Journal of European Popular Culture - Current Issue

Italian TV series Gomorrah – The Series (2014–21) presents a contemporary dramatization of the lives of the Neapolitan Camorra based on Roberto Saviano’s novel (2006). This visual analysis critically examines the symbolism of the fictional domestic interiors of the main protagonists, Genny Savastano and Ciro Di Marzio, who inhabit the La Scampia neighbourhood of urban Naples. The rise in quality contemporary TV dramas which give high attention to character development, relationships and the elongated storyline has allowed the production quality to flourish. Thus, fictional interiors within quality TV series, such as Gomorrah, have become integral for the viewer to assimilate narrative and meaning from the interior spaces. In this close analysis, I use the lens of interior design to examine the mise en scène via the combination of components from the atmosphere, set, lighting and narrative. June Whiteread (2017) suggests the mise en scène of film and TV allows our eyes and imaginations to consider how it might feel to be in, to smell and to emulate the emotion with the fictional interior. Key to this visual scrutiny is how the curation of objects, furniture, colour palettes, ornamentation and decorative motifs serve as narrative backdrops. This critical analysis explores the boundaries of power, class and gender through the fictional interiors of Gomorrah, where the hard, masculine architecture conceals the jewel-like interiors encased within the darkness.

Gravitas, which signifies power and difference, has not been widely adopted as a perspective by which to analyse characters in popular culture. The concept of gravitas has a long history; once believed to refer to gravity and the way that matter is dragged towards the centre of the earth, traditionally, it was a title bestowed on older men who demonstrated power, seriousness, heroism and dignity. This article suggests that gravitas is a position that can be earned and is not just a sign of reverence towards men but can also be used to describe women. Using the character of Vera Stanhope from the UK detective series Vera (2011–25) this article argues that Vera embodies considerable gravitas and commands a great deal of deference from her staff. However, gravitas is attained at the expense of a conventional domestic life, which includes a lack of interest in her personal appearance, distance from personal relationships and indifference to her home. In popular culture, many of these domestic aspects act as barriers to advancements in women’s professional careers, yet arguably, rejection of the domestic sphere allows Vera to embody and command considerable gravitas and for her to fully inhabit her role as a woman Detective Chief Inspector.

While genre hybridity in television and cinema is nothing new, Copenhagen Cowboy (2023), the six-episode Netflix series co-created – with screenwriter Sara Isabella Jønsson Vedde – and directed by Danish auteur filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, is remarkable for the way its mixture of genres is both a continuation of the hybrid approach already established in Refn’s cinema work (and in his first streaming series, for Amazon Studios, Too Old to Die Young [2019]) and a kind of meta-commentary on it. Copenhagen Cowboy was pitched to Netflix as a continuation of Refn’s Pusher trilogy, a series of grittily realistic gangster films set in Copenhagen’s criminal underworld. However, with the series Refn also wished to introduce elements of other genres, including science fiction: as he told Netflix, the series would climax with ‘a spaceship at the end’. Although Refn has described his psychedelic Viking adventure Valhalla Rising (2009) as a ‘science fiction film’, this comment seems to reflect more the creative process involved in making it than the narrative presented on-screen; Copenhagen Cowboy represents his first explicit foray into the realm of science fiction. However, it is science fiction of a particular kind: superhero science fiction and I discuss the series here as, ultimately, a superhero narrative; ‘ultimately’ because its nature as a superhero text is only truly revealed in the final episode.

Crime fiction is an extremely popular genre, the basic template of which can adapt to a multitude of settings, plots and functions. Emerging from repressive dictatorships and oppressive right-wing regimes, many nations in the Spanish-speaking world have only recently, in the past 50 years, seen the development of a crime genre that serves as a critique of society past and present. This article analyses two contemporary Spanish crime novels by award-winning author Dolores Redondo. Adopting a multi-theoretical approach, the character of the detective appearing in two novels by the Basque crime fiction author will be the focus of the discussion. Aspects of slippage in space, time and agency considered from an autoethnographic perspective inform an examination of the narrative structure. It concludes by considering the impact that the motion of ‘leaving and returning’ has in the context of crime fiction.