http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7457-4574
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Abstract
This article interrogates the geopolitical content of the internationally popular television series Bron/Broen (‘The Bridge’) and its two subsequent adaptations. In my analysis of The Bridge as a global phenomenon, I make a threefold contribution to the literature of popular geopolitics and cultural geography. First, in a normative contribution intended to challenge mainstream assumptions regarding the banality of the medium of television, I situate TV-viewing within the discursive battlefield of global politics as an affective act of world-building, a phenomenon enabled by the emergence of a third phase of television (Television 3.0). Second, via a theoretical contribution, I conceive of Bridge-gazing as a form of quotidian geopolitical interaction, wherein the spectator maps their own emplacement in the world’s various (b)order regimes, while also engaging with the distant politics of the series’ narratives. And, third, in an empirical contribution, I provide a exegetic analysis of the three iterations of The Bridge by interrogating the three series’ geopolitical interventions into pressing issues associated with unfettered globalisation, the purported victory of neoliberalism and the waning of the nation-state.
Cet article interroge contenu géopolitique de la série télévisée populaire à travers le monde Bron/Broen (« The Bridge ») et des deux adaptations qui ont suivi. Dans mon analyse de The Bridge en tant que phénomène international, je fais une contribution à trois volets à la recherche en géopolitique populaire et en géographie culturelle. Tout d’abord, dans une contribution normative destinée à remettre en question le postulat concernant la banalité du médium qu’est la télévision, je situe le fait de regarder la télévision au sein du champ de bataille discursif de la politique mondiale en tant qu’acte affectif de construction du monde, un phénomène causé par l’émergence d’une troisième phase de la télévision (Télévision3.0). Deuxièmement, à travers une contribution théorique, je conçois le fait de regarder The Bridge comme une forme d'interaction géopolitique quotidien, selon lequel le téléspectateur situe son propre emplacement dans les divers régimes frontaliers/politiques en même temps qu’il s’engage aussi dans les politiques distantes des histoires de la série. Enfin, dans une contribution empirique, je fournis une analyse analyse exégétique des trois itérations de The Bridge en questionnant les interventions géopolitiques des trois séries sur des questions essentielles associées à la mondialisation débridée, la soi-disant victoire du néolibéralisme et le déclin de l’état-nation.
Este artículo interroga el contenido geopolítico de la serie de televisión internacionalmente popular Bron/Broen (‘The Bridge’) y sus dos adaptaciones posteriores. En este análisis de The Bridge como un fenómeno global, se realiza una triple contribución a la literatura de la geopolítica popular y la geografía cultural. En primer lugar, en una contribución normativa destinada a desafiar las suposiciones dominantes sobre la banalidad del medio de la televisión, se sitúa la visualización televisiva dentro del campo de batalla discursivo de la política global como un acto afectivo de construcción del mundo, un fenómeno habilitado por el surgimiento de una tercera fase de la televisión (Televisión 3.0). En segundo lugar, a través de una contribución teórica, se concibe la mirada desde The Bridge como una forma de interacción geopolítica, en la que el espectador traza su propia base en los diversos sistemas de borde/orden del mundo, al mismo tiempo que interactúa críticamente con la política distante de la narrativa de la serie. Y, en tercer lugar, en una contribución empírica, se proporciona un análisis análisis exegético de las tres iteraciones de The Bridge al interrogar las intervenciones geopolíticas de las tres series en asuntos apremiantes asociados con la globalización sin restricciones, la supuesta victoria del neoliberalismo y el declive de la nación-estado.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Tine Roesen, Vlad Strukov, and Kieran Fino-Saunders for providing their input on the first draft of this essay, and Jason Dittmer for his very welcome suggestion to view the series with a geopolitical eye. I also wish to thank the three anonymous referees and the journal editors for their helpful comments and critiques.
Notes
1. In my usage of this term, I refer to the amorphous suite of political, socio-economic, cultural, and discursive interactions associated with the frontiers between sovereign states, including but not limited to interpersonal, corporate, governmental, and other forms of engagements and frictions.
2. The Union of Kalmaris was a personal (monarchical) union that joined the two kingdoms from 1397 to 1523.
3. An important difference in the narrative is Denmark’s membership in NATO and its subaltern relationship with the United States. This differentiates the country from its neutral neighbour Sweden, which is (geopolitically) positioned as free of the 'corrupting' influences of American warmongering, the use of torture, and other questionable IR actions.
4. While Danish and Swedish are distinct languages, much of the show’s narrative involves interlinguistic engagement, often resulting in inside jokes and visible embarrassment on the part of characters who are less language-able than others (generally speaking, Swedes have more trouble than Danes in understanding their counterparts’ spoken language).
5. France originally opposed the U.K.’s admittance to the union, and prior to the latter’s decision to leave the EU in 2016, the British were one of the most Eurosceptic nations, with much of the ire at continued membership being focused on the country’s ‘immigration’ problem which was very often associated with its sub-Channel border with France.
6. HBO’s crime drama The Wire (2002–2008) should also be viewed as contributing to the sea change in programming quality, as well as increasing demands on the audience, from challenging viewers to critically grapple with ‘spaces of power’ to its reconfiguring the role of ‘stateness’ in shaping poverty, politics, and policing in post-industrial urban America (see Meehan, Shaw, & Marston, Citation2013).
