s announcement of “[a] baby, Thomas” (S2/ E6, 00: 25). When his secretary Lizzie reveals to Tommy that she is pregnant with his child, he responds: “All this death, Lizzie. Fuck, let’s have some life, right? ” (S4/ E5, 00: 15) 46 Sina Schuhmaier 5. Conclusion This hope of genuinely new life, intrinsically different from the permanent limbo the Shelbys find themselves in, warrants the family’s paradigmatic status no matter what its constitution. The paradigm of the family in ‘new television’, then, is not sanctified on the basis of a normative ideal conception of the family as community. Its amorphousness does not mean that the family as community ‘fails’; on the contrary, only in the form of a paradox can it be what Shuster has termed the “remaining site of anything that might resemble normative au‐ thority” (123). This runs counter to the ethics latent in customary invocations of community, which purport that community is inherently good and thus a norm against which to align our actions. Peaky Blinders, if not ‘new television’ altogether, rewrites those ethics, critical not of community as such, but of the idealisation of community. The family has been the basic template of such ide‐ alisation. As a metaphor, it is frequently used to evoke strong collective bonds among members of larger social formations, such as the ‘sisters and brothers’ of the Communist movement or the ‘family of the state’. Such a promise, rather than experience of community, Peaky Blinders demonstrates, is no viable option; salvation will not occur. Lending itself to exploitation, it might be nothing but a capitalist construct. Fig. 5: The Union Jack divided between Thomas Shelby and Major Campbell (S2/ E6, 00: 30). 47 Peaky Blinders (2013-) 19 Note how the genre of the gangster film emerged out of a preoccupation with American society after the Wall Street Crash (see Munby 3-4). Peaky Blinders’ subverting metaphor of the Shelby family as representative of the state of the nation, then, paints a picture of a nation in the grip of ruthless capitalism that asserts itself above the law, a situation particularly felt after the financial crisis of 2008. 19 In Peaky Blinders as well as in the 21 st century, institu‐ tions lack authority and reliability, and community appears as a remedy. As the programme shows, however, community as another norm is no such remedy, and yet, if conceived non-normatively, it is something. The Shelby family as the state is open and under-determined; it is not defined by an essential identity but by liminality; and yet, it exists. The final episode of series two shows the last confrontation between Tommy and Major Campbell at the Epsom Derby by arranging them symmetrically underneath a Union Flag decoratively draped (see fig. 5), while outside the national anthem sounds (00: 31). The nation is facing a choice between the outlaw and exponent of non-normativity Thomas, and Campbell, representative of the system and its institutions, who declares to‐ wards Thomas: “Ahead of you is damnation. But I have the love of God and the certainty of salvation [...].” (00: 32) Yet, neither the authority of the church nor the law possess any certainty in Peaky Blinders, Campbell being the most telling example of this “normative breakdown” (Shuster 6) under the conditions of modernity. In an earlier scene, Campbell notes that Thomas and he “are oppo‐ sites, but also just the same” (S1/ E6, 00: 11). Thomas, however, counters that, “You forget, Inspector. I have my family” (00: 12). Bibliography Primary Sources Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. “Red Right Hand.” Let Love In. Mute Records. 2011 [1994]. Peaky Blinders. Series 1. Written by Steven Knight, Stephen Russell and Tony Finlay. Directed by Otto Bathurst and Tom Harper. BBC Studios, 2013. Peaky Blinders. Series 2. Written by Steven Knight. Directed by Colm McCarthy. BBC Studios, 2014. Peaky Blinders. Series 3. Written by Steven Knight. Directed by Tim Mielants. BBC Stu‐ dios, 2016. Peaky Blinders. Series 4. Written by Steven Knight. Directed by David Caffrey. BBC Stu‐ dios, 2017. 48 Sina Schuhmaier Secondary Sources Bauman, Zygmunt. Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity, 2001. Cooke, Lez. British Television Drama: A History. 2 nd ed. London: Palgrave, 2015. Delanty, Gerard. Community. London, New York: Routledge, 2003. Egner, Jeremy. “‘Peaky Blinders’: The Disparate Ingredients of a Cult Hit.” The New York Times. 21 December 2017. www.nytimes.com/ 2017/ 12/ 21/ arts/ television/ peakyblinders-netflix-bbc-cillian-murphy.html. Accessed on 28 March 2018. Gertenbach, Lars et al. Theorien der Gemeinschaft zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius, 2010. International Movie Database (imdb.com). Accessed on 20 September 2018. Landau, Neil. “Peaky Blinders on Netflix - Steven Knight: Creator/ Writer/ Director/ Executive Producer/ Showrunner.” TV Outside the Box: Trailblazing in the Digital Tel‐ evision Revolution. New York, London: Focal Press, 2015. Safari, http: / / proquest.tech. safaribooksonline.de/ 9781317439714. Accessed on 28 March 2018. Long, Paul. “Class, Place and History in the Imaginative Landscape of Peaky Blinders.” Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain. Eds. David Forrest and Beth Johnson. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 165-79. Moebius, Stephan. Die Zauberlehrlinge: Soziologiegeschichte des Collège de Sociologie (1937-1939). Konstanz: UVK, 2006. Munby, Jonathan. Public Enemies, Public Heroes: Screening the Gangster from ‘Little Caesar’ to ‘Touch of Evil.’ Chicago, London: U of Chicago P, 1999. Nagra, Tommy. “Rolling Out the Red Carpet in Birmingham.” BBC. 2 October 2014. www.bbc.co.uk/ blogs/ aboutthebbc/ entries/ 5786f9cf-16ff-3287-92a0-80faa052ef0d. Accessed on 28 March 2018. Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Inoperative Community. Ed. Peter Connor, transl. Peter Connor et al. Minneapolis, London: U of Minnesota P, 1991 [1985-86]. “Peaky Blinders - Gangs of Birmingham. Awards.” IMDb. n.d. www.imdb.com/ title/ tt2442560/ awards. Accessed on 30 March 2018. Pfeiffer, Ingrid. Interview. “Willkommen in Weimar.” Metropolis: Danzig. arte, G.E.I.E., Straßburg, 5 November 2017. Rosa, Hartmut. “Umrisse einer Kritischen Theorie der Geschwindigkeit.” Weltbezie‐ hungen im Zeitalter der Beschleunigung. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2012. 269-323. Shine, Jessica. “‘One Minute of Everything at Once’: How Music Shapes the World of BBC’s Peaky Blinders (2013-).” Musicology Research 2 (2017): 47-68. Shuster, Martin. New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre. Chicago, London: U of Chicago P, 2017. Smith, Evan. “‘Brutalised’ Veterans and Tragic Anti-Heroes: Masculinity, Crime and Post-war Trauma in Boardwalk Empire and Peaky Blinders.” The Great War and the 49 Peaky Blinders (2013-) British Empire: Culture and Society. Eds. Michael J. K. Walsh and Andrekos Varnava. London: Routledge, 2017. 279-89. Stubbs, David. “Peaky Blinders, Britain’s Answer to Boardwalk Empire.” The Guardian. 6 September 2013. www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/ 2013/ sep/ 06/ peaky-blinderscillian-murphy. Accessed on 28 March 2018. Tykwer, Tom. Interview. “Willkommen in Weimar.” Metropolis: Danzig. arte, G.E.I.E., Straßburg, 5 November 2017. Warshow, Robert. “The Gangster as Tragic Hero.” [1948] The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre and Other Aspects of Popular Culture. New York: Anthenum, 1975. 127-33. 50 Sina Schuhmaier 1 Episode six of the first series was written by Chris Chibnall and Louise Fox (cf. back cover of The Complete Series One and Two). 2 As Chris Chibnall explains: “In true Thomas Hardy style I came up with a compound location name of Broadchurch combining the West Dorset hamlets of Broadoak and Whitchurch.” (Shaw) Chibnall also pays tribute to Thomas Hardy, Dorset’s most famous writer, with the name of DI Alec Hardy. 3 Series one (2013) and two (2015) were directed by James Strong, Euros Lyn, Jessica Hobbs, Jonathan Teplitzky, and Mike Barker; series three (2017) was directed by Paul Andrew Williams, Daniel Nettheim, and Lewis Arnold. ‘If we are not a community of neighbours, then we are nothing’: Small-Town Moralities, Social Change, and Social Cohesion in Broadchurch (2013-2017) Kerstin Frank 1. Introduction The crime drama Broadchurch (2013-2017), written by Chris Chibnall, 1 is one of the most popular and celebrated TV series of this decade in the United Kingdom, a “national obsession” (Billen/ Jackson), with viewing figures reaching up to ten million (see Lawson). Set in the fictional, small, coastal town of Broadchurch in Dorset, 2 the series begins with the murder of eleven-year-old Danny Latimer and the subsequent investigation led by the two detectives Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller (David Tennant and Olivia Colman), which ends in the revelation that Ellie’s own husband killed the boy. After a very successful and critically ac‐ claimed first season, Broadchurch was perceived to go downhill and degenerate into “Boredchurch” (Hardy) in the second, which combined the general who‐ dunit-structure of the series (the investigation of a new or rather old case, set in the town of Sandbrook) with elements of courtroom drama, revisiting the details of Danny’s death while his murderer is being tried in court. The third and final series re-established its position as a “landmark” (Lawson) TV pro‐ duction and transferred the whodunit-structure to a rape case as Alec and Ellie investigate the sexual assault on Trish Winterman ( Julie Hasmondhalgh) during the birthday party of her friend. 3 Critics generally agreed that Broadchurch owes 4 As Stephen Knight phrases it with reference to Agatha Christie’s fiction, the identifi‐ cation of the criminals “is a process of exorcising the threats that the society nervously anticipates within its own membership” (82). 5 In the following, references to Broadchurch will be given without repeating the title. its success to a combination of stunning scenery (the Dorset cliffs and beaches) and a high-quality cast, with particular emphasis on the lead roles of the two detectives Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller, played by David Tennant and Olivia Colman. In addition, Billen and Jackson in a review in the Times call the town Broadchurch itself the “third co-star”. The series derives its intriguing atmos‐ phere and gripping plot from the contrast between a small, picturesque English seaside town with a close-knit community and the crimes that disrupt the town’s peaceful life. The town has a traditional, pretty centre, a harbour, an old church, and beautiful cliffs and beaches at its doorstep. Its citizens are down-to-earth, hardworking middle-class people, who know and trust each other. However, in the tradition of classic murder mysteries, the investigations that follow the crimes bring to light a surprising number of secrets and hidden vices, among them adultery, drug abuse, and a variety of psychological cruelties - and, of course, the crimes themselves, murder and rape. In contrast to traditional crime fiction, in which hidden vices are a part of human nature and therefore a part of every community, 4 Broadchurch employs these generic structures to portray a town - and, by implication, a country - whose social structures and moral strongholds are in decline. Some of the emerging vices are part of a dynamic process of social disintegration that threatens to destroy the old sense of community and of moral consensus. While the sunny side of Broadchurch represents the epitome of a nostalgic ‘English‐ ness’, its dark sides show the fragmentation of this coherent sense of national or local identity. When Detective Inspector Alec Hardy observes the spectacular cliffs close to the town, he ominously comments: “Things fall apart.” (Broad‐ church, S2/ E1, 00: 02) 5 On the surface, this remark refers to the crumbling of the cliffs, but the sentence extends its meaning to symbolically include the devel‐ opment of the town. Of course, it is also an intertextual reference to W. B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” and, perhaps more poignantly, to Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart from 1958, in which a traditional Nigerian community loses its stability and social cohesion with the arrival of foreign missionaries and colonisers. This sense of change shows many parallels to the sociological model of Ferdi‐ nand Tönnies, who analysed the transition from a traditional ‘communal soci‐ 52 Kerstin Frank 6 The English terms for the German original are taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft”. ety’ (Gemeinschaft) to a modern ‘associational society’ (Gesellschaft). 6 The Broad‐ church community is - potentially - still a traditional community as it was defined by Ferdinand Tönnies, whose concepts determine the sociological under‐ standing of the term until today (see Bruce/ Yearley 57): the rural town is shaped by bonds between its members as well as by traditional social rules and moral codes, and personal relations are still based on direct interaction and personal communication. Its cohesive force is what Tönnies calls ‘essential will’ (Wesens‐ wille), a natural, spontaneous emotion that draws people together for the sake of the community itself (see Tönnies 224). In contrast, an associational society is dominated by the ‘arbitrary will’ (Kürwille), which causes people to interact for some other, external reason, rendering their connections far more volatile and guided by specific purposes or self-interests. Thus, relations between people are more indirect and impersonal, traditional moralities are replaced by modern forms of bureaucracy, and the arbitrary will establishes rationality and efficiency as new driving forces. Of course, Broadchurch is not the pre-industrial rural village Tön‐ nies had in mind at the end of the 19 th century. However, Tönnies’ terms are not a historical description but “ideal types” (Encyclopaedia Britannica), and as such they have lost nothing of their analytical value. This chapter explores how Broadchurch stages the struggle between the com‐ munity and the forces of disintegration - or, in Tönnies’ terms, the transition towards an associational community - with the use of genre conventions of crime drama and crime fiction. The upheavals in the community caused by the crimes and the conventional plot developments and character constellations of the genre effectively highlight the traditional structures of the community and the forces of change that are at work, but without establishing a simple, hier‐ archical binary opposition. The series presents both the traditional community and the modernising forces with their positive and negative sides, but with a hint of nostalgia. In order to show these complex structures from different an‐ gles, I will first analyse the representation of the community and its moral foun‐ dations, then the role of the professional, official institutions within this situa‐ tion of change, and, finally, the use of genre conventions to emphasise tradition and change within the community. In this I will focus on the key role of the two detectives, who represent both the challenges that the communal transition im‐ poses on the individual and, if not a solution, at least an attempt to combine the effectiveness of modern professionalism with traditional moral standards of the community. 53 Broadchurch (2013-2017) 7 Broadchurch is a town, not a village, and not everyone knows everyone else. However, the series focuses on a number of characters who have distinct functions in the plot or distinct roles within the community (e.g. the priest, the hotel owner or the newspaper editor) and whose relationships represent the general community spirit of the town. 2. Community and Morality in Broadchurch The town of Broadchurch is proud of its traditional, community-centred social structures and time-honoured moral values. Family ties, good relations with friends and neighbours and a general interest in each other and willingness to help - in short, a strong Wesenswille - are the glue that keeps the community together. The criminal investigations serve as catalysts that reveal both good and bad aspects of these foundations as well as individual transgressions of the communal rules. Beyond this traditional system of community - and of the traditional murder mystery - the catalysts reveal a gradual sense of change within the town brought about by outside forces and a conflict of generations. The very first scene to introduce the Broadchurch community 7 shows Mark Latimer (Andrew Buchan), a plumber, on his way to work through the town centre, greeting people and being greeted, obviously well integrated and re‐ spected (E1/ S1, 00: 02). The first scene at the police station works along the same lines: Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller, returning from a holiday, greets the team warmly and has a present and a warm word or joke for everyone (E1/ S1, 00: 03). The police and its first main representative, Ellie, are thus shown to be an organic community in themselves, displaying the same friendliness and fellowship as the town. One of the central techniques of the series, however, is to counter every moment of idyllic cohesion with a contrast that destabilises it. In the two examples named above, Mark’s happy start into the day is subverted when his son Danny’s (Oskar McNamara) body is found on the beach, and Ellie’s return to work is soon spoilt for her when she hears that she has not got the promotion she has been hoping for but that she has a new boss instead, Detective Inspector Alec Hardy. While these two contrasts at the very beginning serve the function to introduce the main plot of the murder mystery and the central constellation of the detectives, the technique of creating and then destabilising the picture of an idyllic community is used throughout the series to show that high standards always involve human failures and fallibility, and that they exert pressure on the people of the community. The standards of sexual morality, and marital fidelity in particular, are violated several times, most significantly by Mark Lat‐ imer, who spent the night in which his son was killed with the local hotel owner Becca (Simone McAullay), and in the third series by the rape victim Trish ( Julie Hesmondhalgh) and her best friend’s husband Jim (Mark Bazeley). 54 Kerstin Frank In his review in the Times, Andrew Billen suggests a contrast between such individual cases of misconduct and the community as a whole: “Broadchurch was a series that believed in Broadchurch, the town, and in the concept of com‐ munity. […] Yet although communally the town demonstrates strength and love, individually its members are weak and venal.” However, upon closer inspection, the community is revealed to be just as fallible as its individual members. Just as these individuals at times show great social responsibility and moral con‐ sciousness, the community has moments of impressive solidarity and cohesion. In series one, the townspeople show their support for the bereaved parents with flowers, food and a condolence book, by joining them in the reconstruction of the crime (S1/ E5, 00: 01) and, in the last episode, with a long line of signal fires, ignited one after the other across the shoreline (S1/ E8, 00: 48). The symbolism of firelight in the dark, giving hope and warmth, and of the connection and silent communication across great distances, shows the emotional unity and empathy of the town. At the end of the second series, the main representatives of the town community jointly expel Joe (Matthew Gravelle), Danny’s murderer, from the town after he has been sentenced ‘not guilty’ at court (S2/ E8, 00: 42). In the third series, the community shows their support for the rape victims in a football match and in a line of people at the harbour carrying lights in the dark “to reclaim the night” (Billen). However, this willingness of the community to act on behalf of their members sometimes leads to rash, irrational, and unjust actions. This becomes particularly evident in series one, when the media discover that an elderly shop owner and sea brigade teacher was in prison for sleeping with a teenager many years ago. The townspeople are stirred up into a witch hunt, which leads to the suicide of the shop owner. The fact that the main persecutors of the deceased are merrily drinking beer at his funeral shows a certain hypo‐ critical, self-righteous tendency in the community (S1/ E6, 00: 09). Besides such extreme cases of mob action, the town also exerts more subtle pressures on the individual. While the traditional moral standards of the com‐ munity provide social coherence, comfort, and stability, they can also limit the freedom of the individual due to fear of moral judgment. Mark Latimer, for ex‐ ample, shows how strongly he feels this pressure when he lies about his alibi for the night Danny was killed. He would rather draw suspicion to himself for the murder of his own son than reveal that he cheated on his wife. Even when ques‐ tioned under arrest he refuses to tell the truth. When it finally comes out, he tells Alec: “You haven’t lived here, you don’t know how these things stick.” (S1/ E3, 00: 34) DI Alec Hardy is exasperated by Mark’s decision to rate his reputation in the town higher than his innocence in the face of the law, but during the same episode, when talking to his doctor who is not from Broadchurch, he expresses 55 Broadchurch (2013-2017) his own strong dislike of the small-town community: “Small town, everyone watching, I hate it.” (S1/ E3, 00: 29) In the third series, the rape victims, too, ex‐ press fear of the community’s judgement, even though they are the victims, not the criminals (S3/ E5, 00: 04). Besides moral judgement, it is also the ascription of social labels that can put enormous pressure on individuals, as one of the rape victims claims: “I’ll forever be the girl that was raped.” (S3/ E6, 00: 13) Chloë Lat‐ imer (Charlotte Beaumont), too, confesses that although she misses her brother, she feels trapped by always being “the dead boy’s sister” (S1/ E6, 00: 27). Once a role has been assigned to an individual, it seems difficult to escape it. All of these problems, daunting as they may be for the individual, are still side effects of a community in which people matter; a community that, despite occasional errors of judgment (both collective and individual), is presented as an inherently well-functioning, traditional, organic entity. The series repeatedly emphasises the responsibility that everyone has for each other and for the com‐ munity as a whole. At the beginning of the trial of Danny’s murderer in the second series, for example, the prosecuting attorney, Jocelyn (Charlotte Ram‐ pling), claims that the outcome of the trial depends upon everyone in the town (S2/ E2, 00: 21). When, in the third series, the investigation of the rape of Trish brings to light previous cases in which the victims did not report the rapes, social workers and police officers put pressure on the victims to make official state‐ ments, implying that it is their responsibility to do everything they can to pre‐ vent further sexual assaults (S3/ E6 00: 12). A visual technique emphasises this connection of all the people in the community: in a number of scenes, the viewer sees different citizens in different places in quick succession, sometimes while the voices or music from the previous scene continues. At the beginning of the first series, for example, DI Alec Hardy gives a press conference at the school, pointing out that “Danny’s life touched many people”, and a number of towns‐ people are shown watching this speech on TV (S1/ E1, 00: 44-45). This technique is used for a variety of purposes: it can visually point out the many potential suspects, but it can also show how many people are indeed ‘touched’ by these events and how embedded the suffering individuals are in a community. However, the foundations of this communal society are shown to be under threat, and this threat grows steadily over the course of the three series. Individ‐ uals are increasingly uncertain about the extent of their responsibilities towards the community and about the benefits they receive in return. In the first series, moral support for the bereaved family is strong, but local business owners are also concerned that the crime is affecting the tourist trade and thus their economic profits (S1/ E2, 00: 06 and S1/ E4, 00: 07). Becca, the hotel owner, criticises an out‐ spoken shopkeeper for his egotism, but voices similar concerns herself (S1/ E1, 56 Kerstin Frank 00: 16). She is quick to use the media attention raised by the murder to present herself in an interview, emphasising that the crime was a “tragic yet isolated event”, and afterwards ruefully asks the vicar: “Did I sound like a complete arse‐ hole? ” (S1/ E5, 00: 12) Thus, economic interests (or Kürwille) are shown to hamper people’s social and moral concerns (or Wesenswille). Becca is part of a generation which confronts the challenges of the modern world but still tries to preserve the spirit of the community, giving support on the major occasions when the town rallies together, however there is a younger generation that seems to have a dif‐ ferent attitude. Respect for elders and for figures of authority, an integral part of the value system of the traditional community, seems to be on the wane, as can be seen when Alec talks to three young classmates of his daughter, who treat him with barely concealed ridicule (S3/ E3, 00: 09). Alec has a similar experience when he and Ellie are questioning Leo Humphries (Chris Mason), who turns out to be one of the rapists (S3/ E3, 00: 05). In both cases, Alec feels compelled to threaten the cocky young men with the full force of his police power. The most poignant motif in the series that represents a fundamental threat to the community, however, is pornography. Adultery and betrayal are typical se‐ crets to come out during a police investigation in crime drama, both to add emo‐ tional tension and to suggest further potential reasons for murder, but series three introduces pornography as a subject that goes beyond these conventions, and this is strongly connected to the general sense of transition within the community. In his Guardian review, Mark Lawson emphasises “the series’ well-developed sub-theme of the effect on young men of the increasing availability and de‐ pravity of pornography”. The two young men who are later identified as rapists watch pornography frequently, but Ellie’s adolescent son Tom (Adam Wilson) watches it, too, even after he has been caught and punished at school, and after his horrified mother has confiscated his phone. Within the theme of sexual mor‐ ality, pornography represents everything that is problematic about the associa‐ tional society that is slowly undermining the traditional moral and social struc‐ tures of the town: pornography takes the most personal, emotional, and direct type of bond between two people, a bond traditionally framed and regulated by religious and social ceremonies, and subverts it into something impersonal, anon‐ ymous, and (strangely) efficient, thereby alienating it from the emotions that are conventionally associated with it. Since pornography is an expansive and lucra‐ tive market, it also adds a capitalist aspect to the theme of sexuality. Pornog‐ raphy rationalises and disenchants sexuality and, so the series suggests, can give rise to de-humanising and immoral attitudes towards sexuality that can, in turn, lead to sexual violence, as in the case of Leo, the third series’ serial rapist. On the whole, the topic of sexual morality, as it is explored and developed in the course 57 Broadchurch (2013-2017) of the series, reveals and emphasises three aspects of the community as a whole: firstly, its essentially traditional moral standards; secondly, individual lapses from these standards, which are due to human fallibility and to genre conventions; and thirdly, a sense of moral decline, of failing marriages and, worse, a youth that is confronted with a pornographic treatment of sexuality that radically counteracts all traditional moral and emotional attitudes towards sexuality. The traditionally sanctioned place of sexuality, marriage, is threatened and transformed by these developments in sexual morality, just as other institutions are threatened by change, as the following analysis will show. 3. Institutions as Representatives of Social and Moral Order The community perceives its central institutions as a stronghold of its core values and expects them to guard it both against individual transgressions and against more profound threats to the community. However, Broadchurch presents institutions, too, as sites of generational conflict and modernisation. The series shows representatives of the church, the press, the judiciary, and - of course - the police as torn between the pressure to serve the community and the need to fulfil their own particular professional code in the framework of a society in transition. In the end, as the character constellations and plot devel‐ opments suggest, each of the institutions is shown to be only as good as the individuals who work for, and while representatives of each institution are ‘fighting the good fight’, ambitious and ruthless members of the younger gen‐ eration are challenging their authority and indicate incipient changes that go far beyond well-known generational conflicts, and threaten to destroy the very essence of these institutions. The institution of the church is an exception within this general structure, as it is represented solely by the character of the vicar, Paul (Arthur Darvill). The very fact that the church plays a role here shows the relatively conservative, traditional orientation of the community. The vicar is still a figure of respect and authority, and the church is still an institution that people turn to in mo‐ ments of crisis and need. Throughout the series, Paul gives several sermons in which he invokes and encourages the congregation’s sense of community: “If we are not a community of neighbours, then we are nothing.” (S1/ E6, 00: 07) Becca, who later becomes his girlfriend, commends him for this “nice bit of community leadership” (ibid.). Many townspeople seek Paul’s advice, and even though the Latimers are not a religious family, they come to him for marriage counselling. When young Tom Miller and Michael Lucas (Deon Lee-Williams) are caught watching pornography, they are sent to him for punishment, which 58 Kerstin Frank affirms his role as a moral authority in the community (S3/ E3, 00: 15). Paul also assumes responsibility to protect his parishioners: when the elderly shop owner is subjected to the local witch hunt, Paul requests the detectives to protect him, albeit with little success (S1/ E5, 00: 27). Nonetheless, the church is clearly an institution in crisis. With the exception of funerals and times of great distress, the services are almost empty (S3/ E2, 00: 31), and Ellie tells Alec that her family only go to church at Easter if they remember after the egg hunt, to which he caustically replies: “And so does Christianity fall.” (S1/ E4, 00: 19) The vicar himself tries his best to be a part of the community and help the parishioners in need, but he is often helpless in the face of suffering, and he is a troubled figure himself, a recovering alcoholic full of self-doubt. When the national media become interested in Broadchurch, and he gives interviews praising the local community (S1/ E2, 00: 40), he is even ac‐ cused of trying to profit from the murder: Mark Latimer asks him if he enjoyed his “moment of glory” (ibid.), and Alec Hardy tells him he felt he was “too eager to get in front of the camera, claiming all this for the church” (S1/ E6, 00: 28). Alec, the prototypical cynical detective, clearly considers himself and his work as the more substantial moral corrective to society. Paul, however, points out the shortcomings of the police: “People came to me because there was a fear that you couldn’t address, a gap you couldn’t plug.” (ibid.) On the whole, Paul and the institution he represents are shown to be hanging in the balance - they still have a function within the community, but this function seems rather secular, and even when approaching the vicar for help, people are always quick to say that they are unsure about the spiritual side of things - or, as Ellie’s father puts it rather more explicitly: “I’m not into all that bullshit.” (S2/ E3, 00: 15) Paul is happy to adapt his help to the secular, psychological needs of his parishioners, but he realises that he is not always up to this task and that other institutions provide this service more efficiently. Paradoxically, in the third series he tells Beth ( Jodie Whittaker), who often sought his counsel after her son was killed, that he envies her for her new job as a social worker who helps women after sexual assaults (S3/ E5, 00: 27). Eventually, he faces up to the lack of interest in the church and leaves the parish, effectively putting a seal on the rapid decline and vanishing of his institution in modern society. The vicar’s brief appearance on television, which already jeopardises his rep‐ utation, reveals the general distrust attached to the media, which is under sus‐ picion of pursuing financial gain and fame rather than moral objectives. How‐ ever, the series also represents the local newspaper as an important local institution, which provides social cohesion and monitors other institutions. The editor of the local paper, Maggie (Carolyn Pickles), has a strong sense of com‐ 59 Broadchurch (2013-2017) munity and of the moral obligations of her profession. She keeps employing an unreliable photographer on the grounds that “[w]e look after our own here” (S1/ E1, 00: 12); organises the community to express their sympathy towards the be‐ reaved Latimers in a condolence book; and keeps her young, ambitious protegé Olly, Ellie’s nephew ( Jonathan Bailey), on a short leash, making him apologise when he has overstepped the mark by rashly publishing private information online (S1/ E1, 00: 35). Maggie’s moral code is strongly linked to both her small-town paper and to her advanced age, which is emphasised when a young, ruthless antagonist from a national paper appears on the scene. This journalist, Karen (Vicky McClure), wins the trust of the Latimers and of Olly whilst ex‐ ploiting them for her own purpose and bringing national media attention down on the small town. Selling the story to her editor, Karen describes Broadchurch as an “idyllic market town” and the Latimers as a “model family” with a highly photogenic mother (E1/ S4, 00: 50). This cynical, marketing-oriented approach to a family’s tragedy is an implied criticism of professional journalism and media coverage in general. During the course of events, the initially strong contrast between Maggie and Karen is qualified: while Karen tries to represent local events and backgrounds fairly and truthfully, her ruthless editor changes and sensationalises her work without asking. Karen also acts as unofficial media advisor to the Latimers and as self-appointed supervisor of the detectives’ work. She is deeply distrustful of DI Hardy’s abilities as an investigator, having reported on his previous case, the yet-unsolved murder of two young girls in Sandbrook. While Karen’s position thus becomes more complex than a purely evil counterpart to Maggie, series three introduces a new antagonist, as the Broadchurch Echo is taken over by a news conglomerate and Maggie has to answer to a young superior who has no interest whatsoever in the needs of the local community and patronises her by saying: “Times change, Maggie. Don’t get left behind.” (S3/ E2, 00: 12) During two scenes in the third series, Maggie swaps stories with vicar Paul about the decline in their institutions, and in the second of these they have both decided to leave their jobs. Maggie, however, does not seem to be left behind by modern times, since she has decided to start her own Youtube channel and become a ‘vlogger’. This shows that the media are not merely changing values and turning into impersonal, immoral conglomerates, but that new media also offer possibilities for individuals to practise their own kind of journalism without interference from superiors. Compared to public institutions such as the system of justice, those working in the media have less security, but also more flexibility. The judiciary system only plays a role in the second series of Broadchurch, which combines the tropes of both whodunit and courtroom drama as the de‐ 60 Kerstin Frank 8 This topic is at the centre of the British series Silk (first season 2010), in which ambitious barristers are vying for promotion. tectives are simultaneously working on the Sandbrook case and Danny Latim‐ er’s murderer is standing trial. The judiciary is presented in a similar way as journalism. The trial takes place not in the town itself but at the fictitious Wessex crown court, but Jocelyn, the prosecutor, has been a part of the Broadchurch community for years, and the defence team bears down on the town during the trial, trying to find details that will challenge the case of the prosecution. Jocelyn is a parallel figure to Maggie, the editor, and indeed a close friend of Maggie and - eventually - her lover. She is a formidable, authoritative figure, has a strict moral and professional code, and strongly believes that the law is essentially a noble calling (S2/ E8, 00: 36). Interestingly, her eyesight is failing and she is slowly going blind - on the level of character and plot, this adds another dark secret, and on a more abstract intertextual level, this is an implied reference to Lady Justice, whose blindfold ensures that she is unbiased in her judgement. However, in Jocelyn’s case, the symbolic meaning is double-edged, since her failing eye‐ sight could also mean that she is no longer up to the task or “past it”, as one of her young antagonists suggests (E2/ S7, 00: 39). Just as Maggie, Jocelyn is challenged by such representatives of a younger, more ruthless generation, whose ethics are informed by a pragmatic Kürwille (arbitrary will) instead of the Wesenswille (essential will). Her former protégée, Sharon (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), acts as leading counsel for the defence and is prepared to “fight dirty” (E2/ S1, 00: 40), with no intention of sparing the bereaved family further pain. She calls the judiciary system “a loaded, lopsided game full of people justifying that cynicism as a higher calling” (E2/ S8, 00: 05). Her junior, Abby (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), is even more cynical and completely lacking in empathy or moral feeling; she is simply interested in winning the case, and the defence team does win. The reasons for this are twofold: firstly, they are rooted in the system of justice, in which the process of assembling and discrediting evidence is not strictly fact-oriented, but a performance that is meant to influ‐ ence the minds of the jury, which Alec dismisses as “twelve ordinary, stupid, easily swayed, hard-of-thinking assholes” (E2/ S8, 00: 03). 8 Secondly, the reasons lie in mistakes and all-too-human failures committed by those involved in the Latimer case, particularly the police officers. The biggest among these is Alec’s decision to let Ellie into the cell of her husband Joe after he was arrested for the murder of Danny Latimer and Ellie’s subsequent beating of Joe, which leads to the exclusion of Joe’s previous confession from the trial. 61 Broadchurch (2013-2017) 9 The legal teams perform with this in mind throughout the trial, but it becomes most explicit when in a parallel scene both teams are pondering the attitudes of the individual jury members while preparing their final speeches in court (E2/ S7, 00: 18). The series thus implicitly asks a number of interesting questions about mor‐ ality vs. justice, individuals vs. institutions, and facts vs. emotions without of‐ fering any clear-cut answers or judgements. While the teams of prosecution and defence are presenting the procedures and results of the police investigation in court, they seem to apply an objective, empirical perspective, which finds the all-too human, emotionally charged actions of the police and the witnesses wanting. However, the actions of the legal teams themselves are not objective or fact-oriented, but a performance that is geared to raising certainties, doubts, and emotions in the (equally all-too-human) minds of the jury. 9 As Beth bitterly concludes after the verdict: “He’s got off by playing the system.” (E2/ S8, 00: 04) For her and the community, the verdict clearly shows that justice is not to be expected from a system which is not part of the traditional structures of the community but an essentially depersonalised, anonymous institution both geo‐ graphically and socially outside of town. The police as an institution, here mainly represented by the detectives Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller, is positioned in contrast to the judiciary system. Despite the flaws in police procedure which the defence team successfully exploits to challenge the seemingly clear-cut case, the police is the institution which ap‐ pears closest to the community and which has the interest of the individuals at heart, and shares the moral sense of the community. The reasons for this, and the particular constellation and development of the detectives, will be discussed in the next chapter in further detail. At this point, it suffices to say that the police force, in particular its main representatives Alec and Ellie, is the one - and, it seems, only - institution in Broadchurch that manages to successfully combine the virtues of the old, communal society with the new, associational society, i.e. professional procedures that are characterised by efficiency and rationality but employed by human beings with a strong, traditional moral code and respect for the community’s traditions. After the end of the third series, a commentator in the Times summarised: “The two cops got their men, but this was also a series of defeats: the Latimer family sundered, the vicar departing, the good editor resigned.” (Billen) The strongholds of traditional values, the church and the old-fashioned local news‐ paper, are gone; among the official, professional institutions situated locally, only the police prevail. That the Latimer family is “sundered” is not quite true: the marriage of the parents, Beth and Mark, is over, and Mark leaves the town, but Beth and her daughters are doing well and are still embedded in their circle 62 Kerstin Frank of friends. Thus, it is the institution of marriage rather than the family that is shown to be in decline. On the whole, the institutions of the church, the judiciary, the newspaper and the police have a complex, double-sided relationship to the community and its process of change: on the one hand, as traditional represen‐ tatives of social order, they are expected to uphold moral standards and reinforce existing social rules, and in times of crisis the town looks to them for help. On the other hand, these professional institutions are being reformed by a younger generation and are under most pressure to let their work be guided by efficiency and rational calculation, not by personal emotions or traditional moralities. Thus, the representatives of these institutions - particularly the older ones such as Maggie and Jocelyn - are, willy-nilly, both agents of change and moral strongholds against change. 4. The Changing Community and the Conventions of Crime Drama This analysis of the community and its institutions in Broadchurch has shown that the series makes full use of the range of traditional characters, motifs, and plot elements of crime drama and crime fiction in order to dramatise the process of change the town is facing. The institutions whose representation has been explored previously, i.e. the types of institutions and the ways in which they become involved in the plot, are part of these conventions. In the following, I will analyse more specifically how the crimes themselves, the murderers, and the constellation, self-conception, and behaviour of the investigating officers emphasise and negotiate social change. Throughout the first series, the media and the police point out again and again how the murder “may have changed [the] town forever (S1/ E5, 00: 03), how it may “run a crack through the com‐ munity” (S1/ E8, 00: 33), and that the “investigation has left its mark on a close-knit town” (S1/ E8, 00: 37). In fact, the crime and investigation are a means to bring to light cracks and marks that are already in place - or, as both the detectives and the townspeople fear, the crimes themselves might be manifes‐ tations of a general cultural coarsening and brutalisation, a sign that traditional values and moral guidelines of social behaviour are on the wane. Visually, the series often uses a technique that seems to highlight the oppo‐ sition between the crimes and the setting, presenting beautiful and serene views of nature, which in their purity and calm create an eerie contrast to the crimes that have been committed there. In the first series, these are mainly the cliffs, the beach and the sea; in the third one, the well-kept lawns and greenery of Axehampton House make it hard to believe that Trish should have been raped 63 Broadchurch (2013-2017) 10 The second series at the very beginning also presents an idyllic image of the two girls playing in a beautiful meadow in the midst of flowers (S2/ E1, 00: 01), but since this refers to the Sandbrook case, not to the setting of Broadchurch, it is not explored any further. 11 These little hints at bygone days are enough to evoke a world whose heyday and threatening demise have been depicted in countless films and series, most recently and popularly in Downton Abbey (2010-2015). 12 The classic tradition has famously been employed and ironically modified in the film Gosford Park (2002). 13 In recent years, rape has become rather more frequent in crime series, for example in Happy Valley (Season 1, 2014) and Shetland (Season 3, 2016), but it still stands out as a deviation from the convention of the classic murder mystery. in this place. 10 The camera work makes the most of this contrast, at one point slowly moving away from the crime scene until the humans are no longer visible and all that remains is the impression of green nature - and, of course, the knowledge of what has happened there, and the voice of Alec calling the for‐ ensics team (S3/ E1, 00: 28). In the case of Axehampton House, the series plays with further contrasts beside this first one of natural beauty and human depra‐ vation: secondly, there is also an element of class, as the manor house represents a refined, highly cultured social sphere whose ideals of good manners and re‐ straint do not coincide with the violence of rape. This sphere is long gone, as the series emphasises - the ‘lord of the manor’ rents out the house for parties, and all that is left of the old upper-class lifestyle are his childhood memories and some old cricket bats. 11 Thirdly, Axehampton house also introduces inter‐ textual associations with ‘golden age’ crime fiction, in which crime often pen‐ etrates the splendid world of the country house (see Knight 78). The way in which the manor house is presented as a crime scene in Broadchurch can be seen as an ironic nod towards this classic tradition, indicating that times have indeed changed both for manor houses and for crime fiction. 12 That the crime in question is not murder, but rape, is highly significant in this context, since the classic tradition would never have presented a sexual assault as the central crime; the highly aestheticised, old-fashioned, and somatophobic genre of crime fiction needed its body gone and safely buried. Broadchurch, too, only comes up with this - in the classic tradition of the whodunit 13 - rather atypical type of crime in the third series, which is part of a general progression within the series towards a more pressing sense of social change. The crime in the first series is of a far more traditional kind: it is murder, and the murderer is part of the victim’s closest circle of family, neighbours, and friends. Danny is the friend of Joe’s son Tom, and Joe and Danny have developed a close relationship by themselves, a purely platonic one, as Joe insists. He kills Danny on impulse when the boy wants to end their secret meetings and con‐ 64 Kerstin Frank fronts him with the accusation that he, Joe, wants a more physical relationship. All of this is shown in retrospect with the information “59 days earlier” while Joe is confessing the murder to Alec (S1/ E8, 00: 13), a technique that suggests that his confession is true. The killing escapes general categories, both for the murderer himself - “If I can’t understand it, why should you? ” (S1/ E8, 00: 23) - and also for Ellie in her dual role as both detective and wife of the killer. When she asks Alec, “Is he a paedophile? ”, he helplessly and unhelpfully replies: “Why do you need a category? ” (S1/ E8, 00: 43) and adds: “I don’t have these answers. I don’t. People are unknowable.” (S1/ E8, 00: 44) Joe claims that it was essentially a positive bond that he shared with Danny: “I only ever cared for him.” (S1/ E8, 00: 40) It is a puzzling crime full of contrasts: before his confession to the murder, Joe is presented throughout as a nice person, well integrated, caring, and loving, and the basis for the crime was a sense of love. However, there are, of course, sexual implications and suggestions at the psychological manipulation of a child. Besides, Joe brutally strangles the boy, professionally hides every trace, and successfully keeps up a façade of innocence for weeks. All of these actions add sober calculation and rationality to the emotion and spontaneity of the crime. Mark Lawson perceives this as a lack of “psychological plausibility”, the “one big flaw” in Broadchurch, both in series one and three, and he ascribes it to the conventions of crime fiction, in which “the eventual villain often has to be someone whose means and motives have been least clearly shown to the viewer”. This is certainly one way of accounting for the strangely incongruous solution of Joe as murderer. However, this incongruity also has a deeply dis‐ turbing effect, which may be its most important raison d’être: the crime comes from the very heart of the community and is driven by emotions and personal bonds. Because of this, it is a ‘communal’ murder in the sense of Tönnies’ ‘com‐ munal society’, and thus it is only fitting that the rational, modern, ‘abstract’ court in series two cannot administer justice as it befits the community; this is done by the townspeople themselves when they send Joe into exile (S2/ E8, 00: 42). Joe’s development during the second series, his detachment from his own deed and his refusal to take responsibility for his actions can be seen as repre‐ sentative of the threat that hangs over Broadchurch; the possible loss of its es‐ sential will and move towards the arbitrary will, which makes the individual decide on his or her most profitable course of action within a given situation, putting aside general moral principles and the interests of the community. Following this progression, the crimes in series three are clearly ‘abstract’ ones: the rapist chooses his victims randomly, without any personal connection, simply based on opportunity. As Trish flatly remarks when she learns the truth: “So I was just unlucky.” (S3/ E8, 00: 40) The rapist, Leo, is addicted to pornography, 65 Broadchurch (2013-2017) which, as has already been delineated, is an epitome of abstract, impersonal relations. His methods are based on rational planning, calculation, and effi‐ ciency. His motivation - besides the sexual gratification - is a feeling of power and control (S3/ E8, 00: 36), i.e. personal gain without any sense of give and take or balancing as it is part of any power relation in a community, where an increase of power is always accompanied by an increase of responsibility for those less powerful. In Trish’s case, the situation is more complicated because the actual rapist is Michael Lucas, a sixteen-year-old who has been manipulated into the deed by Leo. Interestingly, Leo claims that he did it because he felt sorry for Michael (S3/ E8, 00: 35), which amounts to the travesty of a true personal bond, while in fact the deed seems to have been driven by the need for power and control, just as Leo’s direct rapes. Leo begins to take young Michael under his wings as a reaction to Michael’s being bullied by his stepfather Clive (Sebastian Armesto) (S3/ E8 00: 23). Respect for the elders and traditional hierarchies are a cornerstone of the communal society, and Leo represents a break with this so‐ ciety - he is officially a part of it and plays on the local football team, but in his attitudes and secret actions he defies its values completely. This moral change profoundly affects the detectives. Early in the case, Alec confesses: “Murder I can make sense of. But these sexual offences…” (S2/ E2, 00: 20), and when the case is solved, he tries to reassure himself and Ellie by claiming: “He is not what men are. He is an aberration.” (S3/ E8, 00: 37) This reassurance opens up the central questions rather than solving them: if Leo is an aberration, what is the norm, and is it really still the same? The recurring motif of pornography and its moral implications seem to point against it. While the crimes are thus employed to emphasise both the ‘dark sides’ of the community as is inherent to the genre, and a more profound change towards an abstract society, the detectives represent a more optimistic attempt to reconcile the old with the new, to acknowledge change while retaining the moral core of the community. This is not obvious from the start: at first, Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller seem to be positioned as a clear contrast. She has a warm and affectionate personality, is well integrated in the local community, has a nice and loving family, and cultivates a good, friendly relationship with her colleagues. Alec is introduced as the typical ‘loner’ detective, grumpy, separated from his wife and daughter, and disinterested to the point of rudeness in his colleagues as human beings, who consequently call him “shitface” behind his back (S1/ E7, 00: 03). With regard to the community, the team of detectives thus seems to have one ‘insider’ and one ‘outsider’, corresponding to the cliché of good cop and bad cop. Even on the level of language, Alec is marked as an outsider by his Scottish accent. 66 Kerstin Frank However, after this contrast is initially exploited for comic effects and to in‐ troduce the characters, as well as the community, it begins to change as the detectives each take steps into the direction of their respective counterpart. Alec urges Ellie: “You have to look at your community from the outside now.” (S1/ E2, 00: 29) She starts to do this, willy-nilly, although she is feeling very uncomfort‐ able (S1/ E4, 00: 21 and S1/ E3, 00: 12). At the end of the first series, Ellie tempo‐ rarily loses her place within the community as her husband turns out to be the murderer and she inevitably shares part of the blame, and she is even estranged from her elder son Tom for a while. The second series then shows a gradual, painful process of reconciliation. These experiences force Ellie to reconsider her essentially positive view of humanity, which is a recurring point of discussion between her and Alec during the first series. While she claims that “most people have a moral compass”, he maintains that everyone has the potential to commit murder and that “compasses break” (S1/ E2, 00: 29). Alec refrains from rubbing it in, but the fact that her own husband turns out to be the murderer eventually proves his point. Alec, in his turn, becomes closer and closer to the Broadchurch community. He starts to care about the people, moves out of his hotel room and into an apartment in the second series, and even has his daughter come to live with him in the third series. When Ellie teases him by saying “I thought you hated it here”, he replies: “I do. Mostly.” (S3/ E3, 00: 28-29) These developments of the detectives serve to bring them together as a team as they meet somewhere in the middle and learn to respect each other’s attitudes. At the most fundamental level, however, the moral values and emotional in‐ volvement of the two detectives are very similar from the beginning. Alec’s grumpiness hides great empathy, a strong sense of justice, and his responsibility for providing, or at least preparing, justice. This sense of responsibility far ex‐ ceeds the call of professional duty, is distinctly personal, and verges on the re‐ ligious: Alec claims that he took on the case in Broadchurch as redemption for the unresolved Sandbrook case, and that he has done his “penance” when the latter is finally closed (S2/ E8, 00: 34). He even believes that he is still alive despite his severe heart condition because he must fulfil his purpose (E2/ S7, 00: 04). Alec is driven by this quasi-missionary calling and by his rage and anger on behalf of the victims (E2/ S7, 00: 05), which also transgresses every code of professional detachment. When Ellie is frustrated after the verdict of ‘not guilty’ for her husband, he urges her to use her anger to solve the Sandbrook case with him (E2/ S8, 00: 06). During their investigations, both detectives show a strong tendency to moral judgments as they unravel the smaller and bigger vices hidden in the com‐ munity. In interviews, they frequently treat the suspects or witnesses to disap‐ 67 Broadchurch (2013-2017) 14 Popular and influential Scandinavian crime series in this tradition are The Killing (Danish: Forbrydelsen, 2007-2012) and The Bridge (Danish: Broen, 2011-). 15 Mark Lawson also emphasises the joint influence of “Scandi-noir” and Agatha Christie on Broadchurch. proving glances or remarks when, for example, sexual betrayals are revealed. In this, they represent the moral values of the community and enforce, or at least promote these values, which do not always correspond to their roles as police officers. At the same time, however, they generally show a high degree of pro‐ fessionalism in their investigations, diligently collecting details and pursuing leads and - as Alec never tires of telling Ellie - distancing themselves from the com‐ munity to keep an open, objective mind. Mark Lawson emphasises that the series shows a “procedural realism unknown in classic detective fiction”, a “quasi-docu‐ mentary presentation of best police practice”, which it combines with the “out‐ landish twists and cliffhangers” of crime drama. More intriguingly, I would add, the series combines this modern, empirical, methodical police work with the core values of the traditional community, in which everyone has a responsibility for everyone else and for the community as a whole. The detectives use the rational, modern methods of investigations as means of ultimately providing order and justice, but they always feel answerable to the basic moral prerogatives of the community and, if both happen to clash, they always prioritise the communal moral core over the procedural rationale. In essence, the detectives, in their self-doubts, struggles, and occasional defeats, embody the key conflicts of a com‐ munity in transition, but they also represent a possible solution by combining the highest modern standards of professional rationality with an unalterable moral core of community values. It is not a simple solution, as the sufferings of the two detectives show, but it is a hopeful affirmation of the lasting values of the com‐ munity that deserve to be protected. The series thus employs and transforms the convention of the troubled, suffering detective - a convention associated with Scandinavian noir, 14 not with golden age English murder mysteries 15 - to repre‐ sent a troubled community that has to change with the times and defend itself against disruptive forces while trying to uphold its essential moral core. 5. Conclusion Having viewed Broadchurch through the lens of Tönnies’ theory of communal vs. associational societies, it is important to highlight again the fact that Tönnies’ model refers to “ideal types and not categories of classification” (Encyclopaedia Bri‐ tannica). Thus, my analysis does not aim to present the town as a traditional rural community of the 19 th century, refusing to face up to the challenges of 21 st -century 68 Kerstin Frank England. It intends to show that the core values and the essential social structures of the town as presented in the series are that of a communal society in Tönnies’ terms, bound together by personal relations, natural feeling, and a traditional moral common ground. Neither the town nor the detectives who represent the conflicting facets of the community are averse to modern efficiency, rationality, and a profes‐ sionalisation of institutional processes. What they resent and oppose is a change of the essence of the community, of a threatening transition from the essential will holding the town together to an arbitrary will. The series skilfully employs both the ‘Englishness’ of golden-age crime fiction and the dark melancholy of Scandinavian genre traditions to produce an intri‐ guing combination of nostalgia and hope, of social decline and a belief in the individual moral compass and the prevailing of personal human bonds in fam‐ ilies and local communities. Alec Hardy tells Lee, one of the murderers of Sand‐ brook: “Ultimately, we’re all alone.” (S2/ E8, 00: 18) Later, Ellie corrects him: “I think you’re wrong, by the way […]. We’re not all alone.” Alec’s reply - “I hope you’re right, Miller” (S2/ E8, 00: 35) - sums up the tentative, doubtful optimism that the struggles of the community and of the detectives convey throughout the series. The very last scene of the third season shows Beth and Ellie and their children together, united by the bonds of family and friendship. Series two ends with a similar scene, but with Mark Latimer as part of the group. By the end of the third season he has left the town, unable to come to terms with his son’s death and his own sense of guilt. Throughout the series, the community is shown to uphold rather traditional gender roles, and within this framework, women have the central role of keeping together the family. Ultimately, the last scene suggests, it is their unspectacular daily practice of personal relationships and care that will keep the community alive. Such moments in the series certainly verge on the sentimental, just as the symbolic celebrations of communal spirit that bring the town together in sup‐ port of the victims of crime. However, within the internal logic of the series, they tip the balance in favour of the traditional values of the community that appreciate the individual as a person and place personal bonds and solidarity above all else. The criminal investigations show the troubling aspects of these traditional values, which can be restrictive, or even oppressive, and can lead to self-righteousness and double standards. The investigations also demonstrate that human nature is flawed, and that underneath respectability and social co‐ hesion, there will always be individual acts of egotism and betrayal. Nonetheless, these revelations do not expose the traditional values as illusionary; they merely show that these values require constant care and attention, as well as sacrifices from individual members of the community. The two long-suffering detectives 69 Broadchurch (2013-2017) at the core of the series fully realise the fragility of this system, but maintain that it is worth protecting in the face of profound changes in the general social and moral structure of the country. Bibliography Primary Sources Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor Books, 1994 [1959]. Broadchurch. Series 1-2. Written by Chris Cribnall. Directed by James Strong, Euros Lyn, Jessica Hobbs, Jonathan Teplitzky, and Mike Barker. Kudos, 2013/ 2015. Broadchurch. Series 3. Written by Chris Cribnall. Directed by Paul Andrew Williams, Daniel Nettheim, and Lewis Arnold. Kudos, 2017. Yeats, W. B. “The Second Coming.” The Harvill Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry in Eng‐ lish. Ed. Michael Schmidt. London: The Harvill Press, 1999. 34. Secondary Sources Billen, Andrew. “Male Redemption Hard to Find in Heart of Town’s Darkness.” The Times. 18 April 2017. www.thetimes.co.uk/ article/ television-broadchurch-itv-f0j7zpv02. Accessed on 15 March 2018. Billen, Andrew and James Jackson. “Broadchurch; Meet the Lords.” The Times. 28 Feb‐ ruary 2017. www.thetimes.co.uk/ article/ broadchurch-z7tlc828f. Accessed on 15 March 2018. Bruce, Steve and Steven Yearley. “Community.” The Sage Dictionary of Sociology. London: Sage, 2006. 57. “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.” The Encyclopaedia Britannica. https: / / www.britannica. com/ topic/ Gemeinschaft-and-Gesellschaft. Accessed on 19 March 2018. Hardy, Alex. “TV Review: Broadchurch; Silent Witness.” The Times. 3 February 2015. www.thetimes.co.uk/ article/ tv-review-broadchurch-silent-witness-zr8388qj5pf. Accessed on 15 March 2018. Knight, Stephen. “The Golden Age.” The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction. Ed. Martin Priestman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. 77-93. Lawson, Mark. “Bye Bye Broadchurch: We’re Leaving Darkest Dorset but the Legacy Lives On.” The Guardian. 18 April 2017. www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/ 2017/ apr / 18/ broadchurch-season-3-finale-bbc-legacy-mark-lawson. Accessed on 15 March 2018. Moody, Nickianne. “Crime in Film and on TV.” The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fic‐ tion. Ed. Martin Priestman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. 227-43. Shaw, Annette. “The West Dorset Coastline is the ‘Star’ in Chris Chibnall’s new ITV Drama.” Dorset Magazine. 15 February 2013. www.dorsetmagazine.co.uk/ people/ 70 Kerstin Frank celebrity-interviews/ the-west-dorset-coastline-is-the-star-in-chris-chibnall-s-newitv-drama-1-1957109. Accessed on 15 March 2018. Tönnies, Ferdinand. Studien zu Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft [1887]. Ed. Klaus Lichtblau. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2012. 71 Broadchurch (2013-2017) Families in Gangland: Dysfunctional Community in Love/ Hate (2010-2014) Ralf Haekel 1. Introduction Love/ Hate (2010-2014) is the most successful Irish television series in history, and for this reason alone it is worth investigating the show in relation to Irish history, society, and culture. The series is a gruesome portrayal of the post-Celtic Tiger Dublin crime scene and, I argue in this chapter, also remarkable for its aesthetic qualities. Created by writer Stuart Carolan and directed by David Caf‐ frey, the first of its five series aired in 2010 on RTÉ One, but “it was at the third series that everything exploded” (Murphy/ Carolan/ Flynn 67), as the show’s producer James Flynn remarked in an interview in 2015. Although the second series was already the most popular on Irish TV in 2011, individual episodes of the later series three to five attracted unprecedented numbers of viewers. The finale of the fourth series, for instance, was watched by more than one million viewers (see Sweeney), a sensational number for a television series broadcast in Ireland. Set in Dublin’s criminal underworld, Love/ Hate is a crime drama that focuses almost exclusively on the world of the criminals, with Gardaí and lawyers first taking minor roles and only gaining in prominence in the fourth and fifth series. Regarding influences, the show seems to look abroad, and especially across the Atlantic, by predominantly employing the American gangster genre as a model in a rather straightforward manner. The producers not only focus on a potential mass market, but also adapt American genre conventions and use American hip hop music from the likes of the Notorious B.I.G., Dr Dre, or JAY-Z as the show’s musical score, which gets more varied as the series proceeds, with songs ranging from Blind Willie Johnson, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Sex Pistols to the Dub‐ liners and the Pogues as well. Although clearly inspired by shows such as The Wire (2002-2008) and The Sopranos (1999-2007) (see Lawson), the series is more Irish than it appears at first sight. Criticised as much as praised for merging 1 For a critical discussion see Coulouma, “Where’s the Love”, 161-78; Farquharson 138-55; Ging 179-92. American generic conventions and traditional Irish topics, 1 this mixture of genres is based on an innovative use of serial narration and paints a very apt portrait of the anxiety in present-day Ireland. The gangster lifestyle, petty crimes, and the drug trade are portrayed as traits typical of Irish society in the wake of the economic crash in 2008. Whilst the series narrates a rather con‐ ventional gangster plot, it negotiates and also subtly undermines a set of estab‐ lished topics of Irish national identity formation. Love/ Hate does this by pre‐ senting different forms of community: the community of the family, the community of the gangsters, and the traditional community of the IRA. In what follows, I demonstrate how Love/ Hate represents a society in transition in which any feeling of safety associated with the idea of community and with traditional values gradually drifts out of view. Before looking at the series itself, however, I will contextualise the meaning of community in Love/ Hate in an Irish setting in general and look at it against the background of Irish television history. 2. Ireland and Television In the context of contemporary television, the concept of community serves as a projection, suggesting an ideal of something lost in our 21 st -century post-post‐ modern world. Especially in crime series, a sense of community is constantly conjured up, but eventually appears to be irretrievably lost, be this a harmonious village or family life; an idyll that, upon closer inspection, turns out to be rotten to the core. In the case of Love/ Hate, this ideal image is no longer a given, and community only appears as a shallow surface in a society devoid of positive values - it is certainly no “cosy and comfortable place” (Bauman 1). In this volume, community is linked to the concept of the state of the nation, which dates back to the 18 th century, where it is mainly concerned with questions about economy and governance. It is furthermore associated with a classically English problem that dates back to Victorian Britain in the age of industrialism, desig‐ nating social struggle. Both concepts - community as a sociological term, and the state of the nation as an economic and class-related concept - thus expound the problem of something that is missing within modern society: they give voice to a sense of loss in a time characterised by contingency and anxiety. Com‐ munity, thus, serves as the slightly reactionary opposite of modernity with uto‐ pian overtones. 74 Ralf Haekel With regard to Ireland, the amalgam of these two topics is interesting and difficult, and it carries the potential of paradox - a paradox that also dates back to previous centuries. The historical situation in Ireland during the 19 th century is, of course, entirely different from that in England. After the passing of the Act of Union in 1800 and the foundation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the island had become part of the richest country in the world - and was simultaneously suffering from severe poverty. Community and identity in Ireland are therefore closely linked to England, but also differ fundamentally. The turn of the 19 th century marked the rise of Irish nationalism as not only a political but also a cultural phenomenon. The 1798 uprising led by Theobald Wolfe Tone, which caused the British government to pass the Act of Union, marked a change in the cultural scene, most notably visible in the emergence of the genre of the National Tale. Joep Leerssen points out the cultural dimension of national identity: Nationalism is, of all the great political doctrines of the nineteenth century, perhaps the most idealistic one in that it derives its political agenda, not from social, or practical considerations of state interest, power or wealth, but from the ideal-typical abstraction of the ‘nation’ and its essential character or Volksgeist. This national essence can be understood or intuited from its expressions in the collective history, the subsisting vernacular culture (always seen as a remnant from the primordial past), or its lan‐ guage. (27, emphasis in original) In Ireland, questions of community, the state of the nation, and national identity are hence closely entangled with one another and have a strong cultural com‐ ponent that is, in its very origin, directed against England and Britain. Irish community and the state of the Irish nation, therefore, differ fundamentally from the situation in England in so far as in Ireland, national self-understanding relies on the wish to gain independence from Britain and to repeal the Union. Com‐ munity and the state of the nation in Ireland, in other words, are directed against England, and not primarily an expression of social tensions within Ireland. Within recent years, the focus on England as Ireland’s other, as the country that defines Irish identity ex negativo, has certainly softened as a result of economic prosperity. This confusing mixture of a past national identity that was decidedly anti-English, and a more international and cosmopolitan identity of the present, sets the scene for Love/ Hate. Especially with regard to community concepts, traditional forms clash with contemporary ones. Family, just like in any novel, film, or television series depicting Mafia structures, plays an important role, but, although it is still a strong component, it is no longer the glue that holds society together. 