This book offers a comparative study of historical television genres in Europe, with a special focus on Germany and Great Britain and their way of narrating twentieth century European history. The book analyses our common European past and memory through central historical television narratives. Each chapter looks at how historical TV genres, fictional and documentary, have dealt with the most salient and defining periods, events and changes in the twentieth century— an age of extremes. Bondebjerg offers unique theoretical and analytical insight into the role of television in mediating and shaping the past. The book explores television’s creation of transnational cultural encounters across Europe in relation to our common and national past. The book addresses how television has influenced our understanding of history, collective memory and public debate over the twentieth century. It is fundamentally a book about the importance of the past in present day Europe and the centrality of media for transnational understanding.
Author(s): Ib Bondebjerg
Series: Palgrave European Film and Media Studies
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 318
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Figures
1 Introduction: Mediating European History
Our Embodied Mind and Mediated Cultural Encounters
An Age of Extremes
At the Dawn of a New Century
Historical Views of Europe in the Twentieth Century
History in Our Culture and Minds: Historical Genres, Mediated Cultural Encounters
Screening Twentieth-Century Europe: Outline of the Book
References
2 History as Mediated and Embodied Narratives
Mediating History: National and Transnational Dimensions
History and Our Narrative Mind
History and Memory
Historical Narratives and the Psychological and Cultural Dimensions of Reception
Memory: Social and Subjective Dimensions
References
3 Historical Genres on Television: The Broader European Picture
Basic Historical Genres
Impact and Importance of Historical Fiction and Docudrama
Frozen Cultures: Historical Drama in Eastern Europe
Challenged Democracies: Southern Europe
Creative Encounters and Structures of Co-production: Western and Northern Europe
Imagining and Narrating Twentieth-Century Europe: Focus and Perspectives
References
4 The Meaning of Small Things: Everyday Drama and History from Below
The Embodiment of History
Heimat: A Reflexive and Symbolic Narrative of Everyday Life
Heimat 1: A Symbolic and Realist Story of Home and the World Beyond
Reitz and the Visual and Narrative Language of Memory
The Village: The English Heimat Series with a Difference
Gender, Class, Sex and the Roaring Twenties
Everyday Drama: Impact, Reception and the Dimensions of Memory
References
5 History from Above: Historical Biopics
German Biopics: The Bad and the Good Characters
Biopics as Multi-Layered Docudrama: The Case of Heinrich Breloer
The Complex Cultural, Historical Biopic: Breloer and the Mann Family
The Crown: An Intense Story of Queendom and Personal Freedom
The Crown: A Story of the Transformation of Post-War Britain
The Crown: A Story of Everyday Life and Mediated Politics
Lived Lives, Living History: Biopics and Historical Debate
References
6 Grand Illusions and the Great War: World War I Narratives
The End of an Era: British and German Period Dramas
War and the Changing Map of Europe
Realities and Memories
First World War Documentaries: Memories, Experiences and Factual Narratives
Documentary War Narratives: Multiple Voices and Narrative Strategies
German and Transnational European War Documentaries
British War Period Drama
Parade’s End: Heritage Toryism and Cloud-Cuckoo Land
A War that Changed Europe Forever
References
7 Living on the Edge: The Roaring Twenties and World Crisis
Fragile Democracies and Radicalized Political Cultures
Singing and Dancing on the Volcano: Life in the 1920s
Documenting the Past Through Personal European Stories: Clash of Futures as Transnational Memory Drama
The Weimar Years: Crisis, Political Chaos and the Cultural Avant-Garde
German Noir: Babylon Berlin as Period and Crime Drama
Between Two Wars: Class and Culture in British Period Drama
Down Dark and Sunny Lanes: Dennis Potter, Realism and Dreams of Popular Culture
The Stuff that Dreams Are Made of: The Imaginary and Enchanting Dimension
A Creative, Chaotic, Violent and Divisive Period
References
8 Hell on Earth: World War II Narratives
The Most Mediated War in Modern European History
World War II Documentaries: Explanation, Imagination and Narrative
World War II and Popular British Fiction Series
Memory, Guilt and German Docudramas
A New Generation of German War Drama
Beneath a Frozen Past: Moral Complexities and the German War Generation
World War II as European War: Mediated Transnational Cultural Encounters and Memories
References
9 Post-war Europe: A Social and Cultural Revolution
Better Times: Welfare Societies and Cultural Revolution
Living on a Thin Line Between Germany East and West
Dancing in Berlin: Mothers, Daughters and a New Way of Life
Leaving Heimat: Reitz’s Story of the Youth Revolution in Germany
The Complicated Way Back Home: Negotiating the Past and a New Present
Social and Cultural Dynamics in British Post-war Period Dramas
Tradition and Change: British Generational Period Drama
The Changing World of Women: Call the Midwife and the Post-war Social Revolution
A Changing Europe? Dreams and Realities
References
10 Europe 1989 and Beyond: Towards a New Millennium
Coming to Terms with the Post-1989 German Past: Memories and Realities
Reitz’s Heimat 3: A Chronicle About the Change of a Century
Dreams and Realities of Unification
A Unification Symphony in Many Parts and with Many Voices
The New Millennium: Symbolism and the Dialectic of Past and Present
Rough Realism and Dystopian Narratives: British Post-1989 Narratives
Reality or Nothing: Dennis Potter’s Dystopian Far Future Look at the Past
Between Utopia and Dystopia: Post-1989 Europe
References
11 Conclusion: History on Our Minds and the Forms of Mediated History
Mediated Cultural Encounters, History and Memory
Historical Genres and Twentieth-Century History
The Past in the Present
Quo Vadis Europe? the Twentieth Century and Beyond
References
Index
