10.13130/2036-461X/16392
This article examines and compares the representation of ethnic minority lead investigators in the television crime series, Tatort Hamburg (ARD, 2008-2012 season), Cherif (France 2, 2013-2019), Last Panthers (Canal+, 2015), and Dogs of Berlin (Netflix, 2018). It suggests a typology of the figure of the ethnic minority detective based on representational patterns shared by the series and other literary and television narratives, which is discussed and contextualized within the ideological and commercial limitations of French and German television cultures. The last section assesses the series’ potential to depict ‘postmigrant societies’ founded on and influenced by social plurality and former and ongoing migration movements. In so doing, the study highlights role of typologies and narrative tropes in the portrayal of ethnic minorities in crime television and insists, despite the shortcomings of some series’ representational strategies, on the value of figures of identification for minority and majority audiences that attest to a shifting understanding of ‘us’ and ‘others’ in contemporary European societies.
application/pdf
2036-461X
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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Representation of Minorities
Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives in French and German Crime Television Series
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
21
Thematic issue / Section thématique
2021-11-17
2021-09-19
2021-11-17
2022-12-30
125-143
Cinéma & Cie
Álvaro Luna-Dubois
2021/11/17
10.13130/2036-461X/16392
125
Université de Limoges  & Institut d’études politiques de Paris
2036-461X
36/37
Representation of Minorities
en
143
Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives in French and German Crime Television Series
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16392/14748
21
                                                                                       Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives
                                                                                       in French and German
                                                                                       Crime Television Series
                                                                                       Álvaro Luna-Dubois, Université de Limoges
                                                                                       & Institut d’études politiques de Paris



                                                                                       This article examines and compares the representation of ethnic minority lead                              Keywords
                                                                                       investigators in the television crime series, Tatort Hamburg (ARD, 2008-2012
                                                                                                                                                                                     European crime fiction
                                                                                       season), Cherif (France 2, 2013-2019), Last Panthers (Canal+, 2015), and Dogs of
                                                                                       Berlin (Netflix, 2018). It suggests a typology of the figure of the ethnic minority       Ethnic minority detectives
                                                                                       detective based on representational patterns shared by the series and other                           Postmigration
                                                                                       literary and television narratives, which is discussed and contextualized within the          Crime television series
                                                                                       ideological and commercial limitations of French and German television cultures.                     Representation
                                                                                       The last section assesses the series’ potential to depict ‘postmigrant societies’
                                                                                                                                                                                               of minorities
                                                                                       founded on and influenced by social plurality and former and ongoing migration
                                                                                       movements. In so doing, the study highlights role of typologies and narrative                                    DOI
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       tropes in the portrayal of ethnic minorities in crime television and insists, despite      10.13130/2036-461X/16392
                                                                                       the shortcomings of some series’ representational strategies, on the value of
                                                                                       figures of identification for minority and majority audiences that attest to a shifting
                                                                                       understanding of ‘us’ and ‘others’ in contemporary European societies.




                                                                                       INTRODUCTION1
                                                                                         In 2011 it was estimated that racialized minorities born in Europe roughly
                                                                                       number ten million people, a figure that marks every single EU nation’s
                                                                                       experience and imagination.2 Yet, for the last three decades, media scholars
                                                                                       have stressed that compared to white Europeans, ethnic minorities and
                                                                                       immigrants are largely underrepresented in television.3 One genre that
                                                                                       arguably escapes this rule is crime fiction, which traditionally incorporates
                                                                                       and foregrounds the social margins, immigrants, the disenfranchized, and
                                                                                       the post-industrial blight.4 5 Indeed, as early as in the 1970s and 1980s,
                                                                                       crime series like Tatort (1970-) in Germany or Série noire (1984-1991)
                                                                                       in France featured ethnic minority characters, a trend that continues to
                                                                                       this day. Their inclusion, however, is not exempted from representational
                                                                                       issues, and must be analysed critically to study ways in which European
                                                                                       crime narratives react to and reflect upon cultural diversity.
                                                                                         Literature scholars such as Stephen Soitos or Axel Stähler have
                                                                                       suggested the existence of ‘ethnic crime fiction’ as a subgenre that focuses


