tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/the-fall-7669/articlesThe Fall – The Conversation2021-04-16T15:18:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1589192021-04-16T15:18:24Z2021-04-16T15:18:24ZLine of Duty: why there are so many Northern Irish coppers in British crime dramas<p>There are few TV shows that light up social media quite like Line of Duty. At the core of the action is Northern Irish police officer Ted Hastings, played by Adrian Dunbar, a celebrated film and television actor from Enniskillen in County Fermanagh.</p>
<p>Hastings isn’t the only copper hailing from Northern Ireland on our screens in recent years.</p>
<p>Before the return of Line of Duty, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000sm37">Bloodlands</a> filled its coveted Sunday 9pm slot on BBC One. A crime drama set in Northern Ireland, the ghosts of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/The-Troubles-Northern-Ireland-history">the Troubles</a> hang over Jimmy Nesbitt’s DCI Tom Brannick as he attempts to solve a case that eluded him during the peace proceedings. Before that, one of the most talked-about television crime dramas was <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00wrk40">The Fall</a>. Starring Gillian Anderson, Met officer Stella Gibson is sent to fix a bungled investigation in Belfast. </p>
<p>From Peaky Blinders to Luther, the figure of the Northern Irish police officer has become a mainstay of popular TV on both sides of the Irish Sea. The continued interest in Northern Irish officers in popular culture suggests that there is an intriguing tension in this figure for audiences: one that not only makes great TV but also helps viewers understand Northern Ireland’s complicated history and how it has shaped the present.</p>
<h2>Policing between Britain and Ireland</h2>
<p>The signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 led to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/northern-irelands-police-transformation-may-hold-lessons-for-the-us-141259">reforming</a> and renaming of the Royal Ulster Constabulary as the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). This was created as a new “<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/patten_report/report/chapter1.stm">police service</a> capable of attracting and sustaining support from the community as a whole”. This meant a drive to hire more Catholic officers so the force could be “representative of the society it polices”.</p>
<p>Despite the new force, the police are still hugely controversial in Northern Ireland. Policing has been a sticking point at several key moments in the ongoing peace process. </p>
<p>The nationalist community, who align themselves with an Irish identity and often Catholicism, distrust the force due to the discrimination <a href="https://theconversation.com/northern-irelands-police-transformation-may-hold-lessons-for-the-us-141259">Catholic recruits faced</a> during the Troubles. There are also emerging details of collusion in the <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/o-loan-report-on-ruc-collusion-1.1291638">murders of Catholic civilians</a> during the Troubles. </p>
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<p>The unionist community, who are traditionally more supportive of the PSNI, mostly protestant and support Northern Ireland being part of the UK, have also disagreed with police tactics. In March 2021, First Minister Arlene Foster called on the chief of police to resign after it was announced that there would be no prosecutions following the funeral of republican Bobby Storey, which was allowed to go ahead despite COVID restrictions. Foster described a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-56566468">crisis of confidence</a> in policing over the incident. </p>
<p>While there has been a sustained decrease in levels of violence since 1998, sporadic outbreaks are still a feature of life. We have seen this in recent days after eight consecutive nights of rioting in the capital Belfast, the worst spate of violence <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e736f653-1847-4ae5-89dd-3e35bb9bc4db">in years</a>. </p>
<p>Such tensions have provided fertile material for writers of film and literature and it is perhaps this that lies behind the uptick of cultural representation of the various experiences of policing in Northern Ireland since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. At a time when the situation is so fractious, fictional portrayals of Northern Irish officers allow these issues to be explored and offer nuance behind the headlines. </p>
<p>In The Fall, Chief Constable Burns says: “Policing is political here”. This is also clear in Bloodlands, where having paramilitary connections seem to influence procedure and the various tactics the police use “to keep the peace”.</p>
<p>Many of the officers on screen have a “past” in the conflict – in some cases, it drives the narrative (Bloodlands); in others, it adds backstory to a plot focused on current events (The Fall). </p>
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<p>For those watching in England, Scotland and Wales, a Northern Irish police officer is an ambiguous figure. They are, ostensibly, a British citizen upholding the law, but their complex backstory, marked by their familial or professional experiences of the conflict, makes them distinct. They are at once an insider and an outsider.</p>
<h2>An Irish policeman abroad</h2>
<p>Line of Duty examines the complexities not only for Catholic police officers but also the generations of people who left Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles through Ted Hastings. </p>
<p>Hastings (“the epitome of an old battle,” as he says himself) was the product of a <a href="https://loveacrossthedivide.com/project/">mixed marriage</a>, with a Protestant father and Catholic mother. He trained in Northern Ireland becoming one of a few Catholic officers in the early days of the PSNI, transferring to England due to the escalating sectarian violence and anti-Catholic harassment in the force. </p>
<p>Years of watching corruption and being the target of harassment made him well placed to weed it out as head of Anti-corruption unit 12 (AC-12). Ted’s motivations can be summarised by his continued admission: “We’re only interested in one thing here and one thing only, and that’s catching bent coppers.” Knowing that he has been shaped by a background where he witnessed devastating cover-ups, allows us a deeper understanding of his single-minded determination to root out corruption. </p>
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<p>While his complicated past is an asset in his line of work, it’s also a hindrance. Despite moving across the Irish Sea, he can’t fully extricate himself from all that happened in Northern Ireland. Darker episodes of his time on the PSNI have been used against him, to discredit or implicate him in other crimes, in attempts by criminals to evade being caught by Hastings and his crack team at AC-12. </p>
<p>Against this potent, controversial context, Superintendent Ted Hastings is almost universally admired. Much of this admiration is down to Dunbar, who added several Northern Irish dialect phrases – “<a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/line-of-duty-superintendent-ted-hastings-catchphrases-tedisms_uk_5cc7069ae4b08e4e34855984">Ted-isms</a>” such as the much-loved “now we’re sucking diesel” – to the script that elevated him to cult status. </p>
<p>While other characters are more often literally in the “line of duty”, Ted’s presence is centred around the station and his exasperation with the political manoeuvrings at HQ. He acts as the heart around which the plot turns, with reliable outrage at “bent coppers” and a commitment to “the letter of the law”. </p>
