You have full access to this open access chapter. Palgrave Macmillan, You have full access to this open access chapter, Download chapter PDF. An analysis of recent Italian crime series featuring female detectives as lead shows how Italian crime narratives have elaborated original representations of these figures, often in an ambivalent dialogue with other approaches, such as the portrayal of women detectives in Nordic Noir fictions and TV series.
Our analysis is functional to conceiving European identity as a space of dialogue between different identity constructs, including gender, within the context of the crime genre. On the level of co-production and distribution agreements, TV productions may be read as cultural encounters insofar as they can favour transnational mobility, interactions between professionals in the creative industries from different countries, and, more generally, any kind of practical exchange between different production cultures.
On the level of both representation and reception, TV series and the social discourses they inspire can be conceived as mediated cultural encounters , a notion that suggests a less tangible mobility of narrative models, visual styles, and social imagery Bondebjerg et al.
Furthermore, this specific combination of commitment and entertainment becomes a crucial point when it comes to issues of cultural identity and specifically European identity, defined as the sense of belonging to a common cultural community stemming from the shared consumption and appreciation of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. In other words, we subscribe to the idea that identity can only be understood as a network of diverse belongings referring to different categories, including gender, ethnicity, religion, politics, and many more social and cultural dimensions.
Accordingly, European identity ought to be interpreted as a space of interaction and dialogue between multiple forms of identity, including cultural, social, national, local, and, indeed, gender identities—which are the focus of this contribution.