7. In terms of geospatial proximity, the El Paso-Juárez pairing represents the two closest urban zones (though ironically, the most disparate in terms of economic development). The distance and average crossing time for these three linkages are: Øresund Bridge (12 km including tunnel; ~ 30 min.); BOTA (154 m; ~ 45 min.); and EuroTunnel (50.5 km; 35 min.).
8. The noirish, geographic-centric style is increasingly perceptible in other crime series, including Broadchurch (2013- ), True Detective (2014- ), and Midnight Sun (2016- ), including the employment of an ‘aural landscape’ produced by a score that is ‘understated, offering an eerie and unsettling “pulse” that gently punctuates that punctuates the action’ (Creeber, Citation2015,p. 26).
9. The representation of French as ‘uptight’ when compared to the British is interesting as it challenges many accepted auto- and xenostereotypes associated with the two nations (see Stråth, Citation2010).
10. Denmark imposed similar controls on its southern border with Germany in January 2016. Interestingly given that series is coming to a close, Sweden recently announced an end to its border controls with Denmark, a fact that was not lost on the BBC which used Bron/Broen to frame its 2 May 2017 story on the change in policy.
11. While the series can be viewed as representing the realm of politics, it can also be said that real-world politics seem to have intruded on Bron/Broen in Kim Bodnia’s infamously-public decision to leave the show in the third season due to rising levels of ‘everyday anti-Semitism’ in Malmö (qtd. in Orange 2016). Approximately one-third of the southern Swedish city’s population is of Middle Eastern origin, and in recent years has become the ‘focus of national attention for the alleged “failed integration” immigrant groups to Sweden’ (Anderson, Citation2014, p. 13); not insignificantly, TT’s fourth truth is: ‘Integration has failed’.
12. Director Georgsson (Citation2014) argued that an important part of Bron/Broen was that ‘people looked like each other’ across the border, which is not necessarily the case with the North American or French-U.K. series.
13. Prior to signing on make Bron/Broen, Filmlance’s owner Endemol Shine Group initially sought to develop a show based on the same premise, but set on the Detroit, Michigan-Windsor, Ontario border. If realised, this would have been a rather unoriginal, if more dramatic rendering of the 2006 bilingual Canadian film Bad Cop, Bad Cop about an Ontarian-Québécois police duo who must solve a murder on the border of their respective provinces.
14. Existing since the 1960s, these factories take advantage of cheaper Mexican labour and are able to ‘temporarily’ import unfinished products and the ‘export’ finished goods back to the United States with minimal tariffs. With the increase in international trade between China and the United States conditions, in Mexico have become desperate, with wages decreasing and competition for such jobs increasingly fierce.
15. Passed as a response to the shortage of farm labour during World War II, the guest-worker programme allowed for temporary stays by some 4.6 million Mexican nationals engaged in agricultural work.
16. In the commentary on the pilot, co-creator and executive producer Elwood Reid laughingly recounts that the first filming location in Mexico ‘literally smelled like shit and piss’ (qtd. in The Bridge: The Complete First Season 2014).
17. According to Pew Research Center (Stepler and Brown, 2016), Hispanics accounted for 17.3% of the US population in 2014, a rise from 3.5% in 1960. By 2060, the US Census Bureau predicts that Hispanics will account for 28.6% of the population.
18. As evidence of the last of these, I present an anecdote from my research for this essay. When I emailed the US Customs & Border Protection Information Center to obtain the rights to use one of their photos of BOTA, I – a US citizen resident in the state of New Jersey – received a ‘closed inquiry’ that provided FAQs about Global Entry policies and bringing food into the U.S., stating: ‘We hope our answers ease your entry into the United States. Please understand these answers are informational only. The CBP officer who speaks with you upon arrival determines the admissibility of goods and visitors’ (CBP INFO Center, Citation2016).
19. Interestingly, Bichir comments that ‘you can’t shoot in those places for real’ (qtd. in The Bridge: The Complete First Season 2014), referring to filming restrictions on U.S. border crossings; this despite the frequent depiction of such sites in the series. The necessarily ‘illusions’ of the border stand in sharp contrast with access given producers of Bron/Broen and The Tunnel, particularly in the latter wherein Eurotunnel staff functioned as series extras and filming occurred in the actual control rooms of the facility (Moll, Citation2014).
20. As a point of clarification, The Tunnel maintains Bron/Broen’s use of ethnic difference to mark immigrant communities in France; however, the racially-diverse actors (and the characters they portray) in The Tunnel are simply ‘British’.
21. Returning the metonym of bridged spaces, Janus was the two-faced Roman god of bridges, doors, and other passages. One can easily connect the representation of this two-faced deity to the character of the ‘Truth Terrorist’ in the series, who alters his visage through plastic surgery to escape detection after faking his death.
22. The 2017 murder case involving the Copenhagen-based inventor Peter Madsen and Malmö-based journalist Kim Wall has only served to strengthen the perceptual linkages between these fields based on international media coverage of the event.