<p>One can see why, at <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/northern-ireland-oped/">present</a>, a police officer devoted to anti-corruption would be attractive to audiences. As this season draws to its conclusion and we fear for the future of Ted and AC-12, the presence of the Northern Irish police officer on screen allows audiences to better understand what is happening in Northern Ireland and humanise the complex debates around the future of policing in Britain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline Magennis works for the University of Salford.</span></em></p>The spectre of the Troubles provides fertile drama for cop shows.Caroline Magennis, Reader in 20th and 21st Century Literature, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1259782019-10-30T10:05:54Z2019-10-30T10:05:54ZThe Fall: unsettling short film captures our fears about Brexit, Trump and an uncertain future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298966/original/file-20191028-113944-oo6tl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from Jonathan Glazer's new short film, The Fall.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>This article contains spoilers about The Fall</strong></p>
<p>Something <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/27/jonathan-glazer-the-fall-nazism">very strange</a> – and more than a little scary – happened at around 10pm on Sunday, October 27. <a href="https://www.screendaily.com/news/bbc-hosts-surprise-launch-for-jonathan-glazer-short-the-fall/5144146.article">Out of the blue</a>, viewers of BBC2 found themselves watching the latest film by British director Jonathan Glazer, perhaps best-known for the unsettling <a href="https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/opinion/scottish-horror-wicker-man-dog-soldiers-under-the-skin">Scottish-set</a> science fiction horror <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441395/">Under the Skin</a>.</p>
<p>The five-minute film, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p07rq86b/the-fall">The Fall</a> (available on BBC iPlayer), follows a masked gang as they capture and then attempt to execute a lone man. In one particularly disturbing scene, the mob pose with their victim in a blurry snapshot, as if with an animal they have killed on a hunting expedition.</p>
<p>But was the film just a Halloween horror? Or does it have profound things to say about the current state of the world? </p>
<p>The film actually owes much to <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/338473">The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters</a>, an etching by Spanish Romantic artist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/nyregion/goyas-etchings-of-a-dark-and-complicated-past.html">Francisco José Goya y Lucientes</a>. Goya’s work is the image of a nightmare. Eerie owls, bats, cats and ghouls descend upon a sleeping artist, omens that represent foolishness, ignorance and the persistence of superstition. It is grotesque and demonic, containing imagery found throughout The Caprices, the 80-piece <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/aquatint">collection</a> of the artist’s work published in 1799.</p>
<p>The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters has inspired and been reworked by several <a href="https://artinprint.org/article/the-recurrence-of-caprice-chagoyas-goyas/">contemporary artists</a> – and most recently by Glazer.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Francisco Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Francisco_Jos%C3%A9_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_-_The_sleep_of_reason_produces_monsters_%28No._43%29%2C_from_Los_Caprichos_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>The BBC’s accompanying <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2019/the-fall-jonathan-glazer">press release</a> for The Fall is quick to point out the inspiration drawn from Goya’s work. The creators expect that viewers will “project their [own] preoccupations and interpretations” onto this purposefully vague and evocative short film. The Fall is an artistic vignette about the current political moment, an intervention intended to spark discussion and highlight the audience’s fears – and, perhaps, hopes – for the future.</p>
<h2>The death of reason?</h2>
<p>Like The Fall, Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters is openly ambiguous in its sketched, dark and nightmarish style – and visualises the sense of foreboding that comes during moments of great uncertainty.</p>
<p>Goya’s work often questioned the role of the individual during periods of change that seem beyond their control. And while Goya <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/goya/hd_goya.htm">critiqued the Roman Catholic clergy</a> and those who facilitated their actions (either through support or inaction) during the horrors of the Inquisition, later artists have seen his works’ contemporary relevance and how they highlight the individual’s tendency to ignore or metaphorically sleep through crises. </p>
<p>A further foray into the contemporary Gothic aesthetic that Glazer established in <a href="http://www.diegesismagazine.com/under-the-skin-2014.html">Under the Skin</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/movies/a-visitor-from-betwixt-shows-up-in-between.html">Birth</a>, The Fall draws on Goya – and shifts between crisp digital images and fuzzy footage.</p>
<p>At times, it is as if the footage has been filmed on a phone, replicating the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/11/dangerous-cycle-that-keeps-conspiracy-theories-news-trumps-tweets/">viral</a> images we now see so often posted online and rapidly shared without any knowledge of their origin. And, like Goya, Glazer uses this ethereal dystopian imagery to critique contemporary politics and the “us versus them” mob mentality that haunts issues such as Brexit, Trump’s rise to power and the migrant crisis.</p>
<p>In the film, the group of masked men and women shake the lone victim from a tree – perhaps a reference to the lone activist or marginalised person speaking out against the status quo (a literal <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/04/being-a-black-tree-hugger-has-taught-me-that-we-must-engage-all-citizens-to-fight-climate-crisis">tree-hugger</a>). Meanwhile, other members of the anonymous mob <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurker">lurk</a> in the darkness and watch the victimisation in real time. Like their online equivalents, their masks allow them to act with the intoxicating <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anonymity-is-the-mask-that-licenses-hatred-hvzxql6r9">power of anonymity</a>. </p>
<p>The victim is then hanged, dropping into a hole for a tense 86 seconds to what we assume will be his death. The scene strongly echoes the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/26/lynchings-memorial-us-south-montgomery-alabama">hanging trees</a> associated with the Jim Crow-era US or the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/aug/31/national-justice-museum-nottingham-britain-last-working-gallows">gallows</a> that once provided public entertainment in the UK. As Glazer told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/27/jonathan-glazer-the-fall-nazism">The Guardian</a>:</p>
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<p>A mob encourages an abdication of personal responsibility. The rise of National Socialism in Germany for instance was like a fever that took hold of people. We can see that happening again.</p>
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<p>The imagery is particularly poignant in the light of US president Donald Trump repeatedly using terms such as “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-compares-impeachment-probe-to-lynching-draws-widespread-condemnation/2019/10/22/2fa24af2-f4d4-11e9-ad8b-85e2aa00b5ce_story.html">lynching</a>” and “<a href="https://www.themarysue.com/trump-stop-the-witch-hunt-merchandise/">witch hunt</a>”, language he appropriates to rile up his base and the opposition.</p>
<h2>Dropping into political satire</h2>
<p>Brexit still looms large for the British public. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/26/from-a-great-deal-to-a-halloween-nightmare-how-johnsons-brexit-tactics-fell-apart">promise of a Halloween exit</a> was just another knot in the unravelling rope of the UK’s seemingly endless fall out of the EU.</p>
