Danish Mothers On-Screen (eBook)

This book combines content analysis of film and television cases, the examination of policy documents, and first-hand interview material with Danish industry professionals, tracing the pivotal moments in media and welfare state history to unite these two overlapping spheres: welfare state social policy and media imagery. In doing so, it addresses a gap in existing academic and policy documents to demonstrate how motherhood and femininity are presented in contemporary state-supported Danish screen fiction.

As an industry premised on state funding and public service values, Danish screen fiction plays a cogent role in shaping and communicating cultural norms and provides a space for the cultivation of belonging and a sense of a shared identity. For this reason, it is vital to identify and examine representational trends and patterns in popular media formats. This book argues that the political narrative of gender equality, democracy and universal social support that permeates Danish state policy is undermined in screen fiction, wherein working mother characters are problematised and the welfare system's integrity is challenged. This book asserts that the framing of femininity, motherhood and citizenship in many contemporary Danish films and television dramas indicates a cultural concern about the welfare state's institutionalisation of caregiving and presents absent mothers as an indirect cause of crime, trauma or social unrest.

Djuna Hallsworth is an early career researcher with a PhD in Gender and Cultural Studies from the University of Sydney. She received her PhD for her thesis entitled 'Motherhood in the Danish Welfare State' which was accepted without conditions in 2020. Her research spans welfare state policy, media representations, feminist theory, disability studies and female sexuality. Though born and raised in Australia, Djuna has spent much time in Denmark and is interested in studying the small nation's film and television production methods, and how these interact with Danish social and cultural policy. With a background in lecturing and tutoring students across a range of ages and abilities, Djuna produces research that is accessible and engaging. She has published studies of public service broadcasting in Denmark and the representation of mental illness in Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House, and has lectured in cultural policy at the University of Sydney.