Hinterland - Theories & Media language

• Nordic Noir Elements


  • Other-worldly & supernatural
• Audio track


  A dislocation drama (Michael Massey) Mathias is displaced from his natural environment
• Open frames


  • Isolated Mathias running, loneliness
• Establishing shots


  • Gothic landscape
• De-saturated colour palette & hard lighting


  • Authenticates noir elements
• Tracking shots of Mathias running in rural landscape


  Loneliness, isolation, other-worldly elements
• Narrative markers


  • Teeth, plot driven, expresses investigative narrative
• Recurring situations


  • Iconography of blood
  • Secrets revealed (files of children in the home's attic)
  • Low-key lighting in Hywel interview keeps audience engaged
• Use of GFX in title sequence


  • Expresses style (e.g. teeth, gravestone, barbed wire)
• Slow panning shots & establishing shots


  • Gritty Welsh landscape
• Establishing shots of settings


  • Devil's Bridge, Aberystwyth, rural Wales style
• RECURRING SITUATIONS


  1. MURDER

  2. SECRETS REVEALED

  3. ARREST

  4. BETRAYAL

  5. FIGHTS

  6. BEATING UP SUSPECT
• Criminal investigation process


  • CLUES & EVIDENCE
  • READING THE RIGHTS
  • INTERROGATIONS
  • QUESTIONING WITNESSES
  • FALSE ACCUSATIONS
  • AUTOPSY
• Elements of Narrative


  • Crime as disruption of equilibrium
  • Investigative narrative
  • Intellectual puzzles
  • Enigma codes
  • Positioned with detective (hero) on a quest
  • Flashbacks to crime
  • Binary oppositions - justice v vengeance, personal v professional, cop v killer
  • Narrative closure - resolution
• Narrative offers resolution


  • Justice vs vengeance, personal vs professional
  • cop vs killer
• Equilibrium

  Balanced - Mathias arrives at new job in Aberystwyth
• Home finds children documents in attic


  Jenkins used to work there
• Attempts to solve disequilibrium (CASE)


  Interrogations, looks into clues, witnesses
• Repair - Catrin's baby was killed


  Why she killed Helen
• Not complete closure, serial nature, narrative story arcs continue over episodes
• New equilibrium - closure, Jenny killed baby, case is solved, not complete closure - serial nature narrative, story arcs continue over episodes
• Genre


  NORDIC NOIR
• Nordic Noir


  • Change, develop & vary
  • Borrow & overlay
  • Instances of repetition
  • Not fixed
  • Evolve with new additions
  • Hybrid
• Nordic Noir in Hinterland


  • Chill, bleak setting rural Wales
  • Landscape essential to narrative
  • Iconography of warmer clothing hats, scarves, Volvos
  • Gritty, realistic moral complexity
  • Intensity of tone & mood
  • Social criticism
  • Slow, measured pace use of silence isolation
  • Laconic, world-weary hero
• Mathias


  • Themes: Morality, isolation, corruption
  • Desaturated colour palette
• Nordic interest in psychology & psychological motivations
• Critical reviews: ''The Welsh answer to 'The Killing'''
• Successful format (Hesmondhalgh)
• Postmodernism


  Media creates images of reality based on continuous mediation, which are encoded as 'real' but are actually a simulacrum
• Hyperreality


  The rural world is represented from a mediated perspective, linked to witchcraft, superstition and the supernatural
• The police force is a constructed simulacrum, not actually experienced by the audience
• Intertextual references


  The Shining (1980 psychological horror) encoded the idea that evil is present without knowing, creating ambiguity and an intellectual puzzle for the audience
• Meta-narratives


  Society is governed by master narratives, e.g. trust in government, religion, science
• Binary oppositions


  Have ideological significance, e.g. the concept of justice is ambiguous as justice is done when J & L are arrested, positioning the audience to sympathise with their strong motives and as victims of a flawed system
• Character archetypes


  • DCI Mathias as the hero on a quest to heal from his past, learning and growing through the investigative narrative with enigmas and clues for the audience
  • Catrin and Jenny as the villains
  • Mared, Lloyd, Sian as helpers
• Tom Mathias


  • Masculine
  • Outsider
  • Low angle shot when visiting Catre home
  • In control, his position as chief inspector
  • Awning in isolated mise
  • Wide shot alone & plated snima
  • Moves from London, lives alone in caravan
  • Fly-the-wall shots crafted enclosed
  • Falls asleep, camera picks up of the bills in wallet
  • Left family bound biomass
  • Persistent questioning of potential culprits
  • Doesn't have mental health advice
  • Discovers well's body, climbs down
  • Becomes suspect
• Mared Rhys

  • Sitting, helping to get Helen's body out of water
  • Comforts Syfelt in questioning when he cries
  • Intersection of gender, race, class
  • Glass ceiling, not promoted
  • Social barrier prevents from management
  • Patriarchal oppression & phallic of domination
  • Good mother, intelligent & independent
  • Women belong to domestic life
• Women

  • Efficient, rational
  • Prosper is 'by the book'
  • Subverts masculine, agent, sexualised
  • Victims
  • Helen - domestic cleaner for Dalter, mother figure for Hel
  • Not sexualised, costuming teams, boots, hoodies, layers, lack of make-up
  • Subverted by Catrin unlikely nurturer
  • Subverted by Jenny destroyer, jealous
  • Subverted by Helen sadistic, cruel killer
  • Victims in high angle shots
• Men


  • Constructed through movement (active)
  • Reg. M running but stops when he sees suspect
  • Silence
  • Strength, masculine
  • Aggression
  • Gladiators/combatants
  • Messy hair & wears blue
• Hegemonic masculinity


  The perceived dominant form of masculinity in a given cultural context