<p>The lack of a clear end point for this current situation produces <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/04/anger-and-frustration-how-brexit-is-affecting-our-mental-health">feelings of discomfort, anxiety and unease</a>. It is also this feeling that Glazer purposely attempts to replicate, noting that “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/27/jonathan-glazer-the-fall-nazism">fear is ever-present</a>”. The fear of the unknown and the divisive nature of the decision to leave the EU has created a state riven by political and cultural tribalism. </p>
<p>In the week for <a href="https://cailleachs-herbarium.com/2016/10/samhuinn-halloween-winters-start-guising-divination-and-fires/">guising</a> and in the run-up to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mischief-night-2018-when-is-what-date-uk-liverpool-bonfire-gunpower-plot-guy-fawkes-a8612086.html">mischief night</a> and the autumn fire festivals, The Fall aptly recalls the masks and morbidness of the season while commenting on our present <a href="https://medium.com/the-politicalists/america-and-britain-two-different-kinds-of-dystopia-ddbeccb5bb27">dystopian moment</a>.</p>
<p>But at its end, The Fall offers a moment of hope. The lynching victim has reached out to the sides of the hole he has been dropped down and stopped his lethal fall. And as the film draws to a close, he begins climbing slowly back up towards the light.</p>
<p>Maybe, just maybe, we can also stop, or at least slow down, the present political free fall. But we do need to start by reaching out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Chambers has previously received funding from the Wellcome Trust and the Art and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).</span></em></p>Can we stop our current political free-fall? Perhaps this dystopian short offers a way out.Amy C. Chambers, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/907102018-01-25T18:04:43Z2018-01-25T18:04:43Z‘Northern white crap that talks back’: The Fall’s Mark E Smith spoke for weird Manchester<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203459/original/file-20180125-102744-1ndlug4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/libertinus/30116696143">Montecruz Foto via Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mark E Smith, the only constant member of post-punk band The Fall, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42811968">has died aged 60</a> after a year of ill health. Smith co-founded The Fall in Prestwich, north Manchester in 1976 amid the initial stirrings of British punk. Though the band soon evolved beyond punk’s musical template, its DIY outsider spirit remained central to Smith’s ethos. </p>
<p>Reading through the mass of writing on The Fall, it quickly becomes clear what an enigma Smith presented to those who hoped to pin him down. There is no disputing his unique voice. But Smith was no mystery. So much of his seemingly otherworldly vision was born of the Northern working-class culture that produced him. </p>
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<p>Consider the pantheon of Mancunian music legends. Very few these days still frequent the local pubs they’ve always haunted. Fewer still live where they grew up or walk around the city observing goings-on with their belongings in a supermarket carrier bag – as Smith did right up until the end. The video to the Fall’s 1987 cover of R. Dean Taylor’s There’s A Ghost In My House is set in Smith’s regular watering hole The Woodthorpe, for example. </p>
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<p>It’s unlikely, too, that any other cult band has ever embarked on a tour of Northern working men’s clubs, as The Fall <a href="http://thefall.org/gigography/gig80.html">did in 1980</a>. According to its sleeve notes, live LP Totale’s Turns was “recorded in front of an 80s disco weekend mating audience”.</p>
<p>This apparent jibe is good-natured, it should be said. One of Smith’s most important legacies was his determination to speak for his kind. Though educated at Stand Grammar School, Smith was not part of the rarefied, art school-influenced culture of his post-punk peers. Instead he embodied a much older tradition of the working-class autodidact – voraciously and eclectically well read in everything from spy thrillers to existentialist philosophy. As he once claimed: </p>
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<p>There were no groups around that I thought represented people like me or my mates. If I wanted to be anything, it was a voice for those people … The Fall had to appeal to someone who was into cheap soul as much as someone who liked [the] avant-garde. I even wanted the Gary Glitter fans.</p>
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<p>Yet Smith never opted for a “tell it like it is” kitchen sink realism. Fall co-founder Martin Bramah <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/03755-becks-induction-hour-a-mark-e-smith-interview-about-the-lp-that-nearly-felled-the-fall">described</a> the band’s songs as “Coronation Street on acid”. </p>
<h2>Hit the North</h2>
<p>The Manchester that emerges is a far cry from the glossy, dynamic marketing version that has dominated since the 1990s. It’s grimy, seedy and supernatural, populated by city hobgoblins, psychics living above hairdressing salons on the
Bury New Road and slimy creatures in dockland warehouses. Somehow, though, it’s uncannily familiar.</p>
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<p>Influenced by the “weird fiction” of <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/23928-mark-e-smith-the-fall-rip-obituary-obit">HP Lovecraft and Arthur Machen</a>, Smith was fascinated by what he called “the horror of the normal” – that threshold between the mundane and the magical. His genius was his ability to pull this off without ever seeming pretentious. Smith’s words were laced with a twisted humour that did not undermine their sharply observed force or their dreamlike qualities. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/year-zero-for-british-punk-was-1976-but-there-had-long-been-anarchy-in-the-usa-61329">Year zero for British punk was 1976 – but there had long been anarchy in the USA</a>
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<p>In The North Will Rise Again, a regional rebellion culminates in a razed Arndale Centre and marauding crowds “with bees on sticks”. Factory Records impresario Tony Wilson establishes a secret base in Edinburgh from which to direct proceedings. Meanwhile Smith’s amphetamine fuelled alter-ego Roman Totale lurks underground, his body “a tentacle mess”.</p>
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<h2>Working-class hero</h2>
<p>Even these kinds of freakish fantasies have their roots in the world from which Smith came. My friend, the writer Steve Hanson, once told me his Lancashire high school classroom was “full of little Mark E Smiths” evolving their own bizarre slang and tall tales. This collective propensity to daydream and experiment with language has a long working-class history. It’s an implicit challenge to the pressure of speaking “properly” and settling into the drudgery of your expected role.</p>
<p>Nor does it conclude in childhood. Instead it becomes the preserve of pub fantasists and workplace folklore, as Smith so brilliantly captures on Fantastic Life, in which a 54-year-old dustbin man claims to have participated in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.</p>
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<p>Smith once wryly called The Fall “music for those who don’t want it” – but over time the band’s generally positive critical standing came to be mirrored in an ever-growing and dedicated fan following. This sustained them making music until Smith’s passing. Their career saw the band try everything once with little regard for prevailing fashions – secure in the knowledge that “50,000 Fall fans can’t be wrong”, as their 2004 hits compilation declared in a cheeky allusion to Elvis. </p>
<p>It seems Smith succeeded more than he sometimes acknowledged in giving a voice to his peers, capturing a part of Manchester and the North that goes beyond the usual clichés.</p>
<p>As he presciently observed on 1979’s Psykick Dance Hall:</p>
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<p>When I am dead and gone<br>
my vibrations will live on<br>
in vibes on vinyl through the years<br>
