Sarah Lund, noir ruler. A commentary of the three seasons of Danish TV series Forbrydelsen.

(May contain spoilers)

Nordic noir has reinvented the crime and police genre, creating cultural products that have proved to be massively successful in Europe through official partnerships, and not so official broadcasting channels where some series have acquired a cult following of fans from all over the world.

Such is the case of Danish TV series Forbrydelsen, already a hit home when it became famous in the United Kingdom, Germany and The Netherlands in part for its vertiginous narrative, but mostly because of its main star, Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Lund, a peculiar woman of many complexities, played by the very talented Sofie Grabol, previously known in art cinema circles for her work with the likes of Lars von Trier and the Dogma manifesto.

Grabol’s acting has given depth to a character that is at once hesitant but resolute, strong, not necessarily “feminine” or in possession of psychological attributes and behaviors associated with the female gender. For instance, she’s detached and her lack of communicative skills isolates her from personal and professional surroundings. Her motivations aren’t always easy to read and the sometimes flawed decisions in her personal relationships turn her into a three dimensional character full of dilemmas, contradictions, mistakes and difficult decisions in a field where men make the rules.

Sarah Lund became a female hero since the introductory pilot, where her professional vacillations quickly collided against her firmness to solve the murder of a teenage girl named Nanna Birk Larsen. The episode plays, almost until the end, with the notion of an insecure professional who also has personal issues with her boyfriend, son and mother, and who can’t make up her mind and decide what her priorities are. Messy with her blue jeans, a cardigan, a ponytail and no make-up, she’s not the typical female TV lead, but Lund fulfills the principle of verisimilitude by going against the representation of female detectives who chase criminals in high heels and look like tall, skinny super models, so typical in many American crime shows.

Sarah simply looked and acted familiar, and it was easy to sympathize with her. But she was also intriguing. She’d choose a dangerous path, following her intuition, as the spectator knew something bad was about to happen. The closing scene of episode 1, when she grabs her bag and gets off the plane to go back to her Danish office, quitting her transfer to the Swedish police, interrupts a series of long edits and sets a fast narrative for the upcoming episodes, where Sarah sets the rhythm. The case of Nanna Birk Larsen will develop for the whole season, and in another defiance of the genre’s clichés, the individual story will soon signify the slow disintegration of her immediate circle and all the way to the circuit of politics, where corruption and double standards will mirror the individual tragedy.

“The personal is political”, or so seems to be the show’s stand, going against a trend of storytelling that detaches the individual crime from society. Forbrydelsen shows us that a single crime hurts society as a whole, but it’s also a product of it. Sarah is assigned to the case with her partner, detective Jan Meyer. Following leads that go all the way to the Prime Minister and back, both Lund and Meyer get to unravel the identity of the killer, at the expense of risking everything. Tragedy strikes again and, despite having solved the murder, Lund, now investigated by her bosses, is punished and degraded to a traffic officer in the first episode of Season 2.

The murder of Nanna Birk Larsen seems to have been written following what statistics show all over the world: that the perpetrator is in most cases someone close to the victim. It took Sarah many false leads, a loss of her own and the political elite upside down to finally catch the killer, his own pathology rooted in a broken family and childhood.

By the second season, the production of episodes was reduced by half, and Sarah, now investigating a series of gruesome murders by an apparent serial killer, goes through her worst personal decisions, almost to the point of auto-sabotage, and getting killed by them. A weak season by comparison, Sarah’s personal struggles and blindness at love are the focus of the storyline, with a villain too wicked and too hard to believe. A point in favor is the commentary on international politics, in particular Denmark’s participation in the war against Afghanistan is portrayed as a foolish decision that resulted in the senseless murder of Afghan civilians and the fractured minds of the soldiers upon their return.

But it is the third and last season that remains the most controversial. The young daughter of a prominent industrialist is kidnapped by a man hungry for vengeance. The story focuses on the bitter battle of her parents against each other as they’re desperate to find her, and the plan of the kidnapper reveals a horrific case of pedophilia in the hands of an apparently respectable man. Such tragedy is framed by a wider political context, just like the previous seasons, as the 3rd ends with Sarah facing the limits of justice and reason. What to do when you’re facing a monster, knowing he will get away with a crime?

Intertwined with her own personal demons, her fractured relationship with her son and a second opportunity at love, Forbrydelsen’s finale poses many moral dilemmas in an open ending that manages to portray Sarah with all her contradictions. She’s a hero and an antihero at the same time. The last five minutes of the episode have no dialogue, but the resolution comes from the story that Grabol’s face is expressing as she’s staring at the killer, who stares back in those harrowing, empty eyes. Perhaps one of the best acting moments of Sophie Grabol and an unexpected but satisfying end to one of the best female characters of crime TV.

Archived version: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20180628162132/https://www.bookwitty.com/text/sarah-lund-noir-ruler-a-commentary-of-the-three/570361d3acd0d0166b56a76a

https://www.bookwitty.com/text/sarah-lund-noir-ruler-a-commentary-of-the-three/570361d3acd0d0166b56a76a

Jessica Jones TV series

Jessica Jones TV series, episode 1: rethinking the superhero

From comics to television
The history of comics shows this is a cultural field of ideological tensions, where mainstream ideologies have been contested, criticized and parodied since the early years of the comic strip until our days. One of the most challenging was the poetic and elegant defiance of gender stereotypes composed by George Herriman in his Krazy Kat comic strip. The rich epoch of the sixties counterculture in the United States, was one of sexual liberation where irreverence became almost the norm for male artists, while females found in comics a platform of self-expression in the Wimmen’s Comix movement.