75 Love/ Hate (2010-2014) The genre of the television series seems particularly apt to capture this dis‐ integration of traditional Irish society. The rise of quality television, i.e. the more complex and sophisticated formats of serial television narratives produced in recent years, is almost coeval to the boom of the Irish economy after the late 1990s. The Celtic Tiger years between the middle of the 1990s and the financial meltdown of 2008 brought with them unforeseen economic prosperity. Due to low taxes and as a result of the New Economy, many international corporations went to Ireland and created jobs. As a result, the unemployment rate sank from 20 % in 1990 to 4.2% in 2000. For the first time in history, foreign citizens came to Ireland in order to find work, which changed Irish society fundamentally: after having been a country shaped by emigration for centuries, Ireland suddenly found itself to be a land of immigration, with people of different social, cultural, and political backgrounds now moving to Ireland and Dublin in particular. Also, the shape of the country changed: motorways were built, many more people bought cars, the cities prospered, and Dublin became one of the most expensive places to live in on the British Isles. Yet, the economic boom also created new problems: it introduced new forms of drug abuse, and it also brought organised crime. This had cultural effects, too: Irish crime fiction, which hardly existed before 1990, became immensely popular during the boom years, and today, the Irish crime fiction scene is one of the most productive and multifaceted in An‐ glophone literature. As much as the series portrays a society in flux, it also reflects, especially in its narrative form, the fundamental changes of the art form of the television series. The history of Irish society is more closely connected to the medium of television than is apparent at first glance. Apart from its own internal aesthetic qualities, the content and the formal appearance of a television show is de‐ pendent on three external factors: first, the history of the broadcasting organi‐ sations and their given political outlook; second, the technological possibilities of the medium; and, third and very closely connected to the former two, the aesthetics of the medial form, i.e. whether the fictional show is a single play or a series. The introduction of television in 1961 helped introduce progressive Western ideas into the traditionally Catholic, and conservative, Irish society (see Pettitt 147). The motivation to establish the Irish national broadcasting company RTÉ, Raidió Teilifís Éireann, was first triggered by developments in Northern Ireland and across the Irish Sea, as Lance Pettitt maintains: Overspill television broadcasts from the BBC, the development of British commercial TV during the mid-1950s and the launch of Ulster TV in 1959, provided the context 76 Ralf Haekel and incentive for discussions about the desirability of a national TV service in the Republic. (145) Similar to the development of television in Britain, the medium first had a clearly didactic purpose in Ireland. In a society as conservative as the Irish in the 1960s, this didactic purpose is particularly obvious. Launching the first Irish television channel, President Éamon de Valera addressed the audience with the following words, highlighting the dangers as well as the educational possibilities of the medium: I must admit that sometimes when I think of television and radio and their immense power I feel somewhat afraid. Like atomic energy, it can be used for incalculable good but it can also do irreparable harm. Never before was there in the hands of men an instrument so powerful to influence the thoughts and actions of the multitude. A persistent policy pursued over radio and television apart from imparting knowledge can build up the character of a whole people, inducing sturdiness and vigour and confidence. On the other hand, it can lead through demoralisation to decadence and dissolution. (de Valera) Although some officials were first afraid of the “scandalous immorality allegedly emanating from British television” (Coulouma, “Introduction”, 2), very soon RTÉ “bought in pre-recorded US and British programmes to fill air time” (Pettitt 150) as a cheaper alternative to the expensive production of an exclusively Irish tel‐ evision programme. Both in the Republic of Ireland and in Great Britain, television changed in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the introduction of RTÉ Two in 1978 in Ireland - “with the explicit objective of rebroadcasting UK programmes for audiences not receiving British channels” (Coulouma, “Introduction”, 3) - and Channel 4 in 1982 in Britain: “Channel 4 bought programmes from independent pro‐ gramme-makers, who had to compete with each other for commissions, and Channel 4 itself made no significant investment in production facilities or training.” (Bignell/ Lacy 10) In other words, during this period there was a deci‐ sive shift towards commercialising the television programme on both sides of the Irish Sea. As a result, private broadcasting companies as well as a wider variety of channels and programmes went on air. For the Irish context this meant that [n]ational and European funding was thus partially redirected towards private broad‐ casting companies, with an increase in the commissioning of native, independent programming throughout the 1990s. This period also corresponded to the technolog‐ 77 Love/ Hate (2010-2014) ical shift to cable and satellite transmission, and to the first stirrings of Celtic Tiger prosperity. (Coulouma, “Introduction”, 3-4) For the programmes produced for Irish television, this development implied that the individual shows are no longer exclusively produced for national television, but rather for a worldwide market, very often in collaboration with international partners. Examples include The Tudors (2007-2010), The Borgias (2011-2013), and Penny Dreadful (2014-2016), all produced by the same company which is re‐ sponsible for Love/ Hate: Octagon Films. In what follows, I will refer to Jason Mittell’s now classical approach, in which he describes a number of distinctive characteristics in his formal and narrato‐ logical analysis of what he terms “Complex TV”. By this he refers to a still on‐ going development in television history that is also at the heart of all of the essays collected in this book: a significant change in both quality and popularity of Anglo-American culture, a new focus on the series as the most important form of television drama. Love/ Hate certainly has to be seen in this context. Suggesting “a new paradigm of television storytelling” (Mittell, “Narrative Com‐ plexity”, 38-9; see also Complex TV), Mittell defines the narrative complexity of the television series as the outcome of breaking down the barrier between series, with recurring characters but where each episode finds closure, and se‐ rials, an ongoing, open, and potentially endless story (for the distinction see Allrath/ Gymnich/ Surkamp 5-10). What distinguishes the most recent successful series in general, and Love/ Hate in particular is, furthermore, that they return to a more authorial mode with a showrunner who acts as the main writer, fa‐ vouring the recent American over the established European model of serial nar‐ ration. Thus, the showrunner is more important than the director, which also shows the tendency to introduce narrative twists that are at times totally un‐ foreseen and even shocking. Love/ Hate employs this narrative model by, for instance, building up lead characters and killing them off at most unexpected points in the story - a feature established by, and characteristic of, Game of Thrones (2011-). These twists, however, are put to use in order to problematise the topic of community in Love/ Hate, reflecting the insecurity characteristic of present-day post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Love/ Hate has to be seen in this double context: the wake of the collapse of Irish prosperity, which came to a sudden end in September 2008 when the global bank collapse caused the economic bubble to burst on the one hand, and the recent developments in the medium of television, especially in the field of so-called quality TV on the other. Love/ Hate is a portrait of the dark side and the aftermath of the Celtic Tiger years; it is both swansong and hangover. 78 Ralf Haekel 3. Love/ Hate Love/ Hate centres around a number of young men, all petty gangsters in the Dublin crime scene, as they are introduced in the first episode of the first series. Robbie Treacy (Chris Newman) is released from prison and, since his friend Tommy Daley (Killian Scott) fails to pick him up - he is still in bed with Robbie’s sister Mary (Ruth Bradley) -, departs on his own, enters a corner shop to pur‐ chase a phone card and reads, but does not buy, a magazine. While on his way there, Robbie makes several calls on his mobile phone, to his brother Darren (Robert Sheehan), who has just come back home to Dublin from Spain, as well as to his friend Nidge Delaney (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), who is out shopping with his girlfriend Trish (Aoibhinn McGinnity) and their son Warren (Dylan Stoeck‐ hardt). After flirting with an anonymous woman, Robbie steps out of the news‐ agent’s to wait for Tommy, when he is suddenly shot by a masked killer who is able to escape before the Gardaí, Tommy, or Darren arrive. In this quick sequence of scenes, Dublin is introduced as a 21 st -century metropolis characterised by mobility, technology, international connections - and crime: as Darren leaves the airport, he takes a look at the heading of a tabloid paper which runs “Gang‐ land: Minister promises crackdown”. This headline introduces the scene and the main subject matter of Love/ Hate: organised crime in Dublin’s underworld. In the course of its five series, Love/ Hate shifts its focus several times: while the first two series are about the structure of the gang itself and the inner strug‐ gles of its key members, the third is concerned with the juxtaposition of the gang and the IRA, thus contrasting a traditional Irish with a new and more contingent form of community. The final two series are about the confrontation of the gangsters, led by “King” Nidge, and the Gardaí, particularly Detective Inspector Mick Moynihan (Brían F. O’Byrne). This confrontation eventually leads to Nidge’s downfall and death, bringing the entire series to a close. These latter two series are therefore more conventional - “a simple, even classic set-up - cops and robbers, the good guys versus the baddies” (Harrison) - as well as closer to the American role model of The Wire than the previous series. Love/ Hate can be seen as a clear example of the blending of series and serial as analysed by Mittell: the storyline continues, but there are still elements of closure - which then lead to a shift of focus. The death of leading characters is a case in point, as this creates the space for relatively minor characters to step up and become the programme’s protagonists, like Nidge and his niece Siobhan (Charlie Murphy), who are both supporting roles in the first two series, and undoubtedly the stars of the final two. This way, the series can also introduce new topics or look at a given theme from a different angle. 79 Love/ Hate (2010-2014) As a key subject matter of Love/ Hate, community appears in a number of different facets. The most important one is, I argue, the family, which is both part of and simultaneously in contrast to other forms of communities. Against the socio-historical background - gangland in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland - the show presents a deeply revisionist concept of family and family life which ques‐ tions and occasionally runs counter to traditional values and norms. At times, family structures are shown to be at the heart of these new communities, some‐ times families are threatened and even destroyed by their violence, and even‐ tually, family ties also have the strength to stand up to the community of the gang. Love/ Hate can thus be seen as a series that scrutinises community in a time of transition, juxtaposing traditional and new concepts, thus painting a portrait of Ireland in an age of economic, social, and moral anxiety. 4. Family The community of the family is introduced with a twist right away. There are many different conceptions of family life in Love/ Hate. Generally speaking, it is portrayed as dysfunctional yet still vitally important to each of its members. More often than not, the unity of the family community is threatened from within, as most fathers either appear to have an affair or visit prostitutes. Family also often serves as a subject matter to highlight the personal, ‘human’ side of individual gangsters who otherwise appear vicious and brutal. Love/ Hate’s first series, for instance, focuses on Darren Treacy and his way of coping with crim‐ inal life. Darren and his brother Robbie are merely petty gangsters; one on the run, the other just out of prison. Robbie’s violent death right at the start triggers a whodunit storyline that carries the first series, but is in no way as central to the narrative, or even its driving force, as in other contemporary crime dramas like Broadchurch (2013-2017). Although the quest for Robbie’s murderer struc‐ tures most of the first series, this is merely a tip of the hat to traditional crime fiction and film. Instead, the series itself focuses on the community bonds and relations within a (sub-)society completely controlled and shaped by drugs and organised crime. In the opening episodes, Darren is hiding from the police. He has just returned from Spain, where he hid because of the illegal possession of a shotgun - a relatively minor crime compared to his later deeds, which marks him as slightly less vicious at first, and sets him in opposition to openly malicious characters such as the gang leader “John Boy” Power (Aidan Gillen) or his half-brother, the dim-witted Hughie (Brian Gleeson); the name of the leader ironically alluding to the paradigmatic American TV family, the Waltons. 80 Ralf Haekel 2 In the following, references to Love/ Hate will be given without repeating the title. Darren having had to leave Ireland hints at a traditional topic within both Irish history and Irish culture and media: emigration. Here, however, the concept is turned on its head, or Americanised, if you wish, by merging the topic of emigration with conventions of the American gangster genre. His leaving without notice prior to the beginning of the timeline of the show has brought his relationship with Rosie (Ruth Negga) to an end, with whom he is still in love and wants to win back. As the protagonist of the first three series, he is portrayed as drawn ever further into the criminal circles, whilst at the same time he is secretly and sometimes openly hostile to this kind of lifestyle. His sister Mary, for example, tells him on the anniversary of Robbie’s death: “Darren, you are not cut out for the life you’re leading. […] You are not like Nidge, or even Tommy, or the others. You’re kind. That’s why Rosie loved you.” (Love/ Hate, S2/ E2, 00: 20) 2 Viewers are therefore asked to sympathise with Darren up to his death in the third series, as he does not share most of the negative character traits of his friends: he is one of the few who never visits prostitutes and, although he becomes ever more ruthless in his acts of murder, his conscience is shown to be tortured until the very end. In the scene just quoted, the close connections between family life and the pressures of life in gangland are openly addressed, as Darren feels responsible for Robbie’s death: DARREN. I feel like I’m betraying him or something. MARY. You’re working for John Boy again? DARREN. Yeah. He’s my little brother. Could’ve looked out for him better. MARY. It wasn’t your fault, Darren. DARREN. It was. He got into it because I got into it. I know that, you know that, Mary. (S2/ E2, 00: 19) As the series proceeds, Darren is drawn deeper and deeper into the life of a gangster. Reluctant to commit any serious crimes at the beginning - he deals with black market cigarettes or, together with his mate Luke (Gavin Drea), robs cash machines in order to pay back his debts -, he is then pressed by John Boy into killing Stumpy (Peter Campion), Rosie’s erstwhile lover, because the kingpin deems him to be a ‘rat’, i.e. a traitor. Still more humane than most of the others, he visits Stumpy’s mother after the deed to offer her money. This scene contrasts family and gangster lifestyle. Stumpy, up until then just John Boy’s rather stupid sidekick and ruthless criminal - he beats Rosie brutally so that she loses their child -, can be seen to have a ‘normal’ and a private past as a family 81 Love/ Hate (2010-2014) member. The mother shows Darren - his son’s killer after all - photographs of Stumpy as a child, which creates in both Darren and the viewers a very uneasy feeling, emphasising how criminal life threatens and eventually destroys the community of the family. This aspect is also highlighted in other scenes: organ‐ ised crime threatens to destroy the last remnants of traditional family life. At Robbie’s funeral, for instance, it is not his name that is written in flowers, but the word “brother” that is clearly legible on his grave. Thus, it is as if not only Robbie is buried in the grave, but the very idea of the family itself. Stumpy will not remain Darren’s only victim: he also kills, in a very unex‐ pected turn of events, kingpin John Boy at the end of the second series; IRA boss Git Loughman ( Jimmy Smallhorne); Gary Creed (Stephen Cromwell), and his wife, leaving their little baby crying; and, whilst trying to rescue Nidge, IRA member Paddy (Patrick Murray). Darren himself is shot twice: first at the end of series one in a drive-by shooting by his later victim Stumpy, and then, finally, after having just escaped an attempt on his life, staged but not executed by Nidge, he is killed in the third series by Lizzy (Caoilfhionn Dunne) for having murdered her brother Paddy. This long list of Darren’s murder victims demonstrates how his criminal life not only destroys the life of others, but his own life as well. Not only is he separated from Rosie but also increasingly estranged from his sister Mary who tries to lead a normal life with her two children, struggling to hold her family together. Mary’s family, however, though by far the most ‘traditional’ amongst the main characters, is not a conservative one. Just after having slept with Tommy in the opening episode, Mary gets up and gets dressed, asking him: MARY. What are you looking at? TOMMY. You. You wanna watch some TV, Mary? MARY. No. I have to pick up the kids and get the place ready for Robbie. (S1/ E1, 00: 05) Hence, the audience gets to know that Mary has children, as well as an affair with a man who is apparently not their father. Although Mary’s family life is not traditional in the sense that she is either divorced or separated from her partner, this is by no means problematic. Rather, Mary is introduced as a caring mother who wants to protect her children and hide the criminal community from them. As unremarkable as this may be, it sets the tone for the family con‐ stellations in the series, as they all depart from the conservative model which defines a family as a married couple with children. To contextualise this, it is important to note that the concept of the family is of key importance not only in Irish history and social life, but also in art and culture. While the Irish nation, be it the country as part of the UK, the Irish Free 82 Ralf Haekel State post 1922, or the Republic of Ireland after 1949, is an imagined community like any other; Irish cultural and national identity is traditionally based on an idiosyncratic and religious, i.e. Catholic, conception of the family: as the para‐ digmatic form of community, family is regarded to be the nucleus of Irish society. The very Catholic notion of the family as the heart of Irish identity was con‐ solidated in the 20 th century. Without a parallel in the western world, the country, especially under the leadership of Éamon de Valera as Taoiseach, strengthened the already existing close ties between church and state in the Irish Constitution of 1937, which laid the foundations for the establishment of the Republic of Ireland. The constitution bound the state very closely to the dogma of the Catholic Church, as article 44 clearly states: “The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion.” (“Constitution of Ireland”) Because of this form of state Catholicism, it was forbidden by law to get a di‐ vorce, have an abortion, or even to buy contraceptives. Irish society became a very conservative, even reactionary, Catholic society, in which the family rep‐ resented the essential core: The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law. (ibid.) In other words, the family was considered to be the foundation of community within Ireland and thus also the core of Irish society and national identity, and the law enforced this conservative and even reactionary worldview. As a con‐ sequence, Ireland in the middle of the 20 th century was, in a way, excluded from the modernisation of society that characterised other Western nations during the same time, and censorship secured this kind of self-imposed ignorance. The family as the primary unit of Irish community is therefore one of the key re‐ current topics in Irish literature and art that has a tradition reaching much fur‐ ther back than 1937: the Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen, for instance, describes the typical features of the Irish Gothic and the Irish Big House Novel as based on “the demonic power of the family myth” (3-4). Traditional family structures as portrayed in Love/ Hate therefore fulfil a double function. On the one hand, they represent a form of community that a modern and increasingly secular Ireland struggles to free itself from; on the other hand, family life, especially parenthood, is unflinchingly presented in a positive light, as a “warm place” (Bauman 1). Elmo (Laurence Kinlan), whom Darren first frames and then helps to escape, is a case in point. At a meeting 83 Love/ Hate (2010-2014) with Darren in the third series, he shows him a picture of his son on his mobile, and his story creates a stark contrast with the gangster community: DARREN. What's the story with you? You’ve got a kid now? ELMO. Yeah. One and a half now, he is. He’s a little terror. Climb up on anything. You can’t take your eyes off him. Turn you back and he’s out on the balcony. He’s a little bollocks. Here, I’ll show you a picture of him. There’s one I want to show you. I brought him to an Ireland game. The face on him, dead serious. […] It’s the best thing man, having a kid. I know everybody does be complaining and moaning about it all and that but I love it Darren. I swear. Every minute of it. (S3/ E2, 00: 30) The fact that Elmo’s life is in danger because of his connections to the criminals is opposed to his new role as a father and the responsibilities involved. The feeling that life in gangland is utterly hostile to fatherhood and family life is clearly palpable in this scene. This opposition between a healthy family community and those who are shut out is heightened in the story of Darren’s friend Luke. In order to emphasise the distance between the individual protagonists and the family as a healthy com‐ munity, the show plays repeatedly with an inside-outside juxtaposition. The camera takes the position of one of the individuals standing outside a house looking in, watching the family. The family is thus portrayed as a healthy, warm place that the individual, however, is separated from. This creates a feeling of nostalgia for some remnant of the past; something either lost and no longer accessible, or something that was never accessible in the first place. In the fourth episode of series two, Luke passes by a house and watches a family preparing their Christmas dinner (see fig. 1). Later, Luke develops what seems to be an obsession with Mary, watching her house at night from the street. When Mary sees him and Darren subsequently confronts Luke, he makes a poignant confession: When I was in the care home, sometimes I used to go out for a gander. This one time I was looking in the back window of a house. I was going to rob it and this family were all there. They were watching the telly together. Laughing and everything. I don’t know. I do that sometimes. Being bored and all. Sitting here on my own. I feel sort of good afterwards, you know. Like I knew them. Or like they’re my family. (S2/ E6, 00: 31) When he, later in the series, actually enters her house, Mary is distressed and asks Darren to deal with the situation, who, together with Nidge, kills and buries Luke in the woods. Luke, with his crossing the border between outside and inside by entering Mary’s house, not only signs his own death sentence; in a more 84 Ralf Haekel Fig. 1: Luke watching an anonymous family through the window (S2/ E4, 20: 10). general and metaphorical manner, this scene shows how individual characters in gangland are categorically shut out and barred from this form of community in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland which creates victims, no matter how kind at heart they actually are. 5. The Gangsters As just argued, the family is portrayed as endangered by crime and the gangster lifestyle which is presented as an alternative, yet utterly corrupted, form of community. Throughout the whole series, crime and the drug trade are shown to be a danger to society at large and its individuals in particular. At the begin‐ ning of the fourth series, the dealers sell their drugs not only to adults, but also to children who live in a dire social and economic condition. Violence and drugs hence threaten society, but in turn, the economic situation also creates this criminal scenario in the first place. This is shown in the fate of some of the characters. One of the most prominent victims of drug abuse is Debbie (Susan Loughnane). Her social decline, which is somewhat exaggerated in the series, is clearly linked to her addiction, which, as a synecdoche, represents the conse‐ quences of drug abuse. Introduced as John Boy’s lover, she first loiters in his posh apartment, apparently doing nothing very much at all. Because of her ad‐ diction, she first starts an affair with Tommy to have access to drugs and, after 85 Love/ Hate (2010-2014) John Boy has thrown her out, works as a prostitute. Eventually she dies of an overdose in the fourth series. Her downfall from extremely rich to extremely poor - both sides of the present-day economy - contrasts with her family back‐ ground: at one point she returns to her middle-class home - only to steal money from her mother’s purse. Having crossed the line from one form of community - family - to another - the gangsters -, there seems to be no turning back. The gangster lifestyle displayed in the series fills a void created by the Celtic Tiger-era neoliberal capitalism, and the bursting of the bubble in 2008. One of the few instances in which the economic situation is mentioned is when John Boy meets with his gang and he drinks a toast “[t]o the recession” (S2/ E3, 00: 14) - seconds before he is shot, but not seriously wounded, by his adversary Fran (Peter Coonan). This is, simply put, a world in transition, without traditional values or security. John Boy displays the effects of post-Celtic Tiger contingency on the individual psyche most symptomatically. In series one he is portrayed as the aloof, confident, and awe-inspiring kingpin of the Dublin underground world. Although he controls gangland, he does have family ties as well: his half-brother Hughie, who is as ruthless and brutal as he is mentally deranged, and a grown-up daughter who only appears later. At the end of the first series, it is revealed that Hughie had killed Darren’s brother Robbie for a ridiculously small sum of money, which is in line with his brutality, ignorance, and arrogance. In the final episode of the first series, he accidentally shoots himself, which establishes some kind of poetic justice. Whilst John Boy treated Hughie more or less like his pit-bull throughout the first series, it becomes clear that family ties are important to John Boy, despite everything. What is more, John Boy epitomises one further aspect of the community of the gangsters: toxic mascu‐ linity. The entire underworld is a patriarchal and brutal community, and John Boy as the boss is the linchpin of the misogyny displayed in the series. He treats his girlfriend Debbie with contempt only, which highlights the show’s emphasis on John Boy’s “hyper-violent, misogynistic masculinity, whose amoralism fits well with neoliberal values of individualism and narcissism” (Ging 171). The second series, however, presents John Boy as utterly changed: he is now increasingly marked by paranoia and acts like a control freak. Flore Coulouma remarks that his “paranoid obsessions bring about his downfall. Series one and two show John Boy gradually retreating into his high security apartment to stare for hours on end at his surveillance screens” (“Where’s the Love”, 175). These screens also signify that the boss is hiding behind media and moving further away from reality. The fact that Nidge, after having taken John Boy’s place, also installs surveillance cameras in his house and likewise stares at the split screen only proves that this form of paranoia is not an individual character trait, but 86 Ralf Haekel rather linked to the system of gangster life. Or, as Mick Moynihan, reiterating the old joke, puts it: “Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.” (S4/ E6, 00: 20) This similarity underlines that the community of the gangsters is the opposite of the concept as described by Zygmunt Bauman or Gerard Delanty; it is not a haven of safety and security, and it metaphorically represents the anxiety-driven Irish society after the economic crash. John Boy’s increasingly paranoid and megalomaniac persona is epitomised by a huge mural painting in his apartment, mocking Leonardo’s Last Supper - with Hughie in a Jesus Christ pose, surrounded by his disciples who are all prominent and, needless to say, exclusively male figures from the world of pop culture: Bruce Lee, Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G., Bob Marley, John F. Kennedy, Jimi Hendrix, John Boy himself, John Lennon, and Che Guevara. There are only three prominent Irish characters in the painting, in a way framing the entire ensemble: Phil Lynott on the far right, Michael Collins on the far left, and Bobby Sands at the centre. Whilst Lynott, as the singer of Thin Lizzy, also stands for the world of rock and popular culture, the other two represent 20 th -century Irish political and national history. Michael Collins, one of the key figures of the 1916 Easter Rising and a soldier in the Irish Republican Army who was killed in the Irish Civil War in 1922, and Bobby Sands, a member of the Provisional IRA who went on hunger strike and died in prison in 1981, are two representatives of Irish Republican national identity. Their iconic as well as ironic inclusion in the mural together with American and British figures of popular culture can be interpreted in numerous ways, but it demonstrates that the traditional factors contributing to Irish community and identity formation have vanished into a world of pop culture. The fact that John Boy and Hughie both feature as well shows the kingpin’s delusion of grandeur. As a symbol of Irish society and cul‐ ture, however, the mural may be read as a hint at an Irish past, which, for the community of the gangster at least, has grown shallow in the neoliberal present: the pillars of Irish society have merged with international media and pop culture, and as such they have become empty signifiers. After John Boy’s violent death at the end of the second series, Nidge Delaney takes his position and acts as the new gang boss - ironically called “King” Nidge by Darren - throughout the remaining series, until he is eventually killed at the end of series five. On the surface, Nidge and his girlfriend Trish, with their small son Warren, first seem to lead a more traditional family life as they get married in the course of the first series - which seems worth mentioning, as an unmar‐ ried life as a family would have been quite impossible in the conservative Cath‐ olic Irish society at the middle of the 20 th century. But this family community is shown to be brittle right from the start. Nidge goes to prostitutes regularly, and 87 Love/ Hate (2010-2014) Fig. 2: “King” Nidge in prison at the end of the fourth series (S4/ E6, 49: 08). he also has an extramarital affair with Linda (Denise McCormack), the wife of his part-time companion and part-time rival Fran, and later, in series four, with brothel keeper Janet (Mary Murray). Regarding fashion style, individual behav‐ iour and education, they are depicted as working class or ‘white trash’, but eco‐ nomically they are clearly affluent because of Nidge’s involvement in the drug trade. Hence, Nidge wears ‘tasteless’ but expensive tracksuit jackets and trainers most of the time. At first, Nidge is merely a semi-comic character - certainly not portrayed as the new underground kingpin that he will eventually become, or the paranoid yet fascinating madman who screams at the camera at the end of the fourth series (see fig. 2). Similar to Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in Breaking Bad (2008-2013), Nidge is portrayed at first as rather clumsy, only to become more sinister as the series proceeds. During the opening scene of the first episode, he is loading a gun, following the instruction on a YouTube video with an American voiceover. When Trish enters the room, he acts as if embarrassed and shuts down the computer as if caught in some silly indecent act. At first he lies to her about his connections to the other criminals and his position in the gang, but pretty soon it becomes clear that he is fairly high up in its hierarchy. Nevertheless, the first series still depicts him as a figure torn between gangster and family life centred 88 Ralf Haekel on picking up his son from the nursery, worrying about Warren wetting his trousers, or organising his wedding. The mood soon changes, however, and Nidge’s sinister side comes to the fore. Telling the reluctant Darren that he has to kill Stumpy, he remarks: It’s a bit late in the day, to be honest with you, Darren. This puts me in the shit as well. I’ll be straight up with you. I don’t give a shit about anyone, man. I don’t give a shit. Except for Warren. The rest, I don’t care. Not even Trish. I love her and all, but I don’t give a shit. I’ll do whatever the fuck it is I have to do. I’ll do it, I don’t care. I’ll get on with it. There’s no way out for you, Darren. (S2/ E2, 00: 35) In this scene, the viewers can witness Nidge’s transition from family man to ruthless gangster, or rather, showing his true colours. This also betrays how traditional family values no longer apply: family as community is no longer regarded as a “warm place” or as a normative ideal. In this post-Celtic Tiger world of transition, there is no security, not even a false ideal of it. The fifth and final series underlines this by contrasting the community of the family and that of the gangsters. Nidge’s niece Siobhan, similar to Nidge, a minor character at the beginning who moves closer to centre stage from series to series, turns out to be the ‘rat’ of the gang, i.e. she acts as a police informant. Several incidents eventually convince her that she must betray her own uncle. First of all, she was brutally raped and is therefore traumatised. Furthermore, at the end of the third series, Nidge, in a rash outburst fuelled by jealousy, brutally beats Tommy into a coma with a steel tube and then a golf club. Tommy, Siobhan’s boyfriend and father of their child, survives, but in the fourth series he is utterly changed and mentally disabled. Although he has no memory of the event, Siobhan decides to cooperate with DI Moynihan which, in the final twist of events, brings about the showdown. The clash of these two conflicting forms of community - family as the traditional community and the gang as symbolic of the transient and contingent neoliberal post-Celtic Tiger community - leads to the extinction of both in an almost necessarily tragic turn of events. Nidge, as well as Siobhan, are both killed in the final showdown, with Trish and Warren watching from inside the house (see fig. 3) as he is being shot by the traveller Patrick ( John Connors). This scene clearly mirrors the symbolism of inside - the community of the family - and outside - gangland - introduced in the storyline leading to Luke’s death. This final scene portrays present-day Ireland as a society characterised by contingency, a society in which traditional forms of community are threatened from the outside but in which the new forms of community, epitomised by the gang, can be brought down by family ties - Siobhan, as Nidge’s niece, changing sides - at the same time. 89 Love/ Hate (2010-2014) Fig. 3: Warren watching his father die at the end of the fifth series (S5/ E6, 49: 58). 6. Irishness By depicting Ireland as a society in transition, life in gangland is often contrasted with more traditional forms of Irishness. Set pieces reminiscent of Irish culture are introduced right away, but mostly in order to refer to a world gone by or under threat in gangland. The first traditionally Irish topic hinted at in passing is, as mentioned above, emigration. As explained above, for years, Ireland and Irish society depended on emigration because of the poor economic condition of the land. After the 1990s, however, the situation was reversed, and people from other countries came to Ireland to find employment. This topic is implied right at the beginning when Darren’s absence and stay in Spain is not explained by hardship but because of his possession of a gun. This is mirrored in the final series when Nidge also goes to Spain to strengthen his criminal connections. There he meets his new supplier Terrence May (Paudge Rodger Behan). Thus, the traditional Irish topic of emigration is only suggested but also turned on its head: it is no longer central to present-day Irish society. England is likewise just a place where people like Rosie choose to live, and no longer the old arch-enemy nor a place where Irish people can find work only in factories. The rituals surrounding family life are also described as particularly Irish and as reminiscent of the past, although slightly ironically. The meeting of John Boy and Darren at Hughie’s funeral at the end of the first series’ final episode, for 90 Ralf Haekel instance, is about the very Irishness of these family rituals. It mirrors the funeral in the first episode: both characters have lost a brother, and through this loss the Irishness of family as community comes into focus: DARREN. I’m sorry for your trouble. JOHN BOY. Do you want to come in? DARREN. No. JOHN BOY. Thanks. You didn’t have to come. We’re in the same boat now. It’s a real Irish thing, isn’t it? DARREN. What is? JOHN BOY. Funerals, paying your respects. (S1/ E4, 00: 44) The show often juxtaposes traditional and new forms of community, which em‐ phasises the “contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous (Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen)” (Koselleck 90). The family is not the only established or con‐ servative element introduced, however. Other traditional communities be‐ coming ever more important as Love/ Hate proceeds are the Irish Republican Army in the third series and the Irish Travellers who mainly feature in the fifth and final series. In the latter two traditional communities, family still plays an important role. The IRA appears as a rather unexpected force in the first episode of the third series, so unexpected indeed that even the characters in the series do not seem to see it coming: NIDGE. What? DARREN. Someone’s kneecapped Aido. NIDGE. What? Who done that? DARREN. The RA. NIDGE. The RA? Man, this is beyond me. (S3/ E1, 00: 07) Love/ Hate renders a slightly ironic portrait of the IRA as brutal, idealistic, and nostalgic. The IRA, however, clearly sees itself as a community fuelled by ide‐ alism and political and moral principles, which is why they only have contempt for the criminals: “They’re all scumbags, Daniel. Greedy, jumped up little toy soldiers, no ethics. Believe in nothing. Worthless. I wouldn’t piss on them.” (S3/ E1, 00: 09) Yet, they hardly appear in a positive light themselves. In order to avoid a conflict between the gang and the IRA, Nidge goes out drinking with Git Loughman and his son Dano on St Patrick’s Day. Dano gets so drunk that he needs to be carried home and Git, still out with Nidge, first beats the drunken Siobhan unconscious and then brutally rapes her. Tommy, who comes to her aid, then beats Git until he breaks his neck, and Darren kills him, in one of the most violent scenes in the entire show, with a beer keg. The only real victim here, 91 Love/ Hate (2010-2014) however, is Siobhan, who is severely traumatised by the event. The men - es‐ pecially Nidge - partly blame her for the rape, which betrays the deeply misog‐ ynist and patriarchal nature of their community. This morally dubious attitude of Nidge and his friends is set in contrast with the self-fashioning of the members of the Continuity IRA as ethically and po‐ litically superior Republicans, as the speech delivered by Northern Irish IRA leader Tony (Seán McGinley) makes clear at Git’s memorial: For we have not dissented from our republican principles. The dissenters sit on Stor‐ mont Hill administering British rule. A Provisional Sinn Fein deputy First Minister is their crowning achievement, as they stand shoulder to shoulder with the forces of reactionary imperialism. But let us also take a moment to remember our comrade, Christopher “Git” Loughman. Who we believe has fallen foul of the hands of criminal elements he bravely took on. Git was a political activist all his life. His commitment and drive were an inspiration to all who knew him. The free state forces who indeed, even today at the gates harass us and photograph us and try to make criminals out of us, have not pursued the matter. But rest assured, we will. (S3/ E4, 00: 22) Although the members of the IRA do everything not to be regarded as criminals by the public, the show makes very clear that they are. But Love/ Hate also ren‐ ders the traditional Irish rituals of this community - their folk music and dancing - in an ironic manner. Mocking the highly exaggerated air of pathos in the pub later on the same day, a drunken Darren looks at the people and starts giggling after Nidge has praised the singer of a patriotic Republican song: NIDGE. Good isn’t he. Beautiful voice. What do you think Fran? FRAN. Ah yeah, lovely. Darren starts giggling. NIDGE. What the fuck is so funny? DARREN (laughs). It’s all too much, man. It’s all too much. (S3/ E4, 00: 44) The Irishness depicted here is contrasted with the cosmopolitan world of gang‐ land - and both appear in a negative light. The underground organisation clearly refers to a political past juxtaposed with the neoliberal gangster community of the present which is shallow and void of any idealistic outlook or hope. Love/ Hate ultimately offers no positive perspective: this is a world where any security is lost, community is only an illusion, and every aspect of life is presented as contingent. 92 Ralf Haekel 7. Conclusion To conclude: community appears in different guises in Love/ Hate. The family is reminiscent of past values and ideals - however problematic they might have been. It simultaneously carries connotations of a warm place and a reactionary past. Yet many features of family life have become empty signifiers: they no longer fulfil the traditional function of the family as community, i.e. as the nu‐ cleus of Irish society. Yet, Love/ Hate is not only a television show which mirrors contemporary society; it is also the outcome of its aesthetic form, i.e. its open serial form which is important for an understanding of the show’s content: the uncertainty characteristic of community and life in gangland. Whereas more conventional artefacts - novels, plays, films - function as works, i.e. they focus on the development of one or more main characters within a given socio-his‐ torical setting which reaches some sort of closure, the open form of the television series favours repetition, flow, change of personnel. In other words, on the level of discours the open form serves to emphasise the contingency displayed on the level of histoire. Whilst Love/ Hate clearly shows similarities with American tel‐ evision and points towards a departure from traditionally Irish traits, it is also a portrayal of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland as a state in transition - with an open and uncertain future. What Love/ Hate paints is therefore a highly metaphorical picture of the present state of Ireland in the wake of the economic crash. Bygone forms of community have lost their power to create coherence. They are still important as ties within new forms of community, but the neoliberal gangster life only corrupts the individuals and turns them into paranoid monsters and killers. The state of the Irish nation in Love/ Hate is one of fear, contingency, and violence. Bibliography Primary Sources Love/ Hate. Series 1-5. Written by Stuart Carolan. Directed by David Caffrey. Octagon Films for RTÉ, 2010-2014. Secondary Sources Allrath, Gaby, Marion Gymnich, and Carola Surkamp. “Introduction: Towards a Narra‐ tology of TV Series.” Narrative Strategies in Television Series. Eds. Gaby Allrath and Marion Gymnich. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 1-43. Bauman, Zygmunt. Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. 93 Love/ Hate (2010-2014) Bignell, Jonathan and Stephen Lacey. “Introduction.” British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future. 2 nd ed. Eds. Jonathan Bignell and Stephen Lacey. Basingstoke: Pal‐ grave Macmillan, 2014. 1-15. Bowen, Elizabeth. Collected Impressions. London: Longman, 1950. “Constitution of Ireland.” Enacted by the People 1 st July, 1937. In operation as from 29th December, 1937. Electronic Irish Statute Book. 2015. www.irishstatutebook.ie/ eli/ cons/ en. Accessed on 5 September 2018. Coulouma, Flore. “Introduction.” New Perspectives on Irish TV Series: Identity and Nostalgia on the Small Screen. Ed. Flore Coulouma. Bern: Peter Lang, 2016. 1-12. —. “Where’s the Love in Love/ Hate? Gangster Violence, Irish Identity and Global Televi‐ sion.” New Perspectives on Irish TV Series: Identity and Nostalgia on the Small Screen. Ed. Flore Coulouma. Bern: Peter Lang, 2016. 161-78. de Valera, Éamon. “President First On New Television Service 1961.” RTÉ Archives. n.d. www.rte.ie/ archives/ exhibitions/ 681-history-of-rte/ 704-rte-1960s/ 139351-openingnight-presidents-address/ . Accessed on 5 September 2018. Delanty, Gerard. Community. London, New York: Routledge, 2003. Farquharson, Danine. “Love/ Hate: A ‘Lethal Cocktail’ For Post Celtic Tiger Consumption.” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 37 (2011): 138-55. Ging, Debbie. “Memes, Masculinity and Mancession: Love/ Hate’s Online Metatexts.” Irish Studies Review 25 (2017): 170-92. Harrison, Bernice. “After a promising start, Love/ Hate loses it.” The Irish Times. 11 No‐ vember 2013. www.irishtimes.com/ culture/ tv-radio-web/ after-a-promising-start-love -hate-loses-it-1.1590910. Accessed on 16 October 2018. Koselleck, Reinhard. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Co‐ lumbia UP, 2004. Lawson, Mark. “Is Love/ Hate Ireland's answer to The Wire? ” The Guardian. 24 July 2013. www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/ tvandradioblog/ 2013/ jul/ 24/ love-hate-irelandthe-wire. Accessed on 5 September 2018. Leerssen, Joep. “Notes towards a Definition of Romantic Nationalism.” Romantik 2 (2013): 9-35. Mittell, Jason. “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television.” The Velvet Light Trap 58 (2006): 29-40. —. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York UP, 2015. Murphy, Conor, Stuart Carolan, and James Flynn. “Interview with the Creators of Love/ Hate.” Studies in Arts and Humanities 2.2 (2016): 62-70. Pettitt, Lance. Screening Ireland: Film and Television Representation. Manchester: Man‐ chester UP, 2000. 94 Ralf Haekel Sweeney, Ken. “King Nidge brings in a million.” The Irish Independent. 11 November 2013. www.independent.ie/ irish-news/ king-nidge-brings-in-a-million-29744133.html. Ac‐ cessed on 5 September 2018. 95 Love/ Hate (2010-2014) II. Nostalgia and the Search for Community 1 Sex Lives of the Potato Men holds a 0 % approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is regularly featured on lists compiling the worst films of all time. I.Q. Hunter ac‐ knowledges that the film is affiliated with the kind of crude sex farce that is often seen as “the quintessence of bad British cinema” (154), but he also argues for the film’s overlooked virtues as a melancholy portrayal of the crisis-ridden working class (ibid. 165-7). A Field That Is Forever England: Nostalgic Revisionism in Detectorists (2014-2017) Wieland Schwanebeck 1. Introduction Detectorists (2014-2017) was the first TV series helmed by writer/ director Mackenzie Crook, and ran for three series, as well as a Christmas special, on BBC Four. Aside from a writing stint on the controversial animated show Popetown (2005), Crook had mainly been known as a supporting player on various British TV shows prior to the success of Detectorists. His most mem‐ orable role had certainly been his turn as deeply antisocial team leader Gareth Keenan on the BBC’s ground-breaking comedy series The Office (2001-2003). While most of his co-stars on this programme quickly moved on to other projects - Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant co-writing and directing Ex‐ tras (2005-2007), Martin Freeman conquering both the small and the big screen with global franchises like Sherlock (2010-2017) and the Hobbit trilogy (2012-2014) - Crook’s career did not take off in quite the same way. Other than playing a minor role in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (2003-2007), he seemed to be relegated to lending his idiosyncratic features to bit-parts in everything from Paul McCartney music videos (Dance Tonight, 2007) to the occasional guest spot on British television. His few attempts at genuine starring roles were met with a mixture of critical derision and dismal box-office returns - Sex Lives of the Potato Men (2004), one of the worst-re‐ viewed British screen comedies of all time, marked his personal nadir in that respect, garnering hostile reviews for its crude obscenities as much as for its alleged waste of British comedy talent. 1 2 In the following, references to Detectorists will be given without repeating the title. 3 When trying to chat up a woman, Lance quotes Monty Python’s ‘Dead Parrot’ sketch (Christmas Special, 00: 14), Terry’s tip-toeing around the word ‘Nazi’ evokes memories of “Don’t mention the war! ” in Fawlty Towers (S1/ E5, 00: 10), and when Andy tries to win his girlfriend back, he feels “like I’m in a Richard Curtis film” (S1/ E5, 00: 08). 4 At one point, Lance explains that “a man’s detector is like his woman. […] You don’t touch another man’s detector” (S2/ E2, 00: 21). By the same token, he later fails to make clear to his daughter Kate (Alexa Davies) whether the ‘she’ he is referring to is his girlfriend or his car (S3/ E4, 00: 20). The success of Detectorists, then, arrived practically out of nowhere. The pro‐ gramme is a deliberately understated, character-based comedy that evinced its creator’s assured handling of tone as much as his laconic sense of humour by putting the spotlight on a group of eccentric hobbyists without ever subjecting them to ridicule. The series revolves around the fictitious Danebury Metal De‐ tecting Club (DMDC), an organisation consisting of a bunch of dedicated odd‐ balls who spend their free-time (and in some cases, one suspects, all of their time) probing the fields of surrounding farmland for archaeological finds and precious metals. They are forever on the lookout for treasure and gold (symbolically and literally), never discouraged by how overwhelmingly the odds are stacked against them or by the fact that all they ever seem to dig up is ring-pulls, buttons, old biscuit-wrappers, and the occasional bit of change. Much of the screen time is dedicated to what the characters themselves refer to as “finding junk and talking bollocks” (Detectorists, S1/ E5, 00: 11), 2 that is: the mundane activity of metal-de‐ tecting and their amusing, though ultimately banal, conversations about the pre‐ vious night’s TV schedule, domestic worries, and wildlife. Though some of these vignettes indicate that Detectorists is quite aware of the generic traditions that it is embedded in (there is the occasional nod to British landmark comedies), 3 the series remains very much its own beast in terms of pace and setting. The prin‐ cipal cast of characters includes Andy (played by Crook himself), a jobless ar‐ chaeologist struggling to grow into the responsible pater familias his girlfriend Becky (Rachael Stirling) wishes him to be; Lance (Toby Jones), a kind-hearted forklift-driver still reeling from a divorce, who takes delight in trivia knowledge and playing his mandolin; club president Terry (Gerard Horan), a retired police officer and author of the monograph Common Buttons of North West Essex; as well as their rival detectorists, ‘Simon & Garfunkel’ (Paul Casar and Simon Far‐ naby), thus nicknamed for their uncanny resemblance to the folk duo. As this brief assessment indicates, one of the dominant themes of the show is middle-aged masculinity in crisis, and while an in-depth reading of Detectorists certainly cannot turn a blind eye to how its male protagonists gently polish their metal detectors and personify them as female (S2/ E2, 00: 21), 4 the focus of the 100 Wieland Schwanebeck 5 The show was moved up to Wednesday for its final series. See Hogan for an account of its ratings. following analysis will be a different one. I will contextualise the show within a tradition of British comedy that is associated with the perspective of the re‐ silient underdog, and I will show how its deliberately small-scale perspective and its paradoxical attitude towards history merge into a highly nostalgic por‐ trayal of communal spirit in the face of modernisation. 2. Humbled by History In spite of its stellar reviews, Detectorists remained relegated to its Thursday night, 10 p. m. slot on BBC Four for most of its run, 5 though this has arguably contributed a lot to its niche appeal, thus resonating with the show’s themes. According to Crook himself, people who found the show ‘by accident’ felt “like they’ve discovered something for themselves and being sort of special and holding it close to their hearts” (qtd. in Lloyd). Like the archaeological gems that Andy and Lance dream of unearthing, Detectorists seems to have arrived from another era. Aimed firmly at a middle-aged audience (with hardly any character likely to appeal to a young demographic), the show affords few of the more outrageous conceits or stylistic peculiarities that the more daring brand of British TV comedy has become associated with in recent years. There is nothing deliberately edgy or cringeworthy about its humour, even though the dramatis personae is brimming with socially awkward misfits and the setting coincides with that of grotesque, black-humoured, and borderline-dystopian shows like The League of Gentlemen (1999-2002, 2017). As a result, Detectorists would seem rather out of place amongst some of the most prominent and critically acclaimed British comedy exports of the last decade, like Psychoville (2009-2011), Hunderby (2012-2015), Inside No. 9 (2014-), or Fleabag (2016-). Unlike any of these distinctly dark comedies, it cultivates a love for the seem‐ ingly inconspicuous and mundane, finding poetry in close-ups of flora and fauna, and this strategy also extends to the casting. The two main characters are played by series-runner Crook and by Toby Jones, one of the most reliable supporting actors in British film and television: Jones’ extensive filmography has taken in everything from independent features to Hollywood blockbusters like the Harry Potter series (where he voiced Dobby the Elf in two films, 2002-2010) or The Hunger Games (2012-2015), and while he has played the occasional lead (for in‐ stance, as the meek sound engineer in Peter Strickland’s mesmerising Berberian Sound Studio [2012]), most of his signature roles have been morally ambiguous, 101 Detectorists (2014-2017) Fig. 1: Putting man in his place (S1/ E1, 00: 00). villainous scene-stealers like the gangster Ratchett on ITV’s adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (2010), the shady secret service boss in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), or Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis Culverton Smith in Sherlock (2017). De‐ tectorists ‘promotes’ Jones to leading-man status and supplements his dominant screen persona by emphasising his humanity and warmth; another example of how the show pushes its trademark qualities, suggesting to the viewer that it is always worth taking a second look, and that there is more to the surface than meets the eye. The critics were certainly taken with this agenda: not only did Detectorists receive praise for its “quietly joyous celebration” of “the English countryside” (Lewis) and its “sparse, droll, understated and believable” qualities (Wollaston), the show also won a BAFTA for Best Scripted Comedy (2015), while Jones took one home for Best Comedy Performance (2018). Indeed, the show’s resounding love for the mundane coincides with its not-so-subtle pride in the virtues of the quirky, insular community, a theme I shall be developing throughout the remainder of this chapter. It is not a coinci‐ dence that many of the jokes in Detectorists result from a comic strategy that has often been put forward as a quintessential feature of British humour: ba‐ thos, that is, “the puncturing intrusion of reality that floors lofty aspirations” (Stott 55). This is most evident in the way the show, while never resorting to cruelty, constantly mines humour from belittlement, shooting the characters from bird’s-eye perspectives or reducing them to the size of ants in panoramic long shots (see fig. 1). 102 Wieland Schwanebeck 6 The show’s catchy theme-tune makes a similar point, as singer Johnny Flynn adopts the viewpoint of the treasure itself, waiting for its lover/ finder: “Will you search through the lonely earth for me, / Climb through the briar and bramble? / I’ll be your treasure / […] / I’m waiting for you”. Detectorists is clearly not afraid to ‘think small’, sending its protagonists on a Moby Dick-like search for a villainous magpie (S3/ E3) or making them tie the future of the DMDC to the rather mundane question of how much is left in the club’s coffee jar (S1/ E5, 00: 19). The club takes pride in exhibiting its ‘finds table’, but what the detectorists view as “irresistible nuggets of history” (S2/ E1, 00: 11) is just a bunch of worthless buttons and buckles for the rest of the world; Russell (Pearce Quigley) makes it into the local newspaper for having retrieved a lost wedding ring yet falls short of his Ghostbusters-fuelled ambition to drive his own vehicle with the club logo emblazoned on it (S2/ E1, 00: 13), and it may not be laughable for Lance to purchase club fleeces for the DMDC, but the fact that he orders 150 of them for its seven members certainly is. “We could share ‘em”, he timidly suggests. “21 each? ” (S1/ E5, 00: 22) Even when the show aims for the realm of the spectacular or creates visually inventive and cinematic set-pieces (especially in the last series), it never leaves the audience in doubt that it is absolutely content to accept the small screen as its natural habitat. In a sequence that evokes memories of the grim coda to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conver‐ sation (1974), Lance turns his flat upside down looking for a squirrel (S3/ E2, 00: 08), while another episode features what may be the slowest car chase ever committed to the screen (S3/ E3, 00: 04). Whenever the show adapts cinematic conventions that fall outside the juris‐ diction of the traditional multiple-camera sitcom, like the panoramic aerial shots, it draws attention to man’s relative insignificance, as well as to the over‐ whelming force of history. Frequent use is made of the free-floating, omniscient camera-eye, as the camera goes beyond purely character-based focalisation and pans up and down to exercise its privilege of unlimited viewpoints, very much in the spirit of omniscient narration in 18 th -century literature. Series Two is full of such moments, as it plots Lance’s search for treasure in the tradition of clas‐ sical romance, where the lovers will only come together for the climactic em‐ brace. 6 The series opens with a prologue set in medieval times, showing how a monk has buried the precious objects that Lance will dig up in the series finale (S2/ E1, 00: 00), and the camera exercises not just temporal but also spatial priv‐ ileges throughout the subsequent episodes, frequently panning beneath the de‐ tectorists’ feet to tease the audience and to reveal that the treasure, unbeknownst to Lance and Andy, is already within their reach (S2/ E4, 00: 01; S2/ E3, 00: 02). 103 Detectorists (2014-2017) 7 In the last scene of the series, Lance summarises the magic of metal-detecting thus: “[I]t is the closest you’ll get to time travel. See, archaeologists, they gather up the facts, piece the jigsaw together. Work out how we lived and find the buildings we lived in, but what we do is… it’s different. We unearth the scattered memories, mine for stories, fill in the personality. Detectorists. We’re time travellers.” (S3/ E6, 00: 25) See Murgia/ Roberts/ Wiseman 353-5 for a more detailed account of what motivates detectorists. 8 There is an intertextual dimension to it, too: Toby Jones, who plays Lance, has appeared as Alfred Hitchcock in a made-for-TV movie that chronicles the making of 1963’s The Birds (The Girl, 2012). 9 If there is a fitting companion piece to Detectorists in contemporary British popular culture, it may well be Ben Wheatley’s surrealist horror film, A Field in England (2013), starring The League of Gentlemen’s Reece Shearsmith. A generic hybrid set during the English Civil War, this black-and-white oddity plays almost like a prologue to Detectorists and shows that the increasingly glorified fields of the pre-industrial world are not just the bucolic realm of the heritage industry, but that they have seen their fair share of violence and bodies buried within them. When voicing their ethos as historians and time travellers, 7 Lance and Andy often appear overwhelmed by the sheer force of history and of time passing. The first gold-dig on Farmer Bishop’s land is credited to “Old Man Adam” (S1/ E2, 00: 26), which underlines the biblical dimension of their pastime, and Lance’s Hitchcockian musings on the conspiracy of the magpies that have ab‐ ducted ‘his’ gold (S3/ E4, 00: 01) may be a joke, 8 but they are borne out by the series’ occasional stab at the transcendental. This is evident in what is without a doubt the most visually stunning sequence of the whole programme: when Andy blows into a falconer’s whistle he has dug up, a two-minute time-warp sequence literally summons the ghosts that still haunt the field (S3/ E1, 00: 25), which puts a metaphysical spin on what is otherwise a show thoroughly infa‐ tuated with materialist culture. By invoking the spectre of their forefathers (on whose ‘hallowed ground’ Andy and Lance tread), the show not only underlines the humbling dimension of metal-detecting in the face of history, but suffuses it with a thoroughly national dimension. In finally uniting Lance with ‘his’ gold in the euphoric climax of the series, the show goes beyond merely celebrating rural England’s hidden treasures and literally celebrates the nation at large. When an ecstatic Lance goes into his long-awaited ‘gold dance’, he puts the show in touch with the kind of rituals that F.R. Leavis (together with Denys Thompson) has described as the quintessence of the ‘organic community’, a thoroughly idealised version of rural England that is embodied by “[f]olk songs, folk dances, Cotswold cottages and handicraft prod‐ ucts” and adjusted “to the natural environment and the rhythm of the year” (qtd. in Bilan 15). 9 Lance arguably has his proudest moment when his find goes on display at the British Museum, and his own name, by being put on a plaque, becomes a 104 Wieland Schwanebeck 10 The legendary American sitcom Seinfeld (1989-1998) is often cited as the prime example here, its stubborn refusal to introduce epic changes coinciding with its ‘no hugging, no learning’ policy. Tellingly, Seinfeld is one of the very few sitcoms to feature a more-or-less straightforward adaptation of an absurdist drama, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal (1978). Detectorists briefly pays homage to the show when Louise (Laura Checkley) recites “Yada, yada, yada”, a phrase very much popularised by Seinfeld. footnote to the nation’s historiography. Like in Rupert Brooke’s famous sonnet, “The Soldier” (1914), he who touches the soil makes it “forever England” (v. 3), which may be why the show (which pokes gentle fun at the quirks of its charac‐ ters) never undercuts or mocks the project of metal-detecting itself. At the same time, though, Detectorists evokes strangely ahistoric, anonymous landscapes that are not so much characteristic of the realist paradigm that the show frequently references, but of the tradition of absurdism, particularly the spatio-temporal setting and character constellation of Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot (1953). 3. Waiting for Gold The fundamental paradox at the heart of Detectorists is that it is a programme which celebrates history (though be it a very select, glorified version of it) and refutes it at the same time, having its characters put their heads (or rather, their metal detec‐ tors) in the sand. Lance and Andy constantly fail to see the bigger picture: blissfully unaware of the jet-planes flying over their heads (S1/ E2, 00: 21), of their partners’ pregnancies (a constellation that marks them out as detectorists who are rather bad at detecting), and - in one of the series’ major laugh-out-loud moments - of the fact that what they believe to be traces of a Saxon settlement is, in fact, the Google Earth watermark (S1/ E1, 00: 15). Other jokes result from the fact that they are sheer ob‐ livious to the passing of time: when going to a job interview, Andy puts dirt under his fingernails in order to pretend he has experience as a worker (S2/ E4, 00: 13), and in the same episode Lance, who frantically tries to reconnect with his grown-up daughter, gives her all the Christmas and birthday presents he owes her in the span of one afternoon (S2/ E4, 00: 23). This ahistorical condition overlaps with the very nature of the sitcom as a genre, where life-changing events and epic developments are much rarer to be found than in soap-operas or crime drama. This is why comedy, as a genre that is rather impervious to change, is the legitimate realm of the middle-aged man-child who is reluctant to move with the times and of the lad who refuses to grow up, and why it relies so much on “cyclical plots and regular settings” (Mills 34). 10 The tension between changing nothing (that is, to give the audience 105 Detectorists (2014-2017) 11 In the first series, the viewer learns that Lance has won the lottery but has no intention of spending the money. When Andy, in the final series, desperately needs a big sum to make a down payment for a house, the possibility of Lance lending it to him never occurs to anyone. 12 Not to mention the final series’ meta-reflexive quality, as the looming deadline (the closing of the farm) coincides with the termination of the series. In the second of the final six episodes, Andy explains that they have “less than six weeks” left (S3/ E2, 00: 03). more of what they have grown accustomed to) and producing serial narration across several years inevitably produces some inconsistencies: Lance’s lot‐ tery-win remains curiously inconsequential, 11 the character of Sophie (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) simply disappears after the second series and is never mentioned again, and the triumphant conclusion to the first series (when the DMDC absorbs some of its rivals, the ‘Antiquisearchers’) is forgotten a year later, and the number of DMDC members does not seem to have changed. The Christmas Special goes so far as to have Lance fight for cosmic balance by ‘cor‐ recting’ his gold-find and thus to eradicate the impact of having fulfilled his lifetime’s ambition - in order to avoid bad karma, he purchases some antique coins and hides them in a remote field, thus making amends for his ‘theft’. This is not to say that there is no plot to be found here; in fact, the show’s artful intersections between the archaeological story-lines and the private sphere rank amongst its most sublime achievements. In the first series, Andy and Lance detect on the land of Farmer Bishop, who is rumoured to have killed his wife and disposed of her body (a story-line that resonates with the domestic tensions both men struggle to resolve); the second series sees the DMDC help a young German who is looking to reconnect with his family history by searching for his grandfather’s shot-down World War II plane, while at the same time, Lance and Andy navigate the responsibilities of their own expanding family trees; and the final series is all about nesting and finding new territory: the DMDC is expelled from one of its favourite search-sites, and Lance and Andy attempt to settle down permanently with their respective families. 12 However, there is a stubborn refusal to grow and, like in the classic Ealing comedies, a spirit of resistance in the face of modernisation to all these devel‐ opments, so that Detectorists occasionally comes to resemble the most plotless of all literary traditions: the Theatre of the Absurd. The intertextual connection is not only emphasised by the importance of waiting (as Andy and Lance spend the bulk of their time hoping for gold yet finding nothing), but it is evident in a number of scenes, starting with the very first exchange that passes between Lance and Andy in the prologue to the first episode: “Anything? ” - “Fuck all.” (S1/ E1, 00: 00) This echoes the first words spoken in Waiting for Godot, “Nothing 106 Wieland Schwanebeck to be done” (5). Furthermore, some of Detectorists’ more desolate landscapes recall Beckett’s sparse specifications of scenery - “A country road. A tree. Eve‐ ning.” (ibid. 5) -, and the same goes for the role of the tree as a timid symbol of hope. While Beckett’s duo derive comfort from the fact that the tree has grown a few leaves towards the end of the play (ibid. 90), Andy and Lance take it upon themselves to fight for the preservation of their beloved oak as a minor symbol of resistance against being expelled from the farm (S3/ E5). Moreover, there is a near-verbatim allusion to Beckett’s oft-quoted ending. Both acts of Waiting for Godot famously conclude with an exchange between Vladimir and Estragon that underlines their lack of agency as well as the play’s continued discrepancy be‐ tween words and actions: Following Vladimir’s suggestion, “Shall we go? ”, Es‐ tragon agrees, “Yes, let’s go”, only for the stage direction to clarify that “[t]hey do not move” (91). Detectorists reiterates the joke when Russell and Hugh (Divian Ladwa), during a nightly excursion, stumble upon a couple having sex in their car. Contrary to their voiced intentions (“Can we go home now? ” - “Yeah.”), they remain trapped in the headlights of the car and do not leave (S2/ E3, 00: 02). Like in Theatre of the Absurd (and some of the cringe comedies that were to follow in its footsteps), Detectorists is a show that is “[not] afraid of silence” (Sturges) - which follows logically from the way it constantly traps its characters in the pitfalls of language, tautology, and malapropisms. While watching his ex-wife’s New Age shop for her, Lance assures a customer that “the moonstone puts you in touch with the moon” and, in an impromptu speech of almost Shakespearean buffoonery, that “a spirit stick” is there to “hit spirits with” (S1/ E5, 00: 05). In the same episode, he has trouble convincing Sophie of his lot‐ tery-win because she is under the impression that he is speaking in metaphors (S1/ E5, 00: 14). Consequently, the jokes do not derive from the kind of hyper-smart, witty banter that is frequently associated with the modern sitcom, but from the characters’ rather inadvertent exhibitions of wit. When giving Andy some relationship advice, Lance tells him, “you’re on thin ice. Could find your‐ self in some hot water.” (S1/ E4, 00: 05) As two simultaneously dim-witted and rather philosophical keepers of the land and soil, Andy and Lance occasionally resemble the English stage’s original existentialists: the two gravediggers in Hamlet (c. 1602), whose corporeal needs and crude jokes both undercut and amplify their memento mori wisdom. Where the gravediggers’ witty riddles teach Hamlet a valuable lesson about the volatile nature of human existence (as illustrated by his famous monologue about the great Alexander, whose “noble dust” is now only fit enough to “stop a beer-barrel”, Hamlet 5.1.193-201), Andy and Lance frequently discuss the occa‐ sionally bizarre demises of their off-screen acquaintances. On hearing that “old 107 Detectorists (2014-2017) 13 This comment can be heard on “Welcome to the Clubhouse”, a short documentary fea‐ tured on the DVD of the show’s final series. Rod McLynn” has perished in a vat of boiling soup, Andy is mainly interested in what flavour the soup was (S2/ E4, 00: 25), a remark that could have come straight from a Shakespearean jester, whose bodily needs will always thwart his philosophical ambitions. Detectorists does not flash these literary credentials, as it firmly rejects any overt celebration of highbrow culture, even though the image of Andy tumbling into his mother-in-law’s dustbin (S1/ E5, 00: 10) evokes another Beckett play, Endgame (1957), and Crook’s own assessment that the final series’ storyline resembles that “of the previous two series in that not much happens” 13 appears to paraphrase Vivian Mercier’s famous quip on Beckett’s play as one “in which nothing happens - twice” (qtd. in Calderwood 34). But where Waiting for Godot only offers a fragile sense of communality in its supplementary pairings (Vla‐ dimir/ Estragon and Pozzo/ Lucky), Detectorists opts for a triumphant conclusion and posits a rather idealised view of community - and Englishness. 4. Join the Club The intertextual shadow of the gravediggers is not the only Shakespearean el‐ ement in Detectorists; in fact, the whole series may be an extended riff on the notion of the ‘Green World’, a concept that goes back to Northrop Frye. Ac‐ cording to Frye, Shakespeare’s plays often feature settings where the fairies weave their magic: idyllic, rural spaces, like the Forest of Arden in As You Like It (c. 1599) or the woods in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1596), detached from the regular confines of social decorum and hierarchy, where anarchy is briefly allowed, where summer symbolically prevails over winter, and where the pro‐ tagonists are allowed a kind of sabbatical to prepare for fertile endings that coincide with a return to the state of normalcy, to marriage vows and a resto‐ ration of order (see Frye 182). Detectorists, right to its final episode, firmly refuses to shatter its bucolic realm, and its climax is an unabashed triumph of all the virtues commonly associated with the Green World: “contemplation instead of action, the happy harmonies of music and love instead of the metallic clash of arms and the discordances of conspiracy” (Laroque 193), even though here, the ‘happy harmonies’ do, ironically, include the metallic clanging that is music to the aspiring detectorist’s ear. Throughout all three series, metal-detecting re‐ mains firmly tied to a spirit of resistance against ‘going with the times’, against bowing to the dictate of corporations (who want to install solar panels on the 108 Wieland Schwanebeck 14 Prior to the 1996 Treasure Act, treasure found by metal-detectorists automatically be‐ came property of the Crown. This led to a number of illegal sales, which contributed to the somewhat unfair stigmatisation of all detectorists as greedy (see Murgia/ Roberts/ Wiseman 353-4). fields of Danebury) and profitability - a very benign view that goes firmly against the stigmatisation of detectorists as mere treasure-hunters. 14 Lance ide‐ alises the past, as is illustrated by his car fetish and his love for 1970s glamour icon Linda Lusardi (who cameos in a dream sequence, S3/ E3, 00: 01), to an extent that he even despises TV nostalgia conventions because they “aren’t what they used to be” (S2/ E1, 00: 26). This is, in itself, not new: the BBC has always taken pride in its promotion of clean, middleand upper-middle-class entertainment (see Mills 52), and nostalgia has played a key role in that respect. In a legendary charter, Tom Sloan, the BBC’s Head of Light Entertainment in the 1960s, iden‐ tifies the elusive quality of ‘flair’ as a kind of magic ingredient to set off good and wholesome entertainment from the rest of the competition, and whenever this quality is invoked in debates surrounding British TV programming, accu‐ sations of an inherent conservatism of British sitcoms are never far off (see Kamm/ Neumann 11-4). In Detectorists (which its creator has described as “the sitcom that Thomas Hardy would have written”, qtd. in Lewis), some of that spirit translates into clichéd imagery of a bucolic, pre-industrialised England - nowhere more so than in the final series, when Andy and Becky make a successful bid for their dream cottage in the woods, a place that Andy plans to retire to in order to be “a full-time hobbyist” (S3/ E5, 00: 16). There is little else he can do, being hopelessly lost for the real world, an idealist who finds himself frequently at odds with prospective employers. Andy substitutes water for weed-killer in order to spare the vegetation he is supposed to destroy (S3/ E4, 00: 07), and he quits his job as an archaeologist when the company’s interests clash with his ethos as a pre‐ server of history (S3/ E3, 00: 10). Needless to say, the show is wholly supportive of his moral integrity, and this sympathy for the underdog resonates with some of the most cherished traditions of British comedy, including the modern working-class comedy of the post-Thatcherist era, but especially the Ealing paradigm (see Schwanebeck 105-7): films like Passport to Pimlico (1949) or Whisky Galore! (1949), where the little man scores symbolic victories over au‐ thoritarian bullies by practising a “relatively gentle” form of “comic disruption and disorder” (O’Sullivan 71). Like the fondly remembered Ealing comedies, Detectorists celebrates a small group of eccentrics who resist any pressure to ‘move with the times’, and who firmly defend their small territory of outdated Englishness in the face of mod‐ 109 Detectorists (2014-2017) 15 Mark Gatiss, one of the creators of The League of Gentlemen, drew this analogy himself. When the League’s revival was announced, Gatiss pointed out that “we have become a local country for local people and I wonder if there is something Brexity in us that we can do” (qtd. in Jackson). 