people will dance to my waves.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90710/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Wilkinson has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and was a researcher on the Leverhulme project 'Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture'. </span></em></p>The Fall’s frontman was the ultimate pop outsider who never lost his working-class Manchester roots.David Wilkinson, Lecturer in English, specialising in popular musical and subcultural studies., Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/834582017-09-06T18:51:35Z2017-09-06T18:51:35ZWhose record is it anyway? Musical ‘crate digging’ across Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184544/original/file-20170904-17952-10p5utg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigerian 80s artist William Onyeabor.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Luaka Bop</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Legendary UK Radio DJ, the late <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/biography/">John Peel</a> used to play Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2006/sep/17/worldmusic1">The Bhundu Boys</a> on his shows. A lot. Throughout the mid-80s, their <a href="https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/Jit/">jit-jive</a> would appear alongside Mancunians <a href="https://thefall.xyz/">The Fall’s</a> <a href="http://observer.com/2016/10/post-punk-101-what-is-post-punk/">post-punk</a> and <a href="https://neubauten.org/">Einstürzende Neubauten’s</a> German industrial noise. </p>
<p>If Peel liked a band, he really championed them. And he really <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/16/john-peel-plays-bhundu-boys">loved</a> The Bhundu Boys. Peel was <a href="http://intimatemomentswithzimmusicians.blogspot.co.za/2011/09/bhundu-boys-zimbabwes-musical-heartache.html">in tears</a> the first time he saw them play live. The Bhundu Boys got their <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2006/sep/17/worldmusic1">name</a> from young guerrillas who supported the liberation army that fought for Zimbabwean independence. Between 1981 and 1984 they had four number ones on the local hit parade.</p>
<p>Touring the UK in 1986, they became stars of a new <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/genre/international-ma0000002660">“World Music”</a> scene. The term had been dreamt up by DJs like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/jun/29/popandrock1">Charlie Gillett</a> and the UK’s premier “indie” music magazine NME proclaimed October 1987 “World Music Month”, issuing a free cassette tape <a href="https://nmecassettes.wordpress.com/nme-035-the-world-at-one-1987/">“The World at One”</a>. </p>
<p>The Bhundus didn’t feature on this tape but they became stalwarts of a scene in the UK that included African stars like Nigerian <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/king-sunny-ade-mn0000771297/biography">Sunny Adé</a>, Zimbabwean <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/thomas-mapfumo-mn0000581262/biography">Thomas Mapfumo</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/youssou-ndour-mn0000692100">Youssou N'Dour</a> from Senegal. This “scene” lies on a continuum of Western consumption of African music from 1960s’ exotica to the contemporary trend for African reissue vinyl and its attendant <a href="https://strut.greedbag.com/buy/nigeria-70-the-definitive-lp-edi/">compilation culture</a>.</p>
<p>This continuum has been lying on the margins of Western music consumption since the early 1960s, when Herb Alpert’s <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Herb-Alpert-The-Tijuana-Brass-Sounds-LikeHerb-Alpert-The-Tijuana-Brass/release/398984">Tijuana Brass Sounds</a> brought (what was marketed as) the music of Mexico to urban American and the UK. Arguably the first of many Western producers/musicians to export sounds and rework them for a domestic market, exotica was an early example of the culture of listening to music from “somewhere else”. </p>
<p>As producers, musicians and labels have had more access to old vinyl and to new digital technology, the opportunities of reissues and compilations have proliferated. And so the sounds of <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/africa/ethiopia/articles/ethio-jazz-the-amazing-story-of-ethiopian-jazz-from-london-to-addis/">Ethiopian jazz</a>, of <a href="http://www.afropop.org/11366/essential-afro-funk-re-issues-and-compilations/">Nigeria in the 1970s</a> and of <a href="https://www.alliance-francaise.ca/en/culture/concerts/griots-mali-en">Mali’s Griot culture</a> have become staples in a reinvigorated “World Music” culture reliant on reissue and compilation. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/osNAy1DNkOQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Nigeria’s King Sunny Ade & His African Beats performing ‘Me Le Se’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Addiction, compulsion, obscurity and desire pepper this continuum, which has, at its centre, discomforting tensions around neo-colonialism and control. A fascinating <a href="https://thevinylfactory.com/news/podcast-african-vinyl-21st-century-reissues/">podcast</a> by the radio programme <a href="http://www.afropop.org/">Afropop Worldwide</a> has suggested that the latest urge to buy up African vinyl and to compile generically and geographically determined compilations is yet one more (white) western scramble for Africa. Are reissue labels like <a href="http://www.strut-records.com/">Strut</a>, <a href="http://analogafrica.com/">Analog Africa</a> and <a href="http://luakabop.com/">Luaka Bop</a> guilty of such a scramble? Or does this story have a number of different plot lines, not all of them hitched to neo-colonial narratives?</p>
<h2>Space-disco musician</h2>
<p>The trend in reissues manifested for me in the face of Nigerian space-disco musician, <a href="http://luakabop.com/onyeabor/smoothngood">William Onyeabor</a>, which appeared on my Twitter timeline a couple of years ago. Everyone I followed was raving about him. I clicked, listened and downloaded. Then I saw a <a href="https://pitchfork.com/news/54124-watch-the-william-onyeabor-documentary-fantastic-man-featuring-damon-albarn-and-caribou/">documentary</a> about him and wrote an <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15405702.2016.1193181">academic piece</a> that riffed off the idea of “raiders”. I linked the craze for Onyeabor to the phenomenon around the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125608/">“Searching for Sugarman”</a>, which focused on the “missing” 70s folk rocker, <a href="http://www.sugarman.org/">Sixto Rodriguez</a>.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">William Onyeabor’s ‘Atomic Bomb’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I ought to make a confession at this point. I was one of those that sought out African music in the 80s and 90s. I saw the continent’s greats, <a href="https://felakuti.bandcamp.com/">Fela Kuti</a>, N'Dour and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/salif-keita-mn0000832281">Salif Keita</a>. But I didn’t really obsess, didn’t really care about whether or not they were “authentic”. I just hated the hugely popular dance-pop duo <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/wham">Wham!</a>… </p>
<p>But I knew guys (and it always seems to be guys) who would listen to nothing else, who moved to Africa, who demanded the “real”. They would spent their days in London’s <a href="http://www.london-rip.com/places/london-record-shops-3">Sterns African record store</a>, crate digging for treasure, and searching for rare vinyl to find something new. That was then, and now the crate diggers are searching for new sounds that are old – reissues, undiscovered stars from the 70s, of whom Onyeabor was one, a “collector’s piece”. </p>
