My friend Daniel Brodén will be defending his thesis Dark Shadows over Folkhemmet: A Cultural Genre History of Crime Fiction in Swedish Cinema and Television (Folkhemmets skuggbilder. En kulturanalytisk genrestudie av svensk kriminalfiktion i film och tv) on Saturday. His english abstract is here. Here is a snippet from the beginning of the abstract:
This dissertation investigates Swedish crime film with a combination of genre history and cultural analysis. The main focus is how this popular genre has elucidated dark aspects of the welfare state model widely known as Folkhemmet (“The People’s Home”), since it was established in Swedish cinema during World War II.
Through the visual metaphor Shadow Images (“skuggbilder”) this dissertation clarifies how crime films cast a dark shadow over social life with fictional stories about murders and criminality. Crime is a term associated with ruptures and uncertainties, just like the concept of Modernity. An exhaustive study of all crime fiction produced for Swedish cinema and television shows how the genre continously has reflected and commented critically on the changes in modern society.
Daniel has seen most (actually I think he has seen all) Swedish crime films and he has an amazing memory and ability for retelling them. I am looking forward to attending the thesis defence. It’s open so if you are in Göteborg then you can attend on Saturday (6th December) at 10.00 am, room T302, Arkeologen, Olof Wijksgatan 6.