16 Tim O’Sullivan points out that there is a frequently unacknowledged darker side to the Ealing comedies, too. He mentions “stories of maverick and dangerous eccentricity” like Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), where the quirky underdog resorts to cold-blooded murder to secure his interests (71). ernisation, thus presenting the viewer with “a picture of an England lost to time” (Barnett). This deeply nostalgic spirit for an allegedly ‘better’, glorified England of the past, which resonates with the series’ investment in the treasures hidden in England’s soil, has problematic aspects to it, of course, particularly in the age of Brexit. While most of the show’s critics took comfort in the fact that nothing could be “more quintessentially of these isles” than “the silhouette of a lone figure sweeping a metal detector back and forth in contemplative solitude in some remote English field” (ibid.), there can be no doubt that Detectorists har‐ bours a slightly more complex agenda underneath its good-humoured façade. It is not a coincidence that the years leading up to the Brexit vote saw a new wave of programmes in which the notion of a firmly white, pre-industrial ‘Merry England’ comes under increasing scrutiny and is revealed to be an invention of the heritage industry and to hide deeply regressive, horrific fantasies of in‐ breeding and exclusion. No wonder that The League of Gentlemen returned from a 15-year hiatus as soon as the United Kingdom had voted ‘out’, for its most well-known catchphrase (“Are you local? ”) had suddenly acquired a dimension that not even its creators could have foreseen back in the 1990s. 15 Of course, the League’s fictitious setting of Royston Vasey was already in itself a throwback to a staple of British horror fiction: the seemingly kind-hearted, bucolic small-town community whose inhabitants harbour horrifying secrets, murderous inten‐ tions, pagan cults, and cannibalistic urges. This bleak vision of idiosyncratic insular communities is the mean-spirited Other to Ealing’s vigorous opti‐ mism; 16 it permeates classic British horror films like The Village of the Damned (1960) or The Wicker Man (1973), and it returned with a vengeance in the new millennium, in films and TV series like Hot Fuzz (2007), Psychoville, Hunderby, and, to a degree, Broadchurch (2013-2017). In Detectorists, the idea of the devouring, predatory community is merely alluded to as a throwaway joke - while trying to make a new prospective DMDC member feel at home, Sheila (Sophie Thompson) half-jokingly assures him that “you’ve not joined a cult” (S2/ E1, 00: 17), but the ensuing forced laughter and awkward silence indicates that she may have touched a sore spot. The show’s paratextual apparatus (including its promotion materials, interviews, or DVD 110 Wieland Schwanebeck Fig. 2: Please keep out (S2/ E2, 00: 15). extras) makes a point of stressing how much of a labour of love and a ‘family affair’ the series is, going so far as to cast Rachael Sterling’s real-life mother, British screen icon Diana Rigg, as her on-screen mom, but at the same time, this suggests that the detectorists (both onand off-screen) are very much content to remain amongst themselves; a narrative of self-sufficient insularity that made the show resonate with current political discussions in the run-up to the refer‐ endum. As the DMDC’s president, Terry constantly makes it a priority for them to branch out and to acquire new members, but his fellow detectorists are rather reluctant to follow suit. One of the show’s visual leitmotifs consists of placing the characters in vast surroundings, particularly the DMDC’s clubhouse, which could easily accommodate 100 people but never contains more than ten. When intruders come knocking, they are ogled suspiciously (see fig. 2), and much of the club-time is dedicated to denigrating the competition, “a wretched hive of scum and villainy” according to Andy (S1/ E3, 00: 15). Throughout the series, it is shared contempt for the Antiquisearchers that binds the club together, and the cruel humour which the two groups level at each other underlines that every successful process of forming a community and of including others implies an exclusion at the same time, for there is no such thing as an ‘us’ that would not go at the expense of a denigrated and stigmatised ‘them’. 111 Detectorists (2014-2017) 17 Following Savile’s death in 2011, he was revealed to have been one of the worst sex of‐ fenders in British history, having molested hundreds of children throughout his career while enjoying the protection of the BBC. The inclusion of the scene in a BBC Four sitcom may be viewed as a belated attempt to make amends on behalf of the network. Occasionally, Detectorists puts the finger where it hurts, and draws the view‐ er’s attention to how fictional its glorified view of the past really is, and how fragile its sense of communality. In one of the most melancholic vignettes of the whole series, Andy digs up a medal saying “Jim fixed it for me” (S1/ E3, 00: 01), a reminder of Jim’ll Fix It (1975-1994), one of the most beloved children’s pro‐ grammes in British TV history. But Andy’s pained expression speaks volumes, and we can assume that his own memories of having watched the show while growing up are now forever tainted by the subsequent revelations about the show’s host, Jimmy Savile. 17 In another meta-reflexive scene, the DMDC questions its own idea of inclusivity: Terry proudly explains that they have “two lesbians and an Asian amongst their ranks”, and when his wife helpfully points out that “Louise and Varde are also women” and “not just lesbians”, he takes this as affirmation: “We got all the minorities covered.” (S2/ E3, 00: 13) Detectorists milks this very limited understanding of inclusivity for numerous laughs: as a running gag, Varde (Orion Ben) remains silent to viewers of the show, and when she attempts to speak, her fellow detectorists chastise her for monopolising the conversation (S3/ E4, 00: 11); Hugh, on the other hand, whom Terry counts as the club’s token Asian member, is constantly patronised and assumed to be a teenager. A similar kind of ambiguity permeates the show’s humour, which is generally on the “warm, affectionate” side (Lewis) and seems particularly intent on not offending anyone. There are no obscenities here, and even the occasional bits of innuendo are all in good humour. When the club-members erupt into a gig‐ gling fit at Terry’s inadvertent use of lewd imagery (during his customary speech on metal-detecting, he lectures them on “moist cracks” and “deeper penetration” of the soil, S3/ E1, 00: 15), the aim is neither to deliver a full-scale attack on his authority nor to make a desperate bid for another target audience. Yet while Detectorists never goes for the ‘wink-wink nudge-nudge’ school of smutty hu‐ mour nor for the kind of “mocking of the vulnerable” that is frequently associ‐ ated with modern-day sitcoms, where the jokes rest on racist or sexist stereo‐ types (Mills 79), it is not free of denigration. There is an almost paradigmatic sequence to drive home the point in the second episode of the third and final series, where meetings of the two rival detectorist groups are intercut with one another. At the DMDC clubhouse, Lance has just finished telling a joke, and they all erupt into laughter, pointing fingers at one another as a token of shared recognition (‘I laugh with you, I see you.’). This kind of laughter is very much a 112 Wieland Schwanebeck Fig. 3: Laughing-with and laughing-at (S3/ E2, 00: 22). social event, one that builds a ‘community of laughter’ out of “shared worlds, shared codes, and shared values” (Reichl/ Stein 13). Cut to the parallel meeting of the Antiquisearchers, where everyone is having a laugh at one of their mem‐ bers who appears to have made a fool of himself (see fig. 3). Here, too, fingers are pointed, but this time in order to facilitate someone’s temporary exclusion from the group (‘I laugh at you - look at you! ’). On the surface, the scene seems to suggest that there is a clear-cut demarcation line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ 113 Detectorists (2014-2017) laughter, an idea firmly supported by the mise-en-scène, which contrasts the brightly-lit DMDC clubhouse (Union Jack visible in the background) with the conspiratorial atmosphere of the back room where the Antiquisearchers meet. Yet viewed in context of the series, one cannot help but notice that laughter always cuts both ways, working “as a mechanism of inclusion and exclusion, of valorization on the one hand and of denigration on the other” (Horlacher 25), for the DMDC’s inclusive laughter (much like their club ethos) rests on the unspoken exclusion of those who have not joined the club, and who are denied access to the clubhouse. Both laughing-at and laughing-with require an “implicit acceptance of and identification with the norm”, which makes any kind of laughter “simultaneously criticism and affirmation” (ibid. 27, 35). 5. Conclusion Detectorists leaves its most exuberant celebration of communality for the grand finale, when the DMDC comes together one last time on the land that is about to be taken from them. The final episode is an odd proposition: on the one hand, it indulges in the kind of frantic tying-up of plotlines that is characteristic of the final act in a comedy (Shakespearean or otherwise), but on the other hand, it does so at a very gentle, almost pre-modern pace that never disrupts its pastoral spirit of idealised Englishness, and with a renewed sense of reconciliation. This time, Lance and Andy even invite the competition to join them, having learned that ‘Simon and Garfunkel’ and their fellow Antiquisearchers (who, at this stage, go by the name of ‘Terra Firma’) may not be so different from them, and that a metal detector is a metal detector, after all. The ending tries to have its cake and eat it, singing the praises of the Green World in a near-wordless montage, while at the same time gently poking its characters into moving on: marriage proposals are made, couples prepare for new living situations, friendships are formed, and the old certainties of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ appear to vanish as former rivals are welcomed to join the ranks of the club. Show-runner Mackenzie Crook lets his characters down gently, sparing the viewers the sight of what may be lurking outside the Green World. As his merry treasure-seekers come together to erect a gazebo and to share a glass of Sheila’s disastrous lemonade, Crook treats his audience to a contemplative montage: metal detectors are raised one final time against the heavens, in a gesture that serves simultaneously to invoke group solidarity and to also defy authority (see fig. 4). Family members (mostly female) seem content to watch, looking after the children and patiently reading books, thus acknowledging Leavis’ point that literature is the only way to retrieve the organic community, 114 Wieland Schwanebeck Fig. 4: A merry band of brothers (S3/ E6, 00: 13). while the largely homosocial group of detectorists goes about its business as though they were ploughing the fields (S3/ E6, 00: 20). If Crook’s original aim in making the show was to write “a love song to the English countryside” (qtd. in Lloyd), then this is the bit where he treats his listeners to a final encore of the chorus. Needless to say, the show has, at this point, obliterated most of the traces of its occasional flirt with the subversive and has fully aligned itself with the kind of conservatism that some see as an in-built structural necessity of comedy - not just of the Ealing variety, which was so firmly associated with the “rear-view mirror” of misrecognition and misremembering in postwar Britain (O’Sullivan 67). However, it would be unfair to suggest that Detectorists is the programme of choice for all nostalgic Brexiteers, particularly because, by virtue of being a comedy show, it leans more strongly towards the ambiguous qualities of irony and remains firmly tongue-in-cheek about many of the values that its characters (not to mention its mise-en-scène) embrace. Chances are that, when confronted with the ‘in’ or ‘out’ question of the referendum, Andy and Lance would have responded with a resounding “Don’t care”, before grabbing their metal detectors and seeking out another field in England. 115 Detectorists (2014-2017) Bibliography Primary Sources Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. London: Faber & Faber, 2010 [1953]. Brooke, Rupert. “The Soldier.” The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tra‐ dition in English. Ed. Phillis Levin. London: Penguin, 2001 [1914]. 167. Detectorists. Series 1-3. Written and directed by Mackenzie Crook. BBC Four, 2014-2017. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Eds. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. London: Cengage Learning, 2006 [c. 1602] (The Arden Shakespeare). Secondary Sources Barnett, David. “Real-Life Detectorists: The Metal Hunters Who Are Digging up a Treasure Trove of British History.” The Independent. 16 November 2017. www.indepe ndent.co.uk/ news/ long_reads/ detectorists-season-3-buried-treasure-trove-hoxnehoard-metal-detector-detecting-artefacts-roman-a8055786.html. Accessed on 17 Jan‐ uary 2018. Bilan, R.P. The Literary Criticism of F.R. Leavis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979. Calderwood, James L. “Ways of Waiting in Waiting for Godot.” ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘Endgame’: Contemporary Critical Essays. Ed. Steven Connor. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1992. 29-43. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. London: Penguin, 1990 [1957]. Hogan, Michael. “Detectorists Returns to Unearth More Comic Gold.” The Telegraph. 8 November 2017. www.telegraph.co.uk/ tv/ 2017/ 11/ 08/ detectorists-returns-unearthcomic-gold-review/ . Accessed on 17 January 2018. Horlacher, Stefan. “A Short Introduction to Theories of Humour, the Comic, and Laughter.” Gender and Laughter: Comic Affirmation and Subversion in Traditional and Modern Media. Eds. Gaby Pailer et al. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. 17-47. Hunter, I.Q. “From Window Cleaner to Potato Man: Confessions of a Working-Class Stereotype.” British Comedy Cinema. Eds. I.Q. Hunter and Laraine Porter. London, New York: Routledge, 2012. 154-70. Jackson, Jasper. “Mark Gatiss: League of Gentlemen Star Hints at ‘Brexity’ Return to TV.” The Guardian. 13 October 2016. www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/ 2016/ oct/ 12/ league-of-gentlemen-mark-gatiss-return-tv-bbc. Accessed on 17 January 2018. Kamm, Jürgen and Birgit Neumann. “Introduction: The Aesthetics and Politics of British TV Comedy.” British TV Comedies: Cultural Concepts, Contexts and Controversies. Eds. Jürgen Kamm and Birgit Neumann. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 1-20. Laroque, François. Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 116 Wieland Schwanebeck Lewis, Tim. “Mackenzie Crook: ‘We Aspire to Be the Sitcom Thomas Hardy Would Have Written’.” The Guardian. 25 October 2015. www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/ 2015/ oct/ 25/ mackenzie-crook-the-detectorists-new-series. Accessed on 17 January 2018. Lloyd, Robert. “British Detectorists on Acorn TV Uncovers a Comedy Treasure.” Los An‐ geles Times. 25 August 2015. www.latimes.com/ entertainment/ tv/ la-et-st-detectorists -interview-20150824-column.html. Accessed on 17 January 2018. Mills, Brett. The Sitcom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2009. Murgia, Alessia, Benjamin W. Roberts, and Rob Wiseman. “What Have Metal-Detecto‐ rists Ever Done for Us? Discovering Bronze Age Gold in England and Wales.” Arch‐ äologisches Korrespondenzblatt 44.3 (2014): 353-67. O’Sullivan, Tim. “Ealing Comedies 1947-57: ‘The Bizarre British, Faced with Another Perfectly Extraordinary Situation.’” British Comedy Cinema. Eds. I.Q. Hunter and Lar‐ aine Porter. London, New York: Routledge, 2012. 66-76. Reichl, Susanne and Mark Stein. “Introduction.” Cheeky Fictions: Laughter and the Post‐ colonial. Eds. Susanne Reichl and Mark Stein. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. 1-22. Schwanebeck, Wieland. “The More, the Merrier? British Comedy and the Community of Laughter.” Anglistik 26.1 (2015): 103-13. Stott, Andrew. Comedy. New York, London: Routledge, 2005. Sturges, Fiona. “Detectorists: A Rich Portrait of Unremarkable Lives Gone Slightly Awry.” The Guardian. 9 December 2017. www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/ 2017/ dec/ 09/ detectorists-rich-portrait-unremarkable-lives-gone-slightly-awry-mackenzie-crook. Accessed on 17 January 2018. Wollaston, Sam. “Detectorists Review: More Tender Comedy about Men, Middle Age and Metal-Detecting.” The Guardian. 9 November 2017. www.theguardian.com/ tv-andradio/ 2017/ nov/ 09/ detectorists-review-third-series-tender-comedy-men-middle-age -metal-detecting. Accessed on 17 January 2018. 117 Detectorists (2014-2017) 1 For a more encompassing listing of these shows see Baena 119. 2 Lead writer Paul Rutman was joined by a team of writers consisting of Lisa McGee, Anna Symon, and Nicole Taylor, who were each responsible for different episodes. The various directors as well were each in charge of a limited number of episodes only: in season 1 Anand Tucker directed episodes 1 to 4, Jamie Payne 5 to 7, and David Moore 8 to 10; in season 2 John Alexander 1 to 3, Jonathan Teplitzky 4 to 6, and Paul Wilmshurst 7 to 10. ‘He’s one of us’: Community, Imperialism, and the Narrative of Progress in Indian Summers (2015-2016) Lisa Schwander But the way out of colonialism, it seems, is forward. A second white word, POSTCO‐ LONIALISM, invites you through a slightly larger door into the next stage of history, after which you emerge, fully erect, into the brightly lit and noisy HYBRID STATE. (McClintock 9) 1. Introduction Set in the 1930s of British India, Channel 4’s Indian Summers (2015-2016) is one of many recent TV shows that transport their audience into the early 20 th cen‐ tury. During the first decades of the new millennium, programmes set in the past have proven immensely popular: period dramas such as Downton Abbey (2010-2015), as well as literary adaptations such as Parade’s End (2012) and The Forsyte Saga (2002-2003) are only some examples that indicate this trend. 1 When Channel 4 released its new production of Indian Summers, a high-budget project starring Julie Walters and employing a team of four writers and six directors, 2 viewers tended to connect the series with these other shows. Indian Summers 3 See media coverages with titles such as “Is Indian Summers the New Downton Abbey? ” (Liebman), “Indian Summers: Why Channel 4’s Sunday night drama is better than Downton Abbey” (Wyatt), and “‘It’s about the Indians, as much as it is the [sic! ] Brits’: Downton goes to India with Indian Summers” (Rose). 4 See the discussion about community and notions of difference in Ahmed 180; compare later in this introduction. was hailed as the ‘new Downton Abbey’, 3 and the channel tellingly chose to broadcast it during the 9pm Sunday night slot previously inhabited by the latter (see Wyatt). Indeed, Indian Summers’ vision of a past world where colonisers and colonised form two separate but nevertheless intertwined social spheres echoes the formula which Downton Abbey’s master/ servant world established. In both shows, a predominantly romantic plot line evolves across these two spheres. Analysing the trend of historically-themed TV shows, Rosalía Baena sees “the thread that links these shows” as “the idea of Englishness and the enactment of nostalgia for a lost time” (119). She argues that the shows “evoke an acute national sense through a highly idealized English way of life” (ibid. 118), contextualising them within the struggle over a British cultural identity - an identity that has been continuously challenged during the 20 th century through the disintegration of the empire, economic as well as social changes, and, most recently, the ‘postnational era’ and globalisation (see ibid.). Despite the parallels between Indian Summers and Downton Abbey, however, Indian Summers does not entirely fit into the pattern of series that nostalgically reminisce about an erstwhile state of the nation. The past indeed constitutes a place of longing in Indian Summers when it appears as a romantic, exotic locale, but the series does not find a model of an ideal national community within it. With Indian Summers celebrating cross-cultural relations, the form of com‐ munity the series idealises is less connected to the past, but rather glorifies con‐ temporary ideas of a culturally heterogeneous society. If the notion of com‐ munity describes a group of people “viewed collectively” (“Community, n.”), Indian Summers continuously distances itself from concepts that define such collectivity based on ideas of shared ‘origin’ - ethnicity, religion or culture. Instead, it advocates fluid models of belonging where communities depend on shared experiences and personal choices or attitudes and are not separated along lines of difference. 4 In spite of its nostalgia for an exotic, romantically loaded past, the series continuously exhibits its belief in social progress and celebrates leaving behind the social structures it associates with the moment the show is set in. In her discussion of a 1992 Broadway exhibit entitled ‘the Hybrid State’, Anne McClintock observes how a proclaimed hybrid state of the world comes to sig‐ 120 Lisa Schwander 5 In an interview of the Channel 4 extras, Rutman contextualised Indian Summers within an engagement against forgetting the empire: “It strikes me as interesting that so many younger people have no notion of what the empire was. We’ve done a very good job of sweeping the entire empire experience under the carpet […].” (Rutman) Rather than seeing it as nostalgically indulging in some aspect of the history of the nation, he likes to think of Indian Summers as a critique of a silenced part of history. nify the historical progress that distances a contemporary moment from the colonial past. Symbolically re-enacting the transition from a colonial to a post‐ colonial world, the exhibit consists of a passage from a dark room entitled ‘col‐ onialism’, its narrow ceiling preventing the visitor from standing upright, into a room where “you emerge, fully erect, into the brightly lit and noisy HYBRID STATE” (McClintock 9). The passage itself celebrates the advances of history, enacting a “progress through the ascending doors, from primitive prehistory, bereft of language and light, through the epic stages of colonialism, postcolo‐ nialism and enlightened hybridity” (ibid. 10). As I will show, Indian Summers’ narrative fully subscribes to this historicist vision. It envisages its cross-cultural communities as distinctly anti-imperialist and postcolonial in their ability to overcome borders surrounding notions of difference. However, I will also show how the series’ own characters, plot, and aesthetics give reason to doubt the extent to which Indian Summers itself is able to think about communities beyond the category of difference, as well as to whether it actually dispenses with im‐ perialist binaries in its understanding of community. The series’ ambivalent stance, failing to fully live up to its own idealised version of community and political attitudes alike, provides insights into the competing impulses that govern attempts to negotiate forms of belonging and national identity within a 21 st -century British context. Indian Summers projects the social structures of the colonial past as a negative foil against which it develops its alternative vision of ‘progressive’ community structures. It depicts a colonial society permeated by borders that separate people via notions of ‘origin’. The series’ emphasis on the colonial system’s racist and corrupt practices that produce these separations mirrors the writers’ wish to dissociate the series from a glorification of empire. Lead writer Paul Rutman, whose excursion into the world of period drama differs from his other productions such as the crime drama Vera (2011-) and the terrorism-themed series Next of Kin (2018), explicitly distanced Indian Summers from the Downton Abbey-stream of period dramas. Whereas “Downton Abbey is in a very safe place - it’s not challenging”, Indian Summers “was always going to be more edgy, risky” (qtd. in Asian Culture Vulture). 5 However, the series loses much of its critical edge to the romanticised approach through which it expresses an alter‐ 121 Indian Summers (2015-2016) 6 After their love affair, both Englishwoman Daphne Manners and English-socialised Indian Hari Kumar are severely punished for transgressing the borders of the system: gang-raped by a group of Indians, Daphne dies in childbirth after she has become a social outcast, whereas Hari Kumar ends up in prison, beaten up by policeman Ronald Merrick (The Jewel in the Crown, E1-3). 7 Exoticism can easily become a form of racism, despite the longing for the ‘other’ in‐ herent in it (see for example Todorov 318; Huggan 154). native vision to the racist colonial structures that govern its setting. Through its serial narration, Indian Summers develops cross-cultural romantic plot lines that it simultaneously frames as anti-colonial resistance and embeds within a gradual relaxation of the restrictive social setting itself. By associating these relationships with the transition to an idealised postcolonial society to come, the series romanticises the passage from colonialism to the ‘hybrid state’. In this, Indian Summers strikingly contrasts with its 1980s precursor The Jewel in the Crown (1984), a series equally set during the last years of the British Raj. Whereas the latter focuses on the disastrous consequences of an English-Indian love af‐ fair, and while protagonist Hari Kumar’s position between English and Indian cultures ultimately ruins him, 6 Indian Summers embraces such in-between po‐ sitions as enabling and employs its inter-cultural love affairs for its politically optimistic outlook. Through this optimistic, romanticised vision, Indian Summers, despite its en‐ deavour to criticise the colonial past, tends to align itself with the cultural phe‐ nomenon of ‘Raj nostalgia’ Salman Rushdie attacked in his essay “Outside the Whale”. Beyond that, postcolonial critics have expressed doubts about glorifying visions of a contemporary ‘postcolonial world’, and Indian Summers’ imagina‐ tion is caught up in the very problems these critics foreground. Sara Ahmed has pointed out how discourses that ostensibly celebrate a borderless world, such as those surrounding narratives of globalisation and multiculturalism, tend to obscure continuing demarcations involved precisely in the structures they pro‐ mote. Ahmed claims that “through the very emphasis on becoming, hybridity and inbetweenness”, these discourses reproduce “the figure of the stranger” and participate in the “enforcement of boundaries” (13). When Indian Summers, along with its narrative of open borders and flexible belonging, continuously exoticises India and Indian cultures as different, 7 and additionally codes this difference as a sign of inferiority, it delineates a group of people the series con‐ structs as its ‘own’ from a perpetuated cultural ‘other’ and belies its own cele‐ bration of the liberating postcolonial world. In the light of analyses such as Ahmed’s, the series’ embrace of cross-cultural alliances appears as celebratory rhetoric which glosses over that “a different form of political community, one 122 Lisa Schwander 8 The concept of world history as a teleological development towards a ‘modernity’ lo‐ cated in the West developed in 19 th -century Europe. This view is itself complicit with an imperial project as it allows to see the West as more advanced and thus in a position to colonise - to guide and ‘civilise’ - the non-West (see for example Chakrabarty 7-9). However, while the West inferred its inherent superiority from its ‘modernity’, critics point out that it is only its position of power over other parts of the world that allows the West to construct itself as superior and more advanced in the first place (see Dussel 4-5) and ask for a de-Westernised take on modernity that acknowledges diverse forms of being modern (see Chakrabarty). that moves beyond the opposition between common and uncommon, between friends and strangers, or between sameness and difference” (Ahmed 180) is yet to be achieved. The series’ plot and aesthetics thus unwittingly confirm appre‐ hensions that societies which emphasise their heterogeneity nevertheless divide into distinct communities of difference - a critique prominently levelled against multicultural policies. In this context, an apparent celebration of diversity often comes down to no more than a “spectacularisation of ethnic difference” (Huggan 152). Various critics have taken issue with the teleological narrative of progress itself that reads the present as inherently superior to the past. In commenting on the Broadway exhibit, McClintock stresses that celebrating this teleological process invests in the very temporality of a single historical development to‐ wards an ever more advanced modern state that, in locating modernity in the West, has served to support a vision of Western superiority and colonisation (see 10-1). 8 Indeed, Indian Summers’ imagination of the historical transition to a hybrid, de-imperialised world and open community forms exhibits highly problematic notions of cultural difference that question this triumphal narrative. The following sections analyse the competing ideas and desires surrounding community in Indian Summers in three steps. The first part shows how Indian Summers develops its colonial setting with a focus on borders between com‐ munities that define themselves through shared origins and points to alterna‐ tive, open community structures as antithetical to a colonial system. The second chapter analyses the vision of historical transformation inscribed in Indian Summers’ serial narration, centring on its distinctly politicised romantic plot lines. The last chapter then focuses on aspects that interfere with Indian Sum‐ mers’ proclaimed celebration of post-imperial and open communities: the striking exoticism of the series that puts difference centre stage and its Orien‐ talist depiction of a backward India and a superior British culture. 123 Indian Summers (2015-2016) 9 In the following, references to Indian Summers will be given without repeating the title. 10 When I use the term ‘Indian’ to refer to the local population, I do not mean to suggest the existence of a unified Indian group identity, but intend to capture the demarcations brought by the colonial system itself. 2. Focus on Origin and Difference as Signature of a Colonial Past Indian Summers follows Simla’s colonial society over the period of two summers in 1932 and 1935, centring on the English Whelan and the Parsi Dalal families. Aafrin Dalal (Nikesh Patel), employed in the Indian Civil Service and working for Ralph Whelan (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), Private Secretary to the Viceroy of India, provides the hinge between the worlds of the rulers and the ruled, al‐ lowing the audience to enter both worlds simultaneously. Throughout the series, Indian Summers characterises society in colonial India through its borders based on ideas about people’s ‘origins’. Cinematic techniques as well as dialogues draw attention to divisions between characters on the basis of religious, ethnic, or national belonging. Indian Summers contextualises these separations explicitly with the colonial system of the time and, against this background, associates alternative, fluid community forms with resisting and overcoming the colonial system. In their function as an exposition, the first episodes in particular develop the social world the show is set in. They convey a sense of the social borders between British rulers and Indian subjects through a series of spatial contrasts and divi‐ sions. During the first minutes, the camera lingers on a sign of the “Royal Simla Club” with the slogan “NO DOGS OR INDIANS” (Indian Summers, S1/ E1, 00: 04), 9 introducing a colonial separation into British and Indian zones. Ex‐ cluding dogs and ‘Indians’ alike, the club itself comes to represent a British community which, in its eagerness to emphasise its difference from the local population, suggestively overlooks a shared humanity. Additionally, the choice of the generalising term ‘Indians’ highlights the British refusal to acknowledge the factions of the highly heterogeneous population they rule. 10 Through a scene on a train, the series gives a first impression of public life in colonial India. Providing alternating views on the British and the Indian compartments that contrast the spacious seating of the former with the cramped conditions of the latter (S1/ E1, 00: 07), the shooting techniques draw attention to the separation of the British and the local population as distinct groups to be kept entirely apart, as well as to the hierarchy inscribed in this separation. With Indian landowner Ramu Sood (Alyy Khan), the series presents a character whose constant trans‐ gression of borders brings these delineations of the colonial system all the more into focus. The scene that introduces him draws on the spatial hierarchy in‐ 124 Lisa Schwander scribed in the contrasting pair of high and low in order to indicate his disregard for colonial hierarchies and separations. Sitting on a horse and wearing a suit while constantly filmed from below, he towers over Scottish newcomer Ian (Alexander Cobb), who cannot believe that Ramu, the very image of a British gentleman, is “the native” people have been talking about (S1/ E2, 00: 16; see fig. 1). When the next episode shows Ramu Sood in the city centre where he is reminded that “Indians may not use the mall before sundown” (S1/ E3, 00: 05), his character serves again to highlight a colonial division of space through which the British uphold the borders of their community. Fig. 1: Challenging colonial hierarchies (S1/ E2, 00: 16). While these scenes show how the British community delineates itself from the local population, the exposition also draws attention to the divisions be‐ tween India’s own various ethnic and religious communities. Again, the series designs its spatial politics to point towards social borders. In showing the first meeting between Aafrin and his lover Sita (Ellora Torchia), who belongs to the Hindu community and thereby constitutes a socially unacceptable match for the Parsi protagonist, the first episode establishes a pattern where their meetings, instead of taking place in public, are confined to a series of heterotopic spaces (Foucault). Michel Foucault defines heterotopias as real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which 125 Indian Summers (2015-2016) the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simul‐ taneously represented, contested, and inverted (24). He explicitly names cemeteries as an example and describes the subcategory of “heterotopias of deviation”, where “individuals whose behaviour is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed” (ibid. 25). In a similar way, at least in the beginning, the series confines Aafrin and Sita’s relationship to ‘counter-sites’ that accentuate their deviant behaviour. Followed by later meetings in a graveyard by night, the first meeting of the lovers takes place in a bazar where Aafrin follows Sita between some coloured drapery. This setting disconnects the characters from the social life surrounding them: the two lovers walk towards a bright light, the noises of the bazar fade and soft piano music starts to play - the lovers literally walk out of a realist into a romanticised out-of-this-world setting. It is only towards the end of the scene that noises from the bazar tune in again and Aafrin and Sita re-enter the social world (S1/ E1, 00: 35-7). Both the space of this first meeting and the similarly romanticised trope of the graveyard with its gothic associations are secluded from the regular social life, showing that the lovers’ union is possible only out‐ side the borders of the social world they inhabit. The spatial semantics thus underline the normative force of the divisions between the different commun‐ ities, and Indian Summers complements these visual impressions through char‐ acter dialogues that contextualise these borders explicitly within static concepts of communities defined by origin. By stressing that “[o]ne thousand years our community stands alone through marriage” (S1/ E5, 00: 40), Aafrin’s mother (Lil‐ lete Dubey) explains her command that her children marry another Parsi. She rejects her son’s relationship to Sita, declaring that “[w]e will find you a good wife, a good Parsi wife - from your own people” (S1/ E1, 00: 34), and Aafrin’s sister Sooni (Aysha Kala) later repeats this exact phrase when she explains that her parents have chosen a man “from my own people” (S2/ E7, 00: 07). Indian Summers constructs its social system in such a way that a critique of the borders erected between communities of difference and a critique of the colonial system blend into one. At length, the series develops a farce trial that condemns Ramu Sood to death, while both he and the viewers know that he is executed for a crime that consisted of daring “to stand up to them as their equal” (S1/ E7, 00: 41). The colonial justice system is corrupt precisely in its brutal de‐ fence of these community concepts and hierarchies. Furthermore, Ramu ex‐ plains to Ian that “when they arrest a man like you and they can’t find evidence, you walk free. When they arrest a man like me, they simply invent it” (S1/ E7, 00: 39), which shows that justice itself, in a world of imperial divisions, turns into a privilege of the English community. In its repeated focus on the ‘half-caste’ 126 Lisa Schwander children, as well, the series showcases its Raj-critical stance through focusing on the victims of the separations between the English and Indians. These chil‐ dren, whose very existence challenges colonial divisions and who, having “no home, no family” (S1/ E3, 00: 17-8), know that they “don’t belong” (S1/ E8, 00: 24), provide living evidence of the damaging effect of the separations enforced by colonial rule. Whilst the borders between various Indian communities at first sight appear to be unconnected to British rule, the series likewise associates their rigidity with the colonial system. With a repeated reference to the figure of Gandhi, Indian Summers interprets a separation of communities along ethnic and religious lines as beneficial for British colonial rule, whereas alliances across these borders appear as an anti-colonial vision. Angry about what she sees as Aafrin’s lack of political activism, his sister tells him: “If we let them divide us then they win. It is how they have always won. Gandhi wants us to be united, as one. And you will sit among them while he starves for that cause? ” (S1/ E7, 00: 35). Aafrin later repeats this view in a speech to the new viceroy, in which he sums up his contempt for British rule: “No one in India wants your bill. All it will ever do is drive us deeper apart. Hindu against Muslim - only the word of Gandhi stands between us and you […].” (S2/ E10, 00: 19) The series thus presents overcoming separations along these lines as a political necessity. Through the development of Ian, the series stresses the connection between alternative community concepts and anti-imperialism. Being Scottish and, as a planter, not directly part of the governing elite, Ian is an outsider to British society right from the start. After the execution of his friend Ramu Sood, he resolutely turns his back on the British community and imperialist politics alike. On a visit to Ian, Sooni reads a leaflet: SOONI. You are communist now? IAN. After a fashion. SOONI. Stop British imperial thieves from… Ian tunes in: …stealing Indian profit. IAN. Hope for all. See! That’s what we want. Is it not? SOONI. You don’t miss your own people? Walking into the next room where a woman and girl dressed in saris are seated. IAN. These are my people now. (S2/ E3, 00: 16-7) Ian radically breaks with the understanding of community based on origin, and his new concept of his ‘people’ indicates precisely a form of political community that has overcome an opposition between sameness and difference that Ahmed sees missing in contemporary social structures (see 180). Through him, the series embraces a collective that is “not simply about what ‘we’ have in common - or 127 Indian Summers (2015-2016) 11 See the discussion in section 3. what ‘we’ do not have in common” but that is instead “formed through the very work that we need to do in order to get closer to others” (ibid., emphasis in orig‐ inal). The series thus describes both the borders between Indian and British characters and those between different Indian communities as complicit with a colonial system, whereas new bonds across these borders appear to challenge it. In this framework, the series’ own critique of these borders, as well as its foregrounding of alternative community concepts appear as proof of its em‐ pire-critical stance. However, the series’ equation of its own vision with a critique of empire is complicated by two factors: firstly, as the last section of the analysis will show, Indian Summers itself neither follows Ian’s reformulation of community, nor does it manage to entirely break with imperialist notions surrounding com‐ munity. Secondly, its very enthusiasm to imagine alternative community struc‐ tures that transcend the borders erected by the colonial system tends to open up a space for an apologetic, whitewashed view of colonial violence. The series’ politics of characterisation exemplify this process. Indian Summers associates its English protagonists, Ralph Whelan and his sister Alice ( Jemima West), with a somewhat hybrid cultural space. Having grown up in India, they speak in Hindustani to their servants with whom they connect through a shared child‐ hood. Alice’s first comment to her brother’s servant Bhupinder (Ash Nair), “I remember you - you used to pull my hair” (S1/ E1, 00: 26), suggests the depth of their familiarity. In these instances, the series points to a certain degree of hy‐ bridity that was indeed characteristic of the British ruling class settled in India. However, Indian Summers employs this to give the protagonists a politically subversive touch, indicating their ultimately anti-colonial mindset. In Ralph’s case, who in many ways appears as a ruthless representative of the colonial system of government, his association with an Indian lifeworld counterbalances this negative portrayal by pointing to a facet of his personality buried under his political ambitions, a side the series repeatedly alludes to. During the trial of Ramu Sood, a shoe that the assembled crowd considers to be ‘typically Indian’ serves as evidence that the crime in question could not possibly have been com‐ mitted by an Englishman or -woman. Suggestively, the final shot of this episode focuses on Ralph wearing a pair of shoes identical to those deemed unfit for the English (S2/ E8, 00: 46); an image that distances him from the British community present in court. When Ralph gives up his political ambitions towards the end of the series and associates himself fully with Aafrin, 11 this seems as the logical consequence of his difference from the majority of the series’ British characters. 128 Lisa Schwander 12 This tension is typical of the Raj revival, and the specific vision described above brings to mind Rushdie’s critique of the recurring notion in British fiction dealing with the empire that “the British and Indians actually understood each other jolly well, and that the end of the Empire was a sort of gentlemen’s agreement between old pals at the club” (101). 13 Contrasting with terms such as ‘transcultural’, the designation ‘cross-cultural’ itself implies an understanding of cultures as separate entities. I choose the term cross-cul‐ tural deliberately because it seems to capture precisely the way Indian Summers, despite its emphasis on romantic border-crossing, does not manage to think beyond categories of cultural ‘difference’. In this depiction of its two British protagonists, Indian Summers offers a strik‐ ingly reconciliatory vision of colonial rule by constructing English rulers who become the Indians’ best friends and who appear willing to overcome the col‐ onial system by acting in concert with the ruled. This tension between the series’ ambitions to provide a critique of colonialism and the very different implications of its plot is inscribed into the entire romanticised approach which Indian Sum‐ mers applies to the colonial past. 12 3. Cross-Cultural Romances and Historical Progress Against the background of this social system, Indian Summers’ serial narration develops two cross-cultural romantic plot lines that advance the narrative. 13 Presenting these not only as antithetical to the colonial system, but also reading their happy ending as harbinger of a glorious time to come, the series connects these relationships with a distinctly political vision. The first of these relation‐ ships develops between Aafrin Dalal and Alice Whelan. Starting in the very first episode and happily resolved only in the last one, it constitutes a story arc that spans the entire two seasons. It begins with Alice’s escape from a dysfunctional marriage, which leads her to India, the place of her childhood. There, shortly after her arrival, the events of the first episode entangle her life with Aafrin’s. When Aafrin is hit by a bullet intended for Ralph, Alice’s insistence to stand by him sets in motion the characters’ love affair around which the subsequent plot evolves. The second love plot starts only in series two and consists of the rela‐ tionship between Sooni and her Muslim lover Mr Khan (Tanmay Dhanania). In this combination, the series presents a dual romantic constellation whose ful‐ filment depends on overcoming the very borders Indian Summers has associated with the colonial system: those between British rulers and Indian subjects as well as those between various Indian communities. Far from contrasting with the series’ political dimension, romance is thus central to Indian Summers’ dis‐ cussion of community and imperialism. 129 Indian Summers (2015-2016) 14 Although they do not set in scene a national unification - after all, Pakistan and India emerged as two separate states in the time following the moment in which the series is set - the political bonds celebrated through a love relationship associate the series with what Doris Sommer described as ‘Foundational Fictions’ in the process of Latin American nation-building. The texts she analyses offer personal unions between two lovers from different groups within the newly developing nation as an image of a suc‐ cessfully integrated nation. She describes that “[t]ensions that inevitably exist and drive the story on are external to the couple: the counter-productive social constraints that underline the naturalness and the inevitability of the lovers’ transgressive desire”; con‐ sequently the “lovers must imagine their ideal relationship through an alternative so‐ ciety” (17-8). In her reading of the ‘romance novel’, Pamela Regis describes eight essential elements of the genre, among which the ‘barrier’ constitutes the particular el‐ ement that explains why the couple cannot get married (yet). She points out that “[t]he romance novel’s conflict often consists entirely of this barrier between the heroine and hero. The elements of the barrier can be external […] or internal” (32), and in the course of the novel, hero and heroine overcome this barrier. Indian Summers politicises the love stories it depicts through externalising the barrier and equating it with the social structures of the colonial system according to which the characters need to marry within their ‘own’ communities. For both women, the series provides alternative partners, a prospective one in Sooni’s case and, in Alice’s case, a bullying husband returning from the past. Belonging to the ‘right’ people, these alternative partners demonstrate the force of the social barrier. When the couples need to overcome these barriers in order to find romantic fulfilment, this development appears, inflected to the specific param‐ eters of the series, as brave resistance to the colonial system. Sooni’s and Mr Khan’s entire relationship is framed as the literal fulfilment of Gandhi’s idea of resistance. Their courtship symbolically begins when Mr Khan takes Sooni on a tour to hear a speech of Gandhi where the latter proclaims “one whole nation, one people, without stains of division under God” (S2/ E7, 00: 37). After this visit Sooni agrees to marry Mr Khan. The characters have triumphed over the barrier through their defiance of traditional notions of community as well as of British efforts to “drive [them] deeper apart” (S2/ E10, 00: 19). Thus their marriage be‐ comes itself a defeat of the colonial system. 14 While the series links the characters’ overcoming of the barrier to their anti-colonial mindset, in Aafrin and Alice’s case, the protagonists’ happy re‐ union is simultaneously the result of a gradual change in the very structures that created the barrier. The narration of Indian Summers is serial not only with regard to the character arcs it develops, but also with regard to the setting it describes. In fact, Indian Summers’ particular form of serialisation lends itself to 130 Lisa Schwander 15 The distinction between those narratives that divide into many self-contained episodes and those whose story arcs connect the single episodes translates into the distinction between series and serial (see Gwenllian Jones 527; Mazdon, “Introduction”, 9). How‐ ever, Mazdon observes that this distinction becomes increasingly difficult in contem‐ porary TV productions (see “Introduction”, 9). Strictly speaking, Indian Summers is thus a serial and not a series; when I use the term series, however, I refer to the colloquial use of the word TV series that this volume employs. 16 Some episodes of Indian Summers show a clear subplot restricted to a single episode - episode 8 of the second season, for example, begins with Alice’s plan to run away from her husband with Aafrin and her son and ends with Charlie stopping their escape. However, most episodes hardly display a clear beginning and closure and even episodes such as S2/ E8 are firmly embedded within the larger narrative. Aafrin and Alice’s at‐ tempted escape is a result of the previous development and its consequences propel the events around which the following episodes evolve. 17 Again, the series’ spatial images silently underline this transformation. Without com‐ menting on it, Indian Summers shows Aafrin’s family in the second series inhabiting the house where the former missionary used to live in the first series (compare S1/ E1, 00: 29 and S2/ E8, 00: 32-3). Although the family’s upward movement literally invades the space of the English community, their movement provokes no punishment similar to the one Ramu Sood experienced one season - and several years - earlier. a vision of historical progress. Constituting “distinctive formats in which nar‐ rative works at the levels both of individual instalments and of the serial as a whole” (Gwenllian Jones 527), serial narratives consist of individual instalments which can be more or less self-contained (ibid.). 15 Indian Summers provides a strongly integrated larger narrative, and its structure is typical of the “linear narrative progression of the more traditional drama serial” (Mazdon, “Preface”, xi), contrasting with “the tendency to eschew linearity” (ibid.) which Lucy Mazdon observes in many contemporary series. Indian Summers privileges se‐ rialisation at the expense of partial closures within single episodes 16 and almost entirely abstains from flashbacks or anticipations. While this keeps the viewers in the dark about much of the characters’ past lives and helps to build up sus‐ pense, this strictly teleological narrative also presents the story as a linear movement towards an advanced end-point. In conflating romantic plot lines and social setting within this form of serial narration, Indian Summers formulates its vision of a beginning historical transition to a postcolonial age. Against the social background developed throughout the first series, season one ends with a vote which abolishes the colour bar in the club. This kick-starts a development that increasingly challenges the borders separating local and English communities. 17 It is in this context that Cynthia ( Julie Walters), of all characters the most careful upholder of ‘Englishness’, conspires with Alice and Aafrin to enable their relationship. Significantly, Cynthia describes her behav‐ iour as the inevitable result of a historical development: 131 Indian Summers (2015-2016) 18 Cynthia’s development is another example that shows how a Raj-critical stance slides into an apologetic vision of the British imperial past when racist characters appear suddenly improved and any racist remarks appear thereafter to be no more than a game these characters have to keep up for their reputation. Love, you know, sometimes you have to adjust. I mean look at me. I’ve got his lot in my club - day in day out. Do I like it? No! Do I jolly well get on with it? Yes. Because you’ve got to, haven’t you? (S2/ E9, 00: 18) Even the most racist characters cannot obstruct the development the series de‐ picts. 18 It is part of this development that the possible options to define who makes up one’s community steadily enlarge. The bullet that hits Aafrin instead of Ralph provokes an increasingly close relationship between these characters, but it is only towards the end of the narrative that Ralph defends Aafrin, claiming that “[h]e’s one of us” (S2/ E9, 00: 21). His choice of words indicates that, in the course of the series, a new ‘us’ has developed; one that is disconnected from origin and instead builds on shared experiences and friendship and creates po‐ litical alliances across social borders. Further underlining this, the last episode offers a new family tableau in the Whelan estate, where Ralph’s ‘half-caste’ son Adam (Dillon Mitra) is openly treated as a family member - a striking contrast to the trouble Ralph previously went through to keep his past a secret (S2/ E10, 00: 41). It is in the context of this general development that the barrier between Alice and Aafrin finally dissolves, and, with Alice’s husband conveniently killed by an Indian mob, the last episode finally shows Alice, Aafrin, and Alice’s son openly holding hands in the street (S2/ E10, 00: 36). Around the Whelan family there have developed communities detached from notions of sameness or dif‐ ference. While the specific parameters of these two relationships already associate them with social change, a conversation between Aafrin and Sooni explicitly connects their unions with their respective partners to the future: AAFRIN. What’s wrong with us do you think? Why are we doing this to ourselves? SOONI. Who knows? Too obstinate in your case? In my case, I am simply too honest! […] Anyway, others will simply have to adapt - won’t they? We are the pioneers. Wherever we lead, the world will follow. AAFRIN. I hope so. (S2/ E10, 00: 42) Sooni’s understanding of their role is illuminating. As ‘pioneers’, they introduce changes to come, leading the way into a new world. Having contextualised both relationships within anti-colonial resistance, the series suggests that these char‐ acters provide a taste of the ‘hybrid’ postcolonial world that “will follow”. An 132 Lisa Schwander overly romanticised scene, showing both couples embracing in dance while sudden snowfall completes the fairy-tale like moment (S2/ E10, 00: 44; see fig. 2) projects the future they lead into as a wonderful place. The series celebrates its own passage from the dark room of colonialism into the stage of “enlightened hybridity”. Fig. 2: Romantic ending (S2/ E10, 00: 44). 4. Desirable - Backward - Different: Indian Characters in Indian Summers The previous sections have shown how Indian Summers envisages communities that transcend the dichotomy of difference and similarity and how it celebrates these alternative community concepts as an antithesis to the imperialist social structure. The series thus exhibits its desire to work towards an open, de-colon‐ ised world. In analysing the depiction of India and Indian characters, this final part of the discussion shows that the concept of community which Indian Sum‐ mers celebrates clashes with its own continuous emphasis on difference. Firstly, the series’ entire aesthetics is oriented towards projecting an idea of an India able to satisfy a longing for exotic difference, despite the fact that to describe a culture as an exotic ‘other’ is precisely a way of delineating one’s own from the ‘othered’ community. Secondly, the series’ Orientalist construction of Indians as backward is entirely at odds with its emphatic embrace of a transition away from imperial community concepts. 133 Indian Summers (2015-2016) Preceding each episode, the title sequence contextualises the series’ cross-cul‐ tural interest with an attempt to ‘spice up’ British lives through a flavour of the exotic. While black and white photographs show scenes of ‘life in the colonies’, an explosion of bright colours covers larger parts of the screen, reducing these black and white images to the background. Mainly from a red, yellow, and or‐ ange colour scheme, these colours of fire symbolically disturb the everyday lives of the English rulers through an element of danger and adventure, an impression underscored by background music with a strong drum beat. Significantly, the series associates the colourful disturbance explicitly with India: the exploding colours foreshadow a scene in the second season set during the Hindu festival Holi, the festival of colours, whose filmic rendering precisely parallels the aes‐ thetics of the title sequence (S2/ E1, 00: 01; compare fig. 3 and fig. 4). The series thus promises ‘Indian tradition’ to challenge conventional British lives, reviving the literally grey scenes unfolding in the background. When, out of the colour dust, there emerges the image of Aafrin’s and Alice’s intertwined hands, cross-cultural romance appears distinctly in the context of an excitement sur‐ rounding an ‘othered’ India. There is nothing “edgy” (Rutman qtd. in Asian Culture Vulture) about this image; on the contrary, its focus on difference fulfils precisely the needs of a Western society. Beyond the exotic atmosphere of the title sequence, the distinct aesthetics that characterise Indian Summers’ shots of Indian scenery reveal how the series produces a ‘different’ India explicitly as a place of nostalgic yearning. Long shots of wild, exotic Indian surroundings are part of almost every episode, and their quality associates them with the “[g]eneric heritage long-take shots” (Cardwell 120) popular in English heritage films’ nostalgic glances on the English coun‐ tryside. These are held for slightly longer than normal ‘establishing’ long shots generally are; this slowing of pace through extended shot length is characteristic. The shots are also, in general, beautifully framed: […] the landscape shots are framed as landscape paintings might be. (ibid.) Indian Summers applies this technique, for instance, in an extraordinary long shot of the new cottage of Aafrin’s family. When the camera slowly moves from left to right, showing the cottage and carefully tended garden with wild plants growing on a steep slope next to it, the viewers enter a world of fairy-tale qual‐ ities. However, what the series portrays as a space of desire is not simply a beautiful environment, but a recognisably Indian one: the figure of Sooni in her bright orange sari is placed prominently on the steps, turning the image into one of distinctly exotic Indian beauty (S2/ E8, 00: 32-3). As in many other of Indian 134 Lisa Schwander Fig. 3: Exploding colours (title sequence). Fig. 4: Holi (S2/ E1, 00: 01). Summers’ atmospheric takes, the strong, lush colours of this scene are shown through a slight haze reminiscent of the distinct look of old photographs, which, made popular through the contemporary wave of nostalgia, further helps to 135 Indian Summers (2015-2016) 19 Victoria Redclift, for instance, describes how “ethnicity-rich, empirically-heavy, notions of ‘cultural difference’” risk “essentializing ‘community’, experience and belonging” (580). 20 See the discussion in the introduction. Such a depiction is related to what Johannes Fabian (see 31) described as the ‘denial of coevalness’, the way in which anthropologists tend to construct the people they analyse as part of a different time. create a longing for this space. Evoking and fulfilling a desire for ‘otherness’ seems to dictate the aesthetic choices of Indian Summers. In line with the aesthetic exoticisation of India, the series views its Indian characters similarly through the lens of difference. Here, the category of differ‐ ence plays out on the field of culture. This over-emphasis on cultural difference suggests that, in contrast to what it preaches, the series itself falls short of re‐ thinking community concepts. 19 Moreover, this difference appears in the shape of a distinctly Orientalist construction that presents Indians as the lesser devel‐ oped ‘other’, indicating that Indian Summers’ community concepts are far re‐ moved from the anti-imperialist vision the series advocates. Constructing its Indian characters alternatively as childlike, ‘uncivilised’, or ‘premodern’, Indian Summers subscribes to a notion of world development where the colonial space appears stuck in an ‘earlier’ stage of development. 20 Ralph’s servant Bhupinder, for instance, appears as an overly emotional character who has not yet learned to control his feelings. He murders Ralph’s former Indian mistress in a mindless attempt to preserve his master’s reputation and is subsequently unable to deal with his feeling of guilt, thus embodying the stereotype of the childish but loyal ‘native’ servant. Being less ‘advanced’ than Ralph, he depends on the latter for protection. Aafrin and Sooni’s parents appear similarly inferior. Their enormous naivety distances them clearly from the English characters, who, while some of them may be narrow-minded, are never naive. When Aafrin’s parents constantly fool themselves into reassuring views and conceive improbable scenarios that explain their son’s disappearance in order to avoid facing the fact of his arrest (S2/ E9, 00: 13), or when they, wishing to appear both hospitable and wealthy, entangle themselves in lies that the viewer as well as the English visitor sees through (S1/ E2, 00: 25), the series portrays them condescendingly as loveable characters who, however, cannot be taken seriously in their childlike naivety. Orientalist clichés like these manifest themselves most strikingly in the figure of the Maharajah of Amritpur (Art Malik), who broadens the series’ Orientalist vision to encompass an explicitly political dimension. He throws food while being a guest at the Whelans’ house and punishes Ralph for daring to win a game of cricket against him. Emphasising the Maharajah’s childlike temper and his habit to get his will at all costs, Indian Summers turns him almost into a 136 Lisa Schwander 21 Ralph’s own political rule, of course, displays distinctly despotic traits at times. By showing him to act against his better judgement, however, Indian Summers underlines the ultimately ‘enlightening’ effect of British culture. caricature of an Oriental despot. The series foregrounds his sexually predatory behaviour when he, in the presence of his lover (Rachel Griffiths), suggestively called Sirene, claims Ralph’s wife Madeleine (Olivia Grant) as a price for his political support. In describing the Maharajah as overly sexualised and likening his treatment of women to the collection of trophies, the series bluntly alludes to “one of the most well-known pornographic motifs in 19 th and 20 th -century Western culture - the Oriental despot and his harem” (Teo 4). Through a con‐ versation between the Maharajah and Ralph, the series contrasts his rule with a more enlightened understanding it ascribes to the West: MAHARAJAH. You look me in the eye, give me your word as a gentleman - nothing will touch my freedom. RALPH. Yes. But there are… MAHARAJAH. No, you see. That’s exactly my point. It has to be one thing or the other. Either I am free to do as I please, or Majesty is subject to the will of others, outside forces. (S2/ E7, 00: 10-1) The Maharajah’s understanding of freedom proves that he considers his rule beyond the limits of law. Through Ralph’s interjection, the series juxtaposes this attitude, despite Ralph opportunistically playing along, with a British under‐ standing that a ruler must act within the confines of the law. 21 If Indian society appears as generally less ‘enlightened’ than its English counterpart in the series, the depiction of the Maharajah gives the clearest impression of the underlying imperialism, as the supposed ‘backwardness’ here visibly turns into a defence of British imperial rule. Against this background, Indian Summers ascribes a ‘civilising’ influence to British culture. In her reading of romances that develop love stories between Arab men and Western women, Hsu-Ming Teo describes the ambivalent position of many of these fictions. They project Arabian men’s inclusion into a Western society through their partners. While the authors thus attempt to intervene in the demonisation of Arab men, they recreate in this very depiction Orientalist stereotypes and claim Western superiority through their emphasis on the Western women’s civilising influence (see Teo 25). Although Indian Summers’ romances attempt to promote open community forms, these endeavours are similarly flawed by the series’ continuous belief in a British civilising influence that re-inscribes cultural stereotypes and erects borders. In Indian Summers, a civilising influence appears not as the result of the love affairs, but as a prereq‐ 137 Indian Summers (2015-2016) 22 A conversation between Aafrin and his father further illustrates how the series sets off to combat stereotypes and imperialist justifications, albeit in the process involuntarily affirming these. When Aafrin confronts his father, “my father who raised me to believe these British are our best hope. One shelf, you remember? One shelf of a British library is worth all that we can think or do” (S2/ E5, 00: 12), the scene references a famous quote attributed to 19 th -century British politician Thomas Babington Macaulay, who Edward Said, amongst others, names as a prime representative of Orientalist opinions (see 14). The series uses Aafrin as a mouthpiece to voice a critique of imperialist views. However, in attributing the argument against which the critique is levelled to Aafrin’s father, Indian Summers turns the latter into a naive believer of British propaganda. The fact that it is the privilege of his English-educated son to see through this points to the emancipatory potential of British education, ironically affirming to a certain extent the very notion the series appears to criticise. uisite that forms the protagonists’ ‘modern’ mindsets and enables them to con‐ sider cross-cultural romances in the first place. Critically minded and border-crossing, the ‘pioneers’ Aafrin and Sooni are set in contrast to their pa‐ rents and the majority of Indian characters in the series. When her father (Roshan Seth) responds to Sooni’s attacks on his pro-British attitude by telling her to “[m]ock me if you wish. But remember - who is it but the English who gave you the education to sit there scorning your own father” (S1/ E6, 00: 14), the series establishes that the children can function as anti-imperialist heroes pre‐ cisely because they have undergone an English education. The pioneering In‐ dians are themselves a product of a ‘modern’ British influence. Read this way, the love stories through which the series claims its anti-imperialist position prove to validate an imperialist cultural hierarchy. 22 A biased vision that sees the British as the driving force behind a movement towards a modern, postcolonial world is inscribed in the very narrative of pro‐ gress that Indian Summers constructs. The series’ celebration of the triumph over the structures of the past is thus overshadowed by its tacit justification of imperial rule. Having both associated the escalating tensions between India’s different groups with the colonial system and insisted on the necessity to bridge these gaps in order to move on, the series then continuously emphasises the British contribution to this process. During a dinner party that brings together different Indian groups, it is Alice who intervenes in order to provide the ‘un‐ touchable’ guest with food the Indian servants refuse to serve him (S1/ E5, 00: 33). Later, Ralph and the viceroy plot to teach the Indians ‘teamwork’ through a game of cricket (S2/ E3, 00: 08). Ultimately, in the last episode, Ralph’s ‘half-caste’ son Adam and British-educated Aafrin are able to de-escalate tensions brought about by the antagonism between Muslim and Hindu communities: when the conflict produces a bloodthirsty mob ready to kill everyone in reach, it is their civilising influence that brings the people to their senses (S2/ E10, 00: 32). Paci‐ 138 Lisa Schwander fication of, and alliances between, traditionally defined communities depend on British influence. This captures the central paradox of the series’ historical imagination: while associating historical progress itself with a transition to community concepts beyond an emphasis on origin and difference as well as the departure from an imperialist worldview per se, the series’ depiction of this very process recreates borders and imperialist hierarchies alike. 5. Conclusion The preceding analysis of Indian Summers has shown how the series desires to promote open community concepts beyond essentialised notions of belonging, attempting to construct its own vision as anti-imperialist and critical of the past. However, I have pointed to a fundamental tension between this desire and the implications of the series’ own characterisations, plot, and aesthetics. On the one hand, the series identifies the colonial past with a society with firmly es‐ tablished borders between different ethnic, religious, or national communities. Endeavouring to distance its vision from this past, Indian Summers develops a linear, integrated serial narrative that embeds cross-cultural character relations in romantic storylines whose happy endings appear dependent on, as well as symbolic of, social change. In this serial narrative, Indian Summers projects a vision of historical progress towards an ‘enlightened’ future where ‘difference’ no longer matters to define who, in Ian’s words, one’s ‘people’ (S2/ E3, 00: 17) are, and imperialism appears as a thing of the past. However, on the other hand, a desire to encounter India as a place of difference seems to be precisely at the heart of Indian Summers, making the series itself complicit in essentialising cul‐ tural communities. Moreover, the particular vision of difference Indian Summers presents aligns the series’ imagination with imperialist binaries. In celebrating the passage to‐ wards a postcolonial society, the series’ idea of historical teleology exhibits the very bias critics have pointed out to dominate Western concepts of modernity. Inscribed in Indian Summers’ transition to a hybrid world and open communities is not only a fundamentally ‘othered’ India, but an Orientalist dichotomy that attributes Britishness with modernity and progress while allocating India to a state of backwardness. Indian Summers is neither free of defining a community against an ‘other’ coded as culturally different, nor of an imperialist belief in the superiority of British culture. Tellingly, the pointedly Raj-critical stance at least partly dissolves when the romanticised relations between colonisers and colon‐ ised juxtapose the series’ initial presentation of the Raj as a corrupt and violent system with a distinctly positive version of colonial life and rule. If Indian Sum‐ 139 Indian Summers (2015-2016) mers tries to envisage a version of communities that contrast with the social structures of a colonial past, its failure to entirely liberate itself from an emphasis on origin as well as from imperialist views shows the limits of this project. In the end, despite its pronounced orientation towards the future, there is more than the series’ creators like to admit that connects Indian Summers with the idealised presentation of a (national) past that characterises other period dramas set in the early 20 th century. The contrast between the version of community Indian Summers openly em‐ braces and the very different community concepts the series implicitly builds up points to unacknowledged mental binaries which interfere with the desire to construct an open and liberatingly ‘hybrid’ society. The series’ inability to think of community beyond the “opposition between common and uncommon, between friends and strangers, or between sameness and difference” (Ahmed 180, see introduction) exemplifies the problems that critics of multiculturalist concepts have focused on. Despite the celebrated heterogeneity of contempo‐ rary British society, dissolving borders built around notions of difference ap‐ pears as urgent as ever. In his study on The Postcolonial Exotic (2001), Graham Huggan has shown how cultural difference itself has turned into a commodity today. Against this background, classifying people in terms of ‘sameness’ or ‘difference’ seems to fulfil a collective longing of modern Western societies. Read along these lines, Indian Summers’ romance with an exotic India appears as a typical instance of a Western-centred production recreating the ‘other’ it desires. The fact that this goes along with celebrating a world that has ostensibly left behind borders and imperialist binaries gives a powerful impression of the blind spots of triumphant narratives about a postcolonial present. As in Indian Sum‐ mers, where exoticism defeats the series’ well-meant attempt to promote het‐ erogeneous communities, such blind spots complicate a radical rethinking of community and belonging within 21 st -century Britain. Bibliography Primary Sources Indian Summers. Series 1. Written by Paul Rutman, Lisa McGee, Anna Symon, and Nicole Taylor. Directed by Anand Tucker, Jamie Payne, and David Moore. Channel 4, 2015. Indian Summers. Series 2. Written by Paul Rutman, Lisa McGee, and Anna Symon. Di‐ rected by John Alexander, Jonathan Teplitzky, and Paul Wilmshurst. Channel 4, 2016. The Jewel in the Crown. Adapted by Ken Taylor. Directed by Christopher Morahan and Jim O’Brien. ITV, 1984. 140 Lisa Schwander Secondary Sources Ahmed, Sara. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. London, New York: Routledge, 2000. Asian Culture Vulture. “‘Indian Summers’ - Creator Paul Rutman ‘Heartbroken’ but Says All is Not Lost Yet… .” Asian Culture Vulture. 28 April 2016. http: / / asianculturevulture .com/ portfolios/ indian-summers-creator-paul-rutman-heartbroken-but-says-all-isnot-lost-yet/ . Accessed on 1 March 2018. Baena, Rosalía. “Performing Englishness: Postnational Nostalgia in Lark Rise to Candle‐ ford and Parade’s End.” Emotions in Contemporary TV Series. Ed. Alberto Garcia. Ba‐ singstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 118-33. Cardwell, Sarah. Adaptation Revisited: Television and the Classic Novel. Manchester: Man‐ chester UP, 2002. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Differ‐ ence. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008 [2000]. “Community, n.” Oxford English Dictionary Online. 3 rd ed. 2009. www.oed.com/ view/ Entr y/ 37337. Accessed on 9 February 2018. Dussel, Enrique. “Beyond Eurocentrism: The World-System and the Limits of Modernity.” The Cultures of Globalization. Eds. Frederic Jameson and Masao Miyoshi. Durham: Duke UP, 1999 [1998]. 3-31. Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia UP, 2002 [1983]. Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Transl. Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22-7. Gwenllian Jones, Sara. “Serial Form.” Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Eds. David Herman, Manfred Jahn and Marie-Laure Ryan. London: Routledge, 2005. 527. Huggan, Graham. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London, New York: Routledge, 2001. Liebman, Lisa. “Is Indian Summers the New Downton Abbey? ” Vanity Fair. 28 September 2015. www.vanityfair.com/ hollywood/ 2015/ 09/ indian-summers-downton-abbey. Ac‐ cessed on 20 February 2018. Mazdon, Lucy. “Introduction.” The Contemporary Television Series. Eds. Michael Ham‐ mond and Lucy Mazdon. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2005. 3-10. —. “Preface.” The Contemporary Television Series. Eds. Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2005. x-xii. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. London, New York: Routledge, 1995. Redclift, Victoria. “New Racisms, New Racial Subjects? The Neo-Liberal Moment and the Racial Landscape of Contemporary Britain.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37.4 (2014): 577-88. 141 Indian Summers (2015-2016) Regis, Pamela. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2007. Rose, David. “‘It’s About the Indians, as Much as It Is the Brits’: Downton Goes to India with Indian Summers.” [sic! ] The Daily Mail. 24 January 2015. www.dailymail.co.uk/ home/ event/ article-2921729/ Downton-Abbey-goes-India-Indian-Summers.html. Ac‐ cessed on 20 February 2018. Rushdie, Salman. “Outside the Whale [1984].” Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. London: Granta Books, 1991. 87-101. Rutman, Paul. “Paul Rutman Interview.” Channel 4. n.d. www.channel4.com/ programme s/ indian-summers/ videos/ series-1-extras/ paul-rutman-interview/ 4047812467001. Accessed on 20 February 2018. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. London, New York: Penguin Books, 1991 [1978]. Sommer, Doris. Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America. Berkeley, Los Angeles: U of California P, 1991. Teo, Hsu-Ming. Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels. Austin: U of Texas P, 2013. Todorov, Tzvetan. On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought. London, Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. Wyatt, Daisy. “Indian Summers: Why Channel 4’s Sunday Night Drama is Better than Downton Abbey.” The Independent. 