<p>Culture philosopher Walter Benjamin <a href="http://www.kollectiv.co.uk/Benjamin%20Collecting.html">argued</a> that collecting is about control. It is about creating (or even imposing) some kind of order on the world. And a collection is never finished. There’s always one more record. Crate digging, is part and parcel of a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XzMrDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&ots=BIzlaFS4vV&sig=FgsmSW0fh8uMpoN4fHy4AyZn5oI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">compulsion</a> to collect shaped by addiction and compulsion, believes media studies academic <a href="https://www.victoria.ac.nz/seftms/about/staff/roy-shuker">Roy Shuker</a>. And it feeds into a DJ’s sub-cultural capital, whereby unknown African tracks bestow respect within a dance culture that has always fetishised obscurity and the <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=white%20label">“white label”</a> (rare records with white labels to conceal which records DJ were playing).</p>
<h2>Archaeologist of African vinyl</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26654516">Frank Gossner</a>, the “archaeologist of African vinyl” is one of the more well-known exponents of (West) African vinyl collectors, a German DJ literally digging through recent African cultural history. Like a determined archivist bent on rescuing vinyl before it decomposes in the West African humidity, he sources sounds that play well to western ears, raised on rare groove and funk.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Agboju Logun’, a Nigerian disco classic by Shina Williams recently reissued by Strut Records.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gossner, and those who run Strut and Luaka Bop, have <a href="https://thevinylfactory.com/news/podcast-african-vinyl-21st-century-reissues/">“no African ancestry or cultural connection to the continent” </a> beyond enthusiasm. And they furnish European and American ears with sounds that are both obscure and familiar; unknown names playing tunes that sound like 70s’ funk and 80s’ Fela. </p>
<p>This search for old/new sounds is based around a nostalgia culture that is endemic to Anglo-American popular music and which music critic and author <a href="http://blissout.blogspot.co.za/">Simon Reynolds</a> has called <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Retromania.html?id=8FI3dVT9t34C">“retromania”</a>. It is not mirrored by contemporary African music culture, where an investment in musical presents is valued over the preservation of musical pasts and old vinyl is simply chucked away only to be “salvaged” by these western record hunters. </p>
<p>In these salvage operations there have been stories of financial rip offs, musicians not being paid their dues and even rumours about one reissue label, PMG, being <a href="https://www.verygoodplus.co.uk/forum/let-s-talk/let-s-get-stuck-into-the-music/43277-pmg-records-reissues-brownshirts-and-a-deeply-troubling-update">affiliated</a> to the extreme right wing. But of course, there is not just one thread to this narrative, it is complex and multi-layered. This is echoed by <a href="http://www.afropop.org/10749/christopher-kirkley-interview/?platform=hootsuite">Christopher Kirkley</a> who runs <a href="http://sahelsounds.com/">Sahel Sounds</a>, a label dedicated to showcasing contemporary West African music – but Kirkley presents himself on Twitter as “Gentleman explorer, rogue ethnomusicologist”, harking back to colonial narratives.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184546/original/file-20170904-17971-1vb7l7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184546/original/file-20170904-17971-1vb7l7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184546/original/file-20170904-17971-1vb7l7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184546/original/file-20170904-17971-1vb7l7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184546/original/file-20170904-17971-1vb7l7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184546/original/file-20170904-17971-1vb7l7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184546/original/file-20170904-17971-1vb7l7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover of ‘Witchdoctor’s Son’ by Okay Temiz and Johnny Dyani.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matsuli Music</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are labels out there that are championing new sounds, and selling good percentages of their output to Africans (South Africa’s <a href="http://matsuli.blogspot.co.za/">Matsuli Music</a> label for example). There are enterprises that showcase the dynamic West African Bluetooth file sharing and mix tape culture – Brian Shimkovitz’s <a href="http://www.awesometapes.com/">Awesome Tapes from Africa</a> is a good example. </p>
<p>One of these “awesome” tapes is <a href="https://atakak.bandcamp.com/album/obaa-sima">“Obaa Sima”</a> by Ghanaian musician <a href="http://www.factmag.com/2016/05/13/ata-kak-interview-awesome-tapes-from-africa/">Ata Kak</a> (real name Yaw Atta-Owusu), whom Shimkovitaz “tracked down”. His music is something that “no one in Ghana listens to any more”.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ata Kak’s ‘Obaa Sima’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mediated like Onyeabor and “Sugarman”, an African/Black musician to be tracked down by (White) Europeans and Americans, Ata Kak becomes a curio. But when asked by <a href="http://www.factmag.com/">Factmag</a> if he was going to record any “new” music, his reply was,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s important for me to move forward. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>John Peel liked the freshness of The Bhundu Boys, they were contemporary. He didn’t live long enough to experience this recent race to the past in music, this tracking down of the undocumented curiosity, this search for music that sounds old but is new, this new colonialism. If he were alive now, he’d be playing Ata Kak’s new songs and moving things forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83458/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abigail Gardner receives funding from Erasmus + via The University of Gloucestershire for 2 projects on migration and diversity.</span></em></p>The search for old or new African sounds is based around a nostalgia culture that is endemic to Anglo-American popular music.Abigail Gardner, Reader in Music and Media, University of GloucestershireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/679442016-10-31T14:32:02Z2016-10-31T14:32:02ZWhat is it that makes us fall for ‘crime porn’?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143880/original/image-20161031-15783-wdnjla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/The Fall 3 Ltd/Des Willie</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Misogyny or not misogyny? That, it seems, is the question. Having just concluded its third and final series, the BBC crime thriller <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0295tcf">The Fall</a> tells the tale of fictional serial killer Paul Spector, aka “The Belfast Strangler”. Spector – played beguilingly by former model Jamie Dornan – specialises in dispatching pale pretty women with long black hair. His preferred <em>modus operandi</em> is aesthetically perfected strangulation using the usual bondage props (plastic bag, leather belt, boy-scout knots and a balaclava). </p>
<p>This season attracted particular attention, not just for what’s been described as misognynistic “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/07/actor-doon-mackichan-hits-out-at-porn-tv-thrillers">crime porn</a>”, but also for its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/28/the-fall-why-were-we-ever-excited-about-this-dead-dog-of-a-show">increasingly dilapidated storyline</a>. Serial killer Spector lost his memory and the rest of us lost the plot. So why exactly did we fall for The Fall?</p>