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                                                                                 
      on questions of race and ethnicity.6 7 Exploring ethnic crime novels by both
      authors of colour and white authors, Stähler argues that by centring their
      plots on experiences of marginalized subjects, they offer a subversive space
      that challenges the political, social, and cultural hegemonies.8 Scholarship
      focusing on racialized minorities in European crime fiction is sporadic and
      tends to discuss it in relation to other minority literary traditions. Stephen
      Knight, for example, analyses Mike Philips’s British black detective, Sam
      Dean, as a local figure dealing with a wide range of crimes that contrasts
      the detection in African American crime fiction, which he claims, often
      centres on racial oppression.9 Sylvie Dumerlat’s study of Lakhdar Belaïd’s
      novels argues for a ‘Franco-Maghrebi noir’ subgenre, which she defines
      as a hybrid form that combines aspects of the Franco-Maghrebi literary
      tradition (such as auto-ethnographic practices, multilingualism, historical
      rewriting, and peri-urban spaces) with conventions of the French noir
      genre.10
         Television research largely avoids the ethnic crime fiction label and
      focuses instead on investigating the representation of minority characters
      in crime series. The few North American studies explicitly addressing
      television ‘ethnic detectives’ describe them as ‘native informants’11
      who explore cultural differences and make links between minority and
      mainstream cultures.12 French media studies mentioning detectives of
      colour tend to centre on broad discussions of ethnic diversity in television.13
      Ginette Vincendeau notes that the crime genre has launched the careers
      of many black and Maghrebi French actors who are typecast as drug
      dealers, petty criminals, or gang members.14 She also points to a gradual
      shift towards more positive roles since the 1990s but admits that they
      remain subservient to white heroes.15 Similar developments in German
      media have been documented, such as Michelle Mattson’s comparative
      study of 1980s and 1990s Tatort seasons, which notices ‘remarkable
      changes’ in the representation of ethnic diversity in German society that
      detach from malicious portrayals of foreigners, but also acknowledges the
      overrepresentation of foreign criminal figures.16
         Despite the growing and continued presence of characters of colour
      in global crime fiction, there are only a few studies comparing their
      representation across cultures. The available comparative research focuses
      primarily on literary narratives and examines them through a transnational
      or postcolonial lens. For example, Vera Alexander’s analysis of Romesh
      Gunesekera’s The Sandglass (1998), which centres on Sri Lankan British
      characters, considers the novel to be part of ‘diasporic literature’ because
      it emphasizes the latency and awareness of sociocultural borders tracing
      back to the colonial period.17 Although the concept of diaspora allows to
      identify historical and transcultural legacies in European literature, it may
      also separate crime fiction about ethnic minorities from European popular
      culture, national borders, history, and literary traditions.
         The limited engagement of European criticism with discussions on ethnic


126                                 Luna-Dubois, Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives

crime fiction as a category might be partially explained by contemporary
scholarship on European identity and crime literature. According to Kerry
Dune, European crime fiction is thought to be concerned with the relation
of local and regional identities, mainly as a reaction to globalization and
the complex reality of national, regional, and local alliances within the
continent.18 This conception proposes that identity in contemporary Europe
is constructed as ‘an amalgam of provincial and urban, or local and
global characteristics that are deployed and subverted simultaneously.’19
Studying ethnic crime fiction globally, Monika Mueller and Dorothea
Fischer-Hornung suggest that studies on European crime fiction focusing
exclusively on race and ethnicity may face limited interpretations. Indeed,
they argue that in contrast to the North American situation where ethnicity
is primarily associated with skin colour, in Europe, language, regional
dialects, or local customs can play a critical and at times more significant
role than race.20 This could apply well to Brigitte Roüan’s crime telefilm Le
débarcadère des anges (France 2, 2009), whose black detective, Corbucci,
does not face racial discrimination possibly due to his status as a Marseilles
local who speaks in the regional accent and whose late father was a local
white police officer. Hence, studies of European ethnic minority detectives
must also attend to the interactions between race, ethnicity, and other
equally potent markers such as social class, regional identity, and history.
  By stressing the importance and necessity to study and compare European
crime fiction within its own cultural contexts, in this article I examine the
representation of ethnic minority lead investigators in the television crime
series, Tatort Hamburg (ARD, 2008-2012 season), Cherif (France 2, 2013-
2019), Last Panthers (Canal +, 2015), and Dogs of Berlin (Netflix, 2018),
which feature detectives pertaining to the Maghrebi minority in France and
the Turkish minority in Germany. It suggests a typology of the figure of
the ethnic minority detective based on representational patterns shared
by the series and other literary and television narratives. This intermedial
approach aims to demonstrate the strong links between crime television
series and literature but I will also contextualize the patterns within the
ideological and commercial limitations of French and German television
cultures. The last section assesses the series’ potential to present
postmigrant societies founded on and influenced by social plurality and
former and ongoing migration movements.21 In so doing, I suggest that
comparative studies of French and German ethnic minority detectives can
offer powerful insights on how contemporary European television cultures
represent difference, diversity, and more broadly, crime and justice.