15 February 2015. www.independent.co.uk/ artsentertainment/ tv/ features/ indian-summers-why-channel-4s-new-drama-is-betterthan-downton-abbey-10044733.html. Accessed on 20 February 2018. 142 Lisa Schwander The Rural Community as National Microcosm: The Great War and the Birth of Modern Britain in The Village (2013-2014) Lucia Krämer 1. Introduction In comparison to other European countries like Germany, Italy, and Russia, where the memory of the catastrophic military conflicts in the first half of the 20 th century is clearly dominated by World War II, the First World War still plays a prominent role in the UK’s memory culture. The Great War, as it is called, is perceived not only as a conflict of national significance from which the British emerged as victorious, but also as a historical event of extreme trauma. The Great War quickly acquired intense connotations of loss: due to general con‐ scription from 1916 onwards, it was the first war to involve the entire British nation, abroad and on the home front, causing unprecedented loss of life in all strata of society. No previous war had decimated a male generation on the same scale (see Korte/ Schneider/ Sternberg 20). In addition, it contributed to the de‐ cline of Britain’s status as an imperial power and accelerated changes in gender relations and the British class system. Presenting the government’s plans for The Great War’s centenary in a speech delivered at the Imperial War Museum in October 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron pointed out the fundamental role that the conflict still plays for the country’s collective memory and self-image. He emphasised that there is “something about the First World War that makes it a fundamental part of our national consciousness” and called it “a defining part of our history”, which should be acknowledged through “a com‐ memoration that captures our national spirit, in every corner of the country”. 1 See Maurice Halbwachs’ notion of collective memory, which posits that individual memory always occurs in relation to social context and that each individual memory is therefore also a contribution to the memory of a group (see Erll 263). While group memories do not work in the same way as the neuro-processes of individual remem‐ bering, ‘collective memory’ can nonetheless be seen as a useful metaphor. 2 Heimat - Eine deutsche Chronik (1984), Die zweite Heimat - Chronik einer Jugend (1992), Heimat 3 - Chronik einer Zeitenwende (2004), Heimat-Fragmente - Die Frauen (2006). Cameron here acknowledges, albeit indirectly, one of cultural studies’ fun‐ damental tenets of theorising memory. Memory, including collective memory, 1 “never preserves the past as such; rather, much of what we remember is an actively designed construct fulfilling current needs for meaning” (Neumann/ Zierold 236). In memory processes, historic events thus become malleable sig‐ nifiers for issues and events of the present. Period television drama, as one such process, is no exception. Like other forms of historical fiction, it contains a double temporality referring to both the past and the present, and its represen‐ tation of the past reflects on both. This notion underpins the following critical reading of the British TV serial The Village (BBC 2013-2014). The Village is inspired by Edgar Reitz’s Heimat saga, 2 which depicts German history through the lives of the inhabitants of a small village in the west of Germany. The Village was similarly designed to tell Britain’s history from the beginning of the Great War through the 20 th century as it unfolds in one Derbyshire village (see Gilbert). The fictional village is thus a metonymy for English society generally, and its period representation also contains indirect messages for the present. One of those messages is the conceptual focus point of this essay. It is con‐ tained in the way The Village pits two models of community against one another: an older notion of community that relies on a “mechanical” adherence to es‐ tablished rules, laws, social structures, and abstract entities like ‘King and Coun‐ try’, is replaced by a more recent notion of community that relies on “organic” solidarity, which is driven by compassion and respects individual autonomy (see Delanty 38). World War I becomes the catalyst of change that leads from one model to the other because it intensifies dissent. It increasingly turns the rural community in The Village into a site of inherent tension, plurality, and hetero‐ glossia, not only in the sense of competing and contradictory voices and dis‐ courses but, through some villagers’ resistance to power, also in the sense of a concrete challenge to established privilege. This fight in favour of a more ‘civic’ community is presented as a force of modernisation. Through the double tem‐ porality of the period drama, The Village posits this fight as topical also for the ‘modern’ Britain of the spectators. Social inequality, stoked among other things 144 Lucia Krämer 3 The term ‘hostile environment’ refers to a Home Office policy introduced under Home Secretary Theresa May during the time of David Cameron’s Coalition government. Its aim is to make it as difficult as possible for illegal immigrants to remain in the UK. It has also affected homeless EU citizens and citizens from Commonwealth countries who arrived in the UK before 1973 with the right to stay indefinitely but do not have the documents to prove this (see the 2018 ‘Windrush Scandal’). by the recent Coalition and Tory governments’ austerity policies; the increas‐ ingly ‘hostile environment’, 3 not only against illegal immigrants; as well as the demographic divisions revealed by the Brexit referendum, are examples of cur‐ rent indicators of social conflicts in Britain. According to The Village, their sol‐ ution would lie in compassionate, civic solidarity. This essay moreover argues that The Village supports this propagated model of community not only through its content and guidance of sympathy, but also by how it engages with the con‐ ventions of the period drama and reflects on the challenges of historiography on a structural level. The Village is an anti-heritage period drama which refuses to indulge in nostalgia. Instead, it emphasises the instability of memory and the plurality of memories and memory culture. This is where the link to the show’s discussion of community models becomes most obvious: the villagers’ com‐ peting and partly even incompatible memories about the war mirror the dissent that runs through the community about issues of civic participation. 2. The Village The Village is one of the more recent contributions to a long list of TV produc‐ tions that have presented different versions of World War I to the British public. The shows covered in Emma Hanna’s study The Great War on the Small Screen (2009) must nowadays be augmented by numerous titles, for example those cre‐ ated expressly for the BBC centenary broadcasting schedule in the fields of both documentary (e.g. The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire, BBC Two, 2014; Our World War, BBC Three, 2014; I Was There: The Great War Interviews, BBC Two, 2014; Great War Diaries, BBC Two, 2014) and fiction (e.g. The Crimson Field, BBC One, 2014; The Passing-Bells, BBC One, 2014; 37 Days, BBC Two, 2014). A little earlier, Parade’s End (BBC/ HBO/ VRT, 2012), an adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s tetralogy, had already brought the war era to the TV screen, and the second series of Downton Abbey (ITV), which was broadcast in 2011, also con‐ centrated on the effects that World War I had on the members of its fictional household. When the first series of The Village, which was set during the time of World War I, was broadcast on BBC One in 2013, it was therefore only natural that the show should be compared to Downton Abbey. As we will see, The Village 145 The Village (2013-2014) 4 The information about the creator and directors of The Village presented here was re‐ trieved from the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). differs fundamentally from its more popular competitor because it rejects the conventions of ‘heritage’ television in terms of both aesthetics and storytelling. The Village was conceived and almost exclusively scripted by esteemed TV writer Peter Moffat, best known for the legal dramas Criminal Justice (BBC One, 2008-2009) and Silk (BBC One, 2011-2014), and the period drama Cambridge Spies (BBC Two, 2003). 4 The first four episodes were directed by Antonia Bird (a re‐ nowned theatre and television director who also made her name in feature films with Priest in 1994); it was her last work before her death in 2013. Gillies Mac‐ Kinnon, who had directed the film adaptation of Pat Barker’s 1991 war novel Regeneration (1997), took over the helm for the last two episodes of the first series. The second series of The Village was directed by Luke Watson, who had collaborated with Moffat on Criminal Justice and also worked as a director on period dramas Ripper Street (BBC/ Amazon, 2012-2016) and Britannia (Sky At‐ lantic/ Amazon, 2018); Jamie Stone, whose credits include the mini-series Tripped (E4, 2015) and the period show X Company (CBC, 2015-2017); and Dominic Le‐ clerc, who worked on the hit period serial Call the Midwife (BBC One, 2012-). The cast featured a few high-profile actors with strong theatre backgrounds (Maxine Peake, John Simm, and Juliet Stevenson) but consisted predominantly of unfamiliar faces selected deliberately, according to Moffat, to convey the im‐ pression that The Village was “a slice of real life” (Moffat qtd. in Gilbert). Moffat planned for seven series with six episodes each (see ibid.). The first series, which was broadcast in spring 2013, covers the years 1914 to 1920. The second series is set in 1923 and 1924 and focuses on the social tensions within 1920s post-war society. It addresses questions of class and ethnic discrimination and juxtaposes the competing camps of Socialism and Conservatism as well as London-centric party politics with the struggle for greater equality in the village. Further series were to be set during World War II, post-war austerity Britain, and later, but so far no third series has been commissioned, which may have to do with the show’s increasingly lukewarm welcome by its audiences. Critical reaction to the first series was largely positive. Arifa Akbar in the Independent welcomed The Village as “finally - a proper, grown-up period drama”. In a four-star review in the Telegraph Ben Lawrence praised it for being “accomplished” and “intelligent” (“Most Accomplished”), and Euan Ferguson in The Guardian thought that “in the context of period dramas, it was refreshingly brilliant”. Yet the second series was less critically successful, with, for example, Lawrence in the Telegraph pointing out that “the dissonance between trying to 146 Lucia Krämer 5 In the following, references to The Village will be given without repeating the title. give us a history lesson and creating sympathetic characters means that the end result is muddled” (“Series Two”). In contrast to other popular period serials shown in the same BBC One slot on Sunday evenings, such as Poldark (2015-), Call the Midwife or Cranford (2007), the show’s subject matter is markedly bleaker: its unrelenting depiction of exploitative class relations, the struggle for survival of the rural poor, death, disease, alcoholism, war, and the abuse of power by authority figures (be it fathers, teachers, doctors, or military officers), is, unlike in these other shows, not toned down or overpowered by romance or the depiction of human warmth. It therefore made for comparatively “depressive viewing” (Infante/ Salkeld). Viewers on the BBC’s The Village blog (see Griffin) commented, for instance, that the show contained “more misery than I care to watch”, or complained: “Fluff is the usual Sunday fare and this ain’t fluff.” Viewing numbers during series one declined steadily from more than eight to 5.5 million viewers. For series two, they tended to hover around 4.2 million viewers after the first episode (see BARB), which compares unfavourably with the figures for shows like Call the Midwife, Poldark, or Victoria (ITV 2016-). It is unlikely that further series of The Village will be commissioned, at least in the near future. Even on the basis of only two series, however, The Village is a striking example of a rejection and new conceptualisation of classic ‘heritage’ TV. More importantly in the context of this volume, it also engages with the theme of community as both a sociological and a symbolic structure. 3. The Village as Sociological Entity The Village is set exclusively in an unnamed Derbyshire village, which, as the voice-over of the protagonist, Bert Middleton (Bill Jones/ Alfie Stewart/ Tom Vary/ David Ryall), points out at the very beginning, used to encompass the world for its inhabitants: “My father went abroad twice in his life. By ‘abroad’ I mean out of the parish. […] All of life was in our village.” (The Village, S1/ E1, 00: 04) 5 The spatial boundaries of the parish establish the village as a community in the sociological sense, “a particular form of social organization based on small groups, such as neighbourhoods, the small town, or a spatially bounded locality” (Delanty 2). The characters encompass the social panorama of village life, which is not particularly extensive but covers all classes, from rural and industrial workers to teachers and clerics, shop and factory owners as well as the gentry in the shape of the Allingham family at the top of the village hierarchy. At the other end of the social spectrum - and at the centre of the story - stand the 147 The Village (2013-2014) Middletons, poor farmers who, like the Allinghams at the ‘Big House’, also live somewhat removed from the village proper, but form an integral part of the social fabric. The nominal head of the Middleton family is John ( John Simm), a fifth-gen‐ eration farmer. Presented as an abusive alcoholic at the beginning of the story, he becomes a more sympathetic character after he stops drinking as a conse‐ quence of ‘finding God’. He also makes better business decisions, so the financial situation of the family gradually improves. The person who really keeps the farm and household together, however, is his wife Grace (Maxine Peake), whose telling name may be the most obvious of many in the series. Grace becomes a driving force for social change under the impression of class discrimination, the cruelties of the war, and, most importantly, the exhortation by her eldest son Joe (Nico Mirallegro). He works at the ‘Big House’ at the beginning of the story and enlists as a volunteer as soon as war is declared in order to escape the violence and oppression at home. Back on leave, Joe tells Grace: “Do what you can. […] When it’s over, it has to be a better world.” (S1/ E1, 00: 08; see also S2/ E1, 00: 50) Although Joe will not survive the war, his words will become cen‐ tral for the development of the village, because they cause Grace to fight ever more energetically for the emancipation of the working population. Her youngest son Bert is the narrator of the story and also one of its central char‐ acters. Moreover, a daughter, Mary (Chloe Rowley), is born to the family. The Allinghams and Middletons become indelibly connected when Caro (Emily Bee‐ cham), the beautiful and wilful but mentally unstable Allingham daughter, se‐ duces Joe Middleton and gives birth to his child, which her family, however, has removed shortly afterwards to avoid scandal. In The Village, Moffat deliberately rejects the upper-class focus that is so prevalent in TV dramas about the Edwardian period, such as Downton Abbey or Parade’s End. Instead, he paints a much broader picture of social relations, es‐ chewing any sort of nostalgia by depicting the conditions on all social levels as extremely harsh. The Middletons’ destitution may be inconceivable to the Al‐ linghams, but cruelty and abuse, both physical and psychological, are omnipre‐ sent and come in various shapes: for example, John bullies his sons; Edmund Allingham (Rupert Evans) cheats factory owner Hankin (Anthony Flanagan) to profit from his business; and Caro Allingham is the victim of mental, physical, and sexual abuse during a rest cure carried out by one of the most disturbing characters of the serial, Dr Wylie ( Jonny Phillips). While Wylie seems to be motivated in his actions by a general and abstract yearning for power over other people, the aristocrat Lord Kilmartin ( Julian Sands) carries out the most openly discriminatory behaviour in the story in series two purely on the basis of class 148 Lucia Krämer 6 Though driven by altruistic motives, Gibby wants to flood and thus destroy the village in order to create a reservoir of clean water for the larger town of Sheffield. privilege. Not only is he characterised as racist, he also ridicules the existential struggles of the rural poor by describing the smell of Bert’s shirt as follows: “England unperfumed. […] The Middle Ages. Burdock, barley. Nose of pig’s breath. Dog’s tongue, perhaps, and, oh yes, ancient peasant bitterness.” (S2/ E1, 00: 11) This choice of villain coincides with the thematic focus of the second series on class differences and the insistence on a strict ‘them vs. us’ rhetoric displayed by key characters on both sides of the class divide. The possibilities of civic participation in this community are limited, espe‐ cially before the war. The viewers are clearly reminded of this by a reference to the women’s suffrage movement in the shape of the minister’s daughter, Martha Lane (Charlie Murphy). She also becomes the spokesperson for the women who take over the men’s jobs in the boot factory after war has been declared and fights for better working conditions. This active commitment is necessary be‐ cause the political class - and not only the ‘toffs’ - is presented as inherently dangerous. Its representatives in The Village are characterised as either utterly exploitative (Lord Kilmartin), self-serving (Edmund Allingham and the (male) union representative who strives to take jobs away from women in order to give them to returning soldiers), or at least ill-judging (e.g. the Labour representative Bill Gibby in series two). 6 As The Village represents the political class in such a dire light, characters like Martha Lane and Grace Middleton, who resist en‐ trenched forms of gender and class oppression, carry all the more weight as representatives of civic commitment and potential change. They also embody The Village’s central conception of community. 4. A New Community Based on ‘Organic’ Solidarity and Heteroglossia Within the population in The Village, a struggle of forces is at work. On the one hand, we find traditionalist forces who demand the subjugation of group or individual autonomy in favour of the allegedly collective norms of the com‐ munity as a whole. Schoolmaster Ingham (Stephen Walters), who viciously canes Bert in order to stop him from writing with his left hand, is one striking example of these conservative forces. Yet for modern spectators, the fact that any onlookers who encounter old Lord Allingham are obliged to avert their glance from him may provide the strongest visual example of the traditional social order in The Village. (He was disfigured during one of Britain’s colonial 149 The Village (2013-2014) wars.) The allegedly collective norm that is upheld here is the norm of class privilege which all members of the community obey by subjugating themselves to the demands of the one individual at the top of the social hierarchy. As this example shows, the collective norm to which most individuals within the col‐ lective submit may thus, paradoxically, hinge on the power of select privileged individuals. Yet, in The Village, even they suffer from their privilege. Despite material wealth, the Allinghams’ private lives are made difficult by their exposed social position. The facts that old Lord Allingham kills himself in the fourth episode of series one, and that his children are either mentally unstable (Caro), gay (Edmund), or fundamentally damaged by the war (George, a sensitive war poet and shell shock victim) indicate quite openly that in The Village old power structures will be destabilised. As Byrne has correctly stated, authority in all its forms is suspicious in The Village (144). The stage is therefore set for characters representing moral individualism, like Martha, Grace, and the teacher Gerard Eyre (Matt Stokoe), who is imprisoned for refusing to serve in the war, to offer an alternative. They stand for a different kind of community. While the village itself is not particu‐ larly modern in terms of its infrastructure (the only visible signs of modernisa‐ tion of this kind are the aristocrats’ motorcars and the bus service that connects the village to the rest of the world), it is modern in the sense that several of its characters represent a ‘post-traditional’ view of community in which “the em‐ phasis is on community as a moral force and which is essentially civic in nature” (Delanty 39). The Village depicts the Great War as a decisive event in this development because it creates more plurality of opinion in the village and increasingly ren‐ ders it a site of tension, power struggle, and dissent. In the course of this process, one norm governs the show’s guidance of sympathy: both individual and col‐ lective solidarity and loyalty must be driven by empathy and compassion. Other forms of solidarity, for example, to more abstract entities like ‘King and Coun‐ try’, a political party, one’s class, or to the so-called ‘greater good’, are rejected as cruel if they do not also acknowledge the suffering of the individual. The war has literally exploded this kind of solidarity, as the character of Bairstow ( Joe Armstrong), a veteran, points out when he talks to one of the maids at the Al‐ linghams’ house about class loyalty: “Don’t think I’m on your side because my father and your father were both working men. I don’t really believe in them and us any more. The rats in the trenches eat any kind of dead meat.” (S1/ E2, 00: 34) The Village does not deny that class differences persist, especially in series two, which prominently features the conflict between Conservatism and So‐ 150 Lucia Krämer cialism in British politics. Yet, at the centre of the show’s notion of political struggle is ultimately the suffering individual; that it is treated fairly and with empathy and respect is The Village’s moral standard of action. When Eyre, the conscientious objector, is ostracised as a shirker and, after the war, shunned by the veterans, the show encourages viewers to sympathise with him by focusing on his experience of exclusion rather than on his tormentors. When Margaret (Annabelle Apsion), mourning her son Paul (Luke Williams), who died in the war, will not rest until she knows the circumstances of his death and is exhorted by Norma Hankin (Ainsley Howard) that “[i]f you refuse to put the greater good above your own self-interest, we will have to fight you” (S1/ E4, 00: 38), the guid‐ ance of sympathy is in favour of Margaret and against Norma - once again a telling name - who demands that Margaret submit to ‘order’ regardless of her suffering. Interpersonal empathy thus ranks higher than allegiance to an alleged collective good. The Village itself follows its credo of empathy and respect for the suffering individual by refusing to depict scenes of mass death at the Western front (which are evoked by Bairstow’s “dead meat”). Instead, it represents the war through the different fates of individual villagers. The theme of solidarity and loyalty becomes most explicit in the village’s treatment of the death of Joe Middleton, who, as mentioned above, volunteers along with most other young men in the village right after the war breaks out. When Joe returns on leave of absence to break the news of Paul’s death to his family and fiancée, the mental agony the war causes him is already obvious: after having told Paul’s family a sanitised story of his death, Joe, in despair, tells Martha that Paul really died drowning in his own blood from a piece of shrapnel in his throat (S1/ E3, 00: 48). When Joe returns once more from the front (in S1/ E5), he suffers from severe shell shock after having been punished for insubor‐ dination by being shackled to a wheel outside the trenches for an entire night. Unfortunately, only Bairstow interprets Joe’s panic attacks correctly as a result of his war experiences, while Lady Allingham, who witnesses Joe’s erratic be‐ haviour during a walk in the village, merely looks on, albeit with interest and pity, but does not act. Moreover, neither the local doctor nor Dr Wylie are able to understand, let alone help him. Because of his illness, Joe cannot return to his regiment on time. He is arrested as a deserter and shot at dawn. It is in the treatment of Joe’s death in the last episode of series one that The Village’s plea for ‘organic’ solidarity becomes most explicit. Two years after the end of the war, the village community is about to erect a memorial to the village’s war dead and argues about the arrangement of names on the memorial. At first, Joe’s name is not to be included, since his death was not honourable. During a community meeting at the Village Institute, Bert and Grace raise the issue of 151 The Village (2013-2014) how the village community should treat Joe’s memory, and, privately, Lady Al‐ lingham ( Juliet Stevenson) accepts that Joe Middleton’s death is the village’s responsibility: Is there such a thing as a collective conscience? Beyond rules and law and doctors? We’ve killed a man. We think about his death, we can’t stop thinking about it, but we have to resolve it, or it will destroy us. Joe Middleton is our problem. His name is our conscience. (S1/ E6, 00: 36, emphasis in original) Lady Allingham’s juxtaposition of ‘rules’, ‘law’, and ‘doctors’ on the one hand and the village’s ‘collective conscience’ on the other encapsulates the contrast between ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic’ solidarity outlined above. The ‘mechanical’ solidarity is represented by the military command’s inexorable demand for loy‐ alty to the war effort and the army, irrespective of the suffering of the individual, which led to Joe’s execution. It occurs, for example, in Dr Wylie and Norma Hankin, who appears more interested in the symmetrical arrangement of names on the war memorial than in the veterans’ personal investment in it. Wylie’s and Norma’s rule-based approach to community suffers defeat in The Village when Joe’s name is eventually added on a stone slab to the village’s war me‐ morial so that, as John Middleton puts it, “all the living […] [can] remember all the dead” (S1/ E6, 00: 50) as the memorial is unveiled and the entire village com‐ munity attends the event. The scene embodies the ‘organic’ solidarity propa‐ gated by The Village, as committed individuals insist on empathy and compas‐ sion as forms of behaviour that serve to strengthen a community’s inclusivity. It also illustrates the nature of the village and its community as a symbolic structure (see Delanty 2) of belonging and cultural identity. 5. The Village as Symbolic Community On the level of the diegesis in The Village, the key elements that convey the inhabitants’ local (and in this case national) identity (see Delanty 3) are time and space, that is, their sense of history and their land. Both are central to the vil‐ lagers’ perception of themselves in relation to others. This is made clear in a scene where John Middleton sells a field to a rival neighbour farmer and Bert complains: “It’s our land” (S1/ E3, 00: 05). The loss hurts Bert’s pride and self-es‐ teem. Just like his father, he considers the family’s land an integral aspect of their identity. Any loss therefore damages the family’s self-image. In this case, the damage is exacerbated by the fact that John Middleton is forced to sell the land because of the family’s destitute situation. Bert’s feeling of loss is thus laced with shame and hurt pride. The central role that land can take on for individual 152 Lucia Krämer and collective identification processes is also taken up in series two of The Vil‐ lage, when the Allinghams’ land becomes a focal point of social conflict after it is cordoned off. Old ways on which the villagers used to traverse the parish are therefore shut down. Despite the fact that the land is clearly owned by the Al‐ lingham family, socialist Bill Gibby (Derek Riddell) insists that “[t]his is our land, and we’ll walk on it when we want to” (S2/ E4, 00: 51, emphasis in original). In a similar way, the characters draw on the past. For example, John Middleton (S1/ E1 00: 33-4) and Lady Allingham (S2/ E3 00: 30-1) are given extended passages of dialogue in which they speak about their respective family histories. Both characters establish a line between the past and the present in the sense that their families’ current identities are inextricably linked to their histories. Lady Allingham refers to “us” having been at Agincourt, for example, rather than simply speaking about her respective forebears in the third person. John Mid‐ dleton emphasises continuity when he talks about the many generations of farmers in the Middleton family. For both, their families’ pasts are significant reference points for the construction of their present self-images as Allinghams or Middletons. This role of the past as a means of identity construction in the present also works beyond the diegesis, on the level of The Village’s spectators: after all, the show is a period drama. Since the village, as Moffat indicated in his references to Heimat, clearly stands for English society as a whole, it can also serve as a symbolic structure of community to the contemporary audience, as they engage with British history. World War I and the changes it wrought for class and gender hierarchies, as well as the rise of socialist ideas presented in The Village, may feel alien, but, as David Cameron’s speech illustrated, they are also an integral part of British (national) identities. Given the significance of history for the village’s role as a symbolic com‐ munity, the show’s strategies of presenting the past and its take on the conven‐ tions of the period drama deserve special attention. The Village’s aesthetic and narrative features, its metahistoriographic traits, and its challenge of dominant versions of history underline the plurality of memory culture, which, as men‐ tioned above, in turn mirrors and corresponds to the heteroglossia in the village. 6. The Village as Anti-heritage Period Drama The first, and possibly most salient, of the show’s strategies in representing the past is its anti-heritage aesthetics. The Village clearly differs in this respect from a programme like Downton Abbey, which in many ways continues the spate of so-called ‘heritage’ TV shows and films from the 1980s and 1990s. Downton 153 The Village (2013-2014) 7 See Byrne 137-9; Higson 22-42; Hill 76-83; Vidal 1-35; see, however, e.g. Monk for a problematisation of the ‘heritage film’ label and its dependence on specific political contexts. 8 Tellingly, even though Downton is supposed to be set in Yorkshire, the fact that its location shooting takes place at Highclere Castle in Hampshire places it firmly within a Southern English landscape. Abbey revels in an aesthetics of display, showing off stately homes, beautiful landscaped grounds, costumes, hairstyles, and acting talent, and resolves its up‐ stairs-downstairs dynamic through a harmonised picture of class relations. It encourages a nostalgic and celebratory look back at Edwardian and inter-war upper-class society. 7 The only regard in which The Village resembles this type of period television is, as Byrne has suggested, its romanticised portrayal of agrarian life (see 149, 150), which implies that “even the most anti-heritage of historical dramas cannot repress a nostalgia for, and celebration of, the coun‐ tryside” (ibid. 151). Yet, while this may be true in the sense that The Village indeed indulges in displaying the natural beauty of the landscape surrounding the village, the character of this landscape is markedly different from the softer and less rugged southern landscapes that dominate in so-called ‘heritage’ tele‐ vision. 8 The Village’s Peak District landscape is stark and symptomatic of the harsher kinds of lifestyles that the show depicts. Moreover, The Village is literally less colourful than shows like Downton and Mr Selfridge (ITV, 2013-16): the im‐ ages are desaturated, which leads to less visual comfort for the spectator than in shows that adopt the traditional aesthetics of ‘heritage’ film and television. The programme also deviates from ‘heritage’ drama’s typical narrative fea‐ tures. It rejects the genre’s often leisurely storytelling pace, which, as critics have complained, encourages a passive viewing attitude that is exacerbated by the aesthetics of display (see e.g. Higson 38-41; Hill 80-1). On the basis of its narrative structure, The Village clearly aims at active spectators. One element that is remarkable in this context is the show’s frame structure. In the first series, all episodes open in the present, with old Bert Middleton telling the story of his life and of the village to an interviewer. Bert, “the second oldest man in Britain” (S1/ E1, 00: 01), is the centre of attention and the source of information, while the interviewer is merely present through her questions from the off. From this frame in the present, we are in each episode quickly transported into Bert’s past by a flashback, which goes hand in hand with a switch to the scenic presentation of events that is typical of period drama. Even though this framing technique is toned down in the second series, as Bert’s role as narrator is mostly reduced to a voice-over, the frame structure results in a version of the past that, in contrast 154 Lucia Krämer to most period dramas, is clearly marked as personal history, in this case from a working-class perspective. The device of framing the story as personal history contributes to another prominent narrative feature of The Village, namely several deliberate gaps in its distribution of information. In contrast to the viewer-friendly, rather languid storytelling pace associated with the ‘heritage’ genre, the most striking narrative technique of The Village is its refusal to spell things out to the spectator. Hence, the storytelling mode often appears quite elliptical. Expository information in The Village is rarely conveyed explicitly in dialogues. The characters’ actions and statements are often not explained immediately but with delays that can span several episodes. Instead, the show relies on the viewers’ attentiveness and willingness to fill gaps. The most striking example of this occurs in episode six of series one, where, in order to understand one scene, the spectators have to remember the story of Paul’s death that Joe told Martha Lane a full three (! ) episodes earlier. The Village also demands active spectators when it relies on their historical knowledge to complement Bert’s focus on personal and local history. For example, Bert tells the story of a traditional race in the village that took place on 1 July 1916; on the day after the race, an extraordinarily long list of war casualties is put up in the village. It is left to the spectators to establish the link between this list and the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The show’s episode breaks contribute to this feature by introducing temporal gaps in the narrative that may be several years long (e.g. between S1/ E5 and E6). The spec‐ tators therefore need to reacquaint themselves with the changed circumstances of the village and its characters in each episode. Given the show’s aforemen‐ tioned tendency not to spell out expository information, this contributed to The Village’s reputation of being ‘difficult viewing’. Yet the differences between The Village and more typical ‘heritage’ dramas arguably go deeper than the show’s look or narrative features: The Village moreover evokes typically naturalistic tropes in its reworking of the war period, creating a version of history that, for long stretches of the first series, exceeds even “gritty realism” (Byrne 137). Realist art and literature in the 19 th century strove to depict everyday reality and, in the process of doing so, incorporated formerly neglected social phenomena, such as poverty, street crime, or the living and working conditions of the labouring class. Naturalistic writers like Emile Zola went further by suggesting that people are in fact determined by their social surroundings as well as their biology, i.e. by what they inherit from their an‐ cestors, which includes everything from character traits, good or bad, to he‐ reditary diseases, such as a propensity for alcoholism. This notion of deter‐ minism leads to a quite pessimistic outlook, since it permits little room for 155 The Village (2013-2014) change for the individual. The Village obviously does not subscribe to the idea of biological determinism. It explicitly discredits the character of Dr Wylie, for instance, who thinks that character weaknesses are hereditary. Yet there is a pervasive sense of pessimism and of inescapable oppressiveness throughout the first series, which the show conveys mainly through the arbitrary or unjust suffering of individual characters at the hands of other characters, fate, or cir‐ cumstance. The key example of this is the character of Joe Middleton, whose life is a long and inexorable string of oppressions, exploitations, and humiliations, first as a son and as a servant, then as a soldier and ‘invalid’. Although Joe constantly strives to improve his situation, first by getting a job with the Al‐ linghams and then by enlisting, all these steps eventually only lead to his de‐ struction. Margaret, an extremely warm-hearted and empathetic person, who first loses her son Paul in the war and later a daughter to Spanish Influenza, is another character to whom poetic justice is denied in order to underline the cruelties of fate and create a sense of determinism. The image of Edwardian society that emerges from this representation is anything but nostalgic. This air of pessimism is only overcome at the very end of The Village’s first series with the unveiling of the war memorial, that is, at the very moment when the concept of the ‘organic’ civic community, which is based on compassion and respect for individual autonomy, triumphs: John Middleton and Lady Allingham work together across the class divide in order to somehow include Joe’s name in the war memorial. The entire village recognises all its war casualties by name, i.e. as individuals. The collective norm in the early years after the war that ex‐ cluded the names of soldiers shot for desertion from war memorials, and thus the dominant discourse of heroism and military loyalty, are, anachronistically, transcended. Compassion and respect for individual suffering take their place instead. 7. Challenges to Dominant World War I Narratives The Village’s representation of history, and thus its representation of com‐ munity, is not only characterised by the rejection of typical ‘heritage’ features, however. By means of metahistoriographic elements, The Village also evokes the difficulties of historiography in general and, by challenging dominant British narratives of the First World War, reminds the audience of the plurality and in‐ stability of both, memory and versions of history, including the one presented in The Village itself. This instability affects individual as well as collective memory. Given that the past is a central factor in identity construction, as The Village itself shows in its diegesis, multiple versions of one and the same historical subject may 156 Lucia Krämer lead to vastly different interpretations of what the historical event meant, and still means, for a community. In depicting the villagers’ confrontations about the correct ways of commemorating their war dead, The Village presents itself, on the one hand, as merely one more version of history. Because of its working-class focus (both in terms of characters and narrative perspective; see Byrne 146), on the other hand, it also offers itself openly as a corrective, or at least a complement, to the majority of television dramas about the time of the First World War. As is to be expected from the quintessentially bourgeois genre of ‘prestige’ period drama - in terms of audience structure -, most of these shows concentrate on the ef‐ fects of the war on members of the upper or middle class. Through its self-re‐ flexive engagement with collective memory and its working-class focus, The Vil‐ lage destabilises dominant discourses and narratives of the Great War, and it does so in the same spirit as it rejects the uncritical adherence to overarching, alleg‐ edly collective, social norms. Metahistoriographic elements in The Village underline the instability of memory connected with the First World War, such as old Bert’s insistence right at the beginning of the show that the representation of his memories should be honest (S1/ E1, 00: 01). Just like Joe’s conflicting versions of his friend’s death, this detail underlines the potential unreliability of stories about the past and of first-hand witness accounts. The imitation of the talking-heads technique in the frame narrative - its visuals consist exclusively of close-up shots on old Bert’s face - moreover evokes the conventions of documentary filmmaking. In the context of a clearly fictional series, the technique raises questions of authen‐ ticity, reliability and the processes of selection and combination shaping his‐ toriographic narratives. The theme of photography in The Village has a similar function. Unless there is deliberate manipulation, photographs record an actual pre-photographic reality; they are visual documents of real events, places, per‐ sons, or objects in a specific moment in time. Photographs (and later film footage) of life in the village provide images of the past, which are, however, always already shaped in the recording process and also influence how events and people are remembered. They can even provide memories of events one has not witnessed: Bert, for example, cannot say good-bye to his brother Joe when he leaves to become a soldier, but a photograph provides him with an ersatz memory of the event and even makes him feel as if he had been there. Lack of documentation as a form of ideologically motivated active forgetting is thema‐ tised through photography as well, when Bert points out that “[t]here are no photographs of the [war] dead” (S1/ E6, 00: 15). As a further metahistoriographic device, the depiction of detective and police work in several episodes mirrors historiography’s difficult quest for historical ‘truth’, especially the challenges of 157 The Village (2013-2014) 9 Jan Assmann breaks Halbwachs’ concept of collective memory down into two forms: communicative and cultural memory (110). Cultural memory is based on institutional‐ ised forms and media of memory, such as museums, monuments and communal rites or other performative versions of memory culture. According to Assmann, it “is exte‐ riorized, objectified, and stored away in symbolic forms that, unlike the sounds of words or the sight of gestures, are stable and situation-transcendent: they may be transferred from one situation to another and transmitted from one generation to another” (110-1). Thus, it can also exceed the timeframe of 80 to 100 years to which communicative memory is restricted. 10 According to Assmann, communicative memory “lives in everyday interaction and communication and, for this very reason, has only a limited time depth which normally reaches no farther [sic! ] back than eighty [to a hundred] years, the time span of three interacting generations” (111). It is, moreover, “not supported by any institutions of learning, transmission and interpretation; it is not cultivated by specialists and is not summoned or celebrated on special occasions; it is not formalized and stabilized by any forms of material symbolization” (ibid.). obtaining and then rightly evaluating evidence. This becomes most obvious in episode five of series two when Bert and Eyre are arrested and put on trial after a mass trespass on Allingham land turns into a riot. Although the two men are innocent, false and misleading witness testimonies, including one statement from ‘key witness’ George Allingham (Augustus Prew) that he is bullied into giving, all seem to set the trial on a course towards a guilty verdict for Bert and Eyre. They are only saved when the sometimes weak, but fundamentally hon‐ ourable, George Allingham practically smears his own character in order to force the court to disregard his witness statement. Paradoxically, a lie about Allingham’s character is necessary so that justice can be done correctly and the verdict can reflect the ‘truth’ about Bert’s and Eyre’s behaviour. The instability of ‘truth’ in historiographic texts goes hand in hand with the phenomenon of competing versions of history. The Village evokes this theme for example when stories told by characters about the local past as well as folklore tales and tra‐ ditions establish alternative versions of the national past to the history of great men that is metonymically evoked when young Bert and his classmates recite the names of Britain’s kings and queens (S1/ E3, 00: 34). The theme of competing or even conflicting memories also pervades the last episode of series one, where it is combined with an implicit debate on the po‐ tentials and shortcomings of what Assmann has called ‘cultural memory’, i.e. institutionalised and ritualised forms of collective memory. 9 This episode of The Village, where the villagers discuss the war memorial and the institution of Ar‐ mistice Day with its two-minute silence ritual, depicts the early stages in the development of cultural memory of the Great War. The communicative memory 10 of the war is naturally still very much alive among the villagers in 158 Lucia Krämer 11 This version persists until today in Britain’s cultural memory of World War I in, for example, its Remembrance Sunday rituals, the wearing of poppies and the many war memorials across the country. 12 As this scene suggests, the image of Edwardian society in The Village conveys a version of ‘Englishness’ that is clearly more working-class and less elitist than in most British serial period dramas. It is a version of Englishness that, unsurprisingly, therefore also proved to be less readily exportable than the more cosy and unthreatening versions in shows like Downton Abbey, Cranford or Poldark. While The Village was shown on BBC America, it was not, unlike many other recent British period dramas, such as Parade’s End or Howards End (BBC One/ Starz, 2017), a British-American co-production, made at least partly with an American audience in mind. 1920, but there are conflicting perspectives on the past, and the erection of the memorial adds yet another, official version of remembering. 11 By juxtaposing differing views of the best ways of commemorating the war dead during the aforementioned village meeting (S1/ E6 00: 30-4), The Village reminds us that these ‘official’ forms constitute only one possible version of memory culture. At the meeting, opposing views clash. While Edmund Allingham idealises the pre-war period, Grace Middleton points out that only members of his class could, as he does, ever regard it as a “Golden Age” (S1/ E6, 00: 33). 12 Margaret’s wish to bury her son Paul is thwarted by the government’s decision not to repatriate the dead soldiers’ corpses; instead, the Unknown Warrior is, as Edmund Al‐ lingham points out, to be given a king-like burial in Westminster Abbey. While Grace Middleton insists that “[e]veryone’s grief is different”, Norma Hankin retorts that “[i]t’s more meaningful if we join together”, thus echoing Edmund Allingham’s message that “[t]his is not about individual loss. This is common grief, shared bereavement.” Not only does such an emphasis on “common grief ” simplify, and indeed erase, the official memory of British acts of killing - as George Allingham insists earlier in the same episode: “You have to remember - this is about remembering that, yes, we went to France to die for our country; we also went to France to kill for our country.” (S1/ E6, 00: 28) The concept of “common grief ” is also rejected by Grace, who is suspicious of institutionalised mourning and interprets the government’s plans for Armistice Day as an at‐ tempt to erase individual grief, as an imposition of a particular version of history. She is aware of the power structures shaping ‘official’ historiography and of its influence on the (common) individual, warning that “they”, i.e. “the politicians and the generals who took us into this war” (S1/ E6 00: 31), want to write the history for everybody else. By insisting on the multiplicity and diversity of memory and attitudes to‐ wards the past, The Village underlines the instability of dominant mnemonic discourses and of historiography and warns against the fossilisation and loss of 159 The Village (2013-2014) meaning of ‘official’ commemoration practices in relation to war. So there are clear parallels between the serial’s engagement with historiography and memory culture on the one hand and its presentation of community on the other. The apparent skepticism towards the remembrance rituals and dominant dis‐ courses of cultural memory in The Village mirrors the serial’s rejection of the allegedly collective principles that need to be obeyed in a community based on ‘mechanical’ solidarity. Just like the show favours a concept of community based on the principle of compassion and respect for individual autonomy, it also em‐ phasises the importance of acknowledging different memories. It therefore of‐ fers a voice to working-class characters like Grace or Margaret, who both lost their eldest sons, and gives to it as much, if not more weight than to the more abstract ‘official version’ of collective memory, represented by Edmund Al‐ lingham and Norma Hankin. Grace’s and Margaret’s dissent against ‘official history’ feeds into The Village’s celebration of dissent as the catalyst of social change. Moreover, the characters’ competing war memories also allow the con‐ temporary spectator to reflect on the dominant discourses on the Great War and the narratives of collective (or even national) identity they convey. There is one dominant discourse in the British collective memory of the First World War that The Village engages with in a particularly interesting way: the so-called futility myth. The sense of loss caused by World War I was intensified by the fact that the war came to be regarded as futile, mainly for two reasons. First, it did not put an end to military conflict in Europe in the 20 th century, but spawned another World War only two decades later, which, globally, would cost even more lives. Secondly, and more importantly, there is the widespread per‐ ception that British losses during World War I were unnecessarily high due to incompetence among the military command. A whole generation of British young men, so goes the narrative, was sacrificed by incompetent politicians and ‘armchair generals’, who had little idea of what was really happening at the front (see Korte/ Schneider/ Sternberg 28). The myth of British soldiers being ‘lions led by donkeys’ first emerged from several war books published in the late 1920s and early 1930, such as Robert Graves’ Good-Bye to All That (1929) and Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930), and was then perpetuated across the decades and consolidated in the 1960s (ibid. 28-9). The sitcom Blackadder Goes Forth (BBC One, 1989), which is set during the Great War and exaggeratedly depicts British generals as complete idiots who are totally indifferent to the fate of their soldiers, belongs to the most influential texts in this vein because of its popularity. The Village incorporates the myth of loss and futility, but only to modify it in such a way that bereavement and death become, through memory, the seed for 160 Lucia Krämer 13 The Shot at Dawn Memorial in Staffordshire, which commemorates the British and Commonwealth soldiers of World War I who were executed after courts-martial for cowardice or desertion, was unveiled only in 2001. a potentially better world. In a sense, The Village thrives on the discourse of futility. It is the reason why the spectators, despite never seeing the topography of the trenches and no man’s land in The Village, can nonetheless see them in their mind’s eye when Joe Middleton and George Allingham tell their chilling stories of the front. Most viewers will also be aware of shell shock and are therefore all the more appalled at the doctors’ inability to help Joe. The audience expects disregard for soldiers’ lives from the military authorities and is therefore able to interpret the sound of a single gunshot at the end of episode five in series one as Joe’s execution. The Village thus pre-supposes and affirms the horrors associated with the Western front. Arguably, it even exceeds the spectators’ expectations that there will be disregard for soldiers’ lives by including a factual mistake. As several viewers have pointed out in comments on the show (see Griffin), a soldier in Joe’s situation would, in reality, not have been arrested for desertion for just failing to return on time; he would have been charged with absence without leave - which was not a court-martial offence. Given the show’s anti-heritage aesthetics, it is ironic that it is by embracing the presentism associated with heritage culture (see Lowenthal 151-4), i.e. by shaping history for the sensibilities of present-day spectators, that The Village partly counteracts the futility myth. As commentators have pointed out, it was practically impossible that names of soldiers who had been executed after courts-martial would have been included in war memorials in 1920 (see Griffin). 13 Yet in The Village, Joe Middleton’s name is added on an extra plaque to the memorial, which thus becomes the catalyst of truly communal remem‐ bering and a symbol of catharsis. This anachronism reflects how The Village represents memory culture as unstable and multi-layered. While legitimating both official and individual forms of commemorating the war, The Village insists that there can and should never be just one version of remembering. It implies that memory culture is and needs to be a site of multiplicity, and The Village itself both reflects and contributes to this multiplicity. 8. Conclusion This emphasis on multiplicity, which is conveyed by The Village’s self-presen‐ tation as an alternative to ‘heritage’ TV and by its self-reflexive treatment of memory culture, links the show’s engagement with history and with the con‐ ventions of period serial drama back to the civic community model which it 161 The Village (2013-2014) implicitly propagates as progressive. Both are based on the championing of plu‐ rality and diversity. The symbolic representation of the village as a historical space thus becomes an integral part of the show’s implicit propagation of its ‘organic’ community model that is based on compassion and empathy and driven by committed moral individuals. The Village conveys the continued sig‐ nificance and relevance of this community model in the present by denying any sense of nostalgia in its representation of the past. Even though the naturalistic tropes the show evokes in the first series are overcome once the events enter the 1920s, its continued emphasis on mechanisms of oppression and exclusion, predominantly on the basis of class, leads to scenes that show conflicts which are still relevant in British society today. The antidote that the show prescribes is dissent that is driven by a desire for greater civic inclusivity while at the same time respecting individual autonomy. Bibliography Primary Sources The Village. Series 1. Written by Peter Moffat. Directed by Antonia Bird and Gillies MacKinnon. Company Pictures for BBC, 2013. The Village. Series 2. Written by Peter Moffat, Loren McLaughlan, and Amy Roberts. Directed by Luke Watson, Jamie Stone, and Dominic Leclerc. Company Pictures for BBC, 2014. Secondary Sources Akbar, Arifa. “TV Review: The Village Gives Viewers - Finally - a Proper, Grown-up Period Drama.” The Independent. 1 April 2013. www.independent.co.uk/ arts-entertain ment/ tv/ reviews/ tv-review-the-village-gives-viewers-finally-a-proper-grown-upperiod-drama-8555619.html. Accessed on 21 July 2018. Assmann, Jan. “Communicative and Cultural Memory.” Cultural Memory Studies: An In‐ terdisciplinary Handbook. Eds. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. 109-18. Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board [BARB] (www.barb.co.uk/ ). Accessed on 21 July 2018. Byrne, Katherine. Edwardians on Screen: From Downton Abbey to Parade’s End. Basing‐ stoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Cameron, David. “Speech at Imperial War Museum on First World War Centenary Plans.” London. 11 October 2012. Delanty, Gerard. Community. London, New York: Routledge, 2003. 162 Lucia Krämer Erll, Astrid. “Cultural Memory Studies / Kulturwissenschaftliche Gedächtnisforschung.” Kultur: Von den Cultural Studies bis zu den Visual Studies: Eine Einführung. Ed. Stephan Moebius. Bielefeld: transcript, 2012. 258-81. Ferguson, Euan. “Rewind TV: The Village; Jonathan Creek; Game of Thrones - Review.” The Guardian. 6 April 2013. www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/ 2013/ apr/ 06/ thevillage-peake-simm-review. Accessed on 21 July 2018. Gilbert, Gerard. “A Very British Heimat: Will BBC Drama The Village Be as Epic as the German Saga? ” The Independent. 14 March 2014. www.independent.co.uk/ arts-enter tainment/ tv/ features/ a-very-british-heimat-will-bbc-drama-the-village-be-as-epic-as -the-german-saga-8533200.html. Accessed on 21 July 2018. Griffin, John. “The Village: We Wanted It to Feel like Living Memory.” BBC Blogs. 2 April 2013. www.bbc.co.uk/ blogs/ tv/ entries/ 7242b2ec-5d8a-3585-860e-f971ca9752ec. Ac‐ cessed 21 July 2018. Hanna, Emma. The Great War on the Small Screen: Representing the First World War in Contemporary Britain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2009. Hill, John. British Cinema in the 1980s: Issues and Themes. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. Higson, Andrew. English Heritage, English Cinema: Costume Drama since 1980. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Infante, Francesca and Luke Salkeld. “A Miserable Start for The Village, the BBC’s Answer to Downton Abbey.” Daily Mail. 1 April 2013. www.dailymail.co.uk/ tvshowbiz/ article -2302163/ A-miserable-start-The-Village-BBCs-answer-Downton-Abbey.html. Ac‐ cessed on 21 July 2018. Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). Accessed on 21 July 2018. Korte, Barbara, Ralf Schneider, and Claudia Sternberg. Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Med‐ iendiskurse der Erinnerung in Großbritannien: Autobiographie - Roman - Film (1919-1999). Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2005. Lawrence, Ben. “The Village, Series Two, Episode One, BBC One, Review: ‘shackled by history’.” The Telegraph. 10 August 2014. www.telegraph.co.uk/ culture/ tvandradio/ tv -and-radio-reviews/ 11022504/ The-Village-series-two-episode-one-BBC-One-review -shackled-by-history.html. Accessed on 21 July 2018. —. “The Village: The Most Accomplished New Drama of the Year so Far.” The Telegraph. 31 March 2013. www.telegraph.co.uk/ culture/ tvandradio/ tv-and-radio-reviews/ 99619 22/ The-Village-the-most-accomplished-new-drama-of-the-year-so-far.html. Ac‐ cessed on 21 July 2018. Lowenthal, David. The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Monk, Claire. “The British Heritage Film Debate Revisited.” British Historical Cinema. Eds. Claire Monk and Amy Sargeant. London, New York: Routledge, 2002. 176-98. 163 The Village (2013-2014) Neumann, Birgit and Martin Zierold. “Cultural Memory and Memory Cultures.” Travel‐ ling Concepts for the Study of Culture. Eds. Birgit Neumann and Ansgar Nünning. Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2012. 225-48. Vidal, Belén. Heritage Film: Nation, Genre and Representation. London, New York: Wall‐ flower, 2012. 164 Lucia Krämer III. Crime and Social Decline in Urban Communities 1 The song was originally released in 2012 as a single from Jake Bugg’s debut album Jake Bugg (2012). 2 “If there’s a beating in the rain/ If there’s a little bit of pain, man/ You’re the one it happens to […]. Sitting on the pavement/ Boy you’ve missed your payment/ And they’re gonna find you soon/ If there’s a beating in the street/ If there’s a feeling of defeat/ You’re the one it happens to” (Bugg). Drugs, Sheep, and Broken Lives: Dysfunctional Families, Violence, and the Subversion of Nostalgia in Happy Valley (2014-) Caroline Lusin Stuck in speed bump city Where the only thing that’s pretty Is the thought of getting out ( Jake Bugg) 1. Introduction The title song of Sally Wainwright’s critically acclaimed crime drama Happy Valley (2014-, BBC One) offers a dreary view of life in an average British town: the speaker of Jake Bugg’s “Trouble Town” (2012) 1 feels stuck in a place defined by tower blocks, benefits, police sirens, drugs, troubled homes, and delinquent youth. The overwhelming notion is one of being targeted and pursued by mis‐ fortune without any hope of “getting out”. 2 The credits of Happy Valley insist‐ ently repeat the refrain to prepare the audience for a narrated world in which society is profoundly out of joint: “In this trouble town/ Troubles are found” (Bugg). Set in the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, the show was inspired by a real-life documentary about a similar place, the picturesque market town Hebden Bridge (see White). Shocked by the suicide of several childhood friends, Jez Lewis explored the dark side of this town in Shed Your Tears and Walk Away (2009), which uncovers a gut-wrenching story of alcohol and drug abuse. In fact, the very title Happy Valley acknowledges the character of this setting as “a place whose beauty and outward placidity conceals a malaise” (Bradshaw): the area is known to the police as ‘happy valley’ because of its history of drug addiction (see White). In Happy Valley, which won the BAFTA for Best Drama Series in 2015, Sally Wainwright uses the oblique network of the drug trade as a universal backdrop to her story. The show is centred on a longstanding conflict between uniformed police officer Sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire), the protagonist, and violent thug Tommy Lee Royce ( James Norton), who is said to have raped and impregnated Catherine’s teenage daughter Becky (Elly Colvin) eight years before the story starts. Shortly after the birth of her son Ryan (Rhys Connah), Becky committed suicide. Catherine’s morally courageous decision to raise Ryan, the child of Becky’s rape and thus living proof of the cause of her suicide, as part of the family instead of putting him into care, has alienated her son Daniel (Karl Davies) as well as her (former) husband Richard (Derek Riddell). In the first series, Tommy Lee Royce, just released from prison after serving eight years for drug charges, has joined petty criminal Lewis Whippey (Adam Long) in working for drug dealer Ashley Cowgill ( Joe Armstrong), whose caravan park is only a cover for his far more profitable trade. At the instigation of disaffected accountant Kevin Weatherill (Steve Pemberton), the three abduct Ann Gallagher (Charlie Murphy), the daughter of Kevin’s employer Nevison (George Costigan). However, things ultimately go badly wrong, which leads to Tommy Lee Royce brutally killing both young police officer Kirsten McAskill (Sophie Rundle) and Lewis, as well as his buddy Brett (Adam Nagaitis). The series comes to a dramatic head when Tommy abducts Ryan, and Catherine only just manages to appre‐ hend him before he kills himself and his son. The second series further develops the conflict between Catherine and Tommy, now in prison for murder, by telling the story of how he tries to reach and win over Ryan through his fiancé, who acts as a go-between. As in the first series, this conflict unfolds against the background of another crime, the brutal sexual abuse and serial murder of a number of women, including Tommy Lee Royce’s mother, and the copycat murder of blackmailing Vicky Fleming (Amelia Bullmore) by her married lover, Detective Sergeant John Wadsworth (Kevin Doyle). Clearly, it is not just the ‘scrotes’, as Catherine likes to call them, who display criminal potential in this series, but members of all classes, just as drugs are presented as a universal problem, as Catherine’s sister Clare Cartwright (Siobhan Finneran), a former addict, goes to prove. With this bleak portrayal of contemporary Britain, Sally Wainwright has firmly inscribed her hugely successful show - the first series was watched by an average audience of 7.2 million, with 7.8 million viewers tuning in for the 168 Caroline Lusin 3 Showcasing a variety of working class housing, the credits of Happy Valley also dis‐ tinctly remind of Coronation Street and its title sequence (see Gorton 75). Besides, the two shows are connected by the actress Sarah Lancashire, who starred in Coronation Street as Wendy Farmer in 1987 and as Raquel Wolstenhulme (later Watts) from 1991 to 1996 and in 2000 (see IMDb). final episode (see “BBC One drama”) - into the tradition of British cinema and television from the North. As Kristyn Gorton argues, Northern films written in the vein of social realism typically “convey a sense of entrapment and a desire for escape” (75) by including elements like “bleakness, coldness, industry, decay, social problems, working class, exploitation, lack of serious culture” (Schmid 349, qtd. in Gorton 75). This is very much in line with Wainwright’s further work for television, which is characterised by “strong and yet struggling female char‐ acters, an interest in crime and an attention to the messiness of family life” (Gorton 78). Wainwright’s oeuvre, and Happy Valley in particular, accordingly “follows in a strong tradition of British social realism from kitchen sink drama to Coronation Street (ITV, 1960)” (ibid. 73). Like Coronation Street (1960-), which is set in Salford and centres on a working-class community, Happy Valley depicts a fairly traditional community, as it hardly displays any of the geographical mobility that has characterised social structures since the mid-20 th century. 3 Still, the show evinces the social change that has taken place since the 1950s and 60s, which has largely been perceived in terms of “the loss of family and community solidarity […] combined with processes of individualization” (Charles 444). In describing these developments, Happy Valley decidedly transcends the geo‐ graphical boundaries to reveal the state of the nation as a whole, as Hebden Bridge acquires “an ‘everytown’ quality, riddled with the type of social problems by which few British communities can be unaffected” (Piper, “Broadcast Drama”, 178). Happy Valley, as the following sections will show, showcases the break-up of traditional social structures and units, like the family and the community, only to underscore the value of individual moral agency as an antidote to a society marked by violence and exploitation. Paradoxically, Catherine, the focal char‐ acter of Happy Valley, counteracts the tendency towards individualism and self-centredness apparent in the entire community by acting in an individualist, profoundly emotional manner. Its strong concern with a variety of topical social issues, such as drug-abuse, unemployment, corruption, and dysfunctional fam‐ ilies, turns Happy Valley, in the words of Helen Piper, into a prime example of how an indigenous broadcast drama-entertainment series may be inflected to ad‐ dress local and national anxieties, specifically through the use of the generic and the 169 Happy Valley (2014-) 4 For the anti-heritage style of The Village, see the article by Lucia Krämer in this volume. spectacular in relation to space/ place, and through the dramatization of a national institution (the police) […]. (“Broadcast Drama”, 178). As a member of the police force, Catherine encounters a variety of serious social problems at first hand. It is particularly significant in this context that she is not, like practically all protagonists of current crime dramas, such as Luther (2010-), Vera (2011-), The Fall (2013-2016), or Broadchurch (2013-2017), a plainclothes detective employed in the CID (Criminal Investigation Department). As a uni‐ formed officer actually working on the streets, Catherine is ideally positioned to function as a mediator between the police and the community. In fact, she is less a representative of the institution of the police than a go-between whose trademark high visibility jacket (displayed on both DVD covers) signals her pivotal function for the community. If Catherine’s yellow jacket thus visually indicates her status within the ‘trouble town’, Sally Wainwright more generally relies on visual clues of setting and landscape to place the series in the Condition of England tradition in a way that is decidedly anti-nostalgic. 2. Rural Landscapes, Nostalgia, and Industrial Heritage Not unlike The Village (2013-2014), Happy Valley cites and positions itself against the nostalgic heritage style of many contemporary TV productions, such as Upstairs, Downstairs (2010), Parade’s End (2012), Downton Abbey (2010-2015), Lark Rise to Candleford (2008-2011), or The Paradise (2012), the latter two also featuring Sarah Lancashire. 4 Rosalía Baena draws attention to how these shows are connected by “the idea of Englishness and the enactment of nostalgia for a lost time” (119), which fulfil a unifying function in the present. Linda Hutcheon and Mario Valdes hence argue that “nostalgia is less about the past than about the present” (20). Such nostalgic escapes to an idealised past, as opposed to a dissatisfying present, are closely connected to the notion of community in sev‐ eral ways. First of all, the past referred to mostly represents a supposedly “sim‐ pler era of ‘real’ community values” (ibid.). And secondly, in illustrating how “the visual display of English national heritage” (Baena 123) produces a feeling of nostalgia, Baena emphasises that remembering a shared history is “central to forging and maintaining a common identity” (118), and essential in creating a unifying sense of community: Specifically, collective nostalgia can promote a feeling of community that works to downplay or deflect divisive social differences (class, race, gender and so on) […]. 170 Caroline Lusin When nostalgia is produced and experienced collectively, it can promote a sense of ‘we’, thus serving the purpose of forging a national identity […]. (121) From this point of view, nostalgia appears as a substitute for a feeling of com‐ munity as a “‘warm’ place” (see Bauman 1) providing safety and a sense of be‐ longing. Historically, Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw argue, nostalgia can therefore be considered as “a by-product of cultural modernity (with its aliena‐ tion, its much lamented loss of tradition and community” (7, qtd. from Baena 120). Through its use of the setting, Happy Valley is closely affiliated with the his‐ torical period usually associated with the loss of community, the age of indus‐ trialisation. As its settings are actually named in the film, Happy Valley spotlights landmarks of the area that clearly evoke its industrial heritage. Old industrial chimneys still mark the airline of Hebden Bridge and Sowerby Bridge shown in the series, distinctly reminding viewers of the history of these towns. Hebden Bridge used to be notable for its water-powered weaving mills, and both towns lie on the banks of Rochdale Canal, which served to transport raw materials to the industrial centre of Manchester. Britain’s extensive network of narrow ca‐ nals, which was built between 1760 and the 1830s (see Stinshoff 265), is intri‐ cately linked to the Industrial Revolution, as it represents “the first nationwide standardised system of transport infrastructure” (ibid. 257). Before the arrival and rise of the railway, the canals “developed into the most important transport routes for heavy bulk commodities of the incipient industrial revolution: coal, iron ore, limestone, gravel, stones, timber, grain, but also cotton, pottery and other manufactures” (ibid. 264). Rochdale Canal plays a crucial role in the story when Tommy hides on a narrow boat on the canal at Hebden Bridge after com‐ mitting the triple murder and finally lures Ryan to his hiding place, where the showdown of the first series takes place. The fact that the establishing aerial shot of the series shows Sowerby Bridge, then, is certainly not just biographi‐ cally motivated (Sally Wainwright grew up in Sowerby Bridge, see Cocozza); the shot is framed in a way characterising the entire series (see fig. 1): The 19 th -century railway bridge running through the centre evokes the ex‐ pansion of the railway as a key factor in the rise of industrial Britain. While the foreground is covered by old working-class accommodation, a garage, and sheds, the background features a church spire - a traditional signifier of com‐ munity - as well as the rolling, rugged hills of the Calder Valley, all steeped in bright sunlight after the rain. This visual juxtaposition of industrial and working class heritage with the uplifting, wide view of rural scenery, which also features in the credits, is typical of the setting in the show. In this contrastive use of Britain’s industrial, working-class heritage, Happy Valley differs distinctly from 171 Happy Valley (2014-) Fig. 1: Aerial shot of Sowerby Bridge (S1/ E, 00: 01). a show like Coronation Street, which represents a “nostalgic celebration of a typical northern English community threatened by modernity” (Schmid 357). In Happy Valley, the warm feeling of community is already a thing of the past. In between or as part of the scenes, Happy Valley again and again features picturesque rural landscape scenes that lend the show a distinctively British flavour. On the surface, Happy Valley thus shares the preference for exterior long shots of rural landscapes which distinguishes British heritage productions (see Baena 124). In films like Downton Abbey, rural life typically features as one of the key elements of English heritage (see ibid. 126), promoting “an ideal of Englishness as a lost pastoral locus, mythologized, missed and longed-for” (ibid. 119). As Helen Piper notes, “almost all domestically produced drama (not least, police/ crime fiction) also feeds the national territorial imagination”, adding that “[i]t may also do so through the inclusion of landscape spectacle” (“Broadcast Drama”, 176). However, the landscape shots in Happy Valley do not just, as in other films, “function as spectacle, as a visually pleasurable lure to the specta‐ tor’s eyes” (Higson, “Space”, 3), nor do they serve “to situate and root her pro‐ tagonists to the land as well as to their emotional journey” (Gorton 75), as Katryn Gorton suggests in her reading of the series. The landscape scenes in Happy Valley conjure up a very similar vision of rural England as heritage films, only to undermine it ironically as nostalgic fiction. 