Review of Tusen flickor om film och våld (2000)
Anja Hirdman (writer), Anne Jerslev (writer), Birgitte Tufte (writer), Karin Stigbrand (writer), Louise Wallenberg (writer), Sofie Stolpe (writer), Ulla B. Abrahamsson (writer).
Read in 2017.
Publication 23 by Rådet mot skadliga våldsskildringar, a government agency existing between 1990 and 2011. An original study of 1001 telephone interviews with women aged 16-20 bookends a collection of essays on media violence and feminism.
Highlights include Jerslev’s paper on Danish teens arranging horror movie nights, in which the author cogently and explicitly analyzes the tuning of control. In the female-only version of these nights, guests bring duvets and light candles, both choices having dual effects: Duvets are comfy and you can hide behind them for fright, candles are cozy and make the house dim and unfamiliar. Jerslev summarizes Zillman and Weaver’s 1996 paper “Gender-Socialization Theory of Reactions to Horror”, on an experiment with actors in a horror audience playing towards the gender type, against it, or being neutral. Non-actors of the opposite sex rated their experiences more highly with those who played towards type. I should track that down.
Citing a 1999-09-23 Dagens nyheter article by Nicholas Wennö, Stolpe describes how Swedish TV networks bought films in package deals from major distributors, with a particularly amusing example being the smooth cooperation between SVT and Kanal 5 around a specific deal with Warner Bros.: The two networks had opposite priorities, gladly choosing different films to air.