The Female Detective, Neurodiversity, and Felt Knowledge in Engrenages and Bron/Broen

Abstract

The neurodiverse female detective in transnational crime dramas embodies complex ways of seeing the gender-based violence these series frequently contain. This detective both orients and disrupts their narrative and visual fields with what I will argue is her surveilling yet troubled look. She inhabits the longstanding transnational tradition of the male defective detective and derives from two recent Anglo-European generic staples: female-led crime dramas and neurodiverse protagonists. In her, gender trouble in the look and its object meet up with the problem of the norm. Beginning with the example of Engrenages ( Spiral, 2005) and then focusing on autism spectrum detective Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) in Bron/Broen, this article considers how the generic familiars and innovations vested in this character alter the dynamics of the gaze, recast the significance of empathy and justice, and enable violence, gender, and everyday social norms to be unsettled in potentially feminist ways.

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