The self-awareness of narratives was prevalent in the eighties, where genres were re-thought and intervened in what have become now classics, such as Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore’s Watchmen. What most of these manifestations have in common is that they appeared in the margins of the comics industry, creating sub-genres and movements that eventually become assimilated by the mainstream industry, which saw an area of opportunity for business, with new narratives that could attract new readers.

Such is the case of Jessica Jones, a comic originally published by Marvel that intended to shift some gender stereotypes. Along with a new roster of super heroes created for contemporary times and branded by Marvel as “New Avengers” series, Jessica Jones has been adapted to other mediums such as film, video games, literature and most recently, television.

This article will discuss episode 1 of the TV adaptation of Jessica Jones, with a focus on its genre and gender subversions.
Created in 2015 by Melissa Rosenberg as a web television series produced by Netflix, Jessica Jones, played by Krysten Ritter, is the story of a grumpy, alcoholic and disheveled private investigator suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Jessica, we learn as the series progress, possesses strange physical powers but has quit them after a traumatic event. She is now in search of a common, more anonymous life and has a struggling business, set up from her impoverished home/office.

Jessica’s skills as an investigator gain from her unique superhero capabilities, despite her trying to suppress them. She’s introduced as a disenchanted and sometimes cynical character walking through the streets of New York City and entering a posh office. She shows no respect for figures of authority and no plans to improve her personal and professional circumstances. Downplaying herself, she interacts only with strictly necessary characters in the first episode, especially the source of her most important jobs: Jeri Hogarth, a powerful female defense lawyer with questionable ethics.

The first five minutes of episode 1 shows no male characters, and instead displays two powerful women interacting with each other, one as a freelance investigator and the other as the owner of her law firm. The first subversion of the series is the lack of reliance on male characters, and a display of women overtaking traditionally male-dominated work ambiences. A second subversion is the representation of these women’s appearance: Jessica is scruffy, wears little make-up and has a leather jacket, blue jeans motorbike type of style; Jeri wears a skirt and short hair. None of them fall into stereotypes of femininity. However, the politics of power are intact in the representation of Jeri’s assistants: two stereotypical feminine women in their assigned work space.

Jessica’s first night at the job makes this superhero genre show intersect with a noir detective genre where ambience and mood enhance the story as well as the character’s personality. The dark streets of NYC echo Jessica’s solitude, misanthropy and stalkerish proclivities, as one of the main male characters is introduced: watched in an objectified kind of way by Jessica (a third subversion), Luke Cage has superhero powers and will become Jessica’s object of desire.

Superheroes have been traditionally represented as ordinary people who go through an extraordinary event and gain extraordinary powers from them. In this sense, Jessica Jones is a conventional character, as her struggles and suffering have the function of making her more convincingly human. PTSD isn’t new either; but its ramifications are: rarely we have seen the routines of an alcoholic protagonist in a state of desperation. Jessica’s health issue make her more human and believable, but more importantly, it is displayed on television without mockery or alarmism, and the camera’s angle portrays it accordingly:

Picture 1: Jessica’s world is upside down

Secondary characters (her neighbors) are introduced. They’re all misfits, but portrayed in a way that makes the audience feel empathy and closeness for them,  as they limit Jessica’s self-destructiveness. Marginal characters assigned to the narrative can be considered another subversion, despite how common this is now in the field of comics. But TV is a different issue, going through its own rearranging of genres and narrative possibilities.

Despite her troubles, Jessica is a competent and fearless P.I., especially when male characters want to dominate her. Sexual practices show other subversions: seduction and copulation are represented without TV’s traditional conservatism of the act being suggested instead of shown. Jeri’s lesbian affair and relationship are introduced without delicacy or soft tones; Jessica seeks, gets and dominates her lover. Jessica is proactive in her desires, represented in a frontal and loud way.  While this can be considered a gender subversion, Jessica’s white privilege over her black lover has provoked reactions. https://www.themarysue.com/race-in-jessica-jones/

Trish Walker’s introduction is the most deceptive of all: She looks stereotypically feminine, has a successful job as a radio host and enjoys the comforts of her luxury NYC condo, with its panic room and reinforced security. Jessica’s sister is apparently her opposite: blonde, rich, physically fit, a public person. Yet, all these stereotypes hide a vulnerable woman who shares Jessica’s past and deepest secrets, and like her sister, refuses to be a victim. Their interaction has a narrative function, as it introduces the villain of the series without actually showing him. 

This ominous character is coming back for Jessica, via her job. He’s using a vulnerable young woman reported as lost to get to Jessica, victimizing and taking away the woman’s autonomy. This suggests how powerful he is before he’s even introduced. As Jessica tries to rescue this girl and her parents, a shocking murder sequence closes the pilot episode. This proves devastating for our heroine, while at the same time detonating her come back to her superhero senses and resolution to face and destroy her nemesis.

The pilot of Jessica Jones progresses in an engaging narrative and successfully introduces the characters, their motivations and their life and work environments, while shifting gender stereotypes in the mass communication media that is television. While there is an imbalance of gender and race issues, these are now part of a collective discussion that should be welcome. 
Archived version:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180628162131/https://www.bookwitty.com/text/jessica-jones-tv-series-episode-1-rethinking-the/56c2a1d9acd0d072fda38e2e

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