172 Caroline Lusin 5 This quotation and all further quotations from Happy Valley are taken from Sally Wain‐ wright’s scripts made available on the BBC website. Fig. 2: Spotting the red kite at Upper Lighthazels Farm (S1/ E1, 19: 14). Perhaps most strikingly, Happy Valley’s subversion of nostalgia becomes ap‐ parent in scene sixteen of series one, episode one, set on Ashley Cowgill’s car‐ avan park at Upper Lighthazels Farm, where the Weatherills spend their week‐ ends. The background shows the four Cowgill and Weatherill children playing on an immaculate green lawn in front of the rolling Yorkshire hills. The side text explicitly describes this scene as the ideal English childhood day: “They’ve got a dog bouncing with them. It’s the kind of glorious, happy day they’ll remember all their lives.” (Wainwright, Happy Valley, S1/ E1, 23) 5 In the foreground, Tommy and Lewis are unloading bags of sand from a truck, watched by Ashley. When the children spot a red kite soaring through the sky, Ben Cowgill enthusiastically calls to his father to watch (see fig. 2): Ashley’s response, with ironically drawn-out vowels, identifies this happy rural idyll as an illusion that has little to do with real life: “Beautiful! Lovely. (addressing the two builders as he still looks up at the kite) Look at that lads, eh? ” (Wainwright, S1/ E1, 24) The dingy ‘real life’ is taking place in the fore‐ ground: the bags of sand (one of which is just about to burst in front of Kevin Weatherill’s eyes) conceal blocks of cannabis resin, and Kevin’s witnessing of this incident will set in motion the abduction plot. Ashley’s two new expensive 173 Happy Valley (2014-) 6 In the same scene, Catherine identifies humour as an essential strategy of coping with the harsh realities of policing: “If y’didn’t want to see the funny side you should never’ve joined the police force” (Wainwright, S1/ E3, 2). Land Rovers, positioned in the middle ground, bear witness to his involvement in the drug trade. The soaring red kite - just like the camera’s general preference for high skies and wide horizons - mocks the characters’ failure to leave this world behind, which the title song alludes to. Even beyond this scene, Happy Valley systematically includes and under‐ mines key aspects of the pastoral ideal of Englishness. If the rural English idyll is hardly complete without sheep, particularly in Yorkshire, Happy Valley re‐ peatedly uses sheep to completely subvert the pastoral ideal. In the first series, Catherine and Kirsten engage in a spot of macabre banter about the farmers’ affectionate relationship with their sheep. In a part of the dialogue omitted in the script, Catherine has obviously just suggested that this relationship involves sexual intercourse: KIRSTEN. You’re lying. CATHERINE. Nope. KIRSTEN. That’s disgusting. CATHERINE. Is it? Why? You think about it. If you’re in love with a sheep, surely the most natural thing in the world’d be to want to shag its brains out. KIRSTEN. No you are, you’re winding me up. CATHERINE. They don’t call it animal husbandry for nothing. Why d’you think they wear wellies? Farmers. Forget the mud. It’s to slot the sheep’s hind legs down - (Wainwright, S1/ E3, 1) Even if Catherine is making light of a serious subject, 6 this conversation demol‐ ishes the pastoral ideal of Englishness in a very effective, ironical manner. The strong undercurrent of violence inherent in Catherine’s account of rural life erupts only minutes after this scene, when Kirsten stops the van with Ann Gal‐ lagher and Lewis on board, and Tommy, following behind, brutally runs her over with his car several times. To support this point, Wainwright again erodes the rural ideal with sexually charged violence in the second series, which starts with how “[t]hree lads off their heads on acid” (Wainwright, S2/ E1, 1) unsuccessfully attempt to steal a sheep, and Catherine single-handedly has to put the severely injured sheep out of its misery. Again, Catherine laces her retrospective account of this gory scene with a good dose of humour, but this completely evaporates in the end: the owner of the sheep, himself a child of rape and incest, turns out to have perpetrated a series of brutal rapes and murders, and his deeply grieving mother finally shoots 174 Caroline Lusin 7 The choice of surname for the most senior police officer in series two, Detective Su‐ perintendent Andy Shepherd (Vincent Franklin), appears more than ironic in this con‐ text. 8 In fact, Far Sunderland Farm itself, everything but idyllic, offers a most disenchanting insight into rural life. As the stage directions reveal: “It’s like we’ve stepped back in time to a cross between the 1870s and the 1970s. The squalor, the poverty, the dirt. Nothing new or even clean” (Wainwright, S2/ E1, 5). him (and tries to kill herself) in their home at Far Sunderland Farm. 7 These events brutally undercut the nostalgic conception of Englishness associated with the rural scenery. 8 When Happy Valley features beautiful visions of unspoilt rural landscape in between scenes, then, such as “the glorious winter skies across the moors” (Wainwright, S1/ E1, 33) on Soyland Moor, these glimpses do not grant the audience a comforting experience of nostalgia; on the contrary, the land‐ scape scenes are blighted by the knowledge of the ugliness they veil and only enhance through their beauty. 3. Dysfunctional Families, Lost Fathers, and Patriarchal Violence In Happy Valley, the deeply flawed Garrs family at Far Sunderland Farm proves but the most radical case in point of a narrated world in which social relations have largely gone awry. Not only is Alison Garrs (Susan Lynch) a single mother who obviously struggles with her son’s complete and utter lack of social ties; her history is uncomfortably reminiscent of Catherine and Kirsten’s dialogue in the first series about how farms breed sexual aberration. Towards the end of the second series, the audience learns that Daryl Garrs (Robert Emms) is actually his grandfather’s son, which evokes a long story of sexual violence and abuse. Argu‐ ably, dysfunctional structures of family and community represent the force that drives the entire plot of both series of Happy Valley, as the issues of the Garrs family uncannily resemble those of Catherine’s own family. In sociological terms, families are “constituted primarily through the structuring of intergenerational relationships between parents and children and between parents themselves that are as such […] societally recognized (legitimized)” (Lüscher 188). In Happy Valley, however, the families of the Garrs and Cawoods are defined more by transgenerational trauma, whereas the intergenerational relationships, as well as those between the parents, are profoundly fraught with problems. The Garrs and the Cawoods share a history of past sexual violence that im‐ pinges on the present and does not bode well for the future, as both families struggle with the traumatic legacy of rape. Alison Garrs was systematically abused by her father, gave birth to Daryl and attempts to commit suicide; Becky 175 Happy Valley (2014-) Cawood was raped by Tommy Lee Royce, gave birth to Ryan and committed suicide shortly after. In the case of the Garrs, the unresolved conflict of the past finds a terrible outlet in the present, when Daryl repeats his father’s offences on an even larger scale by committing serial sexual abuse and murder. Daryl, in this context, provides a sinister foil for Ryan Cawood and his future develop‐ ment: Catherine is persistently concerned throughout the series that Ryan might become like his father, as he is inclined to losing his temper and constantly runs into trouble at school. In fact, Happy Valley leaves no doubt that the Cawood family is still haunted by its past, as Catherine herself suffers from sudden vi‐ sions of dead Becky with a distorted, bluish face in extremely stressful situations. And if Daryl has turned into his father, why should not Ryan replicate the crimes of his own father? In thus negotiating the shadow of the absent father, Happy Valley latches onto the nature versus nurture debate. After Catherine has rescued abducted Ann Gallagher from Tommy’s mother’s basement and been severely wounded in the ensuing fight, she explicitly voices her fear “that Ryan’s fate will be ‘cursed’ by his genetic inheritance from Tommy Lee Royce” (Piper, “Compassion”, 189) in a discussion with her former husband. Still shattered by her recent experience with Tommy, Catherine expresses acute dislike of her grandson: CATHERINE. I can’t stand him. RICHARD. (carefully) What y’talking about? […] CATHERINE. The times. I’ve had to sit. And listen. To the stupid, mindless, idiotic things he’s done at that school. Daniel was never like that! Becky was never like that! Where does he get it from? Hm? (RICHARD doesn’t respond) It’s not rocket science. RICHARD. Yeah, and it’s still not his fault. Either. Is it. Like you told me. (a moment) I thought you said he’s dyslexic. CATHERINE. He’s daft. RICHARD. Catherine. If he’s dyslexic he will get angry and frustrated. It doesn’t mean he’s (he hesitates, then whispers -) like his dad. (Wainwright, S1/ E5, 54-5, emphasis in original) In this dialogue, Catherine expressly justifies Ryan’s behaviour with his genetic nature, frustrated by his recurring trouble at school and by a fight with Ryan just previously, after which she referred to him as a “fff psychopath” (Wainwright, S1/ E5, 47, emphasis in original). With hindsight from series two, the story of the Garrs family seems to bolster this notion, as Daryl has obviously followed in his father’s footsteps. Richard, however, makes a strong case for the aspect of nur‐ ture rather than nature, conceding that while Ryan will undoubtedly have in‐ 176 Caroline Lusin 9 Helen Piper illustrates how Tommy Lee Royce is usually shown to be “decidedly unemo‐ tional […], usually filmed in profile or as a somewhat detached figure within the frame […], often from a camera angled behind his shoulder or with its view impeded by an‐ other body” (“Compassion”, 187). Interestingly, his mother’s mentioning his own father‐ hood provides the occasion for the first reaction shot allowing the audience to witness Tommy’s emotions (see ibid.). herited Tommy’s genes, he will also be like Becky, and even more decisively, like Catherine and Clare, with whom he spends most of his time. According to Ri‐ chard, even Tommy’s evildoing is more a question of upbringing - “unloved, more than unloved, despised probably, treated like… dirt on a daily basis” (Wain‐ wright, S1/ E5, 55-6) - and an environment of “squalor and chaos” (ibid.) than of an inherently evil nature. Indeed Tommy himself seems to explicitly confirm this notion later on. In a rare emotional outburst, 9 Tommy tells Brett how he has just learnt that he has a son, who lives with his granny: “How mad is that? Eh? What kind of life is that for a lad? Living with an old woman. And no dad. It’s not… that’s not… (he’s crying now) Shit. It’s shit. It’s no life, not for a lad.” (Wain‐ wright, S1/ E5, 67) This outburst gives the audience a hint at Tommy’s own back‐ ground that suggests a history of neglect and a fatal lack of direction. Through the character constellation and the setting, Happy Valley repeatedly emphasises the transgenerational character of rape, neglect, and suicide, which implies systemic rather than individual origins. The criminals Tommy and Daryl, apparently shaped by the story of their fathers, continue in their foot‐ steps, and the parallels between the Garrs and the Cawood family suggest a more universal phenomenon. Wainwright underscores this universal character of familial upheaval, along with the notion of transgenerational trauma, by in‐ serting a conspicuous reference to a real-life story with similar long-term re‐ percussions. Towards the beginning of the first series, Catherine, Clare, and Ryan visit Becky’s grave in Heptonstall graveyard, where Ryan comes across the grave of American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath. This short scene comprises barely half a page in the script and hardly more than a minute in the film; yet it is highly significant in providing a foil for both Becky and Ryan. Having suf‐ fered a long history of depression, Sylvia Plath committed suicide in 1963, leaving behind two children. By that time, she had already separated from her husband and the father of her children, renowned British poet Ted Hughes, but there had been allegations of violent abuse in that marriage (see Kean). In March 2009, her son Nicholas Hughes, who had apparently inherited the tendency to‐ wards depression from his mother, also committed suicide (see “Poet Plath’s Son”). Considering Happy Valley’s acutely meaningful use of the setting, this short scene is certainly not just a matter of providing real-life context; it serves 177 Happy Valley (2014-) to embed the individual stories of Happy Valley, such as Becky’s suicide, in “a wider social picture in which dysfunction, addiction, poverty and neglect” - and, one may add, suicide - “can have intergenerational repercussions” (Piper, “Com‐ passion”, 189), as Helen Piper notes regarding Tommy. Indeed, the events in Happy Valley add up to a depiction of contemporary Britain as shaped by pervasive structures of “inequality and exploitation” (Piper, “Compassion”, 194), which are still profoundly patriarchal in kind. While women and the links between them are generally still “at the heart of extended family networks” (Charles 447), many women in Happy Valley suffer from outright male violence. Most spectacularly, Tommy runs over Kirsten with unwarranted brutality, and when Catherine frees Ann from his cellar, he literally beats Cath‐ erine to within an inch of her life. Both events are depicted in graphic detail on screen; in the latter scene, Ann is forced to look on powerlessly, locked in Cath‐ erine’s police car, as Catherine finally loses consciousness, a striking example of utter female helplessness (see fig. 3). Fig. 3: Sergeant Catherine Cawood, beaten up by Tommy Lee Royce (S1/ E4, 58: 17). Viewers and critics alike have harshly attacked the show’s “blood-soaked climax” (Glennie) of Kirsten’s murder in the fourth episode of series one. Vivi‐ enne Pattison of Mediawatch-UK, for instance, argued that “[t]his kind of graphic violence dehumanises us all, and studies have shown that watching it can stunt your emotional growth” (qtd. in Glennie). However, it is by no means gratuitous, but integral to the show’s portrayal of ingrained structures of male 178 Caroline Lusin violence. When Ann has to watch Catherine’s bloodied face slip down the car’s window as Catherine passes out, this serves as a most graphic reminder of the helplessness and isolation often associated with the abuse of women. As Sally Wainwright explains: “All the women in this [series] are seen to suffer in some way.” (qtd. in Brown) Even those women who do not suffer violence directly are damaged in one way or another: Helen Gallagher ( Jill Baker) is dying from liver cancer, and Jenny Weatherill ( Julia Ford) has been disabled by multiple sclerosis. In the context of Happy Valley’s pervasive concern with violence against women, it is hard not to read their illness as a metaphor for the pain and damage inflicted on women in a society marked by patriarchal violence. In view of the series’ focus on the sons of rapist fathers to illustrate the continuity of patriarchal stereotypes, Wainwright generally appears to employ biological metaphors in Happy Valley to point towards social and cultural concerns. Rape no doubt constitutes the most blatant case in point of patriarchal re‐ pression in Happy Valley, and one that television has certainly made much of within the last couple of years. Rape seems to feature in most contemporary TV series, be it Downton Abbey, Broadchurch, Love/ Hate (2010-2014), Silk (2011-2014), This Is England (2007-2015), Shetland (2013-), Peaky Blinders (2013-), or more recently, Apple Tree Yard (2017), which one critic hailed as “the first honest portrayal of rape on TV” (Aroesti). Happy Valley, however, stands out among these shows in so far as it features a whole series of rapes - there are Becky, Ann, and the victims of Daryl the serial killer -, and it certainly depicts rape as unsolicited. As Vanessa Garcia illustrates in her critical observations on the presentation of rape in the media, “[t]he social construction of sexual assault victims tends to revolve around victim-blaming more than most other types of crime victims” (19). There can be no question in Happy Valley that Ann has not provoked her own rape, as she is tied to a chair, blindfold, and gagged, and later on drugged with heroin. Even if the authors of a letter to The Guardian expressed strong concern about the depiction of disempowered rather than empowered women in contemporary television (see “Rape”), graphic portrayals of rape like this appear necessary to publicise the realities of sexual assault: as Garcia sug‐ gests, ‘rape myths’ that try to play down the gravity of sexual assault are still widespread, such as the assumptions that “[w]omen provoke or are partially responsible for rape”, “[r]ape is mainly committed by those unknown to the victim”, “[r]apists are psychologically abnormal”, that “‘[n]o’ really means ‘yes’”, and that “[w]omen enjoy violence in sexual relations” (21). In featuring a whole series of sexual assaults, Happy Valley accords a similar prominence to rape as the legal drama Silk, which addresses a range of rape myths in episode two of its first series, when barrister (and later Queen’s Council) Martha Costello 179 Happy Valley (2014-) (Maxine Peake) has to defend a man accused of raping his ex-girlfriend in her home. Like Happy Valley, where Tommy is not called to account for Becky’s rape, Silk shows that there are still far lower conviction rates for rape than for other types of crime (see Garcia 21), as the alleged rapist - quite obviously guilty - is acquitted. But in contrast to Silk, Happy Valley graphically illustrates how patriarchal structures of violence are perpetuated when Daryl, the product of incest, abuse, and rape, himself turns into a rapist and murderer. It is not least the setting of Happy Valley that shows its world in the light of a patriarchal system which, however, lacks any notion of the responsibility tra‐ ditionally associated with patriarchy, especially of the Victorian kind. In the first series, Ashley Cowgill and his caravan park on Lighthazels Farm subtly parody the idealised traditional social structures found in heritage TV, such as Downton Abbey and Lark Rise to Candleford. According to Rosalía Baena, the traditional late 19 th -century community depicted in Lark Rise to Candleford “showcases a harmonious relationship between the Squire and his peasants” in which the Squire “as owner of the land, provides for all the workers, […] is also the Justice of the Peace, and […] resolves their disputes fairly” (128). Renting out his cara‐ vans on the farm, Ashley functions as a caricature of a modern squire, with his employees and customers in the role of his tenants. Far from providing for them in the idealised way shown in heritage TV, he exploits them; instead of taking over responsibility, he shirks it when he leaves Tommy and Ashley to fend for themselves after things have gone wrong. The responsible squire of nostalgic heritage TV has degenerated into an underling in the drug trade who is only seeking his own advantage. In both series of Happy Valley to date, Sally Wainwright underpins the plot with a criminal system transcending Calderdale that lends a transnational, if not global dimension to inequality and exploitation. In the first series, the drug trade functions as an allegory of a system of exploitation that transcends national borders. In a clever narrative move that avoids overt didacticism, Wainwright uses Catherine’s journalist ex-husband Richard as a mouthpiece for a harsh in‐ dictment of the drug trade. Spurred on by Catherine’s frustration at getting no access to any information about the larger structures of the trade, Richard dili‐ gently researches into its Pan-European dimensions to discover a strongly hi‐ erarchical network ruthlessly bent on maximising profit: [T]here’s always someone above pushing them to take more and more and more. So they have to push those under them to take more and more and more. And you know, your big regional dealers - and the people further down the chain - they’ll be people who appear perfectly respectable, with perfectly respectable businesses. (Wainwright, S1/ E4, 15, emphasis in original) 180 Caroline Lusin There is a certain dramatic irony to the fact that Catherine and Richard are having this conversation on the phone as Catherine is arriving on Ashley’s farm to query him on the abduction case, just as he is unloading sandbags. The au‐ dience already suspects that these bags probably conceal another consignment of drugs, but Catherine is of course unaware of that at this stage, a gap of in‐ formation that emphasises the efficiency and obliquity of the drug trade. Only later on, as Ashley has been arrested, does Catherine learn from Detective In‐ spector Phil Crabtree (Alan McKenna) about the devious routes on which the drugs are shipped to Britain. If this network is as impermeable as it is expansive, its effects are everywhere on display, as the show regularly features scenes in‐ volving drug dealers or addicts. Where the first series thus uses the drug trade as an opaque network of de‐ structive, inhuman exploitation, the second series addresses the even more top‐ ical issue of modern slavery. Much more than drugs, modern slavery is a central aspect of British society addressed in recent Condition of England novels, be it in the guise of forced prostitution, as in Elizabeth Day’s Paradise City (2015), or of agricultural and industrial labour, as in Jonathan Coe’s Number 11 (2015). Happy Valley in a sense combines both aspects by focusing on vulnerable women trafficked from Eastern Europe and forced to work in a factory by the inscrutable criminal network centred on the Knezevic brothers, who are part of the Halifax mafia. While one of the women falls victim to Daryl, the other, Ilinka Blazevic (Ivana Basic), manages to escape from the factory and turn to the police. As the young Croatian is in danger of being eliminated by her tormentors, and the police cannot find any suitable accommodation, Catherine brings her home to lodge her with her neighbour Winnie (Angela Pleasence), an immigrant from Eastern Europe. With these characters, Happy Valley does not just emphasise the extent to which contemporary British society is also shaped by migration from Eastern Europe. According to Helen Piper, Catherine’s taking Ilinka home is “an act which, in narrative terms, imports the peripheral to the personal: literally and allegorically ‘bringing home’ the bigger international issue of or‐ ganised slavery” (“Compassion”, 184). Perhaps more than anything else in the show, the modern slave trade encapsulates the profoundly patriarchal structures of a society based on inequality and exploitation by the mercilessly instrumen‐ talising individuals to maximise profit. 181 Happy Valley (2014-) 10 This also becomes apparent when Catherine has to arrest Councillor Marcus Gascoigne (Steven Hartley) for drunk driving and possession. 11 The character of Ann Gallagher, daughter of a wealthy businessman, also serves to blur the distinction between social spheres, as she is unemployed and as “useless”, as she says, as many people on the housing estate: “Hundreds of millions of pounds spent on my education, and here I am, unnecessary and unemployed” (Wainwright, S1/ E6, 23). 4. Stereotypes, Individual Agency, and the Subversion of Institutions Where series like Peaky Blinders or Broadchurch only gradually reveal the flaws and dark spots in the fabric of their families and community, Happy Valley highlights social dysfunction from the first, and across social classes. The first series begins with Catherine and Kirsten called to an incident where a young man, Liam Hughes ( James Burrows) is threatening to set fire to himself. This suicide threat at the beginning of the first series reveals a lowly social sphere where his potential suicide attempt is treated as spectacle, rather than giving cause for concern. Instead of interfering, some of the onlookers even cheer Liam on, cans of beer in their hands. We seem to witness a clichéd scene set in ‘Benefits Britain’, featuring “a small indifferent crowd made up of two size 20 women in size 14 clothes, […] two teenage girls with push chairs, a couple of grubby lads in their early twenties (also with cans of beer)” (Wainwright, S1/ E1, 2). When Catherine arrives on the scene brandishing a fire extinguisher, this tool meta‐ phorically points towards her constant function of resolving social conflicts. However, Wainwright instantly counteracts working-class clichés, as Catherine introduces herself as follows: I’m Catherine, by the way. I’m forty-seven, I’m divorced, I live with my sister - who’s a recovering heroin addict - I have two grown-up children. One dead and one who doesn’t speak to me. And a grandson! So. (Wainwright, S1/ E1, 6) Drugs, Catherine’s self-presentation illustrates, are not a problem reserved to the lower classes, 10 nor is social dysfunction limited to a particular social sphere. 11 Happy Valley is thus certainly not, as Coronation Street, “yet another nostalgic celebration of a typical Northern English community threatened by modernity” (Schmid 357). It depicts a community that seems to share, apart from living in a particular area, at best only a history of familial disruption and dys‐ function. Similarly to Broadchurch’s Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman), but unlike many other female protagonists of crime series, such as Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) from Prime Suspect (1991-2006) or Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) from The Fall 182 Caroline Lusin 12 Happy Valley earned Sarah Lancashire the BAFTA for Best Actress twice, in 2015 and 2017, and she was awarded an OBE for her services to the entertainment industry in 2017. 13 Last but not least, her decision to raise Ryan serves as a central touchstone of what Helen Piper calls “Catherine’s prosocial ideology” (“Compassion”, 194). (2013-2016), Catherine is very much a family woman who fulfils a key function of integration in the public and private sphere. Indeed critics have made much of the role of motherhood in the series, and of Catherine’s motherliness in par‐ ticular (see Gorton; Greer; Wilton). This is no doubt an important aspect of Happy Valley, and Sarah Lancashire’s formidable performance contributes much to the character’s centrality in this series. 12 Catherine’s position within both the family and the community corresponds to the sociological observation that women are “structurally at the centre of the ‘web of kinship’” (Charles 444). In many situations, Catherine fulfils a catalysing function in making people vir‐ tually ‘at home’ and bringing them together: in the private sphere, she provides a home and cares for Ryan as well as her sister, she manages to make Richard overcome his aversion to Ryan, and in the second series, she welcomes Daniel back into the family home after a conflict with his wife. In the public sphere, she gives shelter to Ilinka, she procures food and advice for two vulnerable prostitutes, and she saves Alison Garrs from suicide and tries to console her by cradling her in her arms after Alison has shot her son. This harrowing scene represents, as Helen Piper puts it, “perhaps the most eloquent demonstration of Catherine’s seemingly inexhaustible capacity for compassion” (“Compassion”, 190). 13 A far cry from the behaviour expected of supposedly distanced, objective police officers, the scene powerfully highlights Catherine’s profoundly humane and emotional approach, which also defines her matriarchal position of au‐ thority in the police station. But Catherine can by no means be reduced to an empathetic, motherly character; on the contrary, she often acts against estab‐ lished norms of behaviour. The concept of motherhood is itself “an institution that has been naturalised through patriarchal structures” (Greer 328), which explains Catherine’s own rejection of this role in a critical feedback talk with her constable Kirsten McAskill, where she exclaims: “I’m not your mother.” (Wainwright, S1/ E2, 43) Considering the centrality of patriarchal violence in the series, this rejection of motherhood appears to be less a question of “Catherine’s attempts to negate her maternal identity” (Greer 344) than of her general refusal to subscribe to stereotypes and categorisations. Indeed, Catherine is mainly defined by her constant transgression of boun‐ daries, especially where her role as a police officer is concerned. With its focus on the cataclysmic events of Becky’s rape and suicide, the storyline of Happy 183 Happy Valley (2014-) 14 The inadequacy and destructive character of institutions is a crucial topic of many socially committed current British films, such as Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake (2016) or the series Broken (2017) (for the latter see also the article by Stefan Glomb in this volume). Valley places Catherine at the intersection of the public and private sphere. As a mother, she is bent on avenging her daughter; as a police officer, she is pledged to the pursuit of justice in line with the law. In the first series, this conflict between public and private persona becomes apparent when she starts to mon‐ itor Tommy’s movements on her own initiative, or when she intervenes in Tommy’s machinations on the narrow boat against the explicit instructions of her superiors. If Happy Valley thus dissolves the boundaries between public and private, this is not, as Shauna Wilton argues, a matter of Catherine “struggling to reconcile […] [her] public and private lives” (102); this transgression of boun‐ daries forms part of her more general function of making up as an individual for the inadequacy of institutions. 14 Where the public sphere is concerned, all incidents where Catherine saves the day through her own initiative represent cases in which institutions have failed: the authorities cannot find accommo‐ dation for Ilinka; the police fail to warn the two prostitutes of the killer targeting members of their profession; and all social institutions have omitted to discover and remedy Alison’s abuse and Daryl’s marginalisation. In a contemporary world in which “the weakening or retrenchment of normalcy has meant that the societal significance of institutions […] has declined” (Lüscher 189), Cath‐ erine compensates for the failure of institutions through her individual agency, responsibility, humanity, and morality. However, Wainwright wisely refrains from stylising Catherine into a modern-day Joan of Arc; her attraction as a character results precisely from the fact that Wainwright undermines traditional stereotypes of femininity. Catherine’s transgression of boundaries as a police officer goes hand in hand with a tendency towards violence that strongly contrasts with her motherly traits. Perhaps most strikingly, she acts against her public role in the police when she is lying in bed at night with Richard, “[w]eighing up the pros and cons. Of what it would mean. To take the law into your own hand” (Wainwright, S1/ E1, 45). In imagining her revenge, Catherine not only pictures killing Tommy, but resorts to a very violent imagery and vocabulary: I’d say the down side would be if you didn’t feel much different. Or better. After the thing. […] The upside. On the other hand. Would be the exquisite satisfaction you’d get. From grinding his severed scrotum. Into the mud. With the underside of your shittiest shoe. And then burying his worthless carcass in a shallow grave up on the 184 Caroline Lusin 15 I am grateful to Harriet Mahier for this suggestion. The Moors murders were a series of killings of children, whose corpses the perpetrators buried on Saddleworth Moor near Manchester; at least some of the victims were sexually abused previously to their death. Both the Northern setting of the murders on a moor and the notion of child and sexual abuse mirror elements of Happy Valley and Catherine’s fantasy. moors where it can rot. Undisturbed and unloved. Until the end of time. (Wainwright, S1/ E1, 45-6) In this gory fantasy, Catherine appropriates the same violent ideas usually as‐ sociated with the social sphere she is policing. Arguably, it is an oblique refer‐ ence to the notorious Moors murders, 15 which once more highlights the perpet‐ uation of violence. By evoking these murders, some of the most famous and heinous crimes in British consciousness, Catherine displays an ‘eye for an eye’ ethics that powerfully undermines her own professional role. In fact, Catherine also behaves violently in a way associated more with men than with women. She is as violent as Tommy when she knocks him to the ground in their final confrontation and continues lashing out at him lying helplessly on the floor, as mercilessly as he beat her up previously. Even more than her previous solo runs and her high emotional involvement in the case, this over-aggressive action is incompatible both with stereotypes of female behaviour and with the objective distance of police work. Sally Wainwright thus dismantles the age-old stereo‐ type that violence is ‘unseemly’ for women, which decisively contributes to Happy Valley’s refusal to endorse unproblematic classifications. Even more than Catherine, Alison Garrs personifies motherly violence in a way that subverts several stereotypes of femininity and female crime in partic‐ ular. Throughout the second series, Wainwright depicts Alison as the epitome of maternal care, who is obviously most concerned about the welfare of her outsider son. In the run-up to her killing of Daryl, the film is set to convey in painstaking detail how she does her best to ease him into a happy mood: she lovingly prepares a tasty breakfast, and she creates a seductive fiction of leaving everything behind and emigrating to America to see the sights he always wanted to see. Just as Daryl’s facial expression betrays an inner vision of utmost beauty and happiness, she shoots him in the head from behind with a shotgun to spare him the life imprisonment he could not bear, without him ever noticing what is going on. In an unusual feat of audience control, Happy Valley paradoxically shows this act of murder as the pinnacle of motherly care. As Sarah Rizun il‐ lustrates, the media usually represent women committing crimes “in predomi‐ nantly negative, erroneous, and stereotypical ways” (191), which contrasts starkly with Happy Valley. Where the typical criminal portrayed on television 185 Happy Valley (2014-) is white and upper/ middle class (see ibid. 192), which leads to a strong “under‐ representation of socioeconomically marginalized perpetrators in entertain‐ ment” (ibid.), Alison obviously belongs to a poor working class milieu. And fi‐ nally, whereas depictions of women and their crimes on television “tend to employ an individualised and sensationalised focus that is simplistic and devoid of contextual understanding” (ibid. 194), Wainwright takes great care to embed Alison’s as well as Daryl’s crimes in a family history of violence, abuse, and exploitation. This systematic disruption of classifications is mirrored on the story level of the show in an ethics of personal agency and responsibility designed to defy the constraints of individual, familial, and social history alike, as the need for indi‐ vidual courage and agency still looms large in Happy Valley. Arguing with Ryan about one of his misdeeds at school, Catherine distinctly reminds him: “And don’t blame. Other people. For decisions that you make. You made the decision to rip up the painting, whatever the hell else’d happened, whatever she called you, you made that decision.” (Wainwright, S1/ E5, 45, emphasis in original) This urgent call to accept personal responsibility forms a staple of Catherine’s out‐ look on the world. As Helen Piper argues, “although Catherine elsewhere re‐ minds colleagues that poverty and neglect play a significant part in the shaping of a life, such factors are ultimately rejected as mitigation; moral responsibility is insistently upheld at a deeper personal level” (“Compassion”, 189). It is not just Catherine who advocates this ethics of individual responsibility and agency. Abduction and rape victim Ann Gallagher turns into a prime example of the self-responsible individual in Happy Valley when she consciously refuses to be determined by the terrible things she experienced: “What happened says more about him than it’ll ever say about me.” (Wainwright, S1/ E6, 23) Ann’s further story in series two impressively highlights the power of the individual to escape the constraints of one’s history: it is through her own will that she recovers her agency. Her role as a community support officer in series two metaphorically identifies self-responsible individuals like her as the pillars of society. On the structural level of the show, however, Sally Wainwright establishes a pattern of repetition both within and across the two series that posits a circular view of life leaving but little room for optimism. Each of the two series begins with an apparently random incident whose distinctive central features recur in its violent climax. The first series begins with how Liam, doused in petrol, is threatening to set fire to himself with a cigarette lighter. When Liam is about to inadvertently set himself aflame by lighting a cigarette, Catherine foams him. This set-up is uncannily similar to Catherine’s final calamitous encounter with Tommy on the boat, who is also threatening to kill himself (and Ryan), doused 186 Caroline Lusin in petrol, with a cigarette lighter. Again, Catherine just about manages to avert the catastrophe by punching him in the face and then covering him in foam. In the second series, Wainwright proceeds in exactly the same way. It begins with how Catherine, albeit reluctantly, kills the injured sheep by hitting it on the head with a stone to spare it further misery. At the end of the series, Daryl’s mother unknowingly replicates this gruesome scene (which involved their own sheep) in another act of compassion when she shoots her son. The story arch of both series, finally, begins and ends with a similar incident. Becky’s suicide has its parallel at the end of the series in the suicide of DS John Wadsworth, which Catherine tries hard but fails to prevent despite her best efforts. In leaving Catherine once more helpless and deeply distressed, this framing scene poign‐ antly foregrounds the limited powers of the individual to change the course of things. Taken together, and despite the show’s insistence on personal agency and responsibility, these patterns of repetition create a discomforting impression that history repeats itself in the most violent ways. 5. Conclusion Unlike the speaker of the title song, Sally Wainwright herself did manage to leave the ‘trouble town’ of Sowerby Bridge behind, but her move away from her Northern home to the intellectual centre of Oxford certainly did not entail a “look back with nostalgia” (Schmid 350), as it did for other Northern artists (see ibid.). Whereas nostalgia “exiles us from the present as it brings the past near” (Hutcheon/ Valdés 20), Happy Valley focuses unflinchingly on the contemporary moment. In fact, the world described in Happy Valley strikingly resembles the bleak present nostalgia is supposed to help us escape: it appears as “complicated, contaminated, anarchic, difficult, ugly, and confrontational” (ibid.). Where nos‐ talgia usually relates to a time in history where structures of community are perceived to have been still intact, the setting of Happy Valley persistently ref‐ erences the point in time at which community, along with a sense of belonging and security, was thought to have been lost (if indeed it ever existed). With its ironic references to nostalgic rural ideals of Englishness and its ironic subversion of patriarchal structures of responsibility, Happy Valley is no doubt positioned “in a wider national discourse about contemporary postindustrial society” (Piper, “Broadcast Drama”, 177-8). It is certainly a case in point for the sociological observation that “[t]he social and personal relations characterizing families and communities are ‘fragile’ […] and the solidarities on which they are based are fast disappearing” (Charles 439): it focuses on family histories of dys‐ function, violence, and abuse, which are embedded within larger national, 187 Happy Valley (2014-) Pan-European structures of inequality and exploitation presented by the drug and the modern slave trade. In this context, Happy Valley negotiates the roles of fathers in particular, to whose position in the family sociologists accord “cen‐ tral importance […] with respect to its recognition in society” (Aldous 3). If the relationship of Tommy and Ryan was thus central to both series so far, the third series promises to further explore their shared story as Ryan grows up (see Dowell). Yet, Happy Valley ultimately refuses to subscribe to gender stereotypes through its depictions of graphic ‘motherly’ violence, just as it avoids to confine its unflinching analysis of present-day Britain to a particular social class. Just like Sarah Lancashire’s most recent project Kiri (2018), a four-part Channel4 drama focusing on a maverick social worker, Happy Valley highlights the conflict between the individual on the one hand and the structures of society on the other. In a very similar way as Catherine, Kiri’s protagonist Miriam Grayson (Sarah Lancashire) is presented as a flawed but profoundly warm-hearted, no-nonsense individual marred by the loss of a child. Through these qualities, both women humanise the institutions they work for in pro‐ foundly individual ways. However, where Kiri traces the harrowing process of how Miriam is ultimately ousted from her job for one tragically misguided de‐ cision and destroyed as a person, Happy Valley, despite all its pessimism, con‐ stantly affirms the need for the individual to assert oneself against all odds. In a contemporary world in which social dysfunction, violence, and exploitation are pervasive, Happy Valley makes a passionate case for the agency and moral courage of the self-responsible individual as the clues to ameliorating life in the ‘trouble town’ of Britain. Bibliography Primary Sources Bugg, Jake. “Trouble Town.” www.metrolyrics.com/ trouble-town-lyrics-jake-bugg.html. Accessed on 25 September 2018. Happy Valley. Series 1-2. Written by Sally Wainwright. Directed by Sally Wainwright, Euros Lyn, Tim Fywell, and Neasa Hardiman. BBC, 2014-2016. Kiri. Written by Jack Thorne and Rachel De-Lahay. Directed by Euros Lyn. Channel4, 2018. Silk. Series 1-3. Created by Peter Moffat. 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Koen Matthijs with the collaboration of Ann Van den Trost. Leuven: Leuven UP, 1998. 3-18. Aroesti, Rachel. “Apple Tree Yard: is this the first honest portrayal of rape on TV? ” The Guardian. 30 January 2017. www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/ 2017/ jan/ 30/ appletree-yard-is-this-the-first-honest-portrayal-of-rape-on-tv-emily-watson. Accessed on 2 September 2018. Baena, Rosalía. “Performing Englishness: Postnational Nostalgia in Lark Rise to Candle‐ ford and Parade’s End.” Emotions in Contemporary TV Series. Ed. Alberto N. García. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 118-33. Bauman, Zygmunt. Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. 189 Happy Valley (2014-) “BBC One drama Happy Valley closes with 7.8m viewers.” BBC. 12 June 2014. www.bbc. co.uk/ mediacentre/ latestnews/ 2014/ happy-valley-figures. Accessed on 26 August 2018. 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Valdés. “Irony, Nostalgia and the Postmodern: A Dialogue.” Poligrafias 3 (1998-2000): 18-41. Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). Accessed on 20 September 2018. Kean, Danuta. “Unseen Sylvia Plath letters claim domestic abuse by Ted Hughes.” The Guardian. 11 April 2017. www.theguardian.com/ books/ 2017/ apr/ 11/ unseen-sylviaplath-letters-claim-domestic-abuse-by-ted-hughes. Accessed on 19 September 2018. Lüscher, Kurt. “Postmodern Societies - Postmodern Families? ” The Family: Contemporary Perspectives and Challenges. Ed. Koen Matthijs with the collaboration of Ann Van den Trost. Leuven: Leuven UP, 1998. 180-94. Piper, Helen. “Happy Valley: Compassion, Evil and Exploitation in an Ordinary ‘Trouble Town’.” Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain. Eds. David Forest and Beth Johnson. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 181-97. —. “Broadcast Drama and the Problem of Television Aesthetics: Home, Nation, Universe.” Screen 57.2 (2016): 163-83. “Poet Plath’s Son Takes Own Life.” BBC News. 23 March 2009. http: / / news.bbc.co.uk/ 2 / hi/ entertainment/ 7958876.stm. Accessed on 31 August 2018. Rizun, Sarah. “Fictionalized Women in Trouble: An Exploration of the Television Crime Drama CSI: Miami.” 190-207. ProQuest Ebook Central, http: / / ebookcentral.proquest. com/ lib/ unimannheim-ebooks/ detail.action? docID=896970. Schmid, Susanne. “Between L.S. Lowry and Coronation Street: Salford Cultural Identi‐ ties.” Thinking Northern: Textures of Identity in the North of England. Ed. Christoph Ehland. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2007. 346-60. Stinshoff, Richard. “Beyond the Industrial Revolution: The Transformation of Britain’s Canals and Their Cultural Meaning.” Thinking Northern: Textures of Identity in the North of England. Ed. Christoph Ehland. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2007. 257-77. White, Vikki. “The REAL Happy Valley might look like a pretty village but it hides dark secrets.” The Mirror. 13 February 2016. www.mirror.co.uk/ tv/ tv-news/ real-happyvalley-might-look-7365294. Accessed on 26 August 2018. Wilton, Shauna. “Mothers Hunting Murderers: Representations of Motherhood in Broad‐ church and Happy Valley.” Clues: A Journal of Detection 36.1 (2018): 101-10. 191 Happy Valley (2014-) Marginalised Tower Blocks: Crime and Community on the Council Estate in Top Boy (2011-2013) Luis Özer Play word association with the term ‘council estate’. Estates mean alcoholism, drug ad‐ diction, relentless petty stupidity, a kind of stir-craziness induced by chronic poverty and the human mind caged by the rigid bars of class and learned incuriosity. (Hanley, History, 7) 1. Introduction Looming on the urban skyline, council estates serve as symbols for the socially deprived and marginalised in the popular British imagination (see Burke 181). Due to the Grenfell Tower tragedy on 14 June 2017, when a fire engulfed the 24-storey West London tower block and caused 71 deaths, the state of high-rise housing has recently become an urgently and globally debated matter again. Once heralded as the vehicles of slum clearance and beacons of a thriving wel‐ fare state, council estates are now prominently envisioned as crime-ridden ha‐ vens for a social underclass in British cinema and television (see Monk 274; Nwonka 68-9). In fact, they are architectural reminders of how profoundly classism still governs community formation in Britain’s urban areas today. As Lynsey Hanley argues in her personal and empirical history of council housing, estates are proof that “class is built into the physical landscape of the country” (History 18). These inner-city monoliths are designed in an insular way that ensures maximal separation between their tenants at the bottommost tier of the social scale and the more affluent urban home owners in the immediate envi‐ ronment. Council estates manifest the class barrier that prevails between com‐ munities in inner residential areas across the United Kingdom. 1 Various politicians have identified council estates as seedbeds of crime and sites of neglect throughout the years. In 2016, former conservative Prime Minister David Cameron spoke of “brutal high-rise towers and dark alleyways that are a gift to criminals and drug dealers” (qtd. in Beckett). Nineteen years earlier, in 1997, his Labour Party predecessor Tony Blair addressed the ‘forgotten people’ on the Aylesbury Estate in Walworth, London for his in‐ augural speech but did so in similarly accusatory and criminalising terms: “There are es‐ tates where the biggest employer is the drugs industry, where all that is left of the high hopes of the postwar planners is derelict concrete” (qtd. in ibid.). Television and film have had a share in reflecting or shaping dominant concep‐ tions of council estates since they were first being erected in the early 20 th century. As Andrew Burke argues accordingly, “[t]he image of the tower block silhouetted against the sky has become part of the basic vocabulary of British cinema, most often invoked as a visual signifier for the marginalised and menacing” (177). The critically acclaimed Channel 4 drama Top Boy (2011-2013), which was awarded ‘Best Drama Serial’ at the 2012 Royal Television Society programme awards, is sit‐ uated between the familiar clichéd portrayal of council estates and a more critical social-realist perspective that evinces a sense of community and solidarity among estate dwellers defiant of prejudice. Communal experience in Top Boy therefore serves as a counter model to the dominant medial and political narrative that often reduces the council estate to “a single tale of social dysfunction” (Hanley, “Na‐ tion”). 1 The ensemble drama follows a multigenerational set of tenants on the fic‐ tional Summerhouse estate in the London Borough of Hackney, thus visualising life on the council estate from within. According to Patrick Wright, “the council tower block serves as a generator of infernal meanings for people who look at it from outside. Those who live inside have a different experience” (79). Regarding its in‐ ternal perspective, the series has the means necessary to provide a careful por‐ trayal of lived realities and communal ties on the estate beyond the public eye, to break with stereotyped images imposed on council estates from the outside. More‐ over, in comparison with the documentary and the feature film, the serial narrative format of Top Boy allows for an expansive inquiry into the everyday concerns and struggles of estate dwellers. Although the series is well-equipped for a nuanced depiction of an East London tower block community, its thematic premise as well as its production and genre-specific context do not allow for a classification of Top Boy as a gen‐ uine social-realist text that liberates itself entirely from the dominant public perception of the council estate. While Top Boy does go beyond a purely enter‐ tainment-oriented recitation of the stereotyped popular image by conveying a degree of community attachment among the tenants of Summerhouse, it also adheres to familiar narrative patterns of black urban crime. The series ends up between a thought-provoking and insightful delineation of a marginalised com‐ 194 Luis Özer munity that raises important questions about the larger social dynamics that have led to the current abysmal image of council estates and a reductive and conformist depiction aimed at spectacle and commercial success. Before analysing the oppositional themes and filmic strategies of Top Boy that lead to my assessment, I examine the drama against the backdrop of the rela‐ tively recent televisual and filmic genre ‘black British urban crime’ (see Malik/ Nwonka 430) and discuss its social-realist tendencies. To begin with, I sketch out the evolution of the British council estate from the interwar period until today. The turbulent history of the council estate is linked to filmic representa‐ tions of the same, and not least to how Top Boy portrays inner-city estate com‐ munities and living conditions. 2. Estates of the Nation: On the British Council Estate and its Communities Council estates are geographically bounded communities; like other urban neighbourhoods, they form ‘communities of place’. Interaction between com‐ munity members is confined to one of two fundamentally different types of housing schemes characteristic of certain eras in British council housing history: large-scale suburban estates consisting of low-rise cottage houses with gardens and the type of high-density mass housing in inner residential areas that we are faced with in Top Boy (see Dunleavy 1, 94). Plagued by a general lack of oppor‐ tunity and social mobility, community members typically share a low socioe‐ conomic status in contrast to private home owners in the vicinity who can afford expensive inner urban property. Such communities are marginalised and stig‐ matised by society on the grounds of their minority status or class affiliation. According to Susanne Cuevas, they rank among “Britain’s most underprivileged and highly stigmatised communities which are segregated along class, ethnic and religious lines” (386). Location-based estate communities can be subdivided into other types such as identity-based communities formed around minorities - ethnic, religious, or other - that have accumulated on a given estate. Irre‐ spective of the negative public perception of council housing, ‘community’ here does not lose the distinctively warm feeling the term typically conveys (see Bauman 1). It implies a positive sense of empowerment and collective action in the face of the medial and political vilification of council estates. As concrete monuments indicative of the state of the nation, council estates have come to stand for those who have been left behind on the continuing journey towards a fully modernised country (see Burke 178). Shedding light on the rise and fall of the British welfare state throughout the 20 th century, one may refer 195 Top Boy (2011-2013) 2 Hanley first employed the term in the title of her review of Stephen Willats’ book Vision and Reality for The Times Literary Supplement. Willats uses photographs and interviews to portray council estates and thereby offers a survey of the state of Britain over the last four decades from the perspective of estate tenants (see Hanley, “Nation”). 3 For example, a 1956 policy effected that “[a]bove six storeys the subsidy rose by a fixed increment for each additional storey in the block” (ibid. 37), which provided a monetary incentive to add as many storeys as possible. to them as ‘estates of the nation’. 2 However, the image of state-led housing in the United Kingdom has not always been one of hopeless pessimism and social dys‐ function. Especially in recent years, political ideology and class-related stereo‐ typing have been governing a public discourse on council housing which at times noticeably parted with historical fact. As Wright argues in his survey of high-rise council housing in Hackney, “the image of the council tower block is now sur‐ rounded more by myth than by any clear understanding of the circumstances that gave rise to it” (91). In an effort to counteract such misconceptions and as a back‐ drop for the ensuing analysis, it will be helpful to untangle some historical truths about the council estate and to provide an overview of current developments. The “public housing drive” (Dunleavy 1) began between the wars to relocate slum dwellers in suburban cottage-style estates at urban peripheries. These ef‐ forts came along with a steep rise in housing amenity on behalf of “a bright, uncynical working class” (Hanley, History, 10) and were accordingly deemed a significant achievement of a blossoming welfare state. Councils held on to the interwar model of small-sized houses on large-scale suburban estates for some years in the post-World War II period; however, due to relatively slow progress on slum clearance, subsequent policy changes promoted a new type of high-storey, flatted council estate on expensive inner urban property for rede‐ velopment purposes and “to secure a more direct attack on slum conditions” (Dunleavy 37) at urban cores. 3 As a result, the inner-city tower block became the go-to model of the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s at the expense of the interwar model. Although the “high-rise housing boom” (ibid. 38) of the 1950s and 1960s still implied an overall improvement to housing standards for those who were rehoused, the level of housing amenity did not match that of earlier periods as the density of flats steadily increased, higher storeys were added, and other compromises in construction and safety were made (see ibid. 1-2). The decline of housing standards is one factor in a complex array of circum‐ stances that lead to a dramatic shift in the public perception of council estates after the boom of the 1960s. According to Hanley, “[i]n the decade between 1955 and 1965, council homes went from being the crowning glory of the new welfare state to mass-produced barracks” (History, 103). Contributing to the loss of rep‐ 196 Luis Özer utation of council housing, the conservative administrations of Harold Mac‐ millan and his successors advanced the notion that to be a legitimate and re‐ spected citizen, one had to own the property in which one lived (see ibid. 11, 98). Respective policy was to follow in 1980: under the Thatcher administration, the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme allowed tenants to buy their previously council-owned homes, which led to a scarcity of council housing and left only those without the means to capitalise on the policy in the remaining, less at‐ tractive stock (see Cuevas 384). The declining prestige of the council tower block found expression in a decrease in construction: council-house building sloped down swiftly in the 1970s and 1980s, never to recover (see Hanley, History, 100; Dunleavy 39). Returning to the location of Top Boy, “Hackney was among the last councils to recognize the limitations of ‘comprehensive redevelopment’ as it was practised in the Fifties and Sixties” (Wright 78). The image of the borough was lastingly transformed as Georgian and Victorian structures made way for concrete high-rises in the course of urban redevelopment programmes. Wright sums up the rapid rise and fall of the British council estate as follows: “Stripped of its progressive aura, the council tower block has […] undergone a symbolic conversion and emerged as a monstrous emblem of the futility of all State-led social reform [...].” (105) Said conversion has held steady until today. From a present-day perspective, the repercussions of declining housing amenity, generations of stigmatisation, and a pervasive sense of neglect that plague council estates and their inhabitants should not be underestimated. In fact, com‐ pared to affluent home owners, people growing up on estates have a shorter life expectancy and are one seventh as likely to attend university (see Hanley, His‐ tory, 163). Moreover, a century of council housing has profoundly impacted com‐ munities in conurbations and urban centres. Those affected by slum clearance had little to no stake in the decision-making process regarding when or where they would be rehoused, which disrupted already existing communities and intro‐ duced an element of chance to the prospect of forming lasting communal ties in a given environment for as long as displacement remained on the table (see Dun‐ leavy 31). If, in the past, it was slum clearance that drove plans of urban renewal, cityscapes are now being transformed under headlines such as ‘urban regenera‐ tion’. Despite the rational aim to modernise deprived urban neighbourhoods, these plans call the future tenancy of estate dwellers into question since private or state-led investments in working-class quarters and previously council-owned properties threaten local communities dependent on social housing (see Hill). Most significantly detrimental to an inclusive urban communal life, council estates are “class ghettoes, places where few middle-class people […] ever ven‐ ture” (Hanley, History, 163). This observation has prompted Hanley to conceive 197 Top Boy (2011-2013) 4 In the following, Top Boy refers to the entire multi-season drama, while series one and series two refer to the respective season only. 5 After numerous rumours of a possible continuation of the television drama, the Amer‐ ican on-demand streaming service Netflix officially announced in late 2017 that it would take over and revive Top Boy for a third season with the support of the Canadian rapper and outed fan of the show, Drake, as an additional executive producer (see O’Connor). Set to be available for streaming in 2019, the coming Netflix originals series will com‐ prise ten episodes and bring back the former cast, writer, and producers (see ibid.). of estates as “class-segregated” (ibid. 149). Ironically, council housing was always intended to effect the exact opposite; that is, to combat the marked class barrier between the inhabitants of slums and affluent inner residential areas (see Dun‐ leavy 101). One of the reasons why this effort has been unsuccessful is the pe‐ culiarly insular design of council estates which are often “cut off from passers-by, car routes, local shops and every class of people except the people who live on them” (Hanley, History, 163). This leads to the paradoxical situation that council tower blocks are both central, in cartographic terms, and marginal, from an architectural and social standpoint. Turning to Top Boy next, it will become evident that, despite their central location, class-segregated council es‐ tates tend to become urban enclaves antagonistic towards and alienated from neighbouring communities. 3. Top Boy between Social Realism and Commercialised Urban Crime Top Boy was written by the Irish novelist and screenwriter Ronan Bennett, him‐ self a longstanding Hackney resident, and focuses especially on the gang life, drug dealing, and crude violence that haunt the Hackney council estate. French film and television director Yann Demange directed series one, 4 which com‐ prised four episodes in total. First broadcast in 2011, series one aired over four consecutive nights on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. Canadian film and television director Jonathan van Tulleken directed series two, which comprised another four episodes and aired on Channel 4 two years later, in 2013. 5 The fact that Top Boy came to be broadcast on Channel 4 helps to understand that market forces in the British television industry are partly responsible for why the drama does not entirely break with stigmatised images of the council estate. Following recommendations in the Annan Report 1977, Channel 4 was called into existence in the United Kingdom in 1982 to provide content for mi‐ nority audiences and as a public service counterweight to the commercial tele‐ vision network ITV alongside BBC (see Lay 78). During the early years of the channel, many of its films addressed “the discrimination, social exclusion and 198 Luis Özer 6 The shift towards mainstream programming was, for instance, reflected in Channel 4’s decision to broadcast the popular American sitcom Friends (1994-2004), which earned the channel high ratings throughout a fifteen-year run between 1995 and 2011 (see “Channel 4”). 7 The list of parameters that contribute to the credibility of the drama could be extended. Ashley Walters, one of the drama’s leading actors in the role of chief drug dealer Dushane, previously served a prison sentence for the possession of a firearm (see Iqbal). Moreover, series one was broadcast after Hackney saw gang-related shootings in London Fields and Hoxton in the previous year (see Meikle). 8 Tayo Jarrett (‘Scorcher’) and Kane Robinson (‘Kano’), both leading actors in Top Boy, are familiar names in the London grime scene. stigmas that defined […] Britain’s black communities at the time” and “offered a counter-hegemonic response to racist stereotypes” (Malik/ Nwonka 426). The programming shifted decisively under the Broadcasting Act 1990, which made Channel 4 responsible for generating advertising revenue and competing with commercial networks (see Lay 99). The neoliberal reorientation of the channel centred on commercially successful mainstream television against its original agenda (see Malik/ Nwonka 426). 6 The changes in the industry brought about by the Act have led to the emergence of a distinctive type of contemporary social realism that faces competition in a global commercial market (see Lay 102-3). Top Boy exemplifies the tensions and trade-offs between social-realist mi‐ nority television and commercially oriented mainstream entertainment emblem‐ atic of recent Channel 4 broadcasting. Bennett’s drama evinces key features as‐ sociated with British social realism, an historically contingent and elusive mode of expression generally attributed to motion pictures that shed light on inequali‐ ties affecting the working class (see Lay 8). Top Boy accordingly raises pressing social issues with regard to precarious council housing, street violence, and pov‐ erty. In line with the social-realist tradition, it involves a contemporary setting and draws attention to marginalised and hitherto underrepresented groups facing so‐ cial inequalities. For instance, come series two, gentrification starts to pose an existential threat to working-class, predominantly non-white shop owners and tenants on the estate. The remarkable attention to geographical detail and evo‐ cation of a local Hackney spirit, paired with a sense of genuine “tower-block au‐ thenticity” (Iqbal), add to the social-realist tone of Top Boy. Bennett in fact spent two years observing and interviewing gang members and residents in Hackney. During this time, the team cast several non-professional Hackney locals they found on the streets of the borough (see Bennett). 7 Finally, the drama is con‐ scious of local popular culture trends that emerged during the time of its produc‐ tion. Its soundtrack features grime music, which evolved in London in the early 2000s, and its cast includes artists associated with the genre. 8 199 Top Boy (2011-2013) 9 For an overview of the filmic history of the council tower block in Britain, see Burke 178-81. For a discussion of social-realist representations of council estates in British film, see Nwonka 70-7. 10 It did so quite successfully, generating solid ratings throughout series one that ranged from 990.000 to 1.1 million viewers per episode (see Rosser). Social realism has in the past served as a popular mode of expression to por‐ tray the council estate and associated working-class communities (see Nwonka 65). A number of respective social-realist films and television dramas preceded Top Boy, of which Our Friends in the North (1996) is a noteworthy example. The award-winning and critically acclaimed nine-part BBC television drama sheds light on British council housing in Newcastle between the 1960s and 1990s, es‐ pecially the “compromises and corruption” (Burke 181) that accompanied the emergence of high-rise estates. 9 Complementary to film-making, Susanne Cuevas observes a revival of social-realist modes of writing in contemporary examples of “council estate novels” (392) like Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003) and Courttia Newland’s The Scholar: A West-Side Story (1997). A more recent example in this vein is Guy Gunaratne’s debut novel In Our Mad and Furious City (2018), which is set on an estate of tower blocks in Neasden, North West London and, like Top Boy, is inspired by grime music. In contrast to its social-realist tendencies, Top Boy adheres to a distinctive mode of ‘black British urban crime’ that emerged in the early 2000s (see Malik/ Nwonka 430). This subgenre of the crime drama rose out of a “commodification of black subculture” and a series of “knife and gun crimes amongst sections of black working-class youths in areas across London” (ibid. 427). After eight men had been shot dead in just two years around Hackney’s Clapton Road, the street was dubbed ‘Murder Mile’ by The Independent (see Mendick/ Johnson). However, the sensationalist manner in which mainstream media at the time exploited these incidents to equate criminality with young black gang members from inner-city council estates lacked scientific underpinning and reinforced stigmas attached to black urban communities (see Malik/ Nwonka 428-9). Like many other British films and television shows in this period, Top Boy was clearly in‐ spired by the public fascination for black urban crime. Gang-related violence and murder in the drama are almost exclusively reserved for African-Caribbean characters and other minorities like Muslims or Albanians. Channel 4 advertised the drama accordingly to generate a large viewership (see ibid. 436). 10 Other noteworthy filmic examples of post-millennial black British urban crime include the acclaimed BBC drama Bullet Boy (2004), which, like Top Boy, stars Ashley Walters in a leading role and is set on a Hackney council estate as well as the 200 Luis Özer 11 For more examples in the tradition of black British urban crime from the early 2000s, see Malik/ Nwonka 430-1. 12 In the following, references to Top Boy will be given without repeating the title. successful Inner London drama Kidulthood (2006) and its two sequels. 11 Apart from feature films, critics and reviewers alike have commented on the analogies between Top Boy and the critically acclaimed HBO drama The Wire (2002-2008), which delves into the Baltimore drug scene. While striking similarities with the American serial drama do exist, for example with regard to analogous character arcs (see Cumming), Top Boy sets itself apart on the grounds of its fidelity to the unique living conditions and social housing schemes in a London borough. The formulaic black urban crime motif in Top Boy somewhat compromises its social-realist efforts to expose the social inequalities that fuel criminal in‐ tentions among minorities in the first place and its potential to overcome race and class-related stigma in its portrayal of inner-city estate communities. Channel 4’s commercial drive in a contested global market is one indicator for the ambivalent currents in Bennet’s drama. Keeping the contemporary indus‐ trial context in mind, I now turn to specific thematic and stylistic features by means of which Top Boy either affirms or breaks with dominant conceptions of the council estate. 4. Clashing Visions of the Council Estate: Crime and Community in Top Boy Top Boy unfolds against the backdrop of a troubled inner-city estate where com‐ munity involvement adds a layer of complexity to purely dysfunctional repre‐ sentations of the council estate by providing a form of refuge from daily threats lurking inside the gates of Summerhouse. The storyline at the core of the drama traces the antiheroes Dushane (Ashley Walters) and his close friend Sully (Kane Robinson) as they aspire to rule the Summerhouse drug business. To rise through the ranks, the men in their twenties are prepared to intimidate, assault, or kill those who stand in their way. Their biggest rivals in the Hackney drug trade are a gang from nearby London Fields, led by Kamale (Tayo Jarrett). The latter lives on the 20 th floor, “at the top of the block” (Top Boy, S1/ E2, 00: 07), 12 thus currently holding the position of ‘top boy’. Another contestant for the top spot, albeit unrelated to the gang context, is Ra’Nell (Malcolm Kamulete). His is a coming-of-age trajectory: the teenager is forced to step up after his mother Lisa (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) has suffered a breakdown and is hospitalised. Ra’Nell struggles not to get entangled in gang machinations as he is trying to cope with everyday life on the estate autonomously. 201 Top Boy (2011-2013) 13 Dushane and his friends do not see themselves as a gang. They rather consider them‐ selves extended family: “There is no gangs, [only] friends, family. […] You lot watch too much American movies [...].” (S2/ E1, 00: 19) Their methods and interactions are, however, best described as gang-like. Top Boy is a drama in which different visions of the council estate collide. Midway through series two, Dushane tells his solicitor and fling Rhianna Parkes (Lorraine Burroughs) in a boastful tone that he is coping well considering that he comes from an estate “where from the day you’re born they tell you, you can’t have nothing” (S2/ E2, 00: 29). Rhianna eventually responds that “Summer‐ house is a shithole. You’re the king of a shithole, Dushane” (S2/ E2, 00: 32). The exchange is paradigmatic of two discrepant perceptions of the living conditions in an Inner London tower block that run through the drama. One stems from a life-long resident with an inside perspective who takes pride in his origins and has acquired a position of authority in the gang-afflicted community. The other comes from a self-made solicitor whose blunt comment epitomises the stigma surrounding council housing in post-war Britain and who considers Summer‐ house no more than a dump. For Rhianna, a secure life plan means having a property in one’s name, something that Dushane denies he needs. The alterca‐ tion touches on Cuming’s observation that, being state-owned dwellings, council estates are positioned “between the private and public realms” (329) and ultimately leave residents dispossessed. Dushane’s protection does not consist of material assets but of communal support: he relies on his alliance with other estate dwellers to maintain his way of life. Regarding plot and character constellation, Top Boy conforms to the black British urban crime genre. Black-on-black crime within African-Caribbean com‐ munities and gang-related drug trade drive the plot forward and perpetuate the stigmatised and criminalised image of the council estate. From the outset, the drama renders Summerhouse a place where trouble awaits and a responsible adult accordingly tells the kids in order to protect them: “No hanging out on the estate! ” (S1/ E1, 00: 18). When they disobey and do so regardless, Dushane and his aides lure them into the gang 13 as drug peddlers because minors are more difficult to hold accountable by the authorities. As it turns out, these are not just any drugs but ‘Class A’ drugs: crack, cocaine, and heroin (S2/ E2, 00: 11). Top Boy’s unembellished portrayal of the estate as a drug-infested environment is often cruel and deliberately avoids taking a moral stance. The name ‘Summer‐ house’, which one would rather associate with some sort of retreat for the summer months designed for recreational purposes, creates an ironic contrast to the merciless reality but could also be viewed as a metaphor for the estate as an urban enclave where the norms of ordinary workaday life do not apply. 