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Volume 15, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 2042-7891
  • E-ISSN: 2042-7905

Abstract

This article investigates representations of media in the Danish slasher films () (Schmidt 1995) and () (Schmidt 1996), arguing that such representations function as focal points of a self-reflexive exploration of slasher cinema and its potential cultural work. Utilizing two interrelated media historical contexts as interpretive frameworks, it first reads as concerned with the commercialization of Danish film and television culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s, arguing that the film establishes television as a medial and ideological Other in order to explore its own relationship to the dominant system of capitalist commodification. It then reads as engaged with concurrent anxieties concerning filmic representations of violence, specifically the Scandinavian media panics revolving around home video technology. It concludes that ’s ideological ambivalence allows it to retain a degree of critical distance, while reinforces the cultural logic it ostensibly opposes.

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2025-05-31
2026-04-18

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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): horror film; media history; media panic; media violence; popular culture; youth cinema

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