<p>Since 2013 we have watched Gillian Anderson playing moody detective Stella Gibson (sidelong glances, one permanently raised eyebrow, increasingly breathy asides and lots of black silk) pursuing Spector while transparently indulging her own obsession with the self-appointed Lord of Death. Other admirers include precocious schoolgirl Katie Benedetto who is dying (almost literally) to sleep with him; and a peculiarly-devoted nurse who gazes solicitously into his eyes and bites her lips while counselling Spector on the redemptive possibilities of life after death. Because Spector might be a sadistic serial killer, yes, but he has feelings. And in the final series he appears to lose his memory, claiming to know nothing at all of his foul prior deeds. That makes him <em>almost</em> innocent, right?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143910/original/image-20161031-15783-mo4lpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143910/original/image-20161031-15783-mo4lpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143910/original/image-20161031-15783-mo4lpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143910/original/image-20161031-15783-mo4lpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143910/original/image-20161031-15783-mo4lpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143910/original/image-20161031-15783-mo4lpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143910/original/image-20161031-15783-mo4lpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jamie Dornan as Paul Spector.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Fall 3 Ltd/Helen Sloan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And what of that title, The Fall? Fall from what? Fall from Grace? The Biblical Fall? In which Eve tempts Adam with an entire suite of Freudian symbols and thereby dooms humanity for perpetuity? What is the Original Sin to which the title alludes? Is it one in which women, like Eve, are to blame? </p>
<p>One of Spector’s rescued victims makes a teary-eyed admission to an equally moist Gillian Anderson – that she had initially participated willingly in Spector’s faux-necrophiliac sex games (we gather from this that, unlike amnesiac Spector, she hardly counts as innocent). “He told me I was the only one,” she weeps, and stares knowingly at Gibson before adding: “I’m glad I’m not the <em>only</em> one – to make a mistake.” Gibson, shame-faced, only gulps.</p>
<p>Writer Alan Cubitt is “<a href="http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-09-29/the-fall-writer-allan-cubitt-being-accused-of-misogyny-hurt">hurt and upset</a>” at being accused of misogyny. But maybe misogyny isn’t the point. You don’t need to hate women to portray them as helpless, complicit, gullible, culpable, sexually obsessed, death-invested masochists – although it surely helps. </p>
<p>Besides, it’s not <em>just</em> women. A hapless male admirer called Bailey also falls foul of Spector’s fluttering eyelashes, although the leaden hint that Bailey is a confused homosexual with severe mental health problems (he raped his own sister, we learn, before throwing her to the chomping jaws of a dustbin van – an imaginative touch from Cubitt) renders him an unsympathetic, “feminised” and therefore “acceptable” victim. So we can hardly blame Spector for strangling him from behind with a belt; the two roll on the floor like amorous spoons, with Spector’s leg wrapped tightly around the dying man’s crotch. A world of subtexts at which the bemused viewer can only wonder. </p>
<p>What of Spector himself? I’m not sure a sexual sadist has ever been portrayed so sympathetically on prime time television. And is it just coincidence that his name recalls the celebrated woman-beater <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-spector5archive27mar27-story.html">Phil Spector</a>? There he is, showing us all of the feels, adrift in a sea of forgetfulness; big grey eyes blinking back tears and confusion in equal measure. Maybe, we are given to impute, he is misunderstood. Maybe, we think, he just needs help. Maybe from one of the women watching the show. Maybe it could be you.</p>
<p>A not-so-subtle intertextuality links The Fall to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/fifty-shades-of-grey-14860">Fifty Shades of Grey</a>. After all, having already established himself in The Fall as the poster boy of rape fantasies, in 2014 Dornan starred on cinema screens and <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fifty-shades-grey-advert-fail-5096674">double-decker buses</a> up and down the land as sexy sadist Christian Grey. </p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>Presumably Dornan’s extra-textual double life influenced directorial decisions to hyper-eroticise Spector, with cameras lingering on his naked showering torso – and a touch of slow motion rinse-action thrown in for good measure. All attempts at characterisation replaced by voyeuristic camera angles and quivering silences intended to crank up the sense of impending orgasm. Stella Gibson sighs and fingers her silk lapels while Spector soaps his chest and doesn’t know who he is any more. One might say that, somewhere along the line, the show morphed into an unofficial TV spin-off: Fifty Shades of Dornan.</p>
<p>And this, perhaps, is the issue. Accusations of misogyny both hit and miss the point. There has been throughout The Fall a fetishisation of dead women – one that, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Ove_r_Her_Dead_Body.html?id=090diHhmp40C">as Elisabeth Bronfen has shown</a>, has a long and morbid history in western art and culture – and a concomitant suggestion that women (and possibly gay men) are gladly complicit in their porno-violent deaths. What’s so troubling about The Fall is that the heterosexual man at the centre of it all rises above them like a god, a seemingly blameless and clear-eyed target of their unsolicited and implicitly guilty attentions. And we never did establish whether Spector’s amnesia was real or faked; whether or not this ambiguity was intentional matters less than the fact that his dubious aura of blamelessness persisted all the way to the closing credits.</p>
<p>Perhaps in the end we should trouble ourselves less about whether Cubitt is or isn’t a misogynist, or whether creating aggressive and psychopathic female characters in our TV dramas would be a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-rise-in-tv-crime-porn-normalises-violence-against-women-66877">useful counterbalance</a> (it almost certainly would not, but that’s another story). </p>
<p>Rather we might wonder why fictitious characters such as Paul Spector have the power to <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3858940/The-Fall-fans-continue-wild-Jamie-Dornan-s-serial-killer.html">excite so many women</a>, both on and off the screen. The answer, I am inclined to believe, may be attributed to culture – not nature.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67944/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Fall writer Alan Cubitt is ‘hurt and upset’ at being accused of misogyny. But maybe misogyny isn’t the point.Victoria Anderson, Researcher/Teacher in Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/668772016-10-24T11:10:28Z2016-10-24T11:10:28ZHow the rise in TV ‘crime porn’ normalises violence against women<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142399/original/image-20161019-20340-545aq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">BBC's The Fall has been accused of being misogynistic.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Violence against women in television drama has always been high. But in recent years the graphic portrayal of this violence – particularly sexual attacks and murder of women – is on the increase, and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wtggz">corpse count is rising</a>. </p>
<p>This type of violence targeting women is often seen in crime dramas such as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007y6k8">Silent Witness</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0072wk9">Spiral</a> or <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017h7m1">The Killing</a> but achieves new levels in the fantasy series <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2016/05/03/how-much-violence-is-too-much-on-game-of-thrones/?utm_term=.118b18a03f57">Game of Thrones</a>. And it is increasingly detailed, intimate and frighteningly authentic. </p>
<p>While violence can of course be vital to a storyline – as part of the plot or context – it does not necessarily need to be seen at every opportunity. And it is this overuse of “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37584885">crime porn</a>” – where violence against women dominates television drama – that is coming under fire. And not only is it disturbing to watch, but <a href="http://www.contactmusic.com/thandie-newton/news/newton-still-upset-with-crash-director-over-rape-scene_1021969">the roles are disturbing for actors to play</a>. </p>