202 Luis Özer 14 ‘Sink estate’ has become widely used as a derogatory term for the most deprived estates in the country. It originates from a particular meaning of ‘sink’ which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as: “A receptacle or gathering-place of vice, corruption, etc.” (“Sink, n.”). For a critical discussion of the term and its implications, see Campkin (77-104). Among the recurring characters, Jason (Ricky Smarts) is one of the most disen‐ franchised and underprivileged ones. The child enters the action in series two, stealing from other estate dwellers and vendors to afford drugs for his addicted and abusive parents who live in a shabby and neglected flat. His hopeless sit‐ uation urges the otherwise unconcerned and reckless Sully to tell him: “You’ve got to make something of your life, even among all this shit [...].” (S2/ E4, 00: 14) Jason represents the kind of underclass character who is routinely associated with the ‘sink estate’, 14 who has no stake in society and a bleak future. Cinematography and editing contribute to making the grittiness of estate life more palpable. The opening scene to the first episode serves as an example; fast cuts between Dushane and his company, food vendors on the estate, and a young boy selling drugs follow in succession. Paired with a shaky camera, the quickly alternating medium close-ups of Dushane’s crew in conversation and close-ups of the hands performing the drug exchange or selling groceries evoke a fast-paced, vibrant, and slightly disorienting image of the estate. Meanwhile, more hand-held cameras capture some of Dushane’s allies as they are falling victim to a nearby drug heist and Ra’Nell overseeing the action from a high-rise window. In this instance, the shakiness of the camera work has an immersive effect that makes the audience feel as though they themselves are partaking in the tumultuous situation including sequences of running and approaching cars. The hand-held camera remains a prominent filming technique throughout the drama, creating a documentary film aesthetic based on the illusion that un‐ scripted reality is being captured spontaneously. Although crime and social deprivation constitute real problems on many inner-city estates, it is the implied normality and largely unsanctioned nature of criminal offences in Top Boy that result in a modest departure from social realism in favour of a clichéd depiction of the council estate at the story level. This in‐ cludes a noticeable lack of state authority throughout series one. Although sound effects are used to implement occasional police sirens while blurry emergency lights appear in the background (S1/ E2, 00: 43), the presence of police force is only ever mildly suggested. For purposes of spectacle, series one presupposes a self-regulatory gang system according to which who gets to rule the neighbour‐ hood and drug circulation is decided on the streets and in the courtyards without any state intervention. According to Malik and Nwonka, the underrepresented state apparatus is one in a number of dramaturgic decisions that evince an “eva‐ 203 Top Boy (2011-2013) sion of actual social criticism” (439) and clash with the realist modes of filmic representation employed by the directors. Police interference eventually be‐ comes a more serious concern in series two. The arrest of Dushane’s right-hand man Dris (Shone Romulus) in front of his little daughter hints at the conflict be‐ tween leading a criminal gang life and being a responsible family man. Further‐ more, youngster Michael (Xavien Russell) carries the burden of having disclosed valuable information to the police during an intimidating interrogation, which costs him trust within the gang and finally culminates in his death. All around more consistent in its social-realist tone, series two makes a mark‐ edly greater effort to address wider socio-political issues that influence com‐ munal experience on the estate. Urban property developers aim at turning Sum‐ merhouse into a place of “high-end living units for urban professionals” (S2/ E3, 00: 11) with the support of the council and landlords. As a consequence, Lisa’s hair salon, which functions as a gathering place for the local community, is forced to close down despite all efforts to avert said outcome. Lisa believes that plans of urban renewal around Summerhouse are “ripping this community apart” (S2/ E2, 00: 41). Mustapha (Nabil Elouahabi) is similarly forced to give up his local chip shop due to rising rents and, with his son Gem (Giacomo Mancini), leaves London for the cheaper Ramsgate. According to him, “this place is done. For people like us, anyway” (S2/ E3, 00: 40). Comments like his and Lisa’s imply that longstanding tenants are being pushed out of Summerhouse due to an im‐ pending scarcity of affordable social housing. Working-class communities on the estate are in turn gradually dissolving. They also exemplify important voices in the drama that, against all stigma, value Summerhouse as an established home with an intact community life to which residents have become emotionally at‐ tached despite the hardships that they encounter from time to time. Social stagnation is one of the main reasons why working-class characters like Lisa and Mustapha are unable to affront dangers of gentrification and con‐ stantly struggle to make ends meet. Instead, social mobility in Summerhouse is bound up with the drug business and gang life. The status system among gang-affiliated estate dwellers is vertically stratified: as the title of the drama already insinuates, power is linked to one’s vertical position on the block. Hence, when Dushane and Sully discuss how to seize the building in which Kamale lives, they realise that the rival gang leader purposely stays on the top floor to make it harder for others to reach him: He’s smart. He’s on the 20 th floor. He’s at the top of the block. You know the lift ain’t working in that bitch, yeah? Man’s got to climb all them fucking stairs, get into the flat, then deal with them and then get all the way back down again. Without getting seen. I can’t see that happening, bruv. That’s on top. (S1/ E2, 00: 07) 204 Luis Özer The vertical stratification system at work applies to a localised drug and gang milieu in a specific Hackney neighbourhood of council housing. Analogous to the ‘society within society’ principle characteristic of inner-city estates (see Cuevas 387), the social hierarchies and power relations in Summerhouse attest to a microcosmic society cut off from surrounding residential areas and mar‐ ginalised on the grounds of class affiliation. Therefore, vertical mobility on the estate does not entail social climbing on a macro-societal scale. Whether top boy or a subordinate drug peddler: observed through the nation-wide lens, residents of Summerhouse remain at the less respectable end of the working class. In addition, regardless of where one ranks in the Summerhouse gang, white male drug barons who live elsewhere ultimately remain in charge. As we enter the drama, it is Bobby Raikes (Geoff Bell) who controls the drug supply and decides who gets to fill which position in the local drug chain. His name confirms that he is the one who ‘rakes’ in the cash. As a Summerhouse native who speaks with a cockney accent, Raikes faces the same class-related stigma as other council estate tenants but now governs East London’s drug business. Occupying a position that Dushane is striving to reach, Raikes serves as a model for Dushane across racial lines. There is a noticeable social-realist appeal to how Top Boy depicts the status system on an estate where, held in check by firmly fixed so‐ cietal concepts of class, tenants are driven into a criminal milieu to acquire a position of power. However, the general disregard of any means other than criminal ones to reach higher grounds is slightly overdrawn. Top Boy thus com‐ plies with a notion rooted in Tony Blair’s New Labour policy that the disad‐ vantages of estate dwellers are somehow self-inflicted, arising from anti-social and self-destructive behaviour intrinsic to their social environment (see Nwonka 69; Malik/ Nwonka 439). The more conventionally likeable protagonist Ra’Nell is a partial exception to the wilfully unlawful and corrupt lifestyle that predominates in Summer‐ house. About to turn fourteen and “just getting into the difficult bit” (S1/ E4, 00: 14), he is in a liminal passage into adulthood. Important steps in his rite of passage are accompanied by spatial crossings of symbolic value, as when he climbs a ladder onto the roof of a tower block before his first kiss and relationship with a girl (S1/ E3, 00: 24). But his liminal status transcends his ongoing maturing process: Ra’Nell is situated between a criminal life within and a future outside of the estate. He is performing a balancing act between trying not to get too deeply involved in the dubious dealings of his friends and acquaintances without seeming uncaring and striving for an alternative existence beyond the borders of the estate. Several iconic shots of Ra’Nell gazing over the skyline from a high-rise exemplify his longing for the city beyond Summerhouse. These espe‐ 205 Top Boy (2011-2013) cially include over-the-shoulder shots of Ra’Nell standing at a window or leaning on a railing (see fig. 1), alternating with long shots of Ra’Nell silhouetted against the skyline and extreme long shots of the urban scenery mirroring his field of vision. His yearning seems to materialise when he gets the opportunity to participate in the football trials for the district youth squad; however, his failure to make it into the squad and inability to use his talent as a catalyst for an alternative future is paradigmatic of the paralysed state most tenants of Summerhouse find themselves in, being trapped in their social environment and lacking the resources to build up a life elsewhere. The only exception is the pregnant white woman Heather (Kierston Wareing), who desperately seeks a middle-class life for her unborn child and does not refrain from cultivating a cannabis plantation to raise the money needed to escape the tower blocks. She eventually succeeds, but only after Ra’Nell has been forced to go through serious troubles to monetarise her crop. The role of Heather suggests that one needs a middle-class appearance in the first place and preferably a non-immigrant eth‐ nicity in order to secure a chance to get out. Fig. 1: Over-the-shoulder shot of Ra’Nell gazing at the skyline (S1/ E4, 00: 48). Contrary to characters like Heather or Rhianna, for whom the estate repre‐ sents an uninhabitable place one would only wish to escape from, other central characters exemplify the camaraderie and communal spirit on the estate. There is a high willingness in the Summerhouse community to help out those in need. For instance, old family friend Leon (Nicholas Pinnock) looks after Ra’Nell while 206 Luis Özer the boy’s mother is in hospital, Lisa resorts to Dushane when her son gets in trouble, and Sully becomes a surrogate father to Jason. Such acts of solidarity in Top Boy run counter to simplistic images of deprived and anti-social tower blocks and instead render the estate a catalyst of community. Dris’ and Sully’s affection for their daughters and Dushane’s attachment to the youths on the estate add a moral complexity to the ruthless antiheroes. Their familial ties evoke an im‐ pression of rootedness and provide a contrast to their roles as street thugs. In addition, a multicultural London vernacular functions as a community marker and fosters communal identification. The main characters blend Jamaican Patois (e.g., wagwan for ‘what’s going on’), cockney (e.g., oi for ‘hey’), and urban slang (e.g., innit, a contraction of ‘isn’t it’, used as a generic tag question; bruv, blud, and fam for ‘mate’; jakes and feds for ‘police’; food for ‘drugs’). Apart from adding verisimilitude to dialogue, the locally specific multiethnolect fosters a feeling of belonging among the residents of Summerhouse and emphasises their commit‐ ment to the East London tower block environment. The loyalty of locals to their own square of concrete indeed turns out to be a central theme in Top Boy and increases one’s approval in the community. Being ‘born and bred’ in Summerhouse underscores one’s legitimacy and respect among estate dwellers. For instance, Dushane uses the phrase to convince Raikes that he is a promising and reliable business partner who values his local roots (S1/ E1, 00: 21). However, apart from affirming a person’s credibility on the estate, the inclination to foreground one’s council estate nativity also attests to a deep-seated sense of territoriality according to which incomers do not truly belong in the community. Such territorial thinking coincides with cognitive strategies of transforming the neglected residential area of Summerhouse into a perceived urban centre reserved for those who have always lived there. Estate tenants in the drama thereby reverse dominant patterns of marginalisation: while according to Hanley, it is council estates that would appear as blank spots on a map of London displaying the flow of cars and people (see History, 150), it is those areas of the city beyond their domestic tower blocks that represent peripheral ‘country’ for Summerhouse residents. When Dushane tells Raikes about a hiding place in Finchley, North West London for purposes of drug ped‐ dling, the latter remarks that this implies “going country” (S1/ E1, 00: 31). In the car on the way to said location, Gem is asked whether he has ever been to the country before. Oblivious of the use of ‘country’ as an equivalent for London outside Hackney, he responds that he once visited Hampshire with his grand‐ mother, a misunderstanding that leads to much amusement among the other passengers. Sully then enlightens the boy by explaining that “there’s a whole ‘nother country. It’s not that place you’ve been before” (S1/ E1, 00: 35). Branding 207 Top Boy (2011-2013) the rest of the city rural expanse functions as a means of defining Summerhouse as ‘city proper’. For locals, it represents an inner urban focal point on the map of London where others may only see blankness. By charting a map of London from the perspective of those assumed to be on the margins of society, Top Boy departs from the consensus representation of the marginal underclass and places the tower block into the perceived heart of the metropolis. Apart from reversing prevalent marginalisation processes, the construed city/ country divide attests to the restricted mental maps of estate dwellers who rarely ever leave their patch of the city. Frequent extreme long shots of the London skyline, which capture iconic structures including the O2 Arena and the high-rises of Canary Wharf (S1/ E3, 00: 39), render the city beyond Hackney an ever-present backdrop yet distant and unexplored ‘country’ that remains out of reach for estate tenants. The drama’s title sequence supports this impression. A pan shot captures a neighbourhood of council flats and courtyards from an ele‐ vated platform before settling on a night-time view of the London skyline. The opening shot thus establishes the setting of each episode as an isolated urban enclave contrasted with the recognisable high-rises towering along the Thames. When asked by Dushane to spy on Kamale in London Fields, a boy from the estate reacts saying: “That’s E8! That ain’t my gates [...].” (S1/ E3, 00: 07) The response illustrates that even certain postcode areas of Hackney, although clearly within reach of the estate, do not fall under Summerhouse territory and are rather to be avoided due to local rivalries. Since competing communities like “the Tottenham Mob” or “the Muslim boys from Whitechapel” (S1/ E3, 00: 12) lay claim to their stretch of London, all residents in turn become more restricted in their safe radius of movement. The efforts of local residents to protect and defend their territory triggers an antagonistic climate between neighbouring communities; however, rivalries be‐ tween place-bound communities also testify to how profoundly estate dwellers in Top Boy define themselves with their geographical surroundings. In the face of social marginalisation, community attachment on the council estate promotes an atmosphere of belonging and mutual support across generational and racial lines. The locally anchored communal ties provide a counterweight to the so‐ cially deprived and criminalised image of the inner-city tower block which nev‐ ertheless remains a common thread through both seasons and the entire cast of characters. 208 Luis Özer 5. Conclusion Top Boy departs from the popular medial and political image of the council estate in important ways. Regarding its gritty and morally distanced portrait of the Hackney gang and drug milieu, it seems to be in agreement with the dominant notion that inner residential tower blocks represent all the “major social prob‐ lems of contemporary Britain” (Burke 178). At second glance, through offering a perspective on the local community from within, Top Boy renders the estate more than an environment of deprivation and misery. Communal experience is characterised by a willingness to support other members and a reversal of so‐ cietal marginalisation as a means of upholding territorial authority. The series foregrounds the nature of inner-city estate communities as geographically bounded social entities; community attachment and identification are inextri‐ cably linked to members’ loyalty to their patch of the city. Despite the negative associations estates might hold in the popular British imagination, they can be an occasional source of “fierce pride” (Hanley, History, 20) for their residents, and Top Boy makes this abundantly clear. In sum, the filmic representation of the council tower block in Top Boy is marked by a noticeable gap between, firstly, series one and series two and, sec‐ ondly, between the drama’s social-realist mode of expression and its urban crime plot. In terms of the discrepant dramaturgic approaches in each season, it is the interference of the state apparatus and the imminent threat of urban renewal that contribute to a more nuanced and multidimensional portrayal of the estate in the latter season. The first season differs in that it largely omits socio-political factors impacting the community in favour of employing the setting as an in‐ herently crime-inducing social environment for purposes of spectacle. Re‐ garding its filmic narrative conventions, Top Boy exemplifies the contemporary social-realist drama between public service programming and commercially profitable television tailored to presumed mainstream audience expectations. It makes use of a social-realist framework to provide a seemingly authentic image of the council estate embedded in a faithful depiction of Hackney; at the same time, however, it employs a clichéd black urban crime formula that feeds on stigmas attached to working-class estate tenants and thereby renders East London “a place where ‘black’ and ‘crime’ appear as almost synonymous” (Malik/ Nwonka 440). The clashing visions of the council estate in Bennet’s drama are not only emblematic of market forces in the contemporary television industry, they also give some indication of the current state of the nation. In Top Boy, there is no trace left of the early splendour of estates that provided a dignified home to an 209 Top Boy (2011-2013) esteemed working class. Instead, the series portrays a crime-ridden social en‐ vironment failed by a welfare state unable and unwilling to ensure safe and sustainable social housing. At a time when formations of community include the sharing of ideas and interests in transnational networks of communication, Top Boy offers insight into an isolated living space where community emerges as a strictly confined face-to-face experience and often serves the sole pragmatic purpose of coping with everyday life. Located at the heart of a modern metrop‐ olis and international hub for trade and travel, the Inner London tower block constitutes a platform from which its inhabitants can closely observe the pos‐ sibilities of untethered community life without being able to partake in them due to class and economic barriers. Characters in the drama are instead occupied with preserving remaining places of social interaction on the estate as plans of urban regeneration have reached their front doors. What remains is a com‐ munity on the margins that, in the face of its demise, fights for its continued existence. Bibliography Primary Sources Top Boy. Series 1. Written by Ronan Bennett. Directed by Yann Demange. Cowboy Films and Easter Partisan Films, 2011. Top Boy. Series 2. Written by Ronan Bennett. Directed by Jonathan van Tulleken. Cowboy Films and Easter Partisan Films, 2013. Secondary Sources Bauman, Zygmunt. Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. Beckett, Andy. “The Fall and Rise of the Council Estate.” The Guardian. 13 July 2016. www.theguardian.com/ society/ 2016/ jul/ 13/ aylesbury-estate-south-london-socialhousing. Accessed on 24 January 2018. Bennett, Ronan. “Top Boy: Stories of Hackney’s Young Drug Dealers.” The Guardian. 8 October 2011. www.theguardian.com/ society/ 2011/ oct/ 09/ top-boy-teenage-drugdealers. Accessed on 2 February 2018. Burke, Andrew. “Concrete Universality: Tower Blocks, Architectural Modernism, and Realism in Contemporary British Cinema.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 5.3 (2007): 177-88. Campkin, Ben. Remaking London: Decline and Regeneration in Urban Culture. London: I. B. Tauris, 2013. “Channel 4 to Stop Showing Friends after 15 Years.” The Telegraph. 10 February 2010. 210 Luis Özer www.telegraph.co.uk/ culture/ tvandradio/ 7204518/ Channel-4-to-stop-showing- Friends-after-15-years.html. Accessed on 5 July 2018. Cuevas, Susanne. “‘Societies Within’: Council Estates as Cultural Enclaves in Recent Urban Fictions.” Multi-Ethnic Britain 2000+: New Perspectives in Literature, Film and the Arts. Eds. Lars Eckstein et al. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008. 383-99. Cuming, Emily. “Private Lives, Social Housing: Female Coming-of-Age Stories on the British Council Estate.” Contemporary Women’s Writing 7.3 (2013): 328-45. Cumming, Ed. “Top Boy, Channel 4, Review.” The Telegraph. 31 October 2011. www.tele graph.co.uk/ culture/ tvandradio/ 8860972/ Top-Boy-Channel-4-review.html. Accessed on 23 January 2018. Dunleavy, Patrick. The Politics of Mass Housing in Britain, 1945-1975: A Study of Corporate Power and Professional Influence in the Welfare State. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. Hanley, Lynsey. “Estates of the Nation.” The Times Literary Supplement, 6 October 2016. www.the-tls.co.uk/ articles/ private/ estates-of-the-nation-2/ . Accessed on 9 March 2018. —. Estates: An Intimate History. London: Granta, 2008. Hill, Dave. “Regeneration - or Pushing out the Poor? Labour Divides in Bitter Housing Battle.” The Guardian. 28 October 2017. www.theguardian.com/ society/ 2017/ oct/ 29/ gentrification-pushing-out-the-poor-haringey-council-housing-battle-corbynlabour. Accessed on 21 January 2018. Iqbal, Nosheen. “Ashley Walters and Kano: ‘Top Boy Hit the Nail on the Head.’” The Guardian. 9 August 2013. www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/ 2013/ aug/ 09/ top-boyashley-walters-kano. Accessed on 1 March 2018. Lay, Samantha. British Social Realism from Documentary to Brit Grit. London: Wallflower, 2002. Malik, Sarita and Clive James Nwonka. “Top Boy: Cultural Verisimilitude and the Allure of Black Criminality for UK Public Service Broadcasting Drama.” Journal of British Cinema and Television 14.4 (2017): 423-44. Meikle, James. “Gang Members Jailed for Life over Teenage Girl’s Murder.” The Guardian. 12 April 2011. www.theguardian.com/ uk/ 2011/ apr/ 12/ gang-members-teen age-girls-murder. Accessed on 2 March 2018. Mendick, Robert and Andrew Johnson. “Eight Men Shot Dead in Two Years. Welcome to Britain’s Murder Mile.” The Independent. 6 January 2002. www.independent.co.uk/ news/ uk/ this-britain/ eight-men-shot-dead-in-two-years-welcome-to-britainsmurder-mile-662314.html. Accessed on 14 March 2018. Monk, Claire. “Underbelly UK: The 1990s Underclass Film, Masculinity and the Ideologies of ‘New’ Britain.” British Cinema, Past and Present. Eds. Justine Ashby and Andrew Higson. London: Routledge, 2000. 274-87. 211 Top Boy (2011-2013) Nwonka, Clive James. “Estate of the Nation: Social Housing as Cultural Verisimilitude in British Social Realism.” Filmurbia: Screening the Suburbs. Eds. David Forrest et al. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 65-78. O’Connor, Roisin. “Netflix Announces ‘Top Boy’ Revival with Support from Drake.” The Independent. 8 November 2017. www.independent.co.uk/ arts-entertainment/ tv/ news/ top-boy-series-3-season-3-netflix-drake-return-date-when-cast-trailer-a8044441. html. Accessed on 31 January 2018. Rosser, Michael. “Top Boy Ends on 990k.” Broadcast. 4 November 2011. www.broadcast now.co.uk/ ratings/ top-boy-ends-on-990k/ 5034242.article. Accessed on 2 March 2018. “Sink, n.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2 nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991 [1989]. Wright, Patrick. A Journey through Ruins: The Last Days of London. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. 212 Luis Özer 1 Although these reports date back to the early 2000s, the concept of the deviant teenager still prevails in public consciousness. Moreover, it is exploited for entertainment purposes and reinstalled regularly by formats such as The Worlds’ Strictest Parents (2005-2011) or the docu-reality Bad Teen to Ballroom Queen (2018). The idea is simple: “Disobedient, disruptive and disrespectful [teenagers get a] 30-day crash course in the disciplined world of ballroom dancing” (Laws) - and will be eventually reintegrated into ‘respectable’ society. ‘With great power comes’… Nothing: Superheroes, Teenage Delinquents, and Dysfunctional Community Structures in Misfits (2009-2013) Annika Gonnermann I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless be‐ yond words… (Hesiod, 8 th century BC) 1. Introduction For the past twenty years Britain seems to have had a problem with its teenagers - this at least is the impression conveyed by various articles, whose headlines paint a bleak and desperate picture: according to an article in The Independent from 2001, British teenagers “take more hard drugs, get drunk more often and start smoking earlier than most counterparts in Europe” (Duckworth), and “British parents were among those who knew least about what their children were doing” (ibid.). More‐ over, British teenagers are “problem gamblers” (Davies), are perceived as promis‐ cuous (see Verkaik), and have “deficiencies in education and diet” (ibid.). They are superficial, unable to handle money responsibly and are “extreme internet users” who spend more time online “than their counterparts in all the other 34 OECD countries apart from Chile” (D. Campbell). The Independent ironically concludes that “all leads to the inescapable conclusion that the British teenager is a monster best avoided” (Verkaik). 1 In short, British teenagers have been increasingly stigmatised as uneducated and anti-social, resulting in a growing anxiety “being expressed over the young” (Wearing 220) - particularly by an adult white middle class. The clash of gen‐ erations has led to a significant split, suggesting an almost war-like state be‐ tween teenagers and elders practically reminiscent of Anthony Burgess’ noto‐ rious dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange (1962): a survey published by Public Policy Research in 2006 warns that Britain “has become a place increasingly fearful of its teenage population”, with citizens ready “to blame young people for antisocial behaviour” (Lewis). According to the report, “1.5 million Britons thought about moving away from their local area due to young people hanging around [and] 1.7 million admitted to avoiding going out after dark as a direct result of youths gathering” (BBC News, “Youngsters”). The study goes on to call this ‘paedophobia’ an inherently British problem, a “national phenomenon” (Lewis) unmatched by the findings in other countries. What is it with the British and their contaminated relationship with their youths? Quoting from Charles Acland’s Youth, Murder and Spectacle (1995), Christian Lenz confirms that “wherever the young ‘appears’ [sic! ], in their practices or as an object of social and sociological inquiry, they are both troubled and troubling” (2) - apparently in public consciousness, it is often the latter. For this matter, Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997-2007) and his Labour govern‐ ment introduced so-called ‘anti-social behaviour orders’ (ASBOs) as part of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Blair’s “flagship measure to deal with youth crime” (Travis) consisted of “civil (rather than criminal) orders imposed on in‐ dividuals by the courts” aimed at “banning the individual from engaging in spe‐ cific kinds of [anti-social] behaviour” (BBC News, “ASBO”). Their prime target, as is admitted in an official report by the Home Office in 2002, are “juveniles, who are commonly considered to be the cause of much anti-social behaviour” (S. Campbell i). Lenz, too, highlights that “ASBOs mainly address and are thus linked to youths”, which “mark[…] them as deviant other” (2-3). Offenses include “vandalism, theft and harassment, but also suicide attempts or being too loud during sex” (ibid. 3). ASBOs then have become intrinsically connected to teen‐ agers and their behaviour. This image of youths as troublemakers destroying community is what the TV series Misfits (2009-2013) is predicated upon and thrives off. Much like Skins (2007-2013), its cultural predecessor also produced by Channel 4, Misfits works with a low budget and no renowned actors. However, it has received much praise from both critics and audience: The Guardian recommends it as “reliably hilar‐ ious adventure since day one” (Renshaw), while the Canadian Globe and Mail has called it a “weirdly wonderful sci-fi series […] with a darkly comic spin on 214 Annika Gonnermann 2 In 2017 was announced that Misfits will be adapted for an American audience (see Hunter-Hart). 3 This was actually the first time “a series screening on a digital channel had won the award” (Cooke, History, 240). 4 The cast changes after season two with the drop out of Robert Sheehan (Nathan). The original cast is fully replaced by season 4, episode 4. The following article will thus concentrate on the first two seasons only. 5 The name ‘Wertham’ opens up an interesting reference to criticism of comic books and their supposedly immoral character (see Misiroglu 19). It alludes to the German-Amer‐ ican psychologist Fredric Wertham and his furious attack on superhero-comics in Se‐ duction of the Innocent (1954). Wertham famously vilifies them as potentially dangerous to the development of teenagers and young adults, “fostering the juvenile delinquency plaguing post-war America” (Coogan/ O’Neil v). According to Wertham, comic books stimulate “all kinds of behavior disorders and personality difficulties in children” (10). He goes on to claim that a major part of comic books “glorif[ies], violence, crime and sadism” (ibid.). 6 For a detailed analysis of the term and its cultural significance for Britain see Owen Jones’ Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class (2011). the superhero genre” (Ryan). Its status as a cult series (see Marcos) and its stable fanbase in Britain and abroad (see Buonanno 208) 2 has further kindled the series’ fame: Misfits has been praised for its “naturalistic [and] whip-smart” characters (Renshaw), the performance of its actors and Howard Overman’s “sublime” (Smith) and “razor-sharp script” (Stacey). The surprise hit, with an impressive audience of more than one million viewers per episode (see Dowell, “Second Series”), unexpectedly won the BAFTA for Best Drama Series in 2010, 3 con‐ firming its position as a serious enquiry into British class structures of the new millennium. Produced by Channel 4, the five series of the programme feature a couple of teenage delinquents 4 sentenced to do community service in the fictitious bor‐ ough of Wertham, 5 a largely impoverished urban area in Greater London. The sci-fi-show follows the lives of Nathan, Simon, Kelly, Curtis, and Alicia, who meet on the first day of their community service. Right from the start, all five - despite being as different in character, and attitude as can be - are lumped to‐ gether by the city authorities, who characterise them only by their “status as social outsiders and young offenders” (Schmeink/ Frei 100). Their lives, defined by dysfunctional families and emotional relationships, bullying, and unemploy‐ ment, are further complicated, however, when they acquire superpowers during an unexplained thunderstorm. Now, the socially awkward mobbing victim Simon (Iwan Rheon) can turn invisible, while Curtis (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), formerly an aspiring olympic athlete who was convicted for drug possession, can rewind time; self-conscious Kelly (Lauren Socha), with the stereotypical appearance of a ‘chav’, 6 can hear what other people think, and the attractive 215 Misfits (2009-2013) Alicia (Antonia Thomas) can cause extreme sexual ecstasy through touch. Loud-mouthed and don’t-care-about-anything Nathan (Robert Sheehan) even‐ tually discovers that he is immortal. The various superpowers externalise the characters’ respective personalities and character traits as well as their insecur‐ ities. Moreover, they serve as a metaphor that (these) teenagers are different: without a “place in respectable society” (Thorpe), and shaken by social and per‐ sonal circumstances, “none of the teenagers belongs to the normalised position of the white middle class” (Heinz 83). They are othered right from the start due to gender and race, but mostly because of their social standing as members of an underclass defined by unemployment and difficulties in every respect. Their lives, as Jochen Ecke and Patrick Gill describe it, are “firmly rooted in the world of disadvantage” (146), making them the most unlikely and reluctant squad of superheroes ever to have hit the screen. This, however, is the subversive potential of Misfits: entering the discourse of the deviant youth established by Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange (1962) and Stanley Kubrick’s film version thereof (1971), Misfits gives voice to criminalised youth. With the help of teenage ASBO-superheroes, the show rid‐ icules the idea of teenage troublemakers as the only source of dysfunctional communities, and deconstructs supposedly moral centres of community, such as middle-class society in general, the family, and the church. It exposes them as empty shells far ‘guiltier’ than the youth delinquents they villainise. More‐ over, Misfits deconstructs the idea that communities can be brought into being by imposing punitive measures such as ASBOs. According to Zygmunt Bauman, community “is always a good thing” because it resonates with associations of a warm “cosy and comfortable place” (1). Therefore, it cannot be created by pun‐ ishment or exclusion since it is grounded in an axiomatic, almost utopian notion of ‘understanding’ between community members. Bauman’s notion of ‘com‐ munity’ entails an almost paradisiac state of true approval and consent: “In a true community there is no criticism or opposition.” (Delanty 118) Listing the example of Adam and Eve’s impossible return to Eden, Bauman states that the moment a community has been destroyed, it cannot be resurrected. The active construction of community is then a contradiction in terms. It is easy to imagine what Bauman’s position on both community service and similar programmes would have been: the attempt is doomed to fail. 216 Annika Gonnermann 7 See the article by Luis Özer in this volume. 2. Adding to the Discourse of the Deviant Youth: Harold Overman’s Misfits & Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1962) Today’s narratives about delinquent youths, such as Misfits or Top Boy (2011-2013), 7 have an infamous predecessor in British literary history: Anthony Burgess’ dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) and Stanley Kubrick’s dis‐ turbing film version have set the bar very high when it comes to depicting youth violence and the clash of generations, and have thus turned themselves into inevitable points of reference for all narratives about these issues to follow (see Hunter 96). Thematically, Misfits and the Kubrick-movie are related: firstly, both are products of a time when the media and the public were engaged in a dis‐ cussion about an “emergent youth culture and the increase in crimes committed by gangs of youngsters” (Krämer qtd. in Brosch 107). Secondly, both narratives “have a hard look at how (British) society deals with juvenile delinquents” (Buhlert) and occupy themselves with the intergenerational conflict in Britain and neglected teenagers who commit crimes as an outlet for social frustration. Finally, both A Clockwork Orange and Misfits were shot at the Thamesmead council estate in south-east London, a place famous for its “concrete brutalist architecture” (Cooke, History, 240), offering an “uneasy balance between utopian aesthetics and administrative crisis” (Babish 198). The Southmere Lake, and also the multi-storey building that feature frequently in the background are “a far cry from the detached, single-family home with a garden that dominates the ideals of house-as-home” (Heinz 83) (see fig. 1). It is noteworthy that the creators of Misfits are aware of this intertextual relationship between their series and the Kubrick film. They launch references in a not-so-subtle way, for instance when they establish Simon as a fan of Stanley Kubrick’s work. In one of the bonus Misfits-clips online, “Locker Inspection“, Nathan discovers the DVD version of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in Simon’s locker, marking him as fa‐ miliar with Kubrick’s work. Significantly, the area has barely changed in the 40 years since A Clockwork Orange was shot there, implying that Britain’s troubled relationship with its teenagers has not changed either. Both narratives investigate the moral au‐ thority of those who decide over the youths’ fate: A Clockwork Orange famously raises the ethical question whether it is morally acceptable to condition humans into being good. In the context of ASBOs, Misfits returns to this question about conditioning and punishing juvenile delinquents in a similar way. The show introduces the antagonist Rachel ( Jessica Brown-Findlay) and her superpower 217 Misfits (2009-2013) 8 In the following, references to Misfits will be given without repeating the title. Fig. 1: Thamesmead’s concrete blocks in the background are a constant visual reminder that these characters are not part of a white middle class (S1/ E1, 00: 01). of coercing everyone into socially conformist behaviour as “the Big Bad” of season one (Lenz). Her superpower ability to turn teenagers into “every police‐ man’s and parent’s wet dream” (Misfits, S1/ E6, 00: 18), 8 as Nathan puts it, destroys the teenagers’ own will to act as they please and their ability to decide between good and bad. In the final episode of series one, Kelly, Alicia, and Curtis are turned into socially conditioned ‘zombies’, barely resembling responsible hu‐ mans anymore. On the contrary, they have become “a clockwork orange”, in the sense Anthony Burgess suggested in a TV appearance on the show Camera Three in 1972: “I’ve implied the junction of the organic, the lively, the sweet - in other words, life, the orange - and the mechanical, the cold, the disciplined. I’ve brought them together in this kind of oxymoron, this sour-sweet word” (“An examination of A Clockwork Orange (1972)”). The teenagers have become hybrid creatures like Burgess’ Alex: well-behaved but conditioned to be an automaton and nothing like a living organism - in Misfits, this development is exemplified by the beige-coloured cardigans, skirts, and cloth trousers Rachel’s followers are wearing, which denote a distinctly middle-class association. Two things become apparent: first of all, this type of clothing could not be further away from how the characters usually dress, thus making their brainwashing visible. Second, 218 Annika Gonnermann Rachel’s uniforms are just as conformist and adverse to individuality as the orange jumpsuits the probation workers make the teenagers wear. As a result, the show criticises both “solutions” to the youth problem, which dismiss tackling the roots and instead gloss over the symptoms. Equally, both attempts fail due to their superficiality, since Rachel’s and the state’s punitive brainwash methods have nothing to do with community as a ‘warm circle’ (see Bauman). In this final episode of series one, Nathan advances to become a spokesperson for this generation, designated to save the others from Rachel’s manipulation. Having been chased onto the roof of the community centre for breaking into Rachel’s ‘headquarters’, he addresses the assembled crowd of brainwashed teen‐ agers, appealing to their ‘true’ nature: We’re young, we’re supposed to drink too much. We’re supposed to have bad attitudes and shag each other’s brains out. We are destined to party. This is it. Yeah, so a few of us will overdose or go mental. But Charles Darwin said you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs and that’s what it’s all about - breaking eggs! […] We had it all. We fucked up bigger and better than any generation that came before us. We were so beautiful! We’re screws ups. I’m a screw-up and I plan to be a screw-up until my late twenties or maybe my early thirties and I will shag my own mother before I let her or anyone else take that away from me [...]. (S1/ E6, 00: 32) According to Sadie Wearing, this scene establishes a “generational difference […] in ways which makes the class distinctions between the characters less sig‐ nificant finally than their collective identity as a ‘generation’” (231). Nathan simultaneously confirms and mitigates the prejudices against his generation. While he admits that they have caused more damage than any generation before, he also introduces a historical dimension to the inter-generational conflict: “fucking up” becomes a rite of passage for young people. By stating that they “fucked up bigger and better than any generation that came before,” Nathan refers to an age-old discourse about the decay of succeeding generations. Starting in antiquity, most notably with Hesiod, the claim that the new gener‐ ation is worse than the parent generation can be traced throughout the centuries. Nathan’s speech makes complaints against youth relative by comparing them to their parents’ generation when they were young. Moreover, Nathan succeeds in mitigating his generation’s proclaimed decay by presenting the prospect of eventually fully integrating into ‘respectable soci‐ ety’. By promising to be “a screw-up until [his] late twenties or maybe […] early thirties”, Nathan also predicts his assimilation in mainstream-society once he has reached ‘maturity’. Concomitantly, he constructs the ‘deviant youth’ as a neces‐ sary phase in human development, making integrative measures solely targeted 219 Misfits (2009-2013) 9 A Clockwork Orange hints at sexual abuse Alex suffers from his probation worker. Conse‐ quently, the movie provides background information as to why Alex and his gang might commit crimes and disregard authorities. Continuing a reciprocal spiral of violence, Alex and his droogs are depicted as victims and wrongdoers at the same time. 10 Having been killed during the first episode of season one without any superpowers, Gary (Josef Altin) is not considered a member of the original team. on members of a certain age group obsolete. Furthermore, Nathan ascribes the expression “can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs” to Charles Darwin. He thus introduces ideas about the natural process of evolution to this speech, strengthening his arguments that the deviant youth is not an exception to be banned, but rather an inevitable evolutionary stage between teenage years and adulthood. His claim that teenagers will eventually integrate into society culminates in his conviction that the inter-generational ‘war’ does not originate in the teenage population, but in authorities who have forgotten how it is to be a teenager. It is the authorities who attempt to “take something from him” that is rightfully his - being allowed to be a teenager. Rachel in her attempt to condition all teenagers into being good, is thus put on the same level as the authorities and doctors in A Clockwork Orange, which try to “solve” the youth crime problem by brainwashing them into being ‘good’, thereby positioning themselves danger‐ ously close to totalitarian systems and their inhuman methods of producing mindless minions. This is the reason why both the film and series stress the fact, that the conditioning cannot not be the solution - or to say it in the words of Burgess’ prison chaplain: “Goodness is something to be chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.” (Clockwork Orange) Misfits and A Clock‐ work Orange thus set youth culture “against a totalitarian regime, a corrupt gov‐ ernment and a brutal police force” (Brosch 104). The movie’s horror “is, after all, not one of violent conflict but of institutional failure” (Babish 203). Both narra‐ tives voice criticism against self-righteous officials who have conveniently iden‐ tified teenagers as the main source of dysfunctional communities. 3. The Failure of Traditional Centres of Community Questioning the moral superiority of officials, Misfits depicts authorities and repre‐ sentatives of society as “violent, corrupt and generally worse than the criminals they pursue and punish” (Buhlert). 9 In episode one of season one, Misfits taps into this trope and constructs its representatives of family, society, and church as moral fail‐ ures: the series starts with Simon, Gary, 10 Nathan, Curtis, Kelly, and Alicia putting on their orange jumpsuits, not yet, however, disclosing the lettering on the back reading, “Community Payback”. The viewer, however, is released from their igno‐ 220 Annika Gonnermann 11 In view of Misfits’ preference for word plays, the name of the probation worker could be read as an allusion to Tony Blair, who introduced ASBOs. 12 For a discussion about the perversion of punitive measures that in theory should allow deviant individuals access back to ‘respectable’ society see also the essay by Laura Winter in this volume. rance about what the situation is all about when Tony (Danny Sapani), 11 their pro‐ bation worker, speaks the first lines of the entire series: This is it. It’s your chance to do something positive. Give something back. You can help people. You can really make a difference to people’s lives. That’s what community service is all about. There are people out there who think that you’re scum. You have an opportunity to show them they’re wrong. (S1/ E1, 00: 01, my emphasis) In appealing to their sense of moral duty and belonging, Tony’s introductory speech simultaneously reveals the underlying concept of community: his words evoke the notion of a trade action or bargain. The debt-metaphor suggested not only by his words “to give something back”, but also by the imprint on the working clothes “community payback” constructs community as some sort of rational investment programme: give and receive in return. This kind of thinking stands in stark contrast to how Bauman defines community, according to whom it is not characterised by the principle of quid pro quo. On the contrary, mem‐ bers of a real community “won’t be asking us how and when we will repay” (Bauman 2). This also connects to the drawing of boundaries through the bright orange work clothes, which clearly mark the teenagers as deviant others. Visu‐ ally and textually, the youths are constructed as the “enemies” of society. They have wronged community and should now “do something positive” to be granted to retake their former position. 12 Society, then, ultimately needs deviant youths, in order to construct its own moral borders. Moreover, Tony inadvertently ad‐ mits that the community he is speaking about was never a community in Bau‐ man’s sense of a “warm circle” in the first place. The absence of mutual trust, solidarity, and an understanding of belonging is addressed only after the appeal to their moral consciousness. Tony’s statement that “[t]here are people out there who think that you’re scum” shows a rupture going through this community based on class consciousness. It is examples like these which justify Wearing’s claim that “Misfits should indeed be read in the context of what Sadie Wearing has identified as this ‘hate speech’ about class” (228). The teenagers are racially and socially discriminated against by being called “scum”, which indicates their place at the margins of community and society, i.e. their low social status. Nathan and the others meet Tony’s emotional speech with negative reactions and body language, indicating their unwillingness to accept Tony’s accusations. 221 Misfits (2009-2013) With long individual shots on the characters’ faces, the show contrasts the audio (Tony’s speech) with the visual: in the very first scene, the expressions of the characters show mockery (Nathan), contempt (Gary), indifference (Curtis), boredom (Alicia), doubt/ insecurity (Simon), and revulsion (Kelly). Recognising “the opportunity to do something good” as what it really is, namely punishment, all six show no intention whatsoever to “pay back” society. What might be termed juvenile arrogance is later revealed to be an adequate emotional response to the social, political, and private circumstances the teenagers grew up in. Their experiences with the community Tony is alluding to are demonstrated to have been disappointing and disillusioning. Community, as Bauman describes it, is non-existent in Misfits. Their transgressions spring from “psychological inse‐ curity due to neglect, as mistakes of impulsive action or simply as defence mech‐ anisms” (Schmeink/ Frei 105). Parents, siblings, and friends are conspicuously ab‐ sent throughout the entire series (see Heinz 84). The audience gets to know their family background through messenger reports only, with Kelly calling for her mother when in the shower (S1/ E3; 00: 13), Alicia borrowing her father’s car (S1/ E3, 00: 27), or Simon referring to his twelve-year-old sister (S2/ E1, 00: 18). The only parents featuring are Nathan’s. However, they are clearly cast as antago‐ nists: Nathan’s father Mike Young (Dexter Fletcher) is introduced as an adulterer and moral failure. After cheating on Nathan’s mother Louise (Michelle Fairley) and fathering an illegitimate son, Mike has a troubled relationship to his son Na‐ than, who reacts with disappointment and trust issues. Yet, Nathan’s mother, cannot exactly claim the moral high ground for herself, as she kicks her un‐ derage son out in order to live with her new boyfriend (S1/ E1, 00: 09), leaving him homeless and on the streets. This is one of the clues that lead Schmeink and Frei to conclude that the teenagers’ “anti-social behaviour is merely a reflection of the anti-social, anti-communal life that surrounds them” (105). This notion is exem‐ plified by the hand-made correction on the back of Nathan’s work suit: instead of “COMMUNITY PAYBACK”, it reads “COMMUNITY BL☺WBACK” (S1/ E1, 00: 26), a childish and immature word-play alluding to a sexual innuendo and si‐ multaneously a warning for society that suggests what comes around goes around. After all, the teenagers are neither ‘misfits’ nor ‘anti-communal’ - how could they be if there is no community in the first place? Misfits thereby works against the well-known British stereotype of British teenagers elaborated on in the first subchapter introduction. Imagining its viewers to be prejudiced against youths, the TV series initially seems to match preconceived stereotypes when it refrains from telling the full story of the youthful delinquents’ offenses. All the viewers get to hear, for instance, about Simon’s offense is the following dialogue: 222 Annika Gonnermann 13 “Fire” is given by the subtitles. NATHAN. What about you, weird kid? […] SIMON. I tried to burn someone’s house down! NATHAN. Fi-iiiiiire? … (S1/ E1, 00: 04) Nathan’s shocked reaction, plus the fact that his “Fire” sounds suspiciously more like a “Fuck”, 13 anticipates the viewers’ own one. For a short moment, Simon seems to have reaped what he has sown: the stereotype of the violent, psycho‐ pathic teenager is constructed to comply with the attitude of British society towards its teenagers. A similar but slightly different mechanism emerges when Nathan confesses that he was convicted to do his community service for “eating some pick’n’mix [sweets]” (S1/ E1, 00: 04). This triggers disbelief on the part of the viewer; after all, it is assumed Nathan must have surely done something more severe to warrant a judicial conviction. However, as it turns out, the au‐ dience’s expectations about both Nathan and Simon as being violent, corrupt, and potentially harmful teenagers are disappointed a few episodes later. The show masterfully deconstructs these notions and holds up a mirror to its viewers: Simon offers a sympathetic and comprehensible motivation for his deed, while Nathan was actually ‘done for’ eating sweets (S1/ E4, 00: 13). Misfits thus manages to subvert the general prejudices against teenagers, who turn out to be (more or less) likeable, understandable wrongdoers. To illustrate the teenagers’ neglect and social misfortune, the focalisation of each episode is different, featuring a different main character as focalizer. Misfits dedicates one episode to each character, illuminating the individual fates by distributing the episodes between the five of them almost equally. Within these episodes, the show makes sure to equip its deviant youths with relatable back‐ stories that evoke sympathy on the part of the viewers. In fact, these episodes redefine the characters - originally introduced as wrongdoers and ASBO-teen‐ agers - as victims of social circumstances: Nathan has suffered neglect and emotional distance from his parents, Curtis has been set up by his friends when caught with drugs, Simon has been bullied by his school mates. This depiction, though, creates a stark contrast to how the representatives of ‘respectable so‐ ciety’, i.e. their probation workers and parents, might characterise the teenagers. While parents and probation workers accuse the teenagers of being anti-social, the protagonists demonstrate a pronounced sense of community, exemplified by their willingness to sacrifice themselves for others - the ultimate selfless act. Once he is aware of his power, Curtis, for instance, tries to moderate the con‐ sequences arising from his failed attempt to buy drugs by turning back time - not to improve his own situation, though, but for his then girlfriend and his 223 Misfits (2009-2013) 14 “ASBO Five” is the name given to them by the media (S2/ E6), resonating with typical superhero names, such as Fantastic Four, etc. “accomplice” Sam (Anna Koval), who he wants to spare the stay in prison for drug dealing (S1/ E2). Nathan - once he has discovered that he is immortal - is willing to endure strong physical pain and death over and over again in order to save others, even if this includes being cut up by a chainsaw (S2/ E4). All these examples demonstrate a fundamental capability of creating the unconditional ‘warm circle’ of community. Sarah Heinz is therefore right to claim that the characters are neither “anti-social nor anti-community” (Heinz 84). By having its protagonists behave in a pro-community way, whilst simultaneously being accused of being anti-community, the series asks the viewers to challenge the judgements of mainstream society. It toys with the discrepancy between the official assessment of the teenagers and the moral values displayed by them, thus drawing on the difference in self-perception and external perception. Presenting these two views, the series oscillates between categorising the teenagers as either offenders or victims - a process that is enhanced by the camera techniques of Misfits. One technique employed is what Heinz has termed “CCTV aesthetics” (85), describing camera angles that imitate security cameras, sometimes even explicitly marked as CCTV, with the help of frames added in the corners of the image. These “camera angles from above or within objects like lockers” (ibid.) generate an atmosphere of voyeurism, making the audience complicit with the “controlling gaze” (ibid.) that follows teenagers who have been convicted of anti-social behaviour. This effect is enhanced by the stable position of the camera and the eventual cut when one CCTV camera is activated (see fig. 2a and 2c). The second camera technique suggests a high level of intimacy (see fig. 2b and 2d), for it is frequently used in locker rooms or shot from within toilet cubicles. Almost every scene includes multiple camera settings shot with an obstructed view, which fosters the illusion of the audience being intimately close to the pro‐ tagonists. Brian McFarlane writes that this technique is comparable to the figural narrative situation in novels: “[T]here is, as it were, a narrator looking over their shoulder, in the way that the camera may view an action over the shoulder of a protagonist in the foreground of a shot, giving the viewer both the character’s point of view [and one] which includes the character.” (19; see fig. 2b) This tech‐ nique grants the proverbial look over the shoulder, thus inviting the audience to sympathise with the ASBO Five and adopt their point of view. 14 Moreover, this effect is fostered by the use of a hand camera, which allows for unstable shots and imitates realistic eye and head movements. This way, the viewer can be said to 224 Annika Gonnermann Fig. 2: Misfits uses two types of shots: CCTV aesthetics (see fig. 2a (S2/ E1, 00: 14), fig. 2c (“Locker Inspection” 00: 14)) and the over-your-shoulder shot (see fig. 2b (S2/ E1, 00: 21) and fig. 2d (S2/ E1, 00: 37)), simulating the view a hiding person would have. participate in the scene, standing just around the corner, peeking into the lives of the protagonists (see fig. 2d). These scenes are therefore in stark contrast to the CCTV technique that is shot with a stable frame and no movement. In juxta‐ posing these two techniques, the series ultimately encourages its viewers to “re‐ flect on their position and gaze” (Heinz 85) and thus on their stereotypes and prejudices: one angle offers a position of surveillance, while the other one, filmed from a position approximately chest-high, advocates a discourse that includes the teenagers, rather than going literally over their heads. 4. ‘ASBO Five’-Superheroes and the Demasking of Dysfunctional Community Structures Despite being accused of anti-social behaviour, nearly all characters are depicted as deeply social beings. All five of them display a longing for community ties in the sense of a ‘warm circle’, but they are rejected constantly by friends, family, and representatives of the system, such as their probation workers. This aspect is made explicit by the inclusion of various songs as well. Unkle feat. Richard 225 Misfits (2009-2013) 15 This combination of two different artists is interesting because Richard Ashcroft was a leading figure in the 1990s Britpop movement. Pairing his music with a hip-hop band creates a further level of analysis since both genres are associated with urban working class. Thus, the inclusion of this song underscores the idea of an ongoing generational struggle. Ashcroft’s Lonely Soul (1998), 15 for instance, features prominently towards the end of episode one, accompanying long, dimmed shots of the characters showing them socially isolated in the middle of the night: “God knows you’re lonely souls […]”. (S1/ E1, 00: 38) However, no matter how hard the teenagers try, the series makes it explicit that community can no longer be found in traditionalist set‐ tings. The final shot of the final episode of season two is a case in point. Nathan’s girlfriend Marnie (Gwyneth Keyworth) has just given birth to a child. The sub‐ sequent shot seems to be a perfect picture of harmony and community, exem‐ plified by the arrangement of the characters: similar in size and posture, both Kelly and Simon seem to stand in for the statues of two of the three wise men, Alisha for the Virgin Mary. Featuring a new-born child in the middle of both arrangements, the characters of Misfits seem to unconsciously re-enact the Bib‐ lical scene of Jesus’ birth in the background - enhanced by the row of chairs which makes it seem as if the group were exhibited in the sanctuary of a church (see fig. 3.). For a moment, it seems as if the characters have found community within patterns laid out by the church. However, the series makes sure to destroy the impression immediately: mis‐ taking Marnie’s afterbirth for a baby alien, Nathan ruins the Christmassy at‐ mosphere by stamping on the bloody tissue, splattering his friends with a con‐ siderable amount of blood. This typical example of the often drastic and borderline humour of the show manages to utterly ruin the peaceful setting. By parodying the well-established notions of the Biblical story of Jesus Christ’s birth, the show makes fun of established notions of family and church. However, this scene offers a glimpse of hope for the teenagers: having successfully brought Nathan Jr. into the world, named after his mother’s boyfriend (Nathan is not the biological father), the six teenagers have proven to be apt for demanding and challenging tasks without needing to resort to others. Outcast or ignored by their families, the teenagers have thus created a family of their own - legitimised by the birth of a new generation. The show introduces the “teenage group as [capable of] successfully creating alternative homes” (Heinz 87), and by exten‐ sion establishing a new community. Relying on mutual trust, teamwork, and friendship, the ASBO Five have intuitively established a warm circle that is strong enough to face any challenge presented to them. 226 Annika Gonnermann Fig. 3: It all seems so peaceful: moments before Nathan stamps on the afterbirth of his girlfriend Marnie (S2/ E7, 00: 41). Community in Misfits, then, can only be found outside of tradition, which defines society, church, or family. According to the show, these communities become the locus of evil. Being a superhero-show, Misfits conceptualises the representatives of the various institutions as super-villains to enhance the depiction of corrupt institutions. Parents, probation workers, and priests are cast as the ultimate adversaries of the superhero-teenagers. Working within the traditional good-vs.-bad schema of superhero narratives, the series ex‐ plicitly locates the reasons for dysfunctional communities within traditional communities. It thus inverts the narrative of the deviant teenager and substi‐ tutes it with deviant authorities. Following a “Freak of the Week” pattern, i.e. featuring a new antagonist every episode, Misfits introduces characters with evil superpowers in every episode, starting with the probation worker Tony in episode one of season one. Similar to the teenagers, Tony’s superpower externalises his defining character trait. He is choleric and tends to lose his self-control when faced with delinquent behaviour. Reminiscent of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), or the related superhero theme of Bruce Banner and the Hulk from Marvel’s Hulk-comics, the changed Tony (the producers cast Louis Decosta Johnson to portray Tony in his changed state) turns into a mindless monster viciously attacking the teenagers he in fact should care for. The probation worker can therefore be 227 Misfits (2009-2013) 16 The show’s relationship to its probation workers has indeed become some sort of running gag by season two. Both probation workers of season 1, Tony and Sally (Alex Reid), are killed by Kelly and respectively Simon in acts of self-defence. Both have tried to attack the teenagers and abused them emotionally and psychologically for their own purposes. The only probation worker to survive is Shaun (Craig Par‐ kinson) - funnily enough because he “could not give a shit” (see S2/ E1, 00: 18) and does not interfere with the lives of the teenagers. His fundamentally different ap‐ proach can be seen in the first lines he gives. While the aesthetics and the construc‐ tion of S2/ E1 mirror S1/ E1, the tone could not be more different: “Now, I know this is where I am supposed to make a big speech about you paying your debt to society and making a difference. But seriously, we’ve all got things we’d rather be doing. […] Now just let’s get through with it, and get out of here” (S2/ E1, 00: 05). read as a placeholder for the ASBO system that is defined by hypocrisy. In‐ stead of helping teenagers to regain their status in society, the programme is in fact literally harmful and life threatening. When Tony attacks the teen‐ agers with a sharp metal object, they survive only by killing Tony in an act of self-defence (see S1/ E1, 00: 29f.). 16 Just as society and its representatives cannot stabilise community, other tra‐ ditional institutions such as the church are shown to be dysfunctional, too. Misfits introduces the priest Elliot (Edward Hogg, S2/ Christmas Special) as the final boss of series two, the master villain/ monster usually waiting for the su‐ perhero at the end of a game or movie. Frustrated by his role as a priest at a time when no-one follows the teachings of the church, Elliott acquires superpowers from a special dealer in exchange for money which he had ‘earned’ by stealing from offering boxes or by armed robbery. With his new superpowers, such as walking on water, Elliot proclaims himself Jesus and uses his newly acquired fame to squeeze money out of intimidated followers. Elliot’s attempt to rejuve‐ nate the community of the church is depicted as a criminal act based on fraud, crime, and force. Elliot is a supervillain par excellence: abuse of power and egoism paint the bleakest picture possible of a representative of the church and its enforced community, thus exposing the community of the church as similarly harmful and hypocritical. Combining the genre of the superhero movie with questions about com‐ munity and Britain’s relationship with its teenagers is one of the reasons why Misfits helped sci-fi to escape its perception as “children’s programming or niche fare” (Telotte, “Science Fiction,” 1). Contrary to trivial notions evoked by buzz‐ words such as “teen drama” or “superhero show”, the superhero-aspect of Misfits adds significantly to the discussion about appropriate ways of dealing with the 228 Annika Gonnermann 17 Moreover, what makes the series especially valuable in this discourse is its innovative approach and pronounced realism despite its fantastical elements: the TV show, for in‐ stance, was the “first UK programme to have characters tweeting live in Twitter” (Dowell, “Twitter”). Moreover, free-time filmmaker Simon posts his mobile phone videos on a YouTube channel and operates a Facebook page where he regularly communicates with the other characters. Fans are thus invited to take part in the characters’ lives well beyond the original TV series. The multi-channel approach favoured by Misfits increases not only its range but also accentuates the show as an influential participant in the on‐ going debate about teenagers and community. 18 While Misfits has been celebrated for its innovative take on the superhero genre in terms of deconstructing it, it also had to face criticism for its depiction of gender. Both Wearing and Henning notice that “while Misfits gleefully deconstructs all patriotic and political ideals of the genre, in terms of gender roles, everything remains the same. […] The two women are unable to control their own powers” (Hennig 177). Although this statement needs relativizing (e.g. Curtis cannot trigger his power actively either), both scholars have a point. As Wearing writes: “The figures of Kelly and Alicia seem to offer a counterpoint to the stereotyped figure of the chav or the […] hypersexual black female, and yet these characterisations remain firmly anchored to their discursive roles” (235). younger generation. 17 By casting its ‘criminal’ youths as pseudo-superheroes, the show reverses the superhero-paradigm: according to Nathan Miczo, the hero normally is a role model for society. Usually ‘he’ acts in a “prosocial and selfless [way], which means that his fight against evil must fit in with the existing mores of society and must not be intended to benefit or further his own agenda” (Coogan/ O’Neil 31). Conventionally, superheroes “reflect ideals and concepts of the community” (Hennig 173), meaning that they personify exemplary character traits such as bravery, selflessness, and altruism, as well as physical strength and moral integrity. They “embody […] what we believe is best in ourselves, [there‐ fore a] hero is a standard to aspire to as well as an individual to be admired” (Fingeroth qtd. in Miczo 4). Superheroes like Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman “work to protect and uphold the social order” (ibid. xi), going after the bad guys who often aim at anarchy, rule of terror, and despotism to meet their needs. Since superhero comics and films have “always considered current polit‐ ical and social situations” (Hennig 173), they are suitable vehicles for an enquiry into the status quo of a given society. The genre and its structures are certainly well established, thus inviting satire and mechanisms of deconstruction. Misfits is surely no prototypical super‐ hero-show. The Independent calls the teenagers “five very British superheroes” (“British Squad”), hinting at the ongoing “deconstructions of mythology and the superhero” (Hoppenstand qtd. in Calvert 19). 18 The superpowers in Misfits, for example, are more often a nuisance rather than an advantage, turning the genre 229 Misfits (2009-2013) 19 Misfits is by no means the first TV series to incorporate the idea of normal people ac‐ quiring superpowers. The US-American productions Smallville (2001-2011) or Heroes (2006-2010) have occupied themselves with similar topics - yet were met with criticism. Alex Zalben writes that he will be “darned if ‘Misfits’ […] isn’t what ‘Heroes’ always wanted to be, and never got right”. He goes on to argue that Misfits “was put together by people who whole-heartedly understand comic book tropes, and ignore them as often as gleefully as they can”, thus stressing the more sophisticated and successful approach Misfits employs. expectations upside down. 19 In fact, “the idea that a superpower could be a ‘bit of a hassle’ seems, somehow, intrinsically British” (Renshaw). Normally, super‐ heroes function as a positive embodiment of the community’s most cherished values and can thus be analysed as representatives of said community. Misfits works differently: instead of being superheroes fighting for justice, the ASBO Five externalise dysfunctional community structures, which are gradually exposed to by no community at all due to their lack of concern. Or, as the show puts it: SIMON. What if we’re like meant to be, superheroes? NATHAN. You lot, superheroes? No offense, but in what kind of fucked-up world would that be allowed to happen? (S1/ E1, 00: 43) Hinting at the inherent symbolic relationship between a community and its heroes, Nathan voices the dysfunctionality of contemporary British society. This stands in stark contrast to other superhero shows such as, for instance, Spi‐ derman, where “with great power comes great responsibility”, as Uncle Ben tells his nephew Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man. Uncle Ben’s iconic words have by now come to represent the entire franchise and the superhero genre itself. In the 2012 version he rephrases them slightly when claiming that “if you could to good things for other people, you had a moral obligation to do those things. That’s what’s at stake here. Not choice. Responsibility.” (Amazing Spider-Man, 00: 40) Misfits, however, is “taking the anti-Spider-Man route” (Lenz). In this TV show, with greater power comes… nothing - at least, no call to action, no sacred mission to save the community or a self-imposed obligation to help. Whenever the characters do happen to re-establish order after an attack by a super-villain, they are merely reacting to the circumstances: Their solution to dealing with aggressors, who have also been struck by the same lightning […], is usually to terminate that person and cover it up. They have the powers to save the world, but they merely want to finish community service and their ad‐ versaries are a distraction to their day, which they just want to get over with as little effort as possible. (Lenz) 230 Annika Gonnermann Misfits casts its protagonists as passive superheroes with little interest in al‐ truism and saving the world, thus breaking the typical bond between the com‐ munity and its heroes: where there is no community, there can be no superheroes to defend it. 5. Conclusion Misfits should be read in terms of social exclusion and marginalisation, ad‐ dressing the relationship between Britain and its teenagers. Its major metaphor is the superhero status, which usually distinguishes between exemplary mem‐ bers of society and those who stand opposed to it. These concepts serve as “an apt metaphor for the troubled transition from childhood into adulthood” (Thorpe), thereby answering both “grander questions of moral responsibility and world-saving” (Indiewire) as well as what it means to be a teenager in con‐ temporary Britain. Misfits criticises ‘respectable’ society as hypocritical and de‐ constructs it with remarkable humour. Ultimately, the show turns the implica‐ tions coming with ASBO teenagers upside down, showing them to incorporate true community spirit. The series thus enters an ongoing discourse, permeating British society for quite some time now: the image and the evaluation of the teenage other. Misfits adds to the ongoing discussion about the role of teenagers and the question whether they are to be evaluated and criticised as anti-social criminal elements or victims of a dysfunctional system, which needs a visible scapegoat to mask its own ineffectiveness. Therefore, the show casts its pro‐ tagonists as likeable, yet sometimes misguided, since unexperienced teenagers in desperate need of community ties based on friendship, family, and love. This is why, ultimately, Misfits does not proclaim an existentialist crisis of community. On the contrary, it advocates a return to a more natural and un‐ conditional concept of community as described by Zygmunt Bauman, as Misfits does not end on a pessimistic note denying the potential for community alto‐ gether. The TV show depicts the timid formation of a “warm circle” in the sense of Bauman, based on mutual trust and respect and without terms and conditions. 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Verkaik, Robert. “Behind the Stereotypes: The Shocking Truth About Teenagers.” The Independent. 22 September 2011. www.independent.co.uk/ news/ uk/ this-britainbehind -the-stereotypes-the-shocking-truth-about-teenagers-421295.html. Accessed on 4 February 2018. “A Very British Squad of Superheroes.” The Independent. 8 November 2010. www.inde pendent.co.uk/ arts-entertainment/ tv/ features/ a-very-british-squad-of-superheroes-2 127883.html. Accessed on 10 January 2018. Wearing, Sadie. “Representing Agency and Coercion: Feminist Readings and Postfeminist Media Fictions.” Gender, Agency and Coercion. Eds. Sumi Madhok et al. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 219-58. Wertham, Fredric. The Seduction of the Innocent. New York, Toronto: Rinehart & Com‐ pany, 1954. Zalben, Alex. “Review: ‘Misfits: Season One’ is the Best Superhero Show in Decades.” MTV News. 8 March 2012. www.mtv.com/ news/ 2625985/ review-misfits-season-one/ . Accessed on 10 January 2018. 235 Misfits (2009-2013) IV. Vice and Virtue in Capitalist Communities ‘You wonderful priest’: Community as the Essence of Christianity in Broken (2017) Stefan Glomb 1. Introduction Variously referred to as “one of those rare writers who has become a kind of brand” (Maras) and as “prolific Scouse powerhouse” (Hogan), Liverpool-born screenwriter Jimmy McGovern has contributed considerably to shaping British television drama. Series like Brookside (1982), Cracker (1993-2006), Hearts and Minds (1995), The Street (2006-2009), and Accused (2010-2012) have infused it with “a class-based radicalism rooted in a British socialist-realist tradition” (Blandford 2), thus establishing “richly entertaining and passionate defences of experientially rooted, realistic accounts of everyday lives as the centrepiece of quality of British drama” (Forrest 29). His construction of an “iconography of everyday space” (ibid. 32) and his insistent criticism of social injustice make McGovern a key figure in an analysis of British television drama focusing on the thematic link between community and the Condition of England. His most recent series Broken (2017) faithfully maintains this tradition. Set in the North of England, it charts the personal development and present life of Father Michael Kerrigan (Sean Bean), a Catholic priest from Sheffield, now serving in a double capacity as spiritual guide and practical assistant to the people living in a working-class community in Liverpool. In the press, Broken garnered predominantly positive responses, mainly due to its unabashed re‐ alism, which makes it a “righteous howl of injustice on behalf of breadline Britain” (Hogan), highlighting a “series of social problems being endured by families just about not managing at the arse end of Theresa May's Britain” (O'Grady). It has been seen as presenting “a portrait of poverty in forgotten Britain, minimum pay and zero hours, crisis, debt, and desperation […]. Are you watching, Mrs May? ” (Wollaston). Yet, even though life in contemporary Britain is presented as utterly bleak, no one has accused the series of being overly pes‐ simistic: “If anything, as the Grenfell Tower disaster may yet prove, Broken's unstinting catalogue of social evils understated what is happening to the poorest in society [...].” (ibid.) What provoked more critical reactions, however, was the strong sense of positive closure, which was felt to be at odds with the verisimi‐ litude informing most of the scenes (see O’Grady). However, even this happy ending has not been universally condemned (see Hughes). The following analysis is an attempt to tease out parallels between the way Broken criticises developments in 21 st -century English society and Frankfurt School Critical Theory (represented by Jürgen Habermas and Rahel Jaeggi). First, this article will take a detailed look at the protagonist’s traumatic predic‐ ament, and then move on to show how the series links the loss of community to the detrimental effects of institutions and money and to the tension between life-world and system. The subsequent section addresses the question of how Broken manages to bring about a (partial) re-establishment of community. After a specification of the kind of critique that the series employs, the concluding section will create a link between the thought of Ludwig Feuerbach and Broken and specify how the series is connected to the tradition of Condition of England writing and filming. 