Monday, July 25, 2022

Diplomacy Porn


Christiansborg Palace

The popular Netflix series Borgen deals with the machinations of a fictitious female Danish prime minister, Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen) who inhabits Copenhagen's Christiansborg Palace, also known as Borgen. It’s “diplomacy porn,” Scenes from a Marriage meets Clausewitz--who once famously said “war is diplomacy by other means." Both the Danish national politics with its moderate, left and right wing parties are spotlighted along with both the civil war in an African country Khorun resembling Ethiopia and the war in Afghanistan. Borgen bears comparison to The Bureau, another popular series, where the internecine workings of the French Intelligence service are counterposed with the complex interior lives of the characters. In Borgen, diplomacy goes on in the news room of the country’s major news station as well as between the PM's press secretary, Kasper Juul (Pilou Asbaek) and a reporter, Katrine Fonsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen) who are involved in a romantic duel a la Philadelphia Story. Truth itself is the sometimes inflated currency. It's the lode that's mined and ultimately drives the narrative. The feminist angle, as manifest both in the chambers of government and bed chambers is naturally an important part of the plot, as well as a host of painful secrets involving childhood abuse and mental illness. The lucubrations of plot recall another Bergman movie, Through a Glass Darkly in which the mental illness of a child attends the striving and self-centered parent.  

read "More Flicks Than Pricks" by Francis Levy, TheScreamingPope

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