<p>Actress and comedian Doon Mackichan has spoken out about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/07/actor-doon-mackichan-hits-out-at-porn-tv-thrillers">violence towards women in films and TV</a>. In a documentary aired on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37584885">BBC Radio 4</a>, the actress explained how rape is often used as “a shock device” in TV dramas and how this then “bleeds into our culture”. She believes that “the onus is with commissioners who commission these programmes, and with screenwriters who are pandering to the appetite that has been created”. </p>
<h2>Glamorising violence against women</h2>
<p>BBC television drama <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0295tcf">The Fall</a>, starring Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan, was first aired in 2013. It attracted 3m viewers but rapidly came under attack for <a href="http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-11-13/does-the-fall-glamorise-violence-gillian-anderson-and-writer-allan-cubitt-defend-their-thriller">glamorising violence against women</a>. And the recently launched third season has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37584885">reignited this debate about crime porn</a> and representations of extreme violence on TV – <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14763203.Drama_in_the_dock__does_The_Fall_glamorise_rape_and_violence_against_women_/">particularly against women</a>. </p>
<p>Although the literal body count in The Fall is relatively low, the content and imagery of the drama suggests a fetishism of lethal violence against women. And it is no exaggeration to describe parts of the series as an <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2338648/CHRISTOPHER-STEVENS-Why-does-BBC-think-violence-women-sexy.html">extended rape fantasy</a>. Women are subjected to violence while being both passive and beautiful – allowing murderous cruelty to become pleasurable entertainment.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142901/original/image-20161024-28409-lgrj3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142901/original/image-20161024-28409-lgrj3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142901/original/image-20161024-28409-lgrj3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142901/original/image-20161024-28409-lgrj3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142901/original/image-20161024-28409-lgrj3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=681&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142901/original/image-20161024-28409-lgrj3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=681&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142901/original/image-20161024-28409-lgrj3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=681&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Annie Brawley makes the ideal victim in series two of The Fall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC pictures</span></span>
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<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1946193/">Dornan</a> who plays serial killer Paul Spector laid out his female victims with gentle attendance to the corpse. He is careful – even artistic – as he positions his victims in death. This leads to the female corpse becoming stylised in a manner almost reminiscent of pornography. Because it is no longer enough for women to be merely murdered or raped in television drama. They now need to be mutilated or made into fetishist objects for the titillation of the viewer.</p>
<h2>The female victim</h2>
<p>Of course, women have traditionally been portrayed as <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2633273/Too-woman-victims-TV-dramas-says-Booker-prize-winning-author-John-Bannville.html">victims in television drama</a>, largely because they embody the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/dec/31/joanna-yeates-murder-bristol">ideal victim</a>”. Otherwise known as being pretty, white, young and female – making it seem normalised that women are then vulnerable to violence at the hands of men. </p>
<p>The “ideal victim” helps create “ideal drama” based on hideous crimes. The female becomes a linchpin for compelling shock driven visual tales using extreme, final and often gruesome violence.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Sexism in Game of Thrones.</span></figcaption>
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<p>But by largely focusing on women as victims of violence there is a disconnect between reality and entertainment. Because although statistically men commit more violent crimes than women, more than <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10752232/Our-attitude-to-violence-against-men-is-out-of-date.html">twice as many men are victims of violence</a>. But it would seem that violence against men has less value as a plot line – even though it more closely reflects the real world. </p>
<h2>Female empowerment</h2>
<p>But despite all this, some significant changes have occurred in the types and number of female characters adorning our screen. Strong women are on the rise in television drama. And this mainly reflects women viewers dominating <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/how-to-get-away-with-murder-and-the-rise-of-the-new-network-tv-heroine/381021/">broadcast ratings and the remote control at home</a>.</p>
<p>In this new era of female leads, women are being given greater opportunity to become aggressors. They are increasingly purveyors of violence rather than simply the victim. Ruth Wilson’s character <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/QM6T5wV1jzxllxn1KW6v7Z/alice-morgan">Alice Morgan</a> in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vk2lp">Luther</a> is an excellent example of this. Morgan is a brilliant female psychopath and murderer who becomes Luther’s nemesis and unlikely ally.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142900/original/image-20161024-28420-kkbhxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142900/original/image-20161024-28420-kkbhxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142900/original/image-20161024-28420-kkbhxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142900/original/image-20161024-28420-kkbhxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142900/original/image-20161024-28420-kkbhxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142900/original/image-20161024-28420-kkbhxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142900/original/image-20161024-28420-kkbhxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Alice Morgan is BBC’s Luther.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Pictures</span></span>
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<p>Running alongside female characters inflicting violence is the emergence of strong, empowered women such as <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/01/the-fall-the-most-feminist-show-on-television/384751/">DCI Stella Gibson</a> in The Fall. The portrayal of Gibson has even led to The Fall being heralded as a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/11303562/The-Fall-feminist-anti-men-and-sadly-accurate.html">feminist show</a>. But of course, the use of compelling female protagonists does little to undermine the continuing use of women as victims of violence in the crime drama genre. </p>