2. Michael Kerrigan’s Trauma The title Broken combines several different facets. It refers to the protagonist, Father Michael Kerrigan, whose broken personality is the result of what seems like a concerted effort on the part of the institutions meant to care for him - the family, the school, and the church - to keep him from developing any sense of self-worth. The damage observable here occurs between the institutions and those they should care for, as well as between the institutions and their allotted tasks, namely to facilitate socialisation. What the series exposes here is a breach of confidence and responsibility and, in a sense, a breach of contract, with dis‐ astrous consequences. As will be shown below, it is this critique of dysfunctional (broken) institutions that runs like a thread through the whole series. In another sense, the title also refers to the loss of communal ties. When individuals are left to their own devices when it comes to tackling their problems, the viability of the community as a whole is at risk. There are two reasons for this: firstly, people who have to spend most of their time and energy to keep their heads above water will have little of both left to establish and nourish interpersonal rela‐ tionships; secondly, they are likely to lose faith in the efficacy of communal solutions to their problems. Finally, the title can be reformulated as “Broken Britain” (Hogan), since all of the aspects mentioned above are part of a Condition of England diagnosis which, not least on account of the drab Northern setting 240 Stefan Glomb 1 In the following, references to Broken will be given without repeating the title. In order to include important information in the side-text, the quotes from the series (episode and time) will, wherever necessary, be complemented by references to the script (epi‐ sode and page number). (repeatedly visualised as a forbidding industrial landscape), turns out to be rather dire. Father Kerrigan’s broken personality is the outcome of an upbringing aimed at nipping any trace of self-confidence in the bud. Kicked off by his mother (Aoife McMahon/ Aine Ni Mhuiri), who is near-pathologically unable to provide love and comfort for her son, a development is set in motion which causes the uncontrollable flashbacks that persistently haunt him and make it virtually im‐ possible for him to continue his work as a priest. If we define trauma as “the response to an unexpected or overwhelming violent event or events that are not fully grasped as they occur, but return later in repeated flashbacks, nightmares, and other repetitive phenomena” (Caruth 91), Kerrigan is a textbook example. It is here, also, that the pernicious influence of the Catholic Church, which Broken identifies as the main source of the harm inflicted on Kerrigan, makes itself felt. His mother’s dislike of her son is due to a fanatically religious com‐ pound of disciplinary rigidity and a hysterical aversion to sexuality. In a flash-forward to purgatory, related by Kerrigan to fellow priest Peter Flaherty (Adrian Dunbar), this plays itself out graphically: EXT PURGATORY DAY White light, cold wind, wispy cloud, No comfort to be had anywhere. People walking up to people (millions of them) and hurting them with brutal frankness. It's not a dialogue, this: it's simply people wounding each other. […] MICHAEL’S MOTHER. All that ever mattered to you was THAT (his penis). FATHER MICHAEL KERRIGAN. Who wants to bring up an arrogant child? The slightest sign, you knock it out of them. MICHAEL’S MOTHER. Always at it. FATHER MICHAEL KERRIGAN. Trouble is you also knock out pride and ambition and confidence and self-esteem. You turned me into a self-loathing wreck but that's okay ’cause I WAS NOT ARROGANT. (Broken, E4, 00: 01; E4, 1-2) 1 At the church school he attends as a boy, Kerrigan (Sam Rintoul) also receives nothing but negative feedback. At a particularly poignant moment in the series, he is reading out his interpretation of “The Windhover”, a 1877 religious sonnet by Gerald Manley Hopkins. He displays a clearly precocious interpretive sen‐ 241 Broken (2017) sibility but ends up getting spanked because Father Patrick (Tony Guilfoyle), his teacher, accuses him of getting help from someone else - a reaction that, as the side-text notes, “devastates young Michael” (E1, 14). Again, the church is criti‐ cally exposed as a repressive institution that not only fails to live up to its task but embodies the very opposite of Christian benevolence and good pedagogy. Another significant step in Kerrigan’s personal history is reached when an‐ other of his teachers, Father Matthew (Thomas Arnold/ Robert Gillespie), mo‐ lests him sexually. When he turns to his priest for help, he is told to keep quiet about it and is left alone with his problem. When he confronts Father Matthew years later, it transpires that, even though the teacher abused a number of boys, he has never been brought to account for his criminal behaviour. What is more, Father Matthew feels no compunction since he sees himself justified by the teachings of his church: “The body’s insignificant, Michael. Whatever it does is insignificant. It’s the soul within that counts.” (E3, 00: 55) In all of these instances, it is not merely the moral shortcomings of individuals that are responsible for the trauma that Kerrigan suffers from for the best part of his life; the main cause is the institutional framework of the Catholic Church, because it encourages attitudes and behavioural patterns which are diametrically opposed to Christian faith. In other words, the Catholic Church is shown to be a deeply contradictory institution. The fact that Kerrigan’s trust in others was repeatedly betrayed prepares him for the formative experience which makes him want to become a priest: FATHER MICHAEL KERRIGAN. It was one weekend, thirty nine years ago. I was eighteen. I’d turned my back on school and church and faith - “with good reason” I’d have said back then. But I saw a falconer at work. […] His hawk disappeared, didn’t come back. […] The crowd drifted away till there was just me and him. And every half hour or so he’d call out, “Come on, boy” and then say to me, “He’ll come.” Total faith. And then after, I don’t know, four maybe five hours, he came. God doesn’t always come when you call him […]. But keep on calling him, and he will. I was a Catholic again. (E2, 00: 07) This scene is part of the bird-motif which runs like a visual and verbal thread through the series. In Hopkins’ “The Windhover”, the kestrel is linked to Christ through the intense awe both inspire in the speaker. In Barry Hines’ 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave, held up as the prize for the best composition in young Kerrigan's class, the bird provides a young boy with a chance to escape from his destitute family and an indifferent society (Ken Loach's memorable film version Kes was released in 1969). The irony of choosing Hines’ novel appears to be lost on the teacher who is complicit in creating the very kind of childhood misery 242 Stefan Glomb 2 Another reworking of the kestrel motif is W.B. Yeats’ 1920 modernist poem “The Second Coming”, starting with the lines: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold [...].” (Ricks, 525-6) Here, in contrast to Hopkins’ poem, the falcon is not used as a mirror of the positive attributes of Christ, but paralleled with a sphinx-like monster which “Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born” (ibid.). Thus, the second coming of Christ is turned into its nightmarish opposite, and the bond between the falconer and the falcon is broken. that the book deals with compassionately. The use of the kestrel-motif is char‐ acteristic of the way McGovern’s series grounds the more high-flying side of religion in the (considerably less exalted) here and now of social interaction. 2 Broken succeeds in making Kerrigan a particularly complex character because he is presented not only as a victim but also as a perpetrator. The extent of his psychological deformation becomes apparent when his internalisation of his mother’s attitude towards sexuality finds an outlet in violence. As he confesses to Roz Demichelis (Paula Malcomson), a woman he tries to talk out of commit‐ ting suicide by pointing up the things in his life that he feels guilty about, I treated young women very badly. […] When I was 18, 19. Not all young women, just the ones I had sex with. […] Because they let me have sex with them. It was forty years ago and I could live with it then. Forty years ago the only good woman there’d ever been was the Virgin Mary ’cause she’d never done it with anyone, whereas if a girl did it with a boy, any boy, she was filth and if she did it with me, a boy from whom every bit of self-esteem was well and truly banished, well she was less than filth; she was scum, and you can treat scum any way you want. (E2, 00: 52) All in all, there is a strong suggestion that, after he has undergone a process of maturation, it is the very suffering he had to endure himself that enables him to reach out to others who suffer. It is on account of this ability that he is able to work towards not only the individual well-being of his fellow humans but also towards creating a modicum of communal cohesion. The singularity of this beneficial potential, which marks Kerrigan as a priest and as a person, stands out in sharp relief against the other church officials shown in the series. This applies not only to the ones who failed him when he was a boy, but also to his fellow priest Father Peter Flaherty, who is not exactly a negative character but whose work seems a great deal less existentially mo‐ tivated. The fact that he has not known Kerrigan’s kind of suffering explains his more conventional and businesslike attitude towards his job. By contrast, Ker‐ rigan has a tendency to deviate from the Church’s orthodox course and to ques‐ tion some of its most dearly held tenets. A case in point is Kerrigan’s interpre‐ tation of the way the Virgin Mary has been turned into an ideological tool, which 243 Broken (2017) serves as an example of his waywardness and also testifies to a change in his attitude towards women: I think a few hundred years ago a cardinal went to the pope and said, “Have you seen what this guy Christ actually SAID? ” And the pope reads it and goes (shakes his head in abhorrence, contemplates, decides) “Let’s start talking about his mother. She said nothing.” (E1, 00: 37; E1,12A) What Father Kerrigan is opposed to is that, by turning Mary into a mute icon, the church manages to defuse the potentially subversive quality of Christian faith and at the same time creates a doctrinal footing for their misogyny. In one of his sermons, Kerrigan expresses his views even more drastically: I think I understand why our church is so set against women priests. I think it’s because the old men who run the church do not want menstrual blood on the altar. I think it’s as basic as that: fear of, ignorance of, contempt for the bodies of women. Some people are loving this; some aren't… It’s okay, you might say, these old men will soon be dead. The trouble is they have taught younger men. And those younger men will, in turn, teach younger men. And so it will continue, this fear of, ignorance of, contempt for the bodies of women. Female priests, female bishops, a female pope - that’s what our church needs. (E3, 00: 05; E3, 5) The driving force behind the church officials’ thoughts and actions is not pri‐ marily their individual conscience or personal faith, but a relentless organisation that turns them into cogs in the wheel of a well-oiled engine that has run its course on the same track for centuries. As will be shown in more detail below, a comparable logic is also characteristic of the police force, the job centre, and neoliberal capitalism. In a witty argumentative twist, Kerrigan points out a sim‐ ilarity between the latter and the church when it comes to explaining the seal that keeps priests from passing on information obtained in confession: “I see it now for what it is, of course: the seal. It’s a sales pitch. The best ever - every religion wishes it had it - but that’s all it is: a bloody sales pitch. ’Ten billion confessions heard, not one revealed. Buy now while stocks last.’” (E4, 00: 33) However, the confident tone in which these expressions of nonconformity are brought forward should not obscure the fact that Kerrigan’s work as a priest is informed by constant suffering, causing him to seriously consider leaving his post. But this is less due to doubts about the church than to self-doubt, which regularly erupts in the form of harrowing flashbacks: FATHER PETER FLAHERTY. You always get them? FATHER MICHAEL KERRIGAN. Always. 244 Stefan Glomb 3 Institutions are “social phenomena which create expectations concerning certain forms of social action or certain strategies of problem-solving, without knowledge of the precise motives of the participants and circumstantial details” („soziale Phänomene […], die bestimmte Formen sozialen Handelns oder bestimmte Lösungsstrategien erwartbar machen, ohne die genauen Motive der Beteiligten und ohne detaillierte Begleitumstände zu kennen“) (Hasse/ Krücken 164). This definition is relevant to the present discussion in that it foregrounds the fact that institutions disregard the specific qualities of individuals and situations. While this safeguards the fulfilment of their function, it also points to the dialectical flipside of the concept, namely a breaking of the ties between the institutions and those they are meant to serve. It is this process, in the course of which the functional indifference of institutions gets out of hand and mutates into their main rationale, which is criticised both in Broken and I, Daniel Blake. All translations from the German in this article are mine (S.G.). FATHER PETER FLAHERTY. And they’re at their worst during the consecration? FATHER MICHAEL KERRIGAN. Yes. FATHER PETER FLAHERTY. Why is that, do you think? FATHER MICHAEL KERRIGAN. Because I know, in here (his heart) that I’m not fit to be a priest so at the supreme moment of priesthood, the consecration, this (his heart again), this reminds me of all the dirty, filthy things I have done in my life and of all the dirty, filthy things that have been done to me and it says, “How dare you think yourself worthy of this! ” (E6, 00: 39, E6, 36-7) It is one of the paradoxes in Broken that what might be considered an ideal predisposition for working as a priest, Kerrigan’s awareness of what he con‐ siders to be his guilt and insufficiency as a human being, makes him want to turn his back on the church. This testifies to a stark contrast between the Cath‐ olic Church as an institution and a lived faith as exemplified by characters like Helen Oyenusi (Muna Otaru) and Andrew Powell (Mark Stanley), to whom the essence of Christianity is mutual communal care, and who oppose institutional rigidity. 3. Institutions 3 The focus on institutions that have lost touch with those for whose benefit they were created in the first place is a major feature in contemporary critical en‐ gagements with community and the Condition of England. In what is perhaps the most notable recent example, Ken Loach’s film I, Daniel Blake (2016), the protagonist finds himself entangled in a Kafkaesque labyrinth of formalities, administered by job centre officials unwilling to recognise him as a human being. In a similar manner, Broken depicts the Catholic Church, the police, and the job 245 Broken (2017) centre as institutions that fail to meet their responsibilities and thus have neg‐ ative effects on both individual and communal life. Regarding the job centre in Broken, the way in which the workings of the institution have been divorced from the needs of those they should serve is dealt with in episode one. When Christina Fitzsimmons (Anna Friel), mother of three, who hardly manages to make ends meet, asks for help at the job centre, she is fobbed off by the Job Shop woman (Gail Kemp) with a reply that is illogical and cynical in equal measure: JOB SHOP WOMAN. There might be the possibility of an emergency loan but we’d consider that only after you've made a genuine attempt to borrow the money yourself. CHRISTINA FITZSIMMONS. And who decides what’s genuine? JOB SHOP WOMAN. Well obviously a successful attempt must have been genuine. CHRISTINA FITZSIMMONS. But I wouldn't need the money then, would I? JOB SHOP WOMAN. No. (E1, 00: 19) While it is true that Christina is not entirely blameless herself - she takes money from the till where she works (leaving an IOU), and reports her mother’s death to the authorities only after collecting her mother’s pension - the audience is left in no doubt that she acts out of sheer desperation rather than for personal gain. The most extended and scathing criticism of institutions gone awry concerns the Catholic Church and the police, and both are criticised for the same reason. Whereas the job centre has lost contact with the people as a result of an inflated and automated bureaucratic routine, Broken links the Catholic Church and the police by pointing out their tendency to give priority to in-group solidarity (as a negative variety of community) over the well-being of those they are osten‐ sibly working for. The priests and teachers that Kerrigan has to deal with as a child, as well as most of the police officers, prefer toeing the line of an institu‐ tionally enforced group spirit to taking conscientious decisions that might ex‐ pose their colleagues’ wrongdoings. All three institutions deprive those in their employ of the ability to think and act as fully responsible human beings. In other words, they deprive them of the basic human decency that is represented by Father Michael Kerrigan. This tension becomes an issue in the episode centred on Vernon Oyenusi ( Jerome Holder), a mentally disturbed black boy who is killed by the police in what later turns out to have been an unlawful and unprofessional operation. Sent home prematurely by care workers in a chronically underfunded mental health facility (another institutional problem) because “he was the least unwell” (E2, 00: 14; E5, 00: 08; E6, 00: 11), Vernon is perceived by the police officers (Tony Hirst, Aisling Loftus, Matthew Wilson) as posing a risk to those around him, 246 Stefan Glomb 4 Official investigation into police misconduct is dealt with extensively in the award-win‐ ning BBC police procedural Line of Duty (2012-), created by Jed Mercurio. including his mother. What is interesting in terms of the community-society dualism (more of which below) is that the armed officers resort to standard procedure because they fail to heed the advice of police officer Andrew Powell, who is also on the scene and who knows the Oyenusis well (all of them are part of the Catholic Church community). Rather than seeing Vernon as an individual with (quite literally) special needs, the police officers in charge follow an abstract line of conduct, with disastrous consequences. While the operation could be attributed to personal failure under stress, the aftermath of the incident brings to light a systemic problem. Rather than investigate the incident thoroughly, the senior officers (Louis Hilyer, Michael Higgs) organise a cover-up which includes bullying Andrew, the only policeman who takes what happened to heart, into conformity. In a manner that is both unethical and illegal, his superiors exert pressure and do no not even shrink from downright extortion as they use trumped-up charges to threaten his young family’s existence. What is more, even the officer conducting the investigation for the Independent Police Com‐ plaints Commission (Colin Mace) was formerly a policeman himself and will draw a police pension - a fact he is very reluctant to admit (see E3, 00: 27). 4 With the support of Father Michael, however, Andrew finally sticks to what his con‐ science tells him and helps to expose the police-force’s questionable procedures. At this point, the above analysis of the Catholic Church, as arguably the oldest, largest, and most influential institution in history, can be picked up again and expanded. As with the police, both the misdeeds and the ploys used to keep them secret are systemic aspects of the respective institution’s operative mode. The exploitation of the church’s institutional logic for questionable ends is ex‐ emplified not only in the treatment of young Kerrigan, but also in the episode that features Daniel Martin (Danny Sapani), Helen Oyenusi’s brother, who has come to England on hearing of Vernon’s death. His homophobic prejudices are shown to be shared by the official teachings of the church. It is this institutional logic that Carl McKenna (Ned Dennehy), the homosexual target of Martin’s vilifications, is outraged at: Every morning I look out my window and see tiny little kids heading off to that school of yours to be taught that being gay is a sin and it’s perfectly acceptable to treat people like me with contempt. […] It’s a cycle of hatred perpetuated by your church and, I’ll tell you, as far as I’m concerned the world will be a better place when Catholicism and every other goddam religion has been consigned to history. […] I was raised a Catholic too, I loved it, believed it with all my heart. But I also knew that I was different. I even 247 Broken (2017) 5 There is an intriguing similarity to this situation in the more recent BBC miniseries Collateral (2018, written by David Hare, directed by S.J. Clarkson), where two members of the clergy, Reverend Jane Oliver (Nicola Walker) and Bishop Rufus Chambers ( Jon‐ athan Coy), both homosexual, talk about church hypocrisy regarding sexuality and the increasingly widespread loss of confidence in institutions (see Collateral, E3, 15: 49). The clash between religious orthodoxy and homosexuality is also an issue in the ITV series Grantchester (2014-2017, written by Daisy Coulam, directed by Harry Bradbeer), where junior Anglican curate Leonard Finch (Al Weaver) is almost driven to committing sui‐ cide, due to the discrepancy between his sexual orientation and the teachings of his church (see in particular the conversation between the Reverend Sidney Chambers [ James Norton] and Leonard in Grantchester, S3/ E4, 33: 16). In the same episode, Cham‐ bers talks to Archdeacon Gabriel Atubo (Gary Beadle) about the behaviour of Atubo’s colleagues, who make racist jokes behind his back. Chambers asks him: “You can respect an institution that treats you like that? ” (S3/ E4, 42: 23). wondered if God was calling me to be a priest. But I soon realised, no, I was just gay. I prayed and prayed for God to make it stop, to make me ’normal’ but He didn’t listen. (E5, 00: 36) 5 As the audience knows only too well by this point in the series, Father Kerrigan is painfully aware of the questionable sexual ethics of his church: […] I know what I should say: ‘Daniel, thanks to Catholic teaching you’re a totally fucked up human being but that’s okay ’cause so was I. Ignore everything the church ever says on the subject of sex, Daniel. I do that. Every priest I know does that. You can quote scripture until you’re blue in the face, papal pronouncements, edicts, what‐ ever, they are all utter shite.’ (E5, 00: 47) But it is not only church officials who seem to have lost touch with their religion, some of the parishioners appear equally misguided. This is the case in episode two when a girl is wearing a communion dress coloured by electric lights as part of what seems a reinterpretation of the holier-than-thou attitude, updated for the age of conspicuous consumption. This introduces another crucial topic in Broken: money. 4. Money From the first episode, money - and being “skint” - forms a major thematic thread, connecting the lives of several characters: Father Kerrigan, Christine Fitzsimmons, Carl McKenna, and Roz Demichelis. Father Michael, in one of his flashbacks, remembers how his mother berated him for wearing a school uni‐ form that exposed the family to moneylenders (E5, 00: 29; E1, 40), and Christina Fitzsimmons is mainly shown scrimping and saving in a downward spiral to‐ 248 Stefan Glomb wards destitution. While in these instances people suffer from lack of money, Roz’ addiction to slot machines depicts money as an active force destroying people’s lives: ROZ DEMICHELIS. I’m normal. A pretty normal person. Grew up, went to school, went to college, worked, had a family, bought a house, got a dog. I’m not depressed or anxious, I don’t drink or snort coke and I’m not stupid. I’m not the cleverest person in the world, but I got a B in O level Maths and I know the chances of feeding a slot machine and coming out on top aren’t good. But that’s what I did. (Beat) I just, I started, and I couldn't stop. (E4, 00: 48) When her boss (Richard Lynch) finds out that she has been embezzling more than two hundred thousand pounds from their firm’s account, the only way out for her is suicide. When, following her death, her daughter Chloe (Lauren Lyle) starts smashing the machines with a baseball bat, she provokes the following reaction from the betting shop owner: There’s a few home truths for you, sweetheart. A lot of people enjoy these machines that you've just destroyed. Yeah, okay, a few sad bastards like your mother get addicted but that doesn’t mean you ban them. You don’t ban booze ’cause of a few pissheads, so why ban these ’cause of headcases like your bleeding mother? (E6, 00: 12) It comes as no surprise that Father Michael takes a different view: […] these machines are a capitalist’s dream. They don’t need food or shelter. They don’t need wages. You just buy them and line them up against the wall and on they go, sucking up our money. Our money. Money from one of the poorest communities in Western Europe given to shareholders living in the rich South East. Does that not make you angry? (E6, 00: 16) Further along in his sermon, he even encourages attacks on the machines out of a sense of loyalty to Chloe, who later realises that this is a self-defeating strategy - “[m]orally defensible, but still criminal damage and leaves you open to a restraining order and a possible prison sentence” (O’Grady) - and agrees to look for other routes of opposition. But for a time, Kerrigan’s invitation to follow the example of Christ when he expelled the money changers from the temple has the effect of creating communal defiance of the powers that be, as groups of men gang up to demolish more of the hated symbols of freewheeling capi‐ talism: “Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, as legalised by, and regulated under, the Gambling Act 2005, one of the less lovely legacies of the Blair era [...].” (ibid.) It is worth noting that McGovern appears to have no qualms about making this course of action appear in a rather positive light. 249 Broken (2017) 6 The following novels and films serve as examples of a critical engagement with Thatch‐ erism: My Beautiful Laundrette (1985, written by Hanif Kureishi, directed by Stephen Frears); High Hopes (1988, written and directed by Mike Leigh); Jonathan Coe, What a Carve Up! (1994); Brassed Off (1996, written and directed by Mark Herman); Billy Elliot (2000, written by Lee Hall, directed by Stephen Daldry); Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty (2004); Hilary Mantel, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (2014). Here, Broken taps into a tradition of works of literature and films addressing the Condition of England commencing in the 1980s, during the rule of Margaret Thatcher. 6 Their target, which is still alive and kicking today, has been neolib‐ eralism: Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political and economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entre‐ preneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. (Harvey 2) Far from merely being a political and economic theory, neoliberalism carries a much stronger clout: Neoliberalism has, in short, become hegemonic as a mode of discourse. It has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has been incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world. (ibid. 3) As a result of the sway institutions and neoliberal capitalism hold over Britain as represented in Broken, people are either unfree, or they are free in only a very limited sense of the word. There are those like Christina Fitzsimmons and Roz Demichelis, who are unfree on account of their money troubles, and there are those working for institutions that keep them unfree by restricting their scope of thought and action to a purely instrumental level (the job centre employees and police officers). Finally, there is the betting-shop owner, whose freedom is purely economic; in Harvey’s words: “The freedoms [the neoliberal state] em‐ bodies reflect the interests of private property owners, businesses, multinational corporations, and financial capital.” (ibid. 7, emphasis in original) By contrast, examples of a more expansive concept of freedom, which is linked to individual responsibility, are thin on the ground. It is, however, a mark of the series’ (quali‐ fied) optimism that they are not entirely absent, as the stories of Michael Ker‐ rigan, Helen Oyenusi, and Andrew Powell show. 250 Stefan Glomb 7 “Zusammenhang von Sprechakten und Geltungsansprüchen”. 8 “die Weitergabe von Sinn (Kultur), die Wahrung solidarischer Beziehungen (Gesell‐ schaft) und die Sozialisation ich-starker Individuen (Persönlichkeit)”. 9 “codieren einen zweckrationalen Umgang mit kalkulierbaren Wertmengen und ermög‐ lichen eine generalisierte strategische Einflußnahme auf die Entscheidungen anderer Interaktionsteilnehmer unter Umgehung sprachlicher Konsensbildungsprozesse”. 10 “verknüpfen Interaktionen […] zu immer komplexeren Netzen, ohne daß diese über‐ schaut oder verantwortet werden müßten”. 11 “Der lebensweltliche Kontext, in den Verständigungsprozesse stets eingebunden sind, [wird] für mediengesteuerte Interaktionen entwertet: Die Lebenswelt wird für die Koor‐ dinierung von Handlungen nicht länger benötigt”. 12 “systemisch induzierten Lebensweltpathologien”. 5. Life-World and System When it comes to considering the negative effects that capitalism has on com‐ munity, it is helpful to refer to Jürgen Habermas’ diagnosis of the development of modern societies in Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Theory of Com‐ municative Action). According to Habermas, modern societies are characterised by the coexistence of two spheres: life-world and system. The life-world is the sphere of communicative rationality, a “connection of speech acts and normative claims” 7 (Strecker 222), and facilitates “the passing on of meaning (culture), the preservation of relationships based on solidarity (society) and the socialisation of individuals endowed with ego-strength personality” (Iser 329). 8 By contrast, the systems (mainly state bureaucracy and the capitalist economy) are marked by “functionalist rationality” (Habermas 575) with money and power as its dominant media. These media encode a way of dealing with calculable quantities, which follows a means-end ra‐ tionality, and enable a generalised strategic influence on the decisions of other par‐ ticipants in the interaction, while bypassing linguistic processes aimed at generating consensus. (ibid. 273, emphasis in original) 9 Money and power “link interactions, thus creating increasingly complex webs, without the necessity of anyone seeing them from a vantage point or taking re‐ sponsibility for them” (ibid. 275). 10 Once the systems have reached a certain level of dominance, what ensues is the “colonisation of the life-world” (ibid. 293), i.e. “the life-world context, in which processes of communication are embedded, loses its meaning for media-controlled interactions: the life-world is no longer neces‐ sary for coordinating actions” (ibid. 273). 11 Part of the “systemically induced life-world pathologies” (ibid. 293) 12 are grievous repercussions for the individ‐ uals, who suffer from the “withdrawal symptoms of an everyday practice which 251 Broken (2017) 13 “Entzugserscheinungen einer kulturell verarmten und einseitig rationalisierten Alltags‐ praxis”. 14 “Wenn das Individuum nämlich sein gesamtes Leben mit jenen Kategorien zu betrachten beginnt, mit denen es innerhalb des Arbeitsprozesses operieren muss, wird seine Selbst‐ wahrnehmung, seine Weise zu denken und zu kommunizieren defizitär”. 15 “alle dauerhaften, naturwüchsigen, echten, gefühlsmäßigen, traditionalen, authenti‐ schen, warmen, selbstzweckhaften, organischen und lebendigen Verbindungen von Menschen”. 16 “eine temporäre, gemachte, künstliche, rationale, zweckgerichtete, vertragliche, ab‐ strakte, mechanische und kalte Assoziation”. is marked by cultural impoverishment and one-sided rationalization” (ibid. 580). 13 As Iser states, “when individuals start seeing their whole life through the lens of the categories which they are forced to handle during work, their self-perception and their way of thinking are bound to become deficient” (329). 14 It is easy to see how this accords with Harvey’s statement about neoliberalism becoming a hegemonic mode of discourse. In terms of community, Rosa et al. point out a striking similarity between Habermas’ distinction between life-world and system, on the one hand, and Ferdinand Tönnies’ classic distinc‐ tion between community and society, on the other (52). According to Tönnies, community refers to “all the lasting, natural, genuine, emotional, traditional, authentic, warm, autotelic, organic and living connections between persons”, 15 whereas society emerges as community’s negative opposite: “a temporary, con‐ structed, artificial, rational, goal-oriented, contractual, abstract, mechanical and cold association” (ibid. 40-1). 16 Referring back to McGovern’s depiction of institutions discussed above, it is safe to say that there is a striking parallel between Habermas’ analyses and the way Broken shows how people’s lives are increasingly dominated by systemic forces, how their life-world is deprived of its capacity to create social cohesion, due to systemic colonisation. 6. Community Regained The pivotal stage in the plot of Broken is reached in episode six when recent events bring Kerrigan to the point where he feels that he can no longer work as a priest. The final straw in the chain of events that have further eroded his self-confidence is the confession that he was aware of Vernon Oyenusi’s prob‐ lematic situation after all because he did receive the message Helen left on his answering machine, which he formerly claimed to have missed. During the of‐ ficial investigation into the disastrously failed police operation, his conscience forces him to own up to his omission, which deeply shocks his closest allies, P.C. 252 Stefan Glomb 17 Again, there is a striking parallel in Grantchester. After Chambers has sent his letter of resignation, his landlady (Tessa Peake-Jones) reminds him: “People need you, Sidney. They look to you, not to the church. They look to you.” (S4/ E6, 00: 28) The similarity to Father Kerrigan is obvious: in both cases, the basic human decency of the individual clergyman throws into sharp relief the sorry state of the church as an institution, and in both cases a person perfectly predisposed to serve the church turns his back on it. Andrew Powell and Helen Oyenusi. The latter even accuses him of having held back for selfish reasons. As he admits to Father Peter, he now finds himself in a situation very similar to that of Roz Demichelis: “A woman - Roz - she once said guilt is you knowing you’ve done something wrong; shame is everyone knowing. How right she was.” (E6, 00: 40) The turning point occurs immediately after this conversation, when Kerri‐ gan’s mother in her turn finally brings herself to acknowledge her guilty feelings about her failure to live up to her responsibility: “MICHAEL’S MOTHER. (Her back to him) I’m sorry for how I treated you. (She’s been waiting over forty years to say that. He’s been waiting just as long to hear it) […]. I was a mess. Nerves on edge.” (E6, 00: 42; E6, 39) After his sister has managed to talk him into celebrating his mother’s funeral service, Kerrigan is relieved to find that the flashbacks are gone: his mother’s admission of guilt allows him to take a more lenient view of himself. This newly established self-confidence is stabilised in the scene that serves as the goal of the teleological drift of the whole series. During commu‐ nion, first Christina Fitzsimmons and then a row of people, including Andrew Powell, Chloe Demichelis, and, finally, Helen Oyenusi, approach him saying: “Amen, you wonderful priest.” (E6, 00: 54) 17 This scene is significant in a number of ways: 1. For the first time in Broken, Kerrigan’s support of others is properly re‐ ciprocated, thus bolstering up his recently achieved self-respect and giving him the backing necessary for continuing his work as a priest. After repeatedly being shut out (literally and metaphorically) by those he was trying to help, Kerrigan is no longer the only one who strives to establish communal ties, but can now feel himself belonging to a group of people linked by mutual care. 2. This reciprocation is the result of a communal effort. Sensing the weight of Kerrigan’s problems, Andrew Powell gets together with Christina Fitz‐ simmons and others to organise the modification of the communicants’ response. 3. This modification is a significant breach of church protocol and stands in stark contrast to the repetition of the somewhat jaded original procedure throughout the series. What is happening here is the creative appropria‐ 253 Broken (2017) 18 O’Grady’s reaction confirms this: “As someone brought up to believe in the Catechism literal truth of transubstantiation, which is that you are literally putting a sliver of the body of Christ in your mouth during Mass […], I can believe most things - but I really couldn’t believe that final scene”. tion of one of the most firmly fixed codes of conduct in the whole of human history. 18 This goes along with a shift in emphasis away from the institu‐ tion towards the concrete person working in it. By adding “you wonderful priest” to the expected “Amen”, the communicants stress the importance of the kind of basic human decency represented by Kerrigan. Thus, they also introduce a practical equivalent to Kerrigan’s criticisms of the obso‐ lescent elements of Catholic orthodoxy. What Broken implies here is in line with recent sociological research into the role of religion in contemporary societies. Among other things, this research is marked by the effort to replace the old notion of religious secularisation as decline, displace‐ ment, and extinction with the more open, less evaluative notion of religious “transformation”. This can take many forms, but the key idea is that religion is neither declining, nor statically reproducing, but instead undergoing socially sig‐ nificant metamorphoses. (Smith/ Woodberry 102-3) 4. The kind of community established here cannot be adequately grasped by recourse to Tönnies’ classic definition. Rather than offering an alter‐ native to society by harking back to earlier forms of collectivity, com‐ munity as depicted here is indeed compatible with society, and it “is a product of modernity, not a product of a premodern traditional world” (Delanty 189-90). It is a “post-traditional community” (Rosa et al. 61-2) in that it relies on “situative processes of shaping community” (ibid.), i.e. it is local and temporal, rather than comprehensive and stable. This brand of community is geared to accommodating the ways social meaning is shaped in contemporary societies: The symbolic forms of modern life no longer make clear how people should act because these forms have lost their ability to define meaning and have instead become resources for the construction of many different projects. Meaning, in short, is not given, but is more and more constructed by a vast variety of social actors who have taken over the symbolic resources of society and are creating new universes of meaning. In other words, community now exists in a meaning‐ less world. It is not the world that is meaningful, but the identity projects of social groups. (Delanty 190-1) 254 Stefan Glomb 19 “verfährt so, dass sie eine bestehende Situation an Ansprüchen misst, die über die in dieser angelegten Prinzipien hinausgehen oder sie im Ganzen in Frage stellt”. 20 “die Beobachterin eines fremden Landes dieses anhand ihrer eigenen, von ihr mitge‐ brachten partikularen Normen kritisiert”. 21 “Inkonsistenz entweder zwischen Behauptungen und Fakten, zwischen akzeptierten Normen und Praktiken, zwischen Schein und Wirklichkeit oder zwischen Anspruch und Verwirklichung”. Thus, the regaining of community should not be taken to refer to a process in which an entity called ‘society’ is replaced by an entity called ‘community’. Rather, the social practices depicted in Broken, while clearly counteracting the detrimental effects of the abstract administrative and economic realms, are part of a complex process of change that should not be understood in terms of a simplistic either/ or-distinction. How exactly this process is to be envisaged and what kind of critique it is aligned with will be discussed in the next section. 7. Critique In her important recent study Kritik von Lebensformen (Critique of Life-forms), German social philosopher Rahel Jaeggi distinguishes between three types of critique: external, internal, and immanent critique. External critique’s “method is to measure a given situation against claims that transcend its inherent prin‐ ciples or to call it into question in its entirety” (261). 19 It is thus a case of external critique when “the observer of a foreign country criticises it by reference to her own particular norms, which she has brought with her” (ibid.). 20 Internal cri‐ tique, by contrast, proceeds from an awareness of the “inconsistency either be‐ tween assertions and facts, accepted norms and practices, between appearance and reality, or between aim and realisation” (265), 21 in order to call attention to the ways in which a certain practice deviates from the norms and values it is ostensibly based on. Hence, internal critique aims at restoring its normative integrity to a particular practice. To illustrate this, Jaeggi gives the example of a head of human resources, who voices support for an equal opportunities policy but in fact never hires female applicants (see 263). Following Hegel and Marx, Jaeggi describes the way that immanent critique works as follows: Immanent critique localises the normativity of social practices in the operating con‐ ditions of these practices themselves. Besides, immanent critique starts from the as‐ sumption that the contexts from which it takes its standards are inherently contra‐ 255 Broken (2017) 22 “Immanente Kritik lokalisiert die Normativität sozialer Praktiken in den Vollzugsbe‐ dingungen dieser Praktiken selbst. Außerdem geht immanente Kritik davon aus, dass die Kontexte, aus denen sie ihre Maßstäbe bezieht, gleichzeitig in sich widersprüchlich sind. Sie werden nicht zufällig nicht verwirklicht, sondern sind von einem systemati‐ schen Problem gekennzeichnet”. dictory. They do not fail to be realised by coincidence but are marked by a systematic problem. (277, emphasis in original) 22 This kind of critique is aligned with ’determinate negation’ (bestimmte Nega‐ tion), a kind of negation that does not aim at a wholesale replacement or anni‐ hilation of what is being negated (this would be a case of ‘abstract negation’), but rather sees the result of a negation as partly determined by what has been negated. In other words, both immanent critique and determinate negation combine continuity and discontinuity (see Jaeggi 418). It is instructive to take the example of the Catholic Church, as represented in Broken, to illustrate the different forms of critique and thus to arrive at a deeper understanding of the way McGovern takes stock of contemporary social prob‐ lems. While an atheist would in all likelihood be disposed to apply external critique, which in this case might even aim at abolishing the Catholic Church altogether, internal critique would stress the difference between the teachings of Christianity and the practices of (some of) those who represent it in an official capacity. Immanent critique, as the form of critique championed by Broken (and Jaeggi), is more radical in that it focuses attention on the systemic contradictions that will sooner or later force this institution to change. As the criticism con‐ cerning misogyny and homophobia voiced by Kerrigan and McKenna shows, the Catholic Church’s resistance to keeping up with social developments brings with it the danger of reducing it to an antiquarian oddity. In a similar way, the other institutions featuring in Broken also face the risk of becoming obsolete on account of their internal contradictions. It is not so much the fact that the job centre and the police fail to serve those they are supposed to benefit - this is the kind of discrepancy that can be mended through the application of internal critique. It is the fact that these institutions contribute to establishing an over‐ arching societal logic which results in the treatment of human beings as ex‐ changeable ciphers in a system driven by functionalist rationality. In this con‐ text, both Christina Fitzsimmons and Vernon Oyenusi appear as exchangeable objects that can only be processed by the system if they fit in with pre-estab‐ lished definitions. Hence, both are treated as perpetrators. The more complex and individual dimensions of their respective situations - Christina’s inability 256 Stefan Glomb 23 Cf. the following passage from the script: “HELEN OYENUSI. We were happy in Granby. Vernon loved it there. Lots of friends, lots of laughter. But his Dad wanted ‘somewhere better’ and ‘somewhere better’ meant ‘fewer black faces’ so we moved. Here. And con‐ versations suddenly stopped when Vernon got to them. People laughed at jokes and wouldn’t repeat them to him. He got sick. The man responsible for the sickness couldn’t cope with the sickness and he left and the sickness got worse. And worse. And now it has killed him” (E3, 29A). 24 “Spannungsverhältnis innerhalb einer Formation, das diese über sich selbst hinaus‐ treiben wird”. to support her children is not her fault, and Vernon’s illness is a reaction to the way his father reacted to a society riddled by racism 23 - do not enter the picture. The logic of exchange is, of course, that of capitalism, and capitalism, in its mercilessly neoliberal variety, is the main target of the immanent criticism in Broken. The capitalist logic based on reducing quality to quantity, and individ‐ uality to standardisation, permeates the whole of the society depicted in the series and provokes reactions in the increasingly disaffected people subjected to it that range from violent protest (the smashing of the money machines) to the creation of alternative forms of social bonding (as in the “wonderful priest” scene). None of this can be satisfactorily dealt with by a critique that restricts its scope to drawing attention to an internal contradiction between label and content. What is demonstrated in Broken is, in Jaeggi’s words, the “tension inside a formation that will force this formation to advance beyond itself” (287, emphasis in original). 24 In Broken, both the Catholic Church and neoliberal capitalism, unlikely bedfellows in many ways, find themselves confronted with the alter‐ natives of either transforming themselves or losing their hold on those without whom they cannot exist. 8. Conclusion The way Broken presents religion shows a certain similarity to Ludwig Feuer‐ bach’s seminal 1841 Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity). Even though this does not mean that Broken should be interpreted as a plea for atheism, Feuerbach’s replacement of a theological (God created man) by an an‐ thropological relation (man created God) indicates a shift in emphasis from the divine to the human, which parallels the shift from the institution to the indi‐ vidual priest discussed above. As becomes clear in the episode where Daniel Martin’s interpretation of Carl McKenna’s change of mind as a miracle is ex‐ posed as yet another self-serving sentiment, Broken wisely refrains from sug‐ gesting any divine interference in human affairs. But this does not mean that the series questions the importance of religion altogether. The examples of Mi‐ 257 Broken (2017) 25 For an application of these terms to literature, see Glomb 74-7. chael Kerrigan, Helen Oyenusi, and Andrew Powell clearly show that the kind of decency showcased by Broken as inevitable for the creation of a better society is inextricably entwined with their deeply felt religious belief. Like Feuerbach, Broken reminds us of the importance of characteristics that are fundamentally human, rather than externalising them onto a superhuman being, and it does so by thematising religion in a way that gives priority to interpersonal, communal relationships over relationships focused on the presence or experience of God. This, importantly, also applies to the protagonist Father Michael Kerrigan. As has been shown, the representation of religion in Broken is embedded in a more comprehensive engagement with societal problems and a stocktaking of life in (the North of) England in the twenty-first century. In this regard, the series is a notable contribution to the tradition of Condition of England writing (and filming) which, ever since its inception in the 1840s, has accompanied po‐ litical and social developments as a kind of cultural self-monitoring device. In the present context, a brief look at the pioneering works is helpful. What novels like Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855), Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1854), as well as a number of other novels written in this cultural environment, have in common is not only the fact that they are “a result of the disturbance of the social conscience among the middle classes about the way of life of those working in industrial cities and in factories” (Cuddon 149). They also share a marked propensity to offer individualistic solutions to sys‐ temic problems. Be it old Mr Carson in North and South, who turns into a caring factory owner recognizing his workers as brothers, or Stephen Blackpool in Hard Times, whose Christ-like fate serves a displacement that deflects attention from the causes of the working conditions in Coketown. In each of these in‐ stances (and a great many others), individual thoughts and actions are presented as the linchpin on which visions of a better future depend. The workings of the systemic correlative of these individual perspectives, the amalgam of capitalism and industrial production, are kept out of sight in what seems like an effort to avoid advocating too far-reaching changes which might call into question the legitimacy of the middle classes’ own position in society. By contrast, Broken avoids the extremes of methodological individualism and methodological holism. 25 While the ending may seem overly harmonious con‐ sidering the bleak view of society presented throughout the series, it does not altogether wipe out the awareness of the fact that the inherent momentum of social institutions and neoliberal capitalism has a tight grip on individual des‐ tinies. Advocating the engendering of a temporally and locally specific, as well 258 Stefan Glomb as spontaneous and creative type of community, Broken suggests a solution that, rather than espousing either extreme, apprehends the complex dialectic of in‐ dividual and system and, furthermore, opens up new vistas beyond the time-honoured ways of conceiving of both community and the Condition of England. Bibliography Primary Sources Broken. Written by Jimmy McGovern, Shaun Duggan, Colette Kane, and Nick Leather. Directed by Ashley Pearce and Noreen Kershaw. LA Productions, 2017. McGovern, Jimmy. Broken: Episode 1. Christina's Story. Script. www.bbc.co.uk/ writers room/ scripts/ broken-bbcone. Accessed on 30 January 2018. McGovern, Jimmy. Broken: Episode 2. Father Michael's Story. Script. www.bbc.co.uk/ writersroom/ scripts/ broken-bbcone. Accessed on 30 January 2018. McGovern, Jimmy and Nick Leather. Broken: Episode 3. Andrew's Story. Script. www.bbc. co.uk/ writersroom/ scripts/ broken-bbcone. Accessed on 30 January 2018. McGovern, Jimmy and Colette Kane. Broken: Episode 3. Roz's Story. Script. www.bbc.co.uk/ writersroom/ scripts/ broken-bbcone. Accessed on 30 January 2018. McGovern, Jimmy and Shaun Duggan. Broken: Episode 5. Daniel & Carl's Story. Script. www.bbc.co.uk/ writersroom/ scripts/ broken-bbcone. Accessed on 30 January 2018. McGovern, Jimmy. Broken: Episode 6. Script. www.bbc.co.uk/ writersroom/ scripts/ broken -bbcone. Accessed on 30 January 2018. Collateral. Written by David Hare. Directed by S.J. Clarkson. The Forge, 2018. Grantchester. Written by Daisy Coulam. Directed by Harry Bradbeer. Kudos/ Masterpiece, 2014-2017. Secondary Sources Blandford, Steve. Jimmy McGovern. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2013. Brunkhorst, Hauke, Regina Kreide, and Christina Lafont (eds.). Habermas Handbuch. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2009. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2016 [1996]. Cuddon, J.A. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Fifth Edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Delanty, Gerard. Community. London: Routledge, 2003. Forrest, David. “Jimmy McGovern’s The Street and the Politics of Everyday Life.” Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain. Eds. David Forrest and Beth Johnson. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 29-43. 259 Broken (2017) Glomb, Stefan. “The Hybrid Individual: Reading Literature as a Critical Commentary on Reckwitz’ Theory of Subject Cultures.” Subject Cultures: The English Novel from the 18 th to the 21 st Centuries. Eds. Nora Kuster, Stella Butter and Sarah Heinz. Tübingen: Narr, 2016. 49-78. Habermas, Jürgen. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt/ M.: Suhrkamp, 1981. Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Hasse, Raimund and Georg Krücken. “Institution.” Handbuch Soziologie. Eds. Nina Baur, Hermann Korte, Martina Löw, and Markus Schroer. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwis‐ senschaften, 2008. 163-82. Hogan, Michael. “Jimmy McGovern's Broken is timely but tough to watch.” The Telegraph. 30 May 2017. www.telegraph.co.uk/ tv/ 2017/ 05/ 30/ jimmy-mcgoverns-broken-timelytough-watch-review. Accessed on 10 January 2018. Hughes, Sarah. “Broken: TV's unmissable answer to It's a Wonderful Life - with added Sean Bean.” The Guardian. 5 July 2017. www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/ 2017/ jul/ 05/ broken-bbc-tvs-answer-to-its-a-wonderful-life-with-added-sean-bean. Accessed on 10 January 2018. Iser, Matthias. “Kolonialisierung.” Habermas Handbuch. Eds. Hauke Brunkhorst, Regina Kreide, and Christina Lafont. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2009. 328-31. Maras, Steven. “Jimmy McGovern through an ethical lens.” Journal of Screenwriting 6.2 (2015): 203-20. O'Grady, Sean. “Last night's TV review: Broken (BBC1): stretching credibility to breaking point.” Independent. 14 July 2017. www.independent.co.uk/ arts-entertainment/ tv/ last -nights-tv-broken-bbc1-stretching-credibility-too-far-a7821141.html. Accessed on 10 January 2018. Ricks, Christopher (ed.). The Oxford Book of English Verse. Oxford: OUP, 1999. Rosa, Hartmut, Lars Gertenbach, Henning Laux, and David Strecker. Theorien der Ge‐ meinschaft zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius, 2010. Smith, Christian and Robert D. Woodberry. “Sociology of Religion.” The Blackwell Com‐ panion to Sociology. Ed. Judith R. Blau. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. 100-13. Strecker, David. “Theorie der Gesellschaft: Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns.” Habermas Handbuch. Eds. Hauke Brunkhorst, Regina Kreide, and Christina Lafont. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2009. 220-33. Wollaston, Sam. “Broken review - Jimmy McGovern blasts us with his misery cannon in this bruising drama.” The Guardian. 31 May 2017. www.theguardian.com/ tv-andradio/ 2017/ may/ 31/ broken-review-jimmy-mcgovern-misery-cannon-bruisingdrama. Accessed on 24 January 2018. 260 Stefan Glomb Black Holes, Zombie Capitalism, and Communities of Care: Luther (2010-) as a 21 st -Century Psychomachia Monika Pietrzak-Franger 1. Introduction Crime drama has often been seen as offering a response to current malaise and social anxieties. In her paper “Is Television Studies History? ” (1994), Charlotte Brunsdon regards the genre as often providing a reflection on the state of the nation. Following her, Helen Piper argues in The TV Detective: Voices of Dissent in Contemporary Television (2015) that fictive investigations may therefore be understood as […] extending the question ‘what went wrong? ’ beyond the text and inviting audiences to reflect more broadly on the social world around them. Such a mode of reflection may be national in its particular inflection yet still cross-cultural in its potential […]. (1-2) Irrespective of these semiotic possibilities, the texts clearly also remain complex discursive instruments influenced by generic traditions, ever changing exigen‐ cies of the marketplace and institutional policies as well as national and global economies. In the context of the extant “TV3 environment” (Nelson 66), char‐ acterised by a gravitation towards quality entertainment, crime drama’s survival has been dependent on “budget inflation”, “high production values”, “sophisti‐ cated visual aesthetics”, and “narrative complexity” (Piper 14); all of which have undeniably had an impact on the storylines, thematic and aesthetic foci, and diegetic geographies. These trends notwithstanding, Piper (see 21) argues that the new highly competitive and multi-platform televisual landscape has also led to a diversification of the genre, simultaneously assessing that its currency re‐ mains in the expression and easy export of collective identities, and in their concomitant serial repetition. Recent overviews of post-2000 developments of this televisual genre in the USA and UK continue to emphasise its ideal place “to address collective, often national, preoccupations, particularly those to do with social breakdown and governance” (Piper 136). The character of these concerns is intimately linked to 1 Although Luther has been categorised in terms of both subgenres, and even though snippets of joint team work of the police force unit he is allotted to are clearly present on screen, there is a decided emphasis in the series on the detective’s exceptional powers of seeing, knowing, and reasoning. In contrast, such series as Scott & Bailey (2011-2016) and Line of Duty (2012-) give centre stage to the mundane activities of the police, em‐ phasising their routine, often cumbersome and boring patterns of work (see also Piper 129-33). the subgeneric varieties. Out of an array of subgenres, such as the gangster, serial killer, and forensic crime drama, the police procedural and the detective genre take pride of place on British terrestrial television. Although the boundaries between these two subgenres are blurry, the police procedural stresses “the ac‐ tual methods and procedures of police work” as “central to the structure, themes and action” (Scaggs 91), whereas the detective genre hinges on a ‘genius’ de‐ tective who exhibits a varying degree of institutional dependency and often readily bends the rules of institutionalised codes of conduct (see Jenner 47). Even though they differ in their ideological allegiances, both subgenres highlight the interactions between a local community and the police force/ detective as a struggle with crime that literally and symbolically stands for the volatile forces that threaten to violate the existing social order. Luther (BBC One, 2010-) characteristically takes up these issues as it follows DCI John Luther on his daily struggle with London crime. Identified by critics both as police procedural and detective drama, it has also been categorised as “character-driven psychological thriller” (Backe 125). 1 The BBC One website describes it as “[a] dark psychological crime drama starring Idris Elba as Luther, a man struggling with his own terrible demons, who might be as dangerous as the depraved murderers he hunts” (“Luther”). In the BBC One landscape, the “brilliant” Luther, like the “populist” Sherlock and “highbrow” Wallander (“Lu‐ ther: Brilliantly Unsubtle”), is confronted with atrocious, mainly serialised, crimes that shake the local population. In sync with the generic expectations, the series raises the question about the significance of communal and social bonds as they are constantly threatened by various acts of violence. On a number of levels, it addresses the crisis of community as characteristic of contemporary society and as the underlying cause of criminal activity. At the same time, it fashions Luther as a believer in communal virtues who sets out on a quest to re-establish social order. On a more abstract level, his quest becomes an allegory of the struggle between good and evil - a psychomachia adapted for contempo‐ rary audiences. 262 Monika Pietrzak-Franger 2. The Crisis of Community Luther participates in and co-produces the discourse of the crisis of community. The recent currency of the notion of community has been seen as “a response to the devolution of the values of solidarity and belonging that has been exa‐ cerbated and at the same time induced by globalization” (Delanty x). While classical sociological theories see (mutual) interaction, territorial affiliation, and shared common values, beliefs, and behaviours as essential to communities, there has also been a tendency to define communities more loosely, especially in the postmodern world. Ferdinand Tönnies, German sociologist and early the‐ oretician of community and society, regarded communal bonds as less abstract than societal ties and as rooted in vegetative life, so that the relationship between mother and child, husband and wife, and that between siblings could be seen as fundamental and foundational in this respect. This ‘blood’ community has been distinguished from the community of place (neighbourhood) and community of spirit (friendship) (see Hillmann 268). Like Max Weber and Robert Nisbet, Tön‐ nies associated the collapse of communal values with the onset of modernity. In the wake of the ‘cultural turn’, however, community has become more readily understood as a symbolic structure rather than only as a social practice (see Delanty xi). Anthony Cohen’s seminal work The Symbolic Construction of Com‐ munity (1985) shifted the focus from actual interaction to concerns with meaning and identity. Although primarily focused on the nation, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983), also popularised the notion of community (the nation as an imagined community) as constructed, cognitive, and symbolic. This emphasis has waned subsequently. From the 1980s onwards, philosophical, often deconstructive, takes on the issue (see e.g. Nancy; Esposito, Communitas) have emphasised the “constitutive alterity” as central to the notion of community, “evacuating it of any identity-making connotations” (Esposito, “Community”, 83). In view of these discussions, and sensitive to contemporary socio-political and economic developments, Delanty proposes to see community as: an expression of a highly fluid communitas - a mode of belonging that is symbolic and communicative rather than an actual institutional arrangement - and that […] is variable, capable of sustaining modern and radical social relationships as well as tra‐ ditional ones. (20) This understanding of communities as fluid, temporary, and diverse allows one to address the changes in our contemporary world, and highlights the shifting relationship between the individual, community, and society. What becomes apparent in recent writings on community is that they are embedded in a dis‐ 263 Luther (2010-) course of “loss and recovery”, which renders the concept “utopian and nostalgic at the same time” (ibid. 4). Thereby, the notion becomes both a critical-analytical instrument and a lens through which “the social and the political” can be ad‐ dressed (ibid.). Indeed, despite the alleged devolution of the concept in the postmodern world, philosopher, linguist, and social critic Noam Chomsky recognises com‐ munity, next to freedom, as the basic human need, which can be “satisfied in friendship, solidarity, compassion, pursuit of social justice, fellowship, sym‐ pathy, support, nurture, love, companionship” (McGilvray qtd. in Derber 262). Unlike many neoclassical economists, Chomsky sees freedom as inexorably bal‐ anced by one’s responsibility to community and society. Sociologist and phi‐ losopher Zygmunt Bauman similarly emphasises this co-dependence as he sees communitarianism “as an all-too-expectable reaction to the accelerating ‘lique‐ faction’ of modern life”, a reaction to “the deepening imbalance between indi‐ vidual freedom and security” (Bauman, Liquid Modernity, 170). In his critique of capitalism as a “sociopathic form of society”, Chomsky also considers “freedom as antithetical to market-based greed or pure self-interest” (Derber 262-3). In‐ deed, he suggests that a version of anarchosyndicalism or libertarian socialism (a set of principles that re‐ spects both the need for freedom or autonomy and the need for community and sol‐ idarity with others) best offers a way to create and institute a social and economic order that maximally meets these needs. He assumes that human nature, given pro‐ vision for survival and thriving, would converge on such a social system - if, at least, one could ensure that the institutions created did not (as do capitalist forms of de‐ mocracy and government-controlled socialist systems) offer ways in which individ‐ uals could entrench themselves in position of power. (McGilvray 24) According to this position, communal and individual aims are mutually sup‐ portive. Yet, as Chomsky has made repeatedly clear: Instead of citizens, [neoliberal democracy] produces consumers. Instead of commun‐ ities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless. In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future. (11) Subscribing to a discourse of loss, Chomsky nonetheless acknowledges the pos‐ sibility of establishing new communities that are counteractive to late capitalist structures. 264 Monika Pietrzak-Franger 2 In the text, references to Luther will be given without repeating the title. In Luther, community is largely characterised by its absence: it is either non-existent or inherently fragile and endangered. In a world in which uncer‐ tainty, contingency, and insecurity are the bywords of the day, the problem of belonging has become acute. It is therefore not surprising that the communities depicted in Luther are “postmodern communities” - “fragile”, “nomadic, highly mobile”, and “emotional” (Delanty 104) -, or, in Bauman’s terms, “cloakroom/ carnival” communities (Bauman, Liquid Modernity, 201) - “exterritorial”, “vol‐ atile, transient and ‘single-aspect’ or ‘single-purpose’” (ibid. 199). In general, though, the series subscribes to a discourse of community that sees it as “expe‐ rienced only as an absence which can be desired but never fulfilled” (Delanty 107). Within the diegesis, this absence is framed as the principal factor in the collapse of social structures. A brilliant child-prodigy daughter kills her parents for no apparent reason (Luther, S1/ E1), 2 a soldier targets uniformed policemen by order of his imprisoned father (S1/ E2), a prostitute’s son bonds with her killer and copycats in his name (S3/ E1-2), psychotic twins go on a killing spree in a roll-the-dice competition game across London (S2/ E4). Trauma, potential abuse, projection, and competition are only some of the spelled-out reasons for deviant behaviour. Grief, unrequited love, a sense of injustice, and lack of institutional support also breed delinquency; as do psychological problems of all kinds. In this sense, the series subscribes to the classical criminologist discourse that sees crime as a mirror to society. Arguing against the scapegoating of individuals and against the moral tinge of theories that see criminals as evil and abnormal, American sociologist Frank Tannenbaum claimed that “[c]rime is a maladjust‐ ment that arises out of the conflict between a group and the community at large” (11) and that the “criminal is not a symptom merely. He is a product, he is the very bone and fiber of the community itself […] a product of the sum of our institutions and the product of a selective series of influences within them” (ibid. 25). And although his studies primarily concerned the gangster milieu of early 20 th -century America, Tannenbaum’s work put emphasis on the nodal points linking an individual to various communities and those communities to society. Indeed, the series shows that the violation of such bonds can easily lead to crime. This becomes particularly evident in the second episode of the first series, which blatantly stages the origin of Owen Lynch’s criminal behaviour as the effect of a futile quest for acceptance: a son’s struggle for his father’s approval. As Tan‐ nenbaum aptly argues: The smile, the frown, approval and disapproval, praise and condemnation, compan‐ ionship, affection, dislike, instruments, opportunities, denial of opportunities, are all 265 Luther (2010-) elements at hand for the individual and are the source of his behaviour. It is not es‐ sential that the whole world approves, it is essential that the limited world to which the individual is attached will approve. (11) Like Tannenbaum, the series highlights the significance of these bonds to the emergence and prevention of crime. It does so, among others, by refusing to identify a particular milieu as the source of crime. Through a particular characterisation and simultaneous variability of the se‐ rial killers, Luther stresses the ordinariness of the perpetrators while also fore‐ grounding the role of dysfunctional relationships and affect in their becoming criminals. As far as the social makeup is concerned, with the exception of Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson), her (as yet) potential assassin Megan Cantor (Laura Haddock), Jenny (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), and the marginal character Stacey Bell (Seline Hizli) in the last series, all the perpetrators are male, middleor working-class British citizens, with an occasional American, a nondescript con‐ tract killer, or a vague East-European mafia connection surfacing on the horizon. Also, with the exception of Ken Barnaby (Lucian Masamati, S3/ E1-2), who kills a hacker who has desecrated the internet memorial site of his deceased daughter, they are all white. Very often, as in the case of the psychotic twins (Steven Robertson, S2/ E4) or the husband-avenger (Elliot Cowan, S3/ E3-4), there is only marginal characterisation of the protagonists, whereby they may be said to stand for certain universal principles and behavioural patterns, rather than func‐ tioning as full-fledged characters. As far as the (potential) victims are concerned, they range from innocent children, random women, and police officers, to the perpetrators themselves. With very few exceptions, randomness and chance seem to dictate the choice of victim. While Steven Rose ( John Heffernan, S4/ E1-2) and the bereaved husband (S3/ E3-4) seem to follow some inherent logic in their actions, the twins (S2/ E4) rely on the throw of dice. The overwhelming underlying message of these serial and serialised crimes is that there is neither a way to prevent them, nor any means of protecting individuals and societies from their effects. Whatever the origin of the delinquency, the serialised form does not only emphasise their sheer number, but also the often mundane reasons for, and arbitrariness of, crime. While none of these factors singlehandedly ex‐ plains the origins of criminality, they certainly hint at the existence of complex patterns as indicators of communal and social disintegration and concomitant crime. Here then, in a way, the notion of community as a site of morality and solidarity is constantly evoked ad negativum - as an imagined (lost) ideal, whose collapse leads to criminality. At the centre of those criminal acts seems to lie the devaluation of the family as the site of a stable value system on the one hand and increasing social alien‐ 266 Monika Pietrzak-Franger ation on the other. The linear reading of the last four series underlines this. Alice Morgan’s crime - the murder of her parents (S1/ E1) - and her subsequent be‐ haviour stand for the futility of a family bond. The apparently happy, well-sit‐ uated, upper middle-class family with better than average education is not a guarantee of a loving relationship. Morgan’s performance of the shocked victim and grieving daughter only thinly disguises her lack of compassion, while al‐ leged paternal abuse is suggested as the source of her behaviour. This lack of empathy, spotted by DCI Luther, indicates a larger incapacity to understand another person or to put oneself in their position. It thus symbolically points at dislocation and absence as the defining features of 21 st -century subjectivity. Indeed, these two characteristics are further emphasised by serial narration and find an apt instantiation in the fourth series, in which Steven Rose, an em‐ ployee of a security firm, Geek Patrol, having nested a spyware on his clients’ computers, watches them 24/ 7, only to go on a cannibalistic killing spree. By dismembering them and harvesting their body parts - cutting out their tongues, hearts, and brains - he consumes them on an impulse of a desire/ longing for completeness. “The way he sees it”, Luther speculates, “they’ve got something he doesn’t, so he’s going to take it from them” (S4/ E2, 00: 03). He interprets this behaviour as the result of a pathological state (Cotard syndrome), and/ or as an effect of contemporary lifestyles. Cotard syndrome is a delusional illness, at the core of which lies the denial of self-existence. Depending on the stage of their ailment, patients consider themselves dead, putrefying, and without organs. They also withdraw from society and misinterpret external reality (S4/ E2, 00: 07). In the series, Cotard syndrome, which results in serial cannibalism, becomes symptomatic of 21 st -century neoliberalism and consumerism gone wild. Steven Rose’s sole existence consists in the compulsive, excessive, voyeuristic obser‐ vation of his clients as a compensation for his solitude. In that, he embodies, at least for Luther, contemporary obsession with the lives of others: “other people’s lives seem so much better than ours. More interesting, more attractive, more alive” (S4/ E2, 00: 03). The highly mediatised environment of the contemporary world, the emphasis on individuality, continuous surveillance, and the ever present urge to consume, the series seems to argue, transform people into blood-thirsty dysfunctional individuals who, alienated and unable to sustain any inter-human bonds, turn into compulsive voyeurs and serial murders as a way of filling out this perceived gap. In this context, Steven Rose is Chomsky’s pro‐ totypical product of neoliberal democracy. What is evoked in this self-negating character is the popular-cultural image of the walking dead as incarnations of the dangerous “zombie capitalism” (Harman). 267 Luther (2010-) A capitalist zombie, Rose is also a genus of a serial killer. By extension, serial criminality in the series becomes an allegory of the underlying economic forces of late capitalism. Journalistic responses to Luther’s fourth series have high‐ lighted the unrealistic character of the presented crimes. In his 2015 review for the Guardian, Stuart Heritage claims, “[t]he whole thing constantly teeters on the brink of full-blown camp” and “borderline self-parody”, with “a blandly anonymous cookie-cutter murderer […] whose primary motivation seemed to involve having once watched a few episodes of Hannibal on catch-up”. This narrative excess emphasises the contingency and on-going presence of grue‐ some crime. ‘Inconsistent’, ‘formulaic’, and ‘sensationalist’ have been some of the accusations levelled at the series, in which “Jack the Ripper-level maniacs pop up through London’s grid, and Luther puts them down, whack-a-mole style” (Seitz). Piper sees this as a marriage of a cinematic with a more parochial televisual tradition of crime fiction, through the incorporation of overblown serial killers, psychopathic ‘slashers’ and menacing gangland leaders ostensibly within the precinct-based ‘routine’ of the police drama [...]