TY - JOUR

T1 - Facing complex crime

T2 - Investigating contemporary German crime fiction on television

AU - Rothemund, Kathrin

PY - 2011

Y1 - 2011

N2 - The article, after giving a short overview of the history and characteristics of German crime fiction on television, elaborates on recent tendencies in this area. Furthermore, a short reference concerning the resurrection of the gangster film genre in German cinema is made before focusing more specifically on the textual analysis of the TV crime serials KDD – Kriminaldauerdienst/KDD – Berlin Crime Squad and Im Angesicht des Verbrechens/In Face of the Crime. Through critically discussing the dimension of ‘Quality TV’ and proposing, instead, to use the concept of ‘narrative complexity’, the transformative potential of complex generic narrations is emphasized. Focusing on aspects of multiple interwoven and interacting story arcs, a high number of dominant and developing round characters, a clear visual style, a tendency towards world making, self-referentiality and (generic) intertextuality, differentiating normative messages, as well as innovation and emergence, a textual analysis of the two abovementioned TV crime serials follows in order to exemplify recent tendencies in German crime fiction.

AB - The article, after giving a short overview of the history and characteristics of German crime fiction on television, elaborates on recent tendencies in this area. Furthermore, a short reference concerning the resurrection of the gangster film genre in German cinema is made before focusing more specifically on the textual analysis of the TV crime serials KDD – Kriminaldauerdienst/KDD – Berlin Crime Squad and Im Angesicht des Verbrechens/In Face of the Crime. Through critically discussing the dimension of ‘Quality TV’ and proposing, instead, to use the concept of ‘narrative complexity’, the transformative potential of complex generic narrations is emphasized. Focusing on aspects of multiple interwoven and interacting story arcs, a high number of dominant and developing round characters, a clear visual style, a tendency towards world making, self-referentiality and (generic) intertextuality, differentiating normative messages, as well as innovation and emergence, a textual analysis of the two abovementioned TV crime serials follows in order to exemplify recent tendencies in German crime fiction.

KW - Media and communication studies

U2 - 10.1386/nl.9.127_1

DO - 10.1386/nl.9.127_1

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 9

SP - 127

EP - 142

JO - Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook

JF - Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook

SN - 1601-829X

IS - 1

ER -