<p>What is clear is that viewers principally enjoy <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/dec/13/tv-rape-portrayal-storm">excellent characters, plot and speculation</a>, so there is often no need for excessive visual violence – when the unseen can be just as disturbing and scary. So given that violence in television drama continues to have a central role in storytelling, maybe it is time to revisit the boundaries of just how much is too much.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66877/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Penfold-Mounce does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On screen violence against women is increasingly detailed, intimate and frighteningly authentic – but there’s often just no need.Ruth Penfold-Mounce, Lecturer in Criminology, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/194382013-10-29T03:26:45Z2013-10-29T03:26:45ZThe Fall: does Gillian Anderson play a man in women’s clothing?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33768/original/86vvthjc-1382671543.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gillian Anderson plays detective Stella Gibson in the BBC drama The Fall.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steffan Hill/BBC/Artists Studio</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Female characters are currently dominating our crime dramas on television worldwide, with shows such as British detective series <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1843678/">Scott and Bailey</a>, Danish cop show <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0826760/">The Killing</a>, Danish/ Swedish co-production <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1733785/">The Bridge</a> and now the acclaimed five-part British psychological thriller <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2294189/">The Fall</a>, currently screening on Foxtel. Does this represent a breakthrough for portrayals of women on the small screen, or are these essentially male roles played by female actors?</p>
<h2>Women in crime drama</h2>
<p>Gillian Anderson, best known for her performance as Scully in the long running US science-fiction drama <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106179/">The X Files</a> stars in The Fall as Stella Gibson, the lead detective in pursuit of a serial murderer.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Meet Stella Gibson in The Fall.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Some police shows with central female protagonists offer particular female pleasures: Scott and Bailey, for example, showcases the spectacle of female friendship, and US police procedural <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458253/">The Closer</a> features fashion as much as crime, particularly large hand bags and elegant designer twin sets.</p>
<p>But more recent shows depict a new breed of female detective whose intense focus on their work and successful intuition is what distinguishes them from their colleagues.</p>
<p>In The Killing, detective Sarah Lund’s (Sofie Gråbøl) focus on work excludes other relationships. The cost is estrangement from her son and the loss of various actual and potential love interests along the way. In The Bridge, Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) plays a detective whose Aspergers gives her a unique insight into people and the job. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Season 1 of The Killing.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Like Sarah Lund and Saga Norén, The Fall’s Stella Gibson is intensely preoccupied with work, so much so that she sleeps on a camp bed in her office. But she does take time out to have sex, picking up a colleague she’s never spoken to before for a “sweet night” (sex with no strings attached). This behaviour profoundly unsettles the men around her. </p>
<p>Stella Gibson, Sarah Lund and Saga Norén all step outside of the bounds of traditional female or “feminine” behaviour – and this is significant in opening up possibilities for images of women on screen. Gibson and Norén shock colleagues by having sex like men, and by being matter of fact about satisfying their sexual desires.</p>
<h2>Gender switch</h2>
<p>Gibson’s character is “stellar” like her name – but is her role a breakthrough in female representation on screen or just a gender switch? Does it tell audiences anything about female existence, or merely privilege male ways of doing and being? In other words, is she just a male character in women’s clothing?</p>
<p>The Stella Gibson character is arguably interchangeable with a male detective such as DI Alec Hardy (David Tennant) in the UK drama <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2249364/">Broadchurch</a>, which recently screened on the ABC. They have the same work ethic and mono-focus on the job. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">David Tennant in Broadchurch.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In terms of how men and women are ordinarily depicted, Gillian Anderson’s character is more “like” a man. The message is that to be successful one has to be almost completely consumed by work.</p>
<p>Stella Gibson, Sarah Lund and Saga Norén are not women who have it all, they just have work — despite the allure they have for the men around them, whom they variously devour. There is danger for women in this message. It implies that success requires a choice, a life with personal relationships or a successful career. The latter is depicted as leaving the woman alone, hardened and driven.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Sofia Helin as Saga Norén in The Bridge.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The F-word</h2>
<p>Following this line of thinking, does this type of role offer audiences any female – or feminist – perspectives? </p>
<p>This series has men in all the key creative production roles, giving it a low ranking on the equity scale. However Allan Cubitt created it. He’s the writer behind British crime drama <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103516/">Prime Suspect 2</a>, which stars Helen Mirren, He has a track record shaping interesting and active women characters – so The Fall gets a tick for that. </p>
<p>But it is Stella Gibson’s speeches that offer a clearer example of feminist perspectives informing contemporary television.</p>
<p>As the series progresses Gibson makes a number of observations that show how gender stereotyping affects women. If those speeches seem a bit self-conscious, they also make this important issue visible. In drafting a press release, Gibson observes that the media categorise women as “virgins and vamps, angels and whores”. She remarks, “let’s not encourage them”.</p>
<h2>Female experience on screen</h2>
<p>The difficulties of being a woman in an all-male environment get some airplay too.</p>
<p>There are plenty of hints that the men in the team might easily be moved to line up against Gibson. It is no surprise when she says she needs a “right hand man” – and picks a woman. </p>
<p>Gibson might wear the pants but satin shirts emphasise her femininity and sex appeal. The camera spends plenty of time gazing at her. The problem of what to wear to work, and how women might be read based on that, is a particularly female one. </p>
<p>Men don’t have “wardrobe malfunctions” in a press conference, in which wayward buttons reveal glimpses of lingerie. In this way, the show explores what it’s like for a woman to feel her gender in a body constantly remarked upon. </p>
<p>The show makes important gestures towards making gender stereotyping visible. It is significant that men have created a series that promotes some feminist agendas – and indeed that mainstream TV can be feminist.</p>
<p>Gibson portrays a woman whose intellect, integrity and work ethic makes her a force to be reckoned with. But I am left with a vague feeling that this series and character, as with The Killing and Sarah Lund, contains a warning to women about what they might lose when they throw themselves into work. The show carries an implicit message that women really shouldn’t be like Stella Gibson.</p>
<p>On balance there are many positives in the character of Stella Gibson, including that she is capable, interesting and importantly “active”. Let’s hope it encourages media producers to be more adventurous in the female roles they dream up.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19438/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa French does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Female characters are currently dominating our crime dramas on television worldwide, with shows such as British detective series Scott and Bailey, Danish cop show The Killing, Danish/ Swedish co-production…Lisa French, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, Media & Communication, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.