. (127) Rather than being a parody, this multi-level serialisation and sensationalisation of crime introduces hyperreality to a genre that customarily relies on realistic conventions. The introduction of the hyperreal lays bare these existing con‐ ventions as it at the same time hints at the series’ allegorical appeal. Approached allegorically, Luther can be read as dramatising a 21 st -century psychomachia - a conflict of good and evil in the late-capitalist world. In this context, Rose - the self-denying serial killer, zombie turned cannibal, who longs for the communion with his first love - is also a tragic personification both of loss and of evil. Critically, serial killers have been seen as marking the shift from modern to postmodern cultures and as an incarnation of the “post‐ modern self ” (King). As signifiers of the collapse of community, they have also been linked to the exigencies and ‘freedoms’ of consumerism. Martin Lefebvre (see 56) sees these principles best realised in cinematic acts of cannibalism, which condense capitalist consumption and seriality. For King, the popular topos of the serial killer represents a flattened self constituted in repeated acts of euphoric and commodified consump‐ tion. The serial killer has become a compelling symbol for this new kind of society where individuals are not defined by their rationality and discipline, by an institu‐ tionalized super-ego, but by intense personal interactions mediated by the global con‐ sumer market. (122) 268 Monika Pietrzak-Franger The excessive aggregation of atrocious, serialised, and randomly distributed acts of crime in the series, then, signals the crisis of social values and instability of communal bonds in late capitalism. This lack of communality is visually underscored by the setting of the series. For Jeff Hopkins, the setting of a detective series semiotically offers a heterotopia in which “temporalities and spatialities may collapse into one schizophrenic, albeit pleasurable, present” (57). Piper argues that those dramas may also func‐ tion as both “mythological/ melodramatic” and “social realist texts”, which is often mirrored “by the construction of mise-en-scène and landscape as inter‐ changeably generic and geographically specific, metaphorical and literal” (139, emphasis in original). Indexically anchoring the diegetic space in a specific ma‐ terial place, metaphorically, they may stand for the protagonist’s state of mind (see ibid.). In many crime narratives, urban spaces have been foregrounded as sites of danger, spaces “for disorder”, and “signifier[s] of social breakdown” (ibid. 141, 142). And although Piper (see 142) argues that British TV detective fiction (e.g. Vera [2001-], Lewis [2006-2010], Midsomer Murders [1997-], Broadchurch [2013-2017], Happy Valley [2014-]) often prefers heritage and suburban land‐ scapes, in Luther, like in Marcella (ITV, 2016-), metropolitan spaces, in all their varieties, are associated with the absence of community, loneliness, alienation, and disorder. Critics have emphasised the dystopian character of Luther’s setting. For Piper, Luther’s London is “a territory of almost apocalyptic extremes” (139). She sees a shift from the iconic, “panoramic vista of the metropolis” and “narratively gratuitous skyline shots” of the first series to “a London less signified by its landmarks and more likely to encompass the generic national places in which crime may ever occur”; from “a global city” to a city that is “both British and international” (128). For Serena Davies, in contrast, “[i]t’s beautifully shot, full of slick architectural vistas”. Terrence Rafferty, like Piper, sees it as particularly “inhospitable, nearly uninhabitable”, “soulless, anonymous, thoughtlessly modern - […] the very image of a 21 st -century abyss”. If it is an abyss, though, it certainly is a beguiling one. The various contrasts that Piper points out are achieved through a continuous juxtaposition of derelict industrial buildings, aerial shots of unappealing flat roofs and railway tracks, massive iron bridges, high-rise buildings and block estates with terrace houses and suburban homes. The iconic Gherkin, which prominently features in the graphic-novel-like city‐ scape of the opening sequence, returns as a reference point in many an aerial shot in the series. Indeed, the opening sequence, which caters to the currently popular aesthetic, also seen in Amazon’s Bosch (2015-), superimposes the figure of the detective onto the cityscape. John Luther’s rückenfigur and the close-up 269 Luther (2010-) of his eyes are interwoven with the graphic environment of the buildings’ sil‐ houettes, which, inked onto the screen, have been submerged in the watercolour redness - a schematic city, mediated by the detective, trenched in blood. This graphic-novel aesthetic returns in numerous shots of London by night - a mo‐ saic of darkness and light, lugubrious and threatening at once. What dominates the screen is a landscape defined by high-rise buildings. High-rise blocks have been suggested to belong to generic spaces that “are manifestly ‘national’ and common to most British towns” and therefore, when evoked in crime drama, “they may remind that violence may ever yet occur in any similar public space” (Piper 140, emphasis in original). As the cityscape is strewn with them, their outlines engulfed by fog, their frames dilapidating or erected anew, they testify to the city’s rhythmic cycle of de/ regeneration: de‐ struction and renewal. In the aerial shots of the first episode, they perform a double function: as generic and actual spaces, they indexically anchor the series in the material world and simultaneously universalise the diegetic space. They also, however, become symbolic signifiers of the collapse of community and inter-human bonds. In the second episode of the first series, the iconic, now demolished, Heygate Estate, Southwark, South London, stands for the break‐ down of family values. It becomes the hiding place of the veteran Owen Lynch (Sam Spruell). Thrown out of his home by his wife, who fails to reconnect with him after his return from military service abroad, he is on a mission to kill policemen to extort a milder sentence for his father. Luther describes him as a “little boy” who worships and idolises his father, despite his absence (S1/ E2, 00: 23). After his father refuses to help the police and after he blows up his ‘home’, Lynch sits in a window of the dilapidating Heygate estate listening to the news of the explosion (see fig. 1; S1/ E2, 00: 29); behind him, two more high-rise build‐ ings stand out against a cloudy sky. Focalised from an apparent hole in the wall, he is positioned next to another crumbling wall to his right. With the wires - the only remnants of what used to be solid structures - running through the screen, Lynch seems encaged by the dilapidating building. Here again, the series capitalises on suggestive absence: the once thriving space of a family life is now the hollow and broken interior of an abandoned house - possibly an externali‐ sation of Lynch’s own interior. The uninhabited estate - a 1970s brutalist utopia of communal living - symbolises both the fragility of communal bonds as well as the incapacity of societal structures to sustain them. ‘Home’ in Luther is never a haven. Rather, as indicated by the number of dys‐ functional familial relationships resulting in atrocious, serialised acts of violence, it is a site of abuse, abandonment, and alienation. The first episode of the series pertinently demonstrates this: the home invasion turns out to be, at least at first 270 Monika Pietrzak-Franger Fig. 1: Lynch is sitting in one of the rooms of the dilapidating Hygate Estate (S1/ E2, 00: 29). sight, a random, apparently motif-less, relationship crime. Even the houses in‐ habited by Luther are not habitable spaces. Zoe (Indira Varma), his wife, throws him out of what used to be their family home (S1/ E2); his first substitute is a flat in a high-rise - sordid, with peeling wallpapers; the second is a basic, minimal‐ istic but generous, almost trendy, living space; the third is a fisher’s cottage on the edge, threatening to entomb him alive as the sea encroaches on its foundations. Fostered by zombie-capitalism, dysfunctional families, and fragile interpersonal bonds - returning in home-invasion narratives and metonymically signalled by the plethora of abandoned familial and communal spaces - postmodern com‐ munities are directly linked to the rise of random, large-scale, serialised crime. Community - the essential constitutive absence in Luther - thus paradoxically becomes the narrative engine of the series. 3. Dead Man Walking Despite its defining absence, community, however, also drives the narrative of the series on another level: the sense of its loss is accompanied by the ever-re‐ turning hope and trust in its utopian qualities. It may be unsettling that the one character who strongly believes in the regenerative powers of community is DCI Luther himself - the core representative of the coercive state apparatus, even as he is also its most potent critic. Generically, the TV detective drama has 271 Luther (2010-) 3 Mark the very similar framing (and a conspicuously similar beginning) of River. been regarded as a “fantasy response to the anxiety provoked by crime’s trans‐ gression” (Thompson qtd. in Piper 25). In this context, the detective has been defined as the agent of heroic intervention, preventing and redressing moral lapses and social misconducts (see Piper 25). By solving the crime, he typically restores “social order and moral certainty” (ibid.). This appears particularly tricky in contemporary fictions that emphasise institutional obstacles to police work and constantly centre-frame detectives as struggling to reconcile their own principles with institutional precepts (as in Marcella, ITV, 2016-; River, BBC One 2015; or Scott and Bailey), which is often encoded in a supportive narrative of their futile efforts to resolve the conflict between the personal and the profes‐ sional (see ibid. 26). In accordance with these generic developments, DCI John Luther is fashioned as singularly positioned, with his exceptional skills and de‐ ductive abilities, to restore order. Indeed, the first series establishes him as a defender of communal values. Trust, loyalty, and responsibility for others are just some of the ideals that appear to motivate his actions. “He believes one life is all we have”, Luther’s wife Zoe explains his calling to Alice Morgan. “Life and love. Whoever takes life, steals everything [...].” (S1/ E2, 00: 39) Similarly, Luther tells Morgan, “You were wrong, there is a love in the world. So you lose” (S1/ E1, 00: 51), as though convincing himself that the struggle against crime and evil is not futile as long as this is the case. The whole series highlights these values as uniquely motivating his ac‐ tions. In fact, in the third series, Mary Day (Sienna Guillory), Luther’s new love-interest, explains the etymology of his surname as derived from the Ger‐ manic compound of liut (people) and heri (army) - people’s army (S3/ E1, 00: 24). Combined with the consistent visual framing in the series, John Luther is thus continuously aligned with mythical warriors. His characterisation uniquely locates him at the crossroads of many a cultural tradition. Most mundanely, in terms of (TV) detective fiction, he is a cross be‐ tween Sherlock Holmes and Columbo (see Cross); within the heroic tradition, he is the flawed hero, a hybrid between Jago and Othello (see Ebbinghaus); visually, as he is repeatedly framed standing on the edge, stooping, looking down onto London/ into the abyss, echoing Nicolas Cage in The City of Angels (1987), Luther becomes an archangel, on the brink of falling. 3 His liminal position has repeatedly been underscored by critics: for Backe he is “a broken man” and “a character who constantly oscillates between the mild-man-nered [sic! ] and the manic” (125). He is the allegorical 21 st -century everyman who, with each new case, episode, and series, undertakes the relentless, never-ending, never-re‐ 272 Monika Pietrzak-Franger solved struggle with crime. The show is thus also a dramatisation of the soul’s struggle - a 21 st -century psychomachia for postmodernist audiences lulled to sleep by the compulsion to consume. In general staged as a battle between the mythical forces of good and evil, this psychomachia becomes a struggle between love and crime. In Liquid Love (2003), Bauman posits that love has become a dear commodity in the contem‐ porary world, in a consumer culture like ours, which favours products ready for instant use, quick fixes, instantaneous satisfaction, results calling for no protracted effort, foolproof rec‐ ipes, all-risk insurance and money-back guarantees. The promise to learn the art of loving is a (false, deceitful, yet keenly wished to be true) promise to make ‘love ex‐ perience’ in the likeness of other commodities. (7) Similarly, on the diegetic level, relationships are short-lived, always endangered, and never fulfilling. They are, in Bauman’s words, “perhaps the most common, acute, deeply felt and troublesome incarnations of ambivalence” (ibid. viii). In this context, Luther’s mission, earlier described as an ardent defence of life and love, is problematic on many levels. It forces him to sacrifice his marriage (S1/ E2, 00: 39). It also compromises his moral compass. When he threatens Alice Morgan, she surmises: “You degrade the law you serve just to protect some woman, who cast you aside like a fool. […] Love is supposed to dignify us, exult us. How can it be love, John, if all it does is make you lonely and corrupt.” (S1/ E1, 00: 48) The same accusation is repeated at the end of the fourth series, when Megan concludes that the ‘fondness’ between Luther and Morgan was not love: “Perhaps it could be that Alice Morgan was your blind spot. You didn’t love her. Not really. She frightened you and she excited you, and you mistook that for love. But you would have killed her eventually if she didn’t kill you first.” (S4/ E2, 00: 49) In all three instances, love - the edifying force most readily seen as the essential communal bond - is associated with danger, degradation, and criminality. Iconically, this struggle between good and evil is visualised by the returning image of the black hole. The black hole stands for evil throughout the series. In one of Luther’s early encounters with his nemesis, Alice Morgan, the latter em‐ phasises this connection: “This is a black hole. It consumes matter. Sucks it in and crushes it beyond existence. When I first heard that, I thought that’s evil at its most pure; something that drags you in, crushes you, makes you… nothing.” (S1/ E1, 00: 30) This relationship is strengthened visually. In a spectacular reverse shot (see fig. 2), the image of the black hole, which hangs on Morgan’s wall, fills out the whole filmic frame, with the black hole distinctly enclosed in the centre, 273 Luther (2010-) flanked by the back of Alice’s head on the one hand and Luther’s dark reflection on the other. In fact ‘black holes’ become the common inventory of the series and a meaningful, recurring sign. Earlier in the first episode, Luther stares into a hole in the abandoned industrial building to see the body of Henry Madsen, a child murderer, who ‘fell’ into it while chased by Luther himself. The image reappears when his superintendent informs him that he has been cleared of accusations regarding the above ‘accident’ and can return to work. Visually, these scenes are echoed by the shots featuring Luther staring into the ‘abyss’ of London underneath him, whereby a link is established between the city and the black hole. Luther also repeats Morgan’s definition of the black hole almost verbatim in one of the later episodes of the first series. Fig. 2: Alice Morgan talks to John Luther about black holes (S1/ E1, 00: 30). Iconographically, then, Luther is positioned in the gravity field of the black hole, and framed as constantly struggling to resist its lure, aware that it may swallow and crush him anytime. Here, the link between London and the all-con‐ suming ‘black hole’ of crime is visually strengthened by brutalist concrete con‐ structions that constantly surround Luther and threaten to squash him alive. The oscillation between good and evil is also narratively and aesthetically em‐ phasised in the series: various cross-cutting sequences juxtapose Luther with both victims and perpetrators; his methods are often dubious and dangerously bending institutional rules even as distinctions are made between being a “dirty copper” and not being afraid of ‘getting his hands dirty’ (see e.g. S1/ E3, 00: 48; 274 Monika Pietrzak-Franger 4 In fact, in the scene, trousers are also visible on the hangers. 5 Elba’s public image has been associated with high-class menswear. This is not only visible on a number of blogs, Tumblr and Pinterest pages; his association with signature looks also apparently was one of the reasons behind many fashion campaigns and be‐ hind the launching of his own retail firm. S2/ E1, 00: 12; S2/ E3, 00: 16). In the chain of associative relationships, then, the series conceptualises evil in terms of black holes, links the latter with the London cityscape, and fashions Luther as dangerously positioned in the radius of its gravitational force. Just as it would be too simplistic to consider Luther as impervious to the lure of the black hole, it would also be a mistake to see him as a heroic character who is out of bounds and beyond the influences of contemporary society. In the last series, he is referred to as “a dead man walking” (S4/ E2, 00: 05), which establishes parallels between him and Steven Rose, while simultaneously highlighting the differences in their response to the world around them. Whereas Rose is an ex‐ treme version of the negation of the self in postmodernism that requires con‐ stant consumption for self-sustenance, Luther is framed as keeping his consump‐ tive activities to a minimum. He seems to have temporarily abandoned the middle-class status he embraced as Zoe’s husband: he trades his iconic Victorian terraced house for a flat in a dilapidated high-rise, only to relocate to another, more basic but nonetheless stylish, suburban terraced house, and then to a cot‐ tage at the seashore. In this sense, then, he is part of consumer society, even as his clothes establish him as a particular kind of consumer. Backe draws attention to Luther’s “metareferential wardrobe” (127), arguing that foregrounding these “six identical shirts, six identical pants, three identical jackets and three identical coats” (S3/ E2, 00: 23) 4 within the narrative functions as a metaleptic moment. He interprets the accompanying question, “What does this say about a man” (S3/ E2, 00: 23), as drawing attention to the fictionality of the series, its generic require‐ ments and “as a marker of metaization” (128). At the same time, the scene can be read as a comment on Luther’s consumerist practices within the diegesis. His ‘uniform’ consists of high-quality articles. 5 Rather than participating in repeated acts of insatiable consumption, in a relentless merging with objects as a constit‐ utive act of self-preservation, Luther’s stability as a subject is underlined by his monochrome clothing. His signature layered look - grey shirts, grey checked jackets and grey coats with a variation of red and green ties and black, grey, and subdued blue trousers - functions both as an armour and as a sign of value (a few, good quality items that stand for classic continuity and unobtrusive style, as op‐ posed to quick-changing fashions of the day). It seems that this abandonment of 275 Luther (2010-) 6 It is important to stress that, as Piper (see 123-4) has argued, Luther’s ethnicity is not addressed in the series. inexorable consumption frames Luther, in spite of his dead-man-walking status, as uniquely positioned to counteract zombie capitalism. In his many articles on the End of Capitalism, Alex Knight stresses two issues: that we are all members of the zombie hoards that populate the 21 st -century world, and that the fight with zombie capitalism requires an awareness of our state and a joint action against it. It is worth quoting Knight’s somewhat lengthy passage in which he envisions a way out of this state: Equally important to seeing and knowing is to join a collective and fight for collective change. No individual, however radical their ideas of lifestyle, can escape the hoard alone. What we are interested in is total social transformation. And this is only possible through organizing, and building communities of care and support, which will allow us to fight that two-front battle, challenging ourselves as we challenge the system. Perhaps what we most need is clarity of vision - we need to be able to articulate the world we want to live in. I submit that the core value we ought to fight for is life. So the goal of an anti-zombie movement is to create a world in which we learn to ap‐ preciate and honor life as the source and site of value. Here, Knight highlights the centrality of a communal respect and appreciation for life. (A desire for) Life and love are likewise the driving engines of Luther’s actions. They also seem to underlie his attempts at establishing various com‐ munities of care: the marriage with Zoe, his partnership with Ripley (Warren Brown), his protective attention towards Jenny, and his complicated albeit en‐ thralling relationship with Alice Morgan. The series also shows that, at least temporarily, such communities of care are possible. Series three spotlights var‐ ious communities of care while also emphasising their makeshift, transitory nature and highlighting the variety of impediments that they are exposed to. Their postmodern character is aptly evoked by the heterogeneity of its members. The community of care that is created around Luther comprises himself, his partner Ripley, the criminal Alice Morgan, and Luther’s current love-insterest, Mary Day. 6 Even though they can stop the serial-killer and anti-establishment avenger, their community disintegrates at the end of the series: Ripley is killed and Mary knowingly relinquishes her place to Alice, who now plans to flee with Luther to start a new life. The next series shows that this attempt has been futile and Luther finds himself alone again. 276 Monika Pietrzak-Franger 4. Conclusion Despite, or rather because of, its fragility and frequent, glaring absence, com‐ munity takes centre stage in Luther. Framed as the ‘missing link’ between the individual and society, it is reconfigured as an absence and as a utopian thought - both the reason for social disintegration and its imagined antidote. The dev‐ olution of community and dysfunctional familial relations breed serial crime. Its randomness does not only testify to the powerlessness of existing institutions but also aptly embodies the postmodern condition. Late capitalist tensions be‐ come incarnated in hyperreal serial killings, in which the topos of the serial killer, which often merges with that of the archetypical cannibal and the popular-cul‐ tural figure of the zombie, allegorises the exploitative relations underlying 21 st -century consumerism and highlights its central, albeit highly problematic, role in the construction of subjectivities. Against this background, DCI John Luther embarks on a heroic quest to, lit‐ erally and symbolically, restore order. ‘Life and love’ are the underlying princi‐ ples that propel his actions, even as their character and outcomes often remain morally and institutionally dubious. Cast in the tradition of the brilliant detec‐ tive and the flawed hero, visually framed as a warrior and archangel, Luther perpetually struggles with the forces of evil, embodied in daily, random, and ruthless crimes. Continually trapped in its push-and-pull - as he is visually framed within the gravitational field of black holes - Luther is a 21 st -century everyman. The psychomachia dramatised by the series is a struggle between late capitalist, consumerist greed (as an antidote to non-existence) and the mythical virtues of communal living. Relentlessly, the series shows that this struggle is not entirely futile. Even as they remain fragile and short-lived, communities of care become an antidote, albeit ephemeral, to the monster of zombie capitalism. Bibliography Primary Sources Luther. Series 1-4. Written by Neil Cross. Directed by Sam Miller, Jamie Payne, Brian Kirk, Stefan Schwartz, and Farren Blackburn. BBC One, 2010-. Secondary Sources Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Na‐ tionalism. London: Verso, 2016 [1983]. 277 Luther (2010-) Backe, Hans-Joachim. “Lynching Luther: The Crime Thriller as Reflection of Psychology Tropes in Television.” Das Andere Fernsehen? ! Eine Bestandsaufnahme des ‘Quality Tel‐ evision’. Eds. Jonas Nesselhauf and Markus Schleich. Bielefeld: transcript, 2016. 125-40. Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Love. Malden: Polity, 2003. —. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity, 2006 [2000]. Brunsdon, Charlotte. “Is Television Studies History? ” Cinema Journal 47.3 (2008): 127-37. Chomsky, Noam. Profit over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999. Cohen, Anthony P. The Symbolic Construction of Community. Abington: Taylor and Francis, 1985. Cross, Neil. “Introducing Luther - With Love to Detective Columbo.” BBC TVBlog. 30 April 2010. www.bbc.co.uk/ blogs/ tv/ 2010/ 04/ introducing-luther-with-love-t.shtml. Accessed on 19 May 2018. Davies, Serena. “Luther, BBC One, Review.” The Telegraph. 5 May 2010. www.telegraph. co.uk/ culture/ tvandradio/ 7678585/ Luther-BBC-One-review.html. Accessed on 4 May 2018. Delanty, Gerard. Community. New York: Routledge: 2010 [2003]. Derber, Charles. “Critique and Hope: The Moral Basis of Chomsky’s Political Economy.” The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky. Ed. James McGilvray. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2017. 257-94. von Ebbinghaus, Uwe. “Neue Krimiserie, ‘Luther’: Er reicht keinem Mörder die Hand.” FAZ. 5 September 2009. www.faz.net/ aktuell/ feuilleton/ medien/ neue-krimiserieluther-er-reicht-keinem-moerder-die-hand-11130560/ aufbrausend-wie-othello-1113 1410.html. Accessed on 12 May 2018. Edgley, Alison. The Social and Political Thought of Noam Chomsky. London, New York: Routledge, 2000. Esposito, Roberto. Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community. Trans. Timothy Campbell. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2004 [1998]. —. “Community, Immunity, Biopolitics.” Angelaki 18: 3 (2013): 83-90. “Gemeinschaft.” Wörterbuch der Soziologie. Ed. Karl-Heinz Hillmann. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 1994 [1972]. 268-9. Harman, Chris. Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx. Chicago, Ill.: Haymarket Books, 2010. 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Lefebvre, Martin. “Conspicuous Consumption: The Figure of the Serial Killer as Cannibal in the Age of Capitalism.” Theory, Culture & Society 22.3 (2005): 43-62. “Luther.” BBC One. n.d. www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/ b00s8jk0. Accessed on 12 May 2018. “Luther: Brilliantly Unsubtle.” The Guardian TV&Radio Blog. n.d. www.theguardian.com / tv-and-radio/ tvandradioblog/ 2011/ jun/ 14/ luther-second-series. Accessed on 11 May 2018. McGilvray, James. Chomsky: Language, Mind, Politics. Cambridge: Polity, 2014 [1999]. Nancy, Jean-Luc. La communauté désoeuvrée. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1983. Nelson, Robin. State of Play: Contemporary ‘High-End’ TV Drama. Manchester: Man‐ chester UP, 2007. Piper, Helen. The TV Detective: Voices of Dissent in Contemporary Television. London, New York: I.B.Tauris, 2015. Rafferty, Terrence. “A Detective Who Gazes Into the Abyss.” New York Times. 28 Sep‐ tember 2011. www.nytimes.com/ 2011/ 10/ 02/ arts/ television/ idris-elba-flirts-withdemons-in-luther-on-bbc-america.html. Accessed on 4 May 2018. Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction. Abingdon: Routledge, 2005. Seitz, Matt Zoller. “Luther Is Smart Enough to Just Let Idris Elba Be Idris Elba.” Vulture. n.d. www.vulture.com/ 2013/ 09/ tv-review-luther-season-3.html. Accessed on 4 May 2018. Tannenbaum, Frank. Crime and the Community. New York, London: Columbia UP, 1957 [1938]. 279 Luther (2010-) Tweet Others How You Wish to be Tweeted: Digital Technology and the Sense of Community in Black Mirror (2011-) Laura Winter If technology is a drug - and it does feel like a drug - then what, precisely, are the side-effects? (Brooker, “The Dark Side”) 1. Introduction In the digital age, technological progress continues to invade all spheres of public and private life, and its long-term impact on personal interaction, privacy, and social cohesion is yet to be discovered. Digital technology opens up a plethora of new possibilities in the realm of social infrastructure. Personal and social boundaries, the notion of social networks, and social norms, such as the sense of reciprocity, are increasingly challenged in times of rapid anonymous infor‐ mation exchange. By changing the ways in which we interact and communicate with others, digital innovations necessarily have a lasting effect on how people conceive of community today. Due to the ever accelerating developments in the field of technology, however, ethical considerations about the future of “being-together” (Willson 2) often lag one step behind. The television series has emerged as a key medium to investigate current developments in society. In the following, I will explore how community is ne‐ gotiated in the technology-driven world of the critically acclaimed television series Black Mirror (2011-). Episodes such as “The National Anthem” (S1/ E1), “White Bear” (S2/ E2), and “Nosedive” (S3/ E1) promise valuable insights into how communities of the near future are constructed and how social interaction takes place. Black Mirror highlights not only the ephemeral character of community in the digital age, but also underscores rather negative aspects of community, 1 Especially noteworthy is the Primetime Emmy in 2017 for “Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie or a Dramatic Special” for the episode “San Junipero” (S3/ E4; see Stolworthy, “Emmys 2017”). in which spectacle, the will to punish, and the lack of meaningful encounters play an important role. Since its premiere on Channel 4 in 2011, Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror has attracted an increasing amount of interest internationally. Exploring the unan‐ ticipated side effects of technology on a near-future society, the series was in‐ spired by Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959, with two revivals in 1985 and 2002), an American anthology television series which introduced visionary but controversial science fiction elements. In an interview, Annabel Jones, Black Mirror’s executive producer, reveals that whereas The Twilight Zone […] took on the themes of McCarthyism and psychoanal‐ ysis and the space race, we decided on one of the things that people are worried about but don’t perhaps know yet, which is our relationship with technology. (qtd. in Gilbert) The takeover of Black Mirror by the Netflix corporation after the second series multiplied the success of the anthology due to its international reach, and the third and fourth series are now promoted as “Netflix Originals”. In the meantime, Black Mirror has won over a dozen awards. 1 In an interview, Brooker comments on how the title of his series has already entered the lexicon of contemporary society, proving its widespread appeal: “You know you’re breaking through when it becomes a phrase. When Trump was elected, there were people with banners saying: ‘This episode of Black Mirror sucks.’” (“Black Mirror Season 4 Interview”) Indeed, the series’ title itself evokes critical notions about the condition of our current digital age: the “black mirror” refers to the darkened surface of a technological device - the screen of the television, the smartphone, or the tablet. Most interesting, however, is the suggestion that the user of the device only seems to discover her reflection when the device is turned off and the screen is not displaying content, which pinpoints people’s daily distraction by massive amounts of media content and information exchange. At the same time, the dark reflection insinuates a void in the form of an odd silence, which breaks the otherwise noisy and accelerated flow of information in today’s technologically advanced societies. At first sight, Black Mirror thus seems to qualify as a dystopia in the traditional sense, because it presents a society struggling with “the technological transfor‐ mation, in which the conditions of life have been worsened by technical devel‐ opment” (Milner 95, emphasis in original). The characters in Black Mirror, how‐ 282 Laura Winter 2 In this he is agreeing with Mary Aiken, who states that “[w]henever technology comes into contact with an underlying predisposition, or tendency for a certain behavior, it can result in behavioral amplification or escalation” (22). ever, face challenges not necessarily because of technological opportunities. In many episodes, advanced technology is simply presented as a helpful assistant and integral part of daily life. In an interview, Brooker compares technology with a ‘superpower’ and emphasises that it is usually already flawed human beings who exploit the tech-superpower for their own benefit (see “Black Mirror Season 4 Interview”). 2 Thus, some Black Mirror episodes, such as “USS Callister” (S4/ E1) or “Black Museum” (S4/ E6), show how the protagonists’ downfall is caused not by technology itself, but by the misuse of technology in their ascent to power. In terms of power relations, Black Mirror seems to provide a necessary update within the genre of dystopia. The anthology is not classically ‘dystopian’, as for the most part, it transcends the canonical binary opposition between authori‐ tarian state and protagonist. In Black Mirror, omnipresent technology replaces both the state and the tyrannical corporation (see Moylan 135) in its function as a dystopian antagonist. The anthology depicts a world in which technology exerts almost exclusive, and seemingly unquestioned, authority over a society which fully relies on technological solutions to requirements of daily life. Con‐ cerning the nature of authority, Zygmunt Bauman aptly notes: Authority may only be effective if it does not demand obedience in its own name; if it does not seem to demand obedience at all, when it disguises the command as al‐ lurement. An effective authority must not appear to be an authority - but a helpful hand, a well-wisher, a friend. (Mortality, 196) At the same time, Black Mirror questions this seemingly unconditional trust in, and surrender to, technological authority at a time when political and social institutions have largely lost their guiding function for the individual. The fact that Black Mirror is not an ongoing series but a purposeful compilation of dif‐ ferent controversial topics shows that the anthology offers more than mere en‐ tertainment. By extrapolating real life tendencies of the present digital age, the anthology’s agenda includes the negotiation of community and its significance in a world increasingly shaped by technologically mediated interaction and communication. 283 Black Mirror (2011-) 3 In the following, references to Black Mirror will be given without repeating the title. 4 Claims concerning former British Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘pig allegations’ during an initiation rite at a debauchery party at university, which suggest a real-life model for the episode’s plot, allegedly surprised the creators of Black Mirror (see Hooton; Benedictus). The film The Riot Club (2014) is a straightforward reference to Oxford’s infamous Bullingdon Club, whose alumni include both David Cameron and Boris Johnson. 2. Spectacle, Second Screens, and the Ephemeral Nature of Community in “The National Anthem” The first episode, “The National Anthem”, has been received as a disturbing entrance into the world of Black Mirror. This episode deals with the addiction to the screen of the British people, the impact of an anonymous social media crowd, and the declining power of institutions. These topics are woven into a play with the categories of ‘martyrdom’ and ‘heroism’ pitted against those pre‐ vailing in the 21 st century, as Bauman suggests, ‘victim’ and ‘celebrity’ (see Liquid Life, 47). Princess Susannah (Lydia Wilson) has been kidnapped, and the anonymous blackmailer, who turns out to be the Turner Prize winning artist Carlton Bloom, coerces Prime Minister Callow (Rory Kinnear) into appearing “on all British networks, terrestrial and satellite, and have full unsimulated sexual intercourse with a pig” (Black Mirror, S1/ E1, 00: 04) 3 in order to save the life of the princess. 4 In the beginning of the episode Susannah pleadingly voices the abductor’s demand in a video message. Pierluigi Musarò aptly notes that the ensuing “[t]en full seconds of astonished silence amplify the sense of general bewilderment” (117) - an uncanny silence which invades not only the confer‐ ence room but also the living rooms of this episode’s audience. With only three subtle soundtracks in this episode, the absence of background music instils an impression of sober reality. Unimaginable as Carlton Bloom’s demand may seem, what complicates mat‐ ters is that the video, which is already “trending on Twitter” (S1/ E1, 00: 07), im‐ mediately goes viral, and within only nine minutes, over 50,000 viewers have watched it on YouTube. “We take down one [video], six clones immediately pop up elsewhere” (S1/ E1, 00: 07), claim the Prime Minister’s advisors. Interestingly, it is not a single individual who causes the problem, but content uploaded and distributed by an anonymous mass for an anonymous mass. The fact that the creator of the video cannot be traced exacerbates its viral distribution, which shows that former orientation factors like time and space have become obsolete in the digital age: “They must have bounced the upload from here with a proxy. They could be anywhere […].” (S1/ E1, 00: 28) While the institutional powers 284 Laura Winter 5 Television networks increasingly encourage “the use of social media as a ‘second screen’ during television viewing” (Harrington 240). Twitter and co. thus function as a “back‐ channel” for television and provide anonymous reception communities with a “virtual loungeroom” (Harrington et al. 405). 6 Benedict Anderson coined the term “imagined community” in Imagined Communities (1983). He refers to the nation as an imagined political community, “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (6, emphasis in original). continue to engage in futile attempts to locate the perpetrator, and time runs out for the Prime Minister’s very personal dilemma, news stations pick up on the details and broadcast discussions, background information, and speculations about the number of viewers of the upcoming “historical” event (S1/ E1, 00: 13). For the sake of viewing figures, the media is portrayed to have no other chance but to broadcast the newest insights into this event even against a direct order from the government. As a result, the public increasingly engages in discussions and speculations about the Prime Minister’s task. An event like this clearly seems to strengthen the public’s experience as a socially constructed community through what David W. McMillan and David M. Chavis refer to as a “shared emotional connection” (9). Popular opinion, this episode seems to emphasise, emerges from a mix of broadcast news and social media commentary. Axel Maireder and Julian Aus‐ serhofer note fittingly how reports by news media and interpretation by the personal social network become part of the same news stream, and any single message may include both information and commentary on an event. (307) In this episode, social media serves as a second screen for the people to partake in the ‘historical’ event, and it facilitates sharing their emotions with others. 5 The intense usage of social media interaction is complementary to the television experience in opening up “a new space for audience-audience, and audience-text interactivity” (Harrington 244). With the help of digital technology, the nation can thus strengthen its bonds as an ‘imagined’ community. 6 The Prime Minister’s decision to fulfil the task can be seen as a “[p]ersonal investment [which] is an important contributor to a person’s feeling of group membership and to his or her sense of community” (McMillan/ Chavis 10). As public opinion sways towards the negative after a severed finger has appeared at the news station, presumably the Princess’ finger - who is “not just any prin‐ cess, The Princess, Princess bloody Facebook, bloody eco-conscious, national sweetheart”, as the spouse of the Prime Minister stresses (S1/ E1, 00: 15, my em‐ 285 Black Mirror (2011-) 7 In its virality and popularity, the live event on television in this episode, apart from its disturbing nature, resembles certain real life events. For instance, the wedding of Cath‐ erine Middleton and Prince William - digitally translated into #royalwedding - caused the online community to produce “some 2000 tweets per minute” (Harrington 240). phasis) -, the situation comes to a head. Home Secretary Alex Cairns (Lindsay Duncan) warns the Prime Minister of the weight of his likely decision not to follow the orders of the kidnapper: To the public this would be one man of, to be blunt, questionable popularity, putting personal embarrassment over the life of a young girl. […] You won’t just be a disgraced politician, you’ll be a despised individual. The public, the Palace, and the party insist on compliance. (S1/ E1, 00: 29) Cairns reminds him not only of his valuable role in the political sphere, but even more so of his duty as a morally obliged individual, who must prove his status as a representative member of the imagined community of Britain by saving the princess. After another futile attempt on behalf of the authorities to locate the creator of the video, the Prime Minister finally gives in. While the fulfilment of the task has severe consequences for him as an individual, namely the psycho‐ logical repercussions of trauma, the crowds across the country gather in antic‐ ipation. The peak of interaction within the online community is emerging from the activities on “the social networking sites [which] are abuzz with an estimated 10,000 tweets per minute” (S1/ E1, 00: 13). 7 Information and opinion, which are rapidly anonymously exchanged, spread like a virus and infect the voyeuristic collective hungry for spectacle. What is most striking about the sense of community in this episode is the ‘second order observation’ that occurs through identifying the intradiegetic au‐ dience with the real audience in their compliance in watching a truly trauma‐ tising event. The viewing community in this episode is framed in facial close-ups of different emotional reactions: hesitantly laughing, cringing, jaw dropping, head shaking in disbelief and disgust (S1/ E1, 00: 36). The unbelievable moment on screen, so it seems, implicitly challenges the sovereignty of authorities, breaks down social hierarchies, and questions traditional assumptions of ev‐ eryday life. The audience is mesmerised by the extraordinary atmosphere of the moment: “TVs stay on through the carnivalesque staging that sees the specta‐ tors’ morale transform from excitement and disbelief to horror and sadness […].” (Musarò 119) The spectacle unites people in public and private spaces, in the hospital, in the pub, or in the bedroom (see fig. 1). Everyone is a part of this staging. In fact, as a viewer of this episode, the only thing left to do in order to not partake in Black Mirror’s self-reflexive agenda is to switch off the television. 286 Laura Winter The grotesque spectacle fulfils similar functions as a ‘national anthem’ - uniting the people with hands on their hearts, or in this case, hands covering their mouths. But these scenes clearly also visualise the kidnapper’s success in making a statement about the addiction of the people to the screen. An anthem usually praises shared tradition and the values of a nation. The reaction of the audience in this episode, however, depicts an ambivalent spectrum of emotions - disgust, pity, disbelief, malicious joy - towards a unifying event. These reac‐ tions implicitly mock the traditional function of a national anthem. Instead of feeling pride in a cause greater than oneself and a shared sense of belonging, the people unite to revel in another person’s misery. Fig. 1: The hospital staff gathers in front of the television to witness the spectacle of Prime Minister Callow fulfilling his task (S1/ E1, 00: 36). Community is here portrayed as an utterly passive phenomenon impulsively formed around an event which is collectively perceived as spectacular. For the creator of the video, the humiliation of Prime Minister Callow serves as a means to unite the people in front of the screen. The abductor’s intention was never to hurt the princess - it turned out that the severed finger was his own - but to create social upset amplified by live television and social media. Moreover, the kidnapper makes use of Callow’s status as a prominent politician. In this respect, Bauman argues that celebrities [l]ike martyrs and heroes […] provide a sort of glue that brings and holds together otherwise diffuse and scattered aggregates of people; one would be tempted to say 287 Black Mirror (2011-) that nowadays they are the principal factors generating communities were not the communities in question not only imagined, as in the society of the solid modern era, but also imaginary, apparition-like; and above all loosely knit, frail, volatile, and rec‐ ognized as ephemeral. (Liquid Life, 49-50, emphasis in original) Thus, the community depicted in this episode seems to lack the potential to form itself organically. Its formation through spectacle is negatively connoted because it involves the humiliation of another human being. Additionally, the com‐ munity portrayed is location-based and globally dispersed at the same time. But most importantly, it is a community which dissolves after the event, indicating its ephemeral nature. This also shows that the agency and actions of its members are increasingly difficult to predict, to handle, and if necessary, to eliminate - which ultimately explains the futile attempt of the authorities to control this event, as this governmental operation truly is “virgin territory” (S1/ E1, 00: 07). Referring to considerations by John Hartley, Stephen Harrington argues that [i]f live TV can perform a ‘secular ritual of community building’, by linking com‐ munities, or an entire nation, together in a single moment of interest […], then it seems one ought to be at least a little positive, rather than pessimistic, about the consequences for the public sphere of the intersection of Twitter and television. (243) Given the disturbing content shown on the television screen, “The National Anthem” perverts even this otherwise positive notion of community formation in the digital age, both in the narrated world of Black Mirror and at home in the living room. The final scenes underscore both the huge attractive power which television exerts on the people and their failure to see through the elaborate game of the kidnapper. While the entire nation - in fact, the audience is by now geograph‐ ically extended beyond borders - unites in front of the screen to witness the ‘heroic’ act, it turns out that the kidnapper has actually released Princess Sus‐ annah 30 minutes before the event happened on screen. Due to the omnipresence of the mediated spectacle, nobody noticed her release. Unharmed but clearly light-headed, she staggers across the deserted Millennium Bridge towards St. Paul’s cathedral before the image fades and she collapses. As the camera sways through the otherwise busy streets of London and its suburbs, it turns out that kidnapper and performance artist Carlton Bloom has succeeded in creating a 288 Laura Winter 8 In “Hated in the Nation” (S3/ E6), the perpetrator remains equally untraceable and the success of his endeavour is based on the participation of the community in identifying a scapegoat in order to prove his point. Scapegoating - a concept advanced amongst others by René Girard - seems especially useful at a time in which the sense of com‐ munity is at stake. It remains unclear if Bloom intended to portray the Prime Minister also as a scapegoat, a heroic politician who shoulders the burden of his people and makes up for undesirable developments in society. 9 For a discussion of how family may or may not be a last resort of community in a world void of guidance, see Sina Schuhmaier’s analysis of Peaky Blinders (2013-) in this volume. literal ‘blockbuster’. The successful implementation of his plan was always based on the participation of the people. 8 The episode clearly emphasises the fact that the public are so easily led. What is more, the indifference of the people towards the event only one year later reveals a shockingly short attention span. At the anniversary of the abduction, the media report that one art critic has caused controversy by describing it as ‘the first great artwork of the 21 st century’. But while cultural commentators debate its significance there’s no de‐ nying that with a global audience of 1.3 billion it was an event in which we all par‐ ticipated. (S1/ E1, 00: 42) Saved from all horrors, Princess Susannah goes on living her life as a celebrity in the spotlight. The Prime Minister also seems to have recovered quickly and is rewarded by an “approval rating three points higher than this time last year” (S1/ E1, 00: 42). The world has moved on more quickly than expected. Although this may seem to be a positive outcome, the relatively low increase in the Prime Minister’s popularity reveals the insignificance of the ‘historical’ event beyond the moment of spectacle. Television news surprisingly convey the impression of a happy family, which indicates that private matters play an important role in upholding the public image of the Prime Minister. Within the walls of his residence, however, a shattered family remains. 9 The ultimate impact of the event on his personal life is finally revealed in an online news magazine depicted on a computer screen in the episode “Shut Up and Dance” (S3/ E3), which flaunts the headline: “PM Callow ‘to divorce’ [...].” (00: 49) “The National Anthem” thus portrays community emerging around an un‐ pleasant spectacle and highlights the integral part of digital technology in strengthening the sense of community. The following episode challenges con‐ troversial issues of contemporary society, such as smartphone overuse, violence as entertainment, and the ethics of torture. By negotiating these controversies, 289 Black Mirror (2011-) 10 Plot twists are a popular technique used in many Black Mirror episodes to capture the overall controversies and ambivalence of technology and its side-effects. “White Bear” gives further insights into the ephemeral notion of community emerging from shared spectatorship. 3. The Formation of Community against a Social Deviant in “White Bear” In “White Bear”, social deviance is revealed to be a defining element of com‐ munity. The opening scene of this episode shows a close-up of Victoria Skillane (Lenora Crichlow), who wakes up disoriented sitting on a chair and facing a television displaying a yet unknown symbol. Pills scattered across the floor suggest a failed suicide attempt. She notices the portrait of a young girl in a picture frame; fragmented flashbacks indicate that it might be her daughter. As she leaves the house, still suffering from amnesia, and wanders about ques‐ tioning not only where she is but also who she is, she starts noticing people in neighbouring houses recording her with their smartphones. Increasing her feeling of alienation and disorientation, her question “Do you know who I am, please? ” (S2/ E2, 00: 05) remains unanswered. This opening scene is crucial in two ways. First, the construction of the protagonist as a victim is the prerequisite for a major plot twist 10 towards the end of the episode. Second, the lack of em‐ pathy of the people surrounding her heralds the concept of community in this episode, which consists of people desensitised to violence and suffering. “White Bear” comments on real life developments, such as the excessive re‐ cording of events and even crimes; the urge to share the footage on the social media news feed; and the simultaneous indifference to what is actually hap‐ pening. This is illustrated in the following scene. When a masked man opens fire, a relentless pursuit begins, and the protagonist takes flight together with a girl named Jem (Tuppence Middleton). Their destination is the town of ‘White Bear’, where Jem aims to destroy the transmitter of the symbol depicted on television in the opening scene. Jem explains: There was a signal, like pictures, flashing pictures. They just appeared on every TV, every computer, anything with a screen. […] They did something to people. Like al‐ most everybody just became onlookers: started watching, filming stuff, like spectators who don’t give a shit about what happens. That’s like nine out of ten people now. (S2/ E2, 00: 11) 290 Laura Winter 11 Jem doubts that the signal alone has caused the extreme behaviour of ‘onlookers’ and ‘hunters’: “I guess they were always like that, underneath.” (S2/ E2, 00: 12) This echoes Brooker’s comment on how the disposition of an individual influences the misuse of technology (see “Black Mirror Season 4 Interview”). People’s obsession with the technological device and the excessive urge to re‐ cord the moment, this episode implies, results in a lack of caring and decreases empathy. In order to amplify the criticism of people’s passivity and their lack of moral courage, the protagonist of this episode is placed in a binary world of ‘onlookers’ and ‘hunters’: the former refer to individuals stripped of any empathy and re‐ duced to the function of voyeurs; the latter were not affected by the signal (S2/ E2, 00: 12) but now mercilessly embrace the state of anarchy for entertain‐ ment. 11 The thrilling musical score and the hand-held camera reinforce the terror of the chase, followed and recorded by the ‘onlookers’ via smartphones (see fig. 2). The recurrent flashbacks in which Victoria has access to fragments of her memories are eliminated by the familiar high-pitched sound used in the title sequence of Black Mirror episodes. Having arrived at White Bear, the ‘hunters’ catch up with the women at last. The major plot twist of this episode is reached when Victoria manages to grab the gun and pulls the trigger - but the gun she is holding turns out to be a confetti shooter and suddenly she finds herself blinded by stage lights in a theatre full of cheering audience members (S2/ E2, 00: 27). In this moment, everybody, including the viewer of this episode, is made to be an onlooker. The entire chase of Victoria, it turns out, was staged as the main attraction within the entertainment programme of the “White Bear Justice Park”. Within seconds, the supposed victim of the episode is deconstructed and turned into a perpetrator. On the one hand, this unexpected transformation mocks the real audience’s empathy; on the other hand, her suffering is immediately put into perspective. A collection of television news reports displayed on a screen within the theatre reveals that Victoria has been charged as an accomplice in the murder of a young girl (the same girl she - and the audience - assumed to be her daughter). Victoria witnessed and even recorded her fiancé Iain Rannoch (Nick Ofield), who has the unknown symbol from the opening scene tattooed on his neck, committing the homicide. During investigations and the nationwide search for the young girl, a white teddy bear served as a distinctive clue and became a symbol for mass mourning. What the ‘onlookers’ did to her in the previous scenes is exactly what she did to the girl, and the passion for details of the entertainment programme enhances its absurdity. 291 Black Mirror (2011-) 12 In the episode “Hated in the Nation”, the social media crowd embraces their lust for punishment by spreading the hashtag #deathto (S3/ E6, 00: 06) below those articles, videos or pictures, which are collectively perceived as provoking or immoral. This hashtag then initiates online shaming and a ‘shit-storm’ around the creator of this content, who deserves to be punished according to the online community. Fig. 2: Victoria is trying to fight her way through the ‘onlookers’, armed with their smartphones, in order to escape from the ‘hunter’ (S2/ E2, 00: 06). Victoria is transformed “into a mere object” (Sola/ Martínez-Lucena 16), and her fate is to function as a reminder of the repercussions an individual must face when violating social norms. The spectator community condemn Victoria, whom the judges call a “uniquely wicked and poisonous individual” (S2/ E2, 00: 30), as the prime example of a social deviant and force her to undergo pun‐ ishment. 12 This form of penalisation serves as entertainment for the spectator community, who pay the park entrance fee to play an important active part in her punishment as ‘onlookers’. The protagonist has not only failed to stop her fiancé from murdering a child, but even recorded the homicide, which increases her charge. Being filmed and helplessly exposed to ‘onlookers’, she is confronted with her own atrocity. This form of punishment is conducted by a community which does not seem interested in further investigating the culprit’s deed, but demands justice of equal value in the form of cautionary entertainment. What makes things worse is that her memory is wiped clean in a painful procedure every night, which causes her amnesia and disorientation the following 292 Laura Winter 13 In this respect, Black Mirror criticises a society in which “the notion of punishment proportionality is at risk since […] the power to punish is decentralized, hindering its limitation" (Sola/ Martínez-Lucena 12). morning. This strategy allows for the perpetual entertainment offered to the spectator community depicted in this episode. The hunger for entertainment in this episode is closely tied to real life issues, such as the banalisation of critical situations in the social sphere and people’s distrust of the government to maintain law and order. Many members of the spectator community believe that Victoria’s fiancé evaded justice “[b]y hanging himself in his cell […]. The public mood is now focused on ensuring his accom‐ plice can’t do the same” (S2/ E2, 00: 30). “White Bear”, then, portrays a community which has taken justice into its own hand. 13 But the chance of a possible rein‐ tegration of Victoria into the social sphere is from the outset collectively per‐ ceived as pointless. Justice is done by punishing her each day anew. In the “White Bear Justice Park”, the spectator community can witness the enforcement of rules live and even contribute actively to it, while the operators of the park exploit the public mood and create a novel marketable product of entertainment. Most importantly, however, [t]he offender is seen as someone who has disappointed the expectations that society projects on individuals, rather than as a person to be recovered for the ‘community’, even less as someone who has committed a crime for which society is somehow ‘co-responsible’. (Sola/ Martínez-Lucena 10) “White Bear” only offers subtle hints with regard to community structures outside the theme park. The fact that Victoria had gone through traditional court procedure prior to her placement in the park and the notion of the white bear as a symbol for mass mourning implies that the entertainment programme is embedded within wider societal structures. The Justice Park closely resembles a real life entertainment park and seems to function as a microcosm within the fictional society, in which people are given the oppor‐ tunity to intentionally enter to enjoy themselves. Similar to Prime Minister Callow in “The National Anthem”, who was forced to trade his dignity for the sake of public opinion, Victoria is put on display for the spectator community to freely judge her deviant behaviour. Finally, the offender is the one “who gives the community the opportunity to reaffirm its ‘normality’ and its shared values” (Sola/ Martínez-Lucena 7). The question remains, however, to what extent the spectator community is presented as morally superior. Although they merely perform their role in the strategic psychological punishment, the ‘onlookers’ replicate the original 293 Black Mirror (2011-) 14 For an interesting discussion of delinquent teenagers and their imposed role as social deviants in the popular British television series Misfits (2009-2013) see the essay by Annika Gonnermann in this volume. 15 Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing (1950) offers a brilliant example of unconscious behavioural codes of boundary maintenance. During the apartheid system, conscious and unconscious behavioural codes played an integral part in defining the borders of the White Settler communities in Southern Rhodesia. Thus, it might not be a coincidence that the episode “Nosedive” was filmed in South Africa. crime over and over again: they refuse to help and mindlessly record what is happening. While the community seeks to restore justice, the use of tech‐ nology amplifies the punishment of the individual and strengthens the bond of the ‘onlookers’, as Javier Sola and Jorge Martínez-Lucena observe: It is no longer a ‘silent’ exercise of justice and recovery of the offender by the political community, but a ‘loud’ communication that seeks an impact on the collective con‐ science, an intent to generate social stability at the expense of the ‘excluded’. (13) Although the spectator community is strategically divided into ‘onlookers’ and ‘hunters’, members are united in their lust for entertainment, defining their normality against a collectively chosen social deviant. 14 “White Bear” criticises the complacency of such a community and underscores these negative aspects by drawing attention to growing real life trends, such as smartphone overuse and its effect on people’s empathy. 4. Ratings and Meaningful Encounters in the ‘Pelican Cove Lifestyle Community’ in “Nosedive” The episode “Nosedive” depicts a lifestyle community which demarcates itself through dress and language, but also through subliminal messages and uncon‐ scious codes of behaviour 15 which outsiders cannot decipher easily. This episode shows how the social network mentality invades the physical sphere, consti‐ tuted of characters who only superficially participate in their social environ‐ ment, and zooms in on what it feels like to be ‘disliked’ and excluded from a community in the digital age. Pastel colours, piano soundtrack, and the portrayal of a quiet suburban neighbourhood in the opening scene do not necessarily forecast the premise on which this peaceful, seemingly utopian community is based. These neighbourhood shots, however, are soon subtly infiltrated by beeps and tones of the smartphones, interrupting the peaceful atmosphere. This 294 Laura Winter 16 The aspect of technological determinism surfaces also in Brooker’s view: “The differ‐ ence between smartphones and cigarettes is this: a cigarette robs 10 minutes from your lifespan, but at least has the decency to wait and withdraw all that time in bulk as you near the end of your life - whereas a smartphone steals your time in the present mo‐ ment, by degrees. Five minutes here. Five minutes there. Then you look up and you’re 85 years old” (“Apple’s Software Updates”). 17 This fictional premise does not seem too far-fetched: China has introduced a system of social scores which uncannily resembles the fictional social credit score system in this episode (see Harris). opening scene heralds the omnipresence of technology in daily life and the per‐ petual interruption of the individual’s experiences. 16 “Nosedive” follows protagonist Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) in her futile at‐ tempt to become a member of the popular ‘Pelican Cove Lifestyle Community’. The exclusive housing of this community is advertised as “Limited Edition Living” (S3/ E1, 00: 10) and provides “a bar and restaurant on site, tenants only” (S3/ E1, 00: 09). In order to join, however, Lacie is expected to improve her social status by boosting her ratings - the score resulting from live evaluations created subsequently to any face-to-face interaction. 17 At the moment she is a 4.2 (S3/ E1, 00: 02) - but at least a 4.5 is required. Thus, this episode comments on the heavy use of social media, such as Facebook or Instagram, especially in social situations, and on the undifferentiated binary evaluations of ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’. But “Nosedive” does not only show people rating each other. According to an unwritten rule within the community, Lacie is also expected to rate any expe‐ rience in daily life and immediately share it with the community on her social media timeline. Hannah Parkinson observes that “Lacie snaps a photo of a latte and describes it online as ‘Heaven! x’ before she even tries it, then grimaces when it touches her lips”. Lacie’s reaction implies that mediated experiences and the validation of them by the online community are more valuable to her than the actual experience. With their hands constantly glued to their smartphones, it almost seems as though the characters are armed with high-tech gadgets as a kind of self-defence tool to identify and categorise the fellow being as either trustworthy or threatening with regard to their own social status: any immediate interpersonal contact is mediatised and the smartphone functions as a mediator between them (see fig. 3). This Black Mirror episode highlights that it is not only personal experience which suffers from the obsession with ratings but also social interaction, which is heavily influenced by seeking out benefits and opportunities to increase the social score. The scoring system increases the superficial friendliness among community members immensely, which intensifies social pressure: if an indi‐ 295 Black Mirror (2011-) Fig. 3: Checking the social media news feed via the smartphone and rating every personal interaction and experience is an integral part of the lifestyle community depicted in “Nosedive” (S3/ E1, 00: 03). vidual already has a low score, it is not considered advisable to rate this person a full five stars because of the repercussions for one’s own ranking. For instance, Lacie accepts a smoothie offered by Chester, who is thankful for the interaction and the subsequent high rating because he is a 3.1 - but for that she collects scornful looks from her co-workers (S3/ E1, 00: 07). By constantly evaluating the situation at hand and rating others, the characters are perpetually distracted and lost in cyberspace (see Aiken 10), which impairs their experience of life as such. Moreover, the social media mentality of the characters, which exclusively values increasing popularity, distorts their perception of meaningful encounters, such as the friendly interaction with a co-worker. In the community depicted in this episode, the quantity of external validation delivered by all the ratings dissolves the quality of genuine empathy for others, an element which is pivotal for the basis of a community. Important to note is also the suggestion that joining a community in the digital age correlates clearly with the self-responsible task of organising one’s own social network (see van Dijk 108), which demands effort and rehearsal. Aiming to get accustomed to the rather subtle membership criteria beyond algorithmic scores, Lacie practices in front of the mirror and rehearses different laughs and giggles, which emphasises the artificial interaction dominating her social environment (S3/ E1, 00: 02). At 296 Laura Winter the same time, these rehearsals seem necessary for her to receive “up votes from quality people” (S3/ E1, 00: 13). Furthermore, in order to create a yearning in Lacie to be part of the lifestyle community, her estate agent “sampled [Lacie’s] photo stream” (S3/ E1, 00: 09) to create a hologram of Lacie herself, in which she lives her very own dream: feeling comfortably at home with her future attentive and handsome partner is only a few ratings away. Witnessing her potential future self, Lacie’s expression insinuates that it is loneliness which troubles her and urges her to be part of a community. In her willingness to turn this projected future into reality, Lacie rates every social interaction and social media post with five stars, without even consciously looking at the content. In this sense, “Nose‐ dive” pinpoints the social trend of ‘liking’ things and the tendency that “a failure to deliver regular messages may no longer be excused by absence but rather may be read as evidence of a lack of care” ( Jamieson 27). The members of the lifestyle community prefer the quantity of external validation over meaningful personal interaction. This episode illustrates the absurdity of the lifestyle community further by contrasting members and non-members, and by exemplifying the social network mentality interfering with the family sphere. Due to her preoccupation with ratings, Lacie’s brother misses having real conversations with his sister. He, who seems to care just enough about his score not to become a social outcast, keeps nagging at Lacie about her superficiality and refers to the lifestyle community as “fake-smile jail cells” (S3/ E1, 00: 24). Lacie, however, has already internalised the belief system, with all the values, attitudes, and forms of behaviour which the lifestyle community demands from its members. But because she is not yet fully integrated, she is still exposed to ‘low-ranked’ people, who see right through her efforts and spot her superficiality immediately. This shows how absurd the ranking system is: ‘low-ranked’ people who have either deliberately distanced themselves from the social ranking game (as in the case of Lacie’s brother) or who have been ranked low due to external circumstances are the only ones left who have a clear and critical perspective on this tech‐ nology-driven society. The social rating system in “Nosedive” thus perpetuates itself by down-voting critics and strategically eliminating them from the lifestyle community altogether. The following scenes illustrate the harsh rules of the rating system and how easily and quickly the individual can fall from grace, compared to the immense effort it must make to climb up the social ladder. In Lacie’s world, people receive bad ratings for bumping into someone, “cut[ting] someone off in traffic” (S3/ E1, 00: 12), or for other types of behaviour considered deviant. The social rank is up‐ dated instantaneously according to the individual’s behaviour, which illustrates 297 Black Mirror (2011-) 18 Interestingly, Susan offers Lacie a drink: “Blue thermos is coffee, red’s whiskey. Help yourself.” (S3/ E1, 00: 38) This is a reference to the famous red pill/ blue pill decision (truth, knowledge, freedom vs. illusion, security, falsehood) which Neo must face in The Matrix (1999). how sensitive the social status is to changing conditions and how ephemeral the membership of the lifestyle community can be. At the airport, for instance, Lacie loses her temper when she fails to get a seat on the plane, as the last seats were reserved for people above 4.2 - and after a bad day, her score is below require‐ ments. Due to her behaviour, she immediately receives further down-voting and is confronted by airport security for “intimidation and profanity”, losing “one full ranking point as a punitive measure” (S3/ E1, 00: 29) in addition. This is the begin‐ ning of her downward spiral into low scores, aesthetically underlined by the colour scheme of the episode turning progressively darker. The social interaction within the community in “Nosedive” is based on thinking in binary terms of ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’. The range from zero to five stars barely captures the essence of any experience. Rating is quick and efficient but completely ignores the aspect of quality. In her next social interaction with a service employee, who apparently is not afraid of receiving bad ratings, Lacie is only rated two stars on the simple grounds that “[i]t wasn’t a meaningful encounter” (S3/ E1, 00: 27) to him. This implies two things: first, there is an in‐ terdependency between high scores and what is considered ‘meaningful’. For Lacie, any encounter is artificially made to be meaningful because the oppor‐ tunity to boost her ratings lurks everywhere. For the sake of high scores, she treats others how she wishes to be treated. For the service employee, however, the interaction with Lacie is simply not meaningful because he sees it for what it is: a sober transaction of services with a customer. This again shows distorted perceptions and the internalised social media mentality upon which the lifestyle community is based. Secondly, the fact that Lacie is awarded only two stars against her own expectations conveys that inauthentic friendliness is futile with people who deliberately stay outside of the lifestyle community. Her reaction implies that she is no longer aware of the fact that the social sphere outside of Pelican Cove includes multiple codes of behaviour. When the protagonist is finally confronted with a real social outcast, it be‐ comes apparent how deeply ingrained the social media network mentality is in Lacie’s thinking. On her subsequent hitchhike to her highly-ranked friend’s wedding, she has no other choice than to accept the offer to ride with truck driver Susan (Cherry Jones), introducing herself as a “1.4 - gotta be an antisocial maniac, right? ” (S3/ E1, 00: 38). 18 Their conversation then becomes significant for the overall message of “Nosedive”: 298 Laura Winter LACIE. Well, I got marked down at the airport for yelling, and they put me on double damage. SUSAN. How did it feel? LACIE. Awful. SUSAN. I meant the yelling. LACIE. I don’t know I was mad. Look at where it got me. (S3/ E1, 00: 39) Lacie is not able to understand the hints dropped by Susan about the restrictive nature of the scoring system. While the social outcast tries to engage in a mean‐ ingful way by having a non-transactional conversation, Lacie’s thoughts con‐ tinue to revolve around her status and she cannot exit this mindset even when among outcasts. Having arrived at the wedding, where she initially hoped to collect sufficiently high scores to get a discount on her monthly rental pay in the lifestyle community, she finally squanders all chances of moving upwards. Once again she loses composure, and the high-ranking wedding guests merely pity her before she is put into jail. The end of the episode implies that the pro‐ tagonist has not yet repressed her authentic self fully enough to become part of the highly artificial lifestyle community. Behind ‘bars’ (or glass fronts to be exact), physically imprisoned and locked away from the community due to her deviant behaviour, Lacie paradoxically feels most liberated: freed from the pres‐ sure of social ranking, she laughs and curses in an unfettered manner. “Nosedive” foregrounds how Lacie’s life is entirely guided by the social media posts of the Pelican Cove community members, which ‘virtually’ depict a flaw‐ less life and infinite happiness. What is more, Lacie has become incapable of any meaningful relationship with others. Only when she has been actively divorced from society is she able to exit the restrictive mindset of the rating system she has internalised. The episode thus criticises how the constant flow of informa‐ tion via smartphones in the digital age distracts the individual from consciously engaging in social interactions, but it also addresses people’s increasing urge to rate and share experiences of daily life online. In general, digital technology is certainly “capable of fostering rich, deeper connections by extending intimate contacts across barriers of distance and time” (Chambers 21). By depicting a mere simulation of community void of genuine face-to-face interaction and real conversations, “Nosedive” hints at the negative potential of these developments and demonstrates how quickly community could turn into a shallow construct. 5. Conclusion Disruptive technological inventions have always generated their very distinct fascination, hope, and anxieties among people. With the digital turn, techno‐ 299 Black Mirror (2011-) logical progress has entered the political, social, and private sphere with un‐ precedented speed. Due to this acceleration “far outstripping our capacity to assess its social impact” (Knafo/ Lo Bosco 238), it is hard to predict technology’s long-term impact on society. Hitherto unsuccessful attempts to confidently sit‐ uate the individual within these accelerated developments also challenge the conception of community in the 21 st century. Television series provide a safe place to experiment with possible outcomes. The fictional universe of the Black Mirror anthology offers useful insights into the sense of community in the digital age. In canonical dystopian fiction, the concept of community, especially when displayed as “repressive and conformist” (Willson 1), is often exposed to the risk of being negatively perceived as an infringement on individual freedom and autonomy by rebellious protagonists: the World State’s motto in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is “COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY” (1), and “the Circle” community in Dave Eggers’ epon‐ ymous novel promotes the mantra of “SECRETS ARE LIES. SHARING IS CARING. PRIVACY IS THEFT” (305). Although, or perhaps especially because, the notion of community in Black Mirror is merely implicit, it deserves close attention due to its enduring relevance as a dynamic social force in the digital age. The Black Mirror episodes analysed above depict community in the digital age as an ephemeral social phenomenon, almost hollow at the core and heavily influenced by mediated interaction in the virtual realm. At the same time, com‐ munity is also portrayed as an indifferent collective merely hungry for enter‐ tainment and spectacle. It is precisely the anthology format of Black Mirror which seems to augment its message on a meta-level. Far from resembling a ‘collection of flowers’, the etymological Greek root of ‘anthology’, the series depicts different unsettling near-future worlds in each episode, challenging our comprehension of social boundaries and interaction, and humanity’s dependency on technology at large. The future depicted in Black Mirror is not an undefined moment to come, but rather an alternative present easily realised with all its possible utopian and dystopian connotations. Fan reactions accordingly display a very ambivalent attitude towards technology: “Very excited to binge myself into depression with Black Mirror later”, one viewer tweets; another one announces: “Just watched the first 3 episodes of @blackmirror. BRB… getting rid of all technology. #Black‐ Mirror” (Chakrabarti). These statements exemplify the cognitive dissonance in relation to technology resulting from criticising technology while simultane‐ ously depending on it. The irony of tweeting about our dependency on tech‐ nology is indicative of this complex relationship and demonstrates that perhaps, at least to a certain extent, we are already living in the dystopia the show depicts. 300 Laura Winter 19 Netflix, however, makes sure to keep its customers watching: usually only about 15 seconds remain before the next episode starts automatically. David Cameron’s #piggate scandal is only one example of how fiction overlaps with reality. Unlike other popular dystopian television series, such as Altered Carbon (2018-), Mr. Robot (2015-), The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-), or Westworld (2016-), Black Mirror should be consumed with caution. According to Brooker, “it’s like you’ve had a full meal” (qtd. in Stolworthy, “Black Mirror Creator”) after only one episode. The gravitas of the single episodes seems to slow down the process of eagerly continuing with the next one. 19 Furthermore, many of the characters in Black Mirror evoke a feeling of disgust or pity in the viewer, rather than encouraging identification with a rebellious dystopian hero. It seems as though in a world full of ‘black mirrors’, there are no more Winston Smiths, John Savages or D-503s, the famous rebels in ‘the big three’ dystopian novels 1984 by George Orwell (1949), Brave New World by Al‐ dous Huxley (1932), and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924) (see Beauchamp 58). In Black Mirror, the goal of a totalitarian system has been achieved via tech‐ nology: there are no more rebels, just conformists. Black Mirror is thus a prime example of an updated techno-dystopia providing a cautionary lens on the side effects of omnipresent technology. Bibliography Primary Sources Altered Carbon. Written by Laeta Kalogridis. Directed by Miguel Sapochnik et al. Netflix, 2018-. Black Mirror. 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