Borgen
Immediately following the international success that The Killing became, Danmarks Radio, the Danish public service channel which is also one of the leading channels of the country, has enjoyed a considerable amount of acclaim for its new(er) TV series, Borgen (the short name for Christiansborg, the Danish parliament) of which the 3rd season is currently being aired in Denmark. It does what nice Sunday evening primetime TV does; it’s well acted and scripted, it’s familiar with a slight twist of exoticism and it raises contemporary issues of gender, family and politics in a pleasant, not-too-intrusive way (not in its storyline at least), all on top of a generous layer of page-turning fiction served up by a strong female character in the lead. Voila! There is little doubt that Borgen is a competently crafted series that even performs the occasional genius move now and then, carefully constructed to suit the mass audience of Danish viewers (who paid for the series through their taxes). And that is perhaps the shows biggest problem.
To the outside world Denmark, and the rest of Scandinavia, seems a safehaven of benefits and gender equality: In example, maternity leave for new mothers is fully paid for 12 months, and can be shared equally by both parents if the father wants to stay at home too (it’s a popular option to share the maternity/paternity leave), and Mom is typically back at the workplace once baby turns 1. Childcare options for working parents are readily available, and while it can be difficult to get both your children (or more) in the same institution if you live in a large metropolitan area with high demand, there is always another option. On paper everything looks great, however underneath the surface even Danes battle gender issues – and Borgen’s subtle comments on this battle is the true quality of the show.
Birgitte Nyborg spends the first two seasons on Borgen as the first female Prime Minister of Denmark and leader of the fictitious political party, The Moderates. At the outset she is married to a hunky, brainy man, has two school aged kids and a lovely home with a democratically appropriate amount of Scandinavian design items. As the tedious job consumes her more and more it all begins to crumble; her husband divorces her, her daughter suffers significantly under her absence from the home, she loses what should have been her reelection, in short: life is tough going when you have to parent, govern a country and discover that a happy family life doesn't necessarily fit in two full-on-careers at the same time (or was it the other way around), but most of all the show seems to be saying, when you're a woman. In the beginning of season 3, two years have passed – a wise move of the writers of the series - since last and Birgitte is trying to make a comeback in politics after having pursued her career in a private corporation abroad for a while.
Borgen presents itself as a political drama, but the political plot often reads predictably as a recapitulated Stratego match ("we have to give them this so that they will give us that") that looks to occasionally be needed merely to legitimize it as a political drama, a tendency that is strengthened throughout the 3rd season. For Birgitte is through-and-through an idealist and although some corners just aren't made for cutting, as she's told over and over by her colleagues, she wants to do it all, implicitly understood in the morally correct ways, that is. When, for instance, she is served a juicy piece of dirt on a silver platter and has the choice to take out a political opponent whose methods against her have been repulsively low, we already know it won’t happen. Her incorruptible ideals become a blockade that hinders her from entering into personal conflict in the political drama, which we must then look to her personal life for.
While Borgen claims to be a political drama, it seems more a gender drama at heart. Three seasons in this is the emerging image one gets as Borgen wrestles itself over and over: If Danmarks Radio wanted to actually make a true political drama for the masses, they would, according to the premises they themselves set up, have been better off casting a male Prime Minister, for with Birgitte comes the (apparently still) inevitable question without which this show could not legitimize itself as 'realistic' according to its creators: how can a woman run a country and a household with two kids successfully at the same time? This conflict which is constantly at play in the narrative functions almost on a meta-level that ultimatively is a social comment. The discrepancy between the genre of political drama and what Borgen really becomes corresponds to how gender equality in Denmark is an official fact, yet shatters in real womens lives on a daily basis.
Legislation can only create a certain amount of gender equality – and perhaps Denmark is nearly as close as a developed, capitalist-economy country can get. A good example of this is how a full year of paid maternity leave works as much against women as it works for them. For what happens when a small business is looking to hire much needed labor for their growing enterprise and their qualified but childless, 28-year old female candidate indirectly presents them with the severe risk of having to fund one, two or maybe even three full years of maternity leave and bring in temps, taking up even more ressources? The sort of discrimination that takes place when employers chose to not run such risks is hard to track and document, yet many women are left with solid clues that it has happened to them. Birgitte represents the next issue of mothers who also have career jobs, and the depiction of her life and hardships hits the nail on the head: Can you really be a good mother while being out of the home 55 hours a week or more? Can your marriage survive if you deny your husband his career in sacrifice of your own? Can we trust that leaving our children in institutions will not damage them? All these questions are prominent in shaping the discourse of Danish gender discussions.
One might speculate that such questions are only the manifestations of how gender inequality is being legitimized, but for some women who leave their children to be raised in the hands of strangers, it becomes a nagging question. And for a nation who has taken pride in this practice for decades and constantly receives praise for having done so, there comes a day when it must ask itself: is this truly the best for our children or could we do better?
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