Motherhood in the Danish welfare state: Citizenship and shame on-screen

Abstract

The thesis examines the maternal discourse in state-supported Danish films and television dramas from 2001 to the present, contextualising these texts within their industrial and political context. Combining content analysis of film and television cases, policy documents and interview material, this research deploys a feminist cultural studies methodology to argue that narrative media functions as a highly political site of contestation over who has the right to participate in civil society. 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. I argue that the political narrative of gender equality, democracy and universal social support that permeates Danish state policy is undermined in screen fiction, where the working mother is problematised and the welfare system’s integrity is challenged.

I assert 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. The internalised belief that they have transgressed their citizenship obligations leads the mother characters in the cases to experience shame and consequently modify their social and political engagement. Each case represents a significant aesthetic and thematic movement in Danish screen history and stages a conflict between obligation and desire, suggesting a motif of maternal suffering that transcends genre and style. Beginning with an overview of the policies and actions that have influenced the contemporary Danish cultural context, this thesis scrutinises the depiction of motherhood in En Kærlighedshistorie, Nymphomaniac, Anna Pihl, Forbrydelsen, Borgen and Arvingerne, drawing from media scholarship, feminist theory and political science to locate a narrative of motherhood in the Danish welfare state.