Introduction

In this post, we reflect on our TV Dictionary entries on The Bridge/Bron/Broen (2011-18), which were released at around the same time and made completely independently of each other. We both offer an account of what we thought we were trying to achieve with our videos, as well as reflecting on each other’s work: these reflections were also written independently of each other. To avoid TV Dictionary spoilers, we recommend you watch our videos before reading the accompanying text (and, you should be warned, Ian Garwood’s video is one big spoiler for the first season of the show!).

Zecchi on Zecchi

In my video essay on the series The Bridge/Bron/Broen, the words “Saga” and “sage” are neighbours not just orthographically but also semantically. By highlighting the connections between Saga Norén, the female protagonist, and the various definitions of the term “sage”, my video essay aims to point to the complexity of the TV show, beyond literal interpretations.

The Bridge/Bron/Broen has been situated within “Nordic noir” or “Scandi noir”, a genre characterised by chilling plots of brutal murder investigations, dark sunless settings, a sense of loneliness and despair, and a rotten society. With my video essay I suggest that such a categorisation of the Danish/Swedish series may be simplistic or even erroneous. Saga Norén, the brilliant detective of the Malmö County Police Department, is too blunt, too cold, too intelligent, too honest, too dedicated to her work, too explicit about her sexual needs, and smiles too little, to be considered “normal”. Some critics, who find it difficult to accept that a female character does not conform to the norms of a heteropatriarchal society, have attributed Saga’s behaviour to Asperger’s syndrome.

Thus, in my opinion, the colour palette of the series (unlike Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, or Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, which are also dominated by similar hues), is not supposed to enhance a pervasive sense of loneliness and alienation, but rather positive energy, and female strength. In this context, sage is not a cool color, but an earthy and warm shade of green.

Garwood on Zecchi

One of the pleasures of Barbara Zecchi’s take on The Bridge/Bron/Broen lies in the withholding, until the midway point, of its showcased word. Whereas I chose a Highly Significant Scene for my analysis, Zecchi’s video revolves around a far less dramatic moment, unattached, for a minute and a half, to a dictionary definition.

The manner in which the word – “sage” – is finally revealed made me laugh. As the video eventually discloses, despite Saga’s perceived deviance from behavioural norms, “sage” can be used to describe her profound wisdom, a quality apparent in her interactions with Martin in the scene that bookends Zecchi’s video. However, the first definition focuses on its use simply to denote a colour, which forms the palette for the video’s middle section, evident both in the clips from the show and the canvas created to display them on. The inclusion of the hex colour code for sage is a self-reflexive gesture to the post-production processes that determine the look of the image in the original show and in Zecchi’s reconfiguration of the source material.

The rest of the definitions pop up in a pinboard-like collage, before a return to the original scene, which continues for over another minute. The middle section feels like a dream sequence, erupting within an otherwise low-key moment. However, both dream and the framing (fictional) reality exhibit similar qualities: Zecchi ensures that the dream possesses the qualities of humour and poignancy that are evident in the sequence it interrupts.

Garwood on Garwood

Of the three TV Dictionary entries I’ve made, The Bridge/Bron/Broen is the simplest. It allows the climactic scene of the first season to play out without cuts, the soundtrack continuing undisturbed and the screen going black when I insert dictionary definitions of the word “tension”.

The main editing choices were to do with the timing of the cuts to black. I wanted the definitions to preface particular moments to illuminate the personal and political relationships that provide the backbone of the scene. The final intertitle summarises rather than prefaces, making a statement about the scene’s – and by extension, the show’s – storytelling craft.

I also tried to create a tension that was unique to my video. For instance, the text sometimes covers a cut to another location, so that the viewer is unsettled by the appearance of a different setting when the image returns. There is a fairly consistent rhythm to the timing of the text inserts, hopefully adding a suspenseful ‘pulse’ to the video. To maintain rhythmic consistency, another cut to text within the lengthy segment from 01:37 to 02:50 would have been desirable. However, the action at this point did not lend itself to interruption within the parameters I had established. This points to, ahem, a tension inherent in the process of videographic criticism: that between the formal and narrative integrity of the source material and the efforts of the video essayist to imbue their work with a style and story of its own.

Zecchi on Garwood

A staple of suspense is the ability to represent the gaps in characters’ knowledge, like when the audience is aware of an impending danger which is unknown to the protagonist, as Alfred Hitchcock has famously explained. Instead, Ian Garwood’s video essay brilliantly builds tension using an opposite strategy: that of omitting to the viewers information that is known by the characters.

To capture the essence of The Bridge/Bron/Broen, Garwood chooses the most dramatic —and tense— sequence of the first season and combines it with seven definitions of the word “tension” (white letters on a black background). Intermittently, on seven occasions, the unedited sequence is interrupted for five seconds, in which time the audience’s visual knowledge is suspended, and the viewers are forced to follow the unfolding of the action by relying only on aural information. Gunshots are heard, but the spectators are left not knowing who is shooting at whom.

The definitions of “tension” get deeper and deeper into the essence of the sequence. From descriptive (the bridge’s tension cables; the hostility between characters), to interpretative (the characters’ emotions), to meta-cinematographic (the balance between opposing forces in an artwork), the text progressively turns into the very texture of the video essay. Ultimately, it becomes haptic, in a sort of mimicry of the involuntary eyeblinks of the spectators’ response to fear. Thus, the word “tension” captures not only the essence of the TV show, but also of Garwood’s video essay: a perfect balance between image and text, sight and sound, and of seeing-not-seeing.

A hidden gem from Libertad Gills:

 

Barbara Zecchi is Professor and Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In addition to about hundred scholarly articles and numerous video-essays, she is the author, editor, or co-editor of ten books, including La pantalla sexuada (The Gendered Screen, Cátedra, 2014), and Gender-Based Violence in Latin American and Iberian Cinemas (Routledge, 2020).  In 2011 she launched The Gynocine Project. In 2017 she was elected Associate Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Spain.

Twitter: @gynocine

Ian Garwood is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at University of Glasgow. He is on the editorial board of [In]Transition and has published video essays and writing about audiovisual criticism in [In]Transition, NECSUS and The Cine-Files. Indy Vinyl, his audiovisual and written research project on record playing in American Independent Cinema, won the 2021 Videographic Criticism award from the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies.

Twitter: @iangarwoodfilm