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      Ethnic Minority Detectives in a
      Colour-Blind Continent?
        The selection of the series for comparison is not solely based on their
      protagonists’ ethnic background, but also on their potential to illustrate
      similarities and differences in the construction of detectives of colour
      across France and Germany. What is more, the four series inscribe in a
      trend of 2010s television productions to diversify images of France and
      Germany at the national and international level. The 2008-2012 Tatort
      Hamburg seasons feature its first regular Turkish German detective in
      Germany’s most popular and influential mainstream crime television
      series.22 Although the first Franco-Maghrebi television detectives appeared
      in the 1990s and early 2000s with the young and cool-headed detective,
      Selim Rey (Kader Boukhanef) of Le Lyonnais (Antenne 2/France 2, 1990-
      1992) and the comic police captain, Mohammed ‘Mo’ Loumani (Smaïn)
      of Commissaire Bastille (TF1, 2001-2002), Cherif is the longest-running
      crime series featuring a Franco-Maghrebi protagonist. Moreover, as the
      series co-creator, Lionel Olenga notes, by the 2010s there was a lack of
      diversity in French crime television that the series tried to redress:

               We wanted to bring a new type of cop. The profile of a gloomy,
               introvert, and depressive policeman already existed. We
               needed a character that we weren’t used to see on French TV:
               the cop of Maghrebi descent […] This choice allowed us to turn
               our attention to some clichés, to point at racist attitudes or
               prejudice without falling into activism or that the series centred
               there. Our goal was to entertain with a mix of a cool cop and
               serious investigations.23

        The series The Last Panthers and Dogs of Berlin, focusing on an ex-convict
      Franco-Maghrebi and a queer Turkish German detective respectively, also
      represent a deliberate departure from classic European crime television
      series. While it could be objected that none of the series depicts a female
      protagonist, it is noteworthy that they inscribe in the male focus of the
      crime genre and highlight the marginalization of ethnic minority women in
      European television24 who are more than often limited to supporting roles,
      namely as sisters, co-workers, and mothers.
        Although each of the selected series offers a unique story of a European
      detective belonging to an ethnic minority, they all recount in their own terms
      a story of a presumed asymmetry between non-white detectives’ ethnicity
      and values of law and order. For example, in the first episode of Cherif,25
      upon seeing a hooded dark-skinned man breaking into an apartment, the
      newly transferred white police captain Adeline Briard (Carole Bianic) rapidly
      arrests him. While taking him towards the detention cells, the police chief
      informs her that her detainee is, in fact, her new partner, Captain Kader


128                                 Luna-Dubois, Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives

Cherif (Abdelhafid Metalsi). In a subsequent scene, Cherif admits that the
incident was a ‘very tempting’ prank, to which Adeline, irritated, replies:

Adeline: ‘An Arab wearing a hoodie breaking into an apartment through
          the window, no offense, is rarely a policeman going home, you
          know?’
 Cherif: [quietly surprised] ‘Oh…I see…’
Adeline: ‘I mean… you know what I mean.’ [emphasis added]

   This association of ethnic minorities to crime is also echoed on the
first episode of Tatort featuring Cenk Batu (Mehmet Kurtuluş).26 While
undercover a white Federal officer interrogates him after he tried to catch
the attacker of a Turkish German gang ringleader’s nephew at the hospital:

Officer: ‘He bails out and you follow him down the stairs. Why?’
  Batu: [chuckling] ‘What do you mean, why?’
Officer: ‘I’m wondering, that’s all… I mean, you had nothing to do with
          it. Allegedly.’
  Batu: ‘Wait a minute, don’t you guys ask for moral courage?’
Officer: ‘That’s true. But it’s strange, nonetheless … as soon as you show
          up here, a compatriot of yours gets attacked, but you save him
          despite your appendicitis.’

  Though succinct, Cherif and Tatort’s depiction of ethnic profiling undermine
colour-blind policies and egalitarian models customarily followed in
French and German media, political discourse, and the justice system,
which prohibit the distinction between citizens based on race, ethnicity,
national origin, or religion.27 As Fatima El-Tayeb puts it, such daring scenes
focusing on race and ethnicity in Europe challenge the powerful universalist
narrative of Europe as a colour-blind continent that presents mobilizations
of race as exclusively associated to so-called ‘racialized’ nations like the
U.S.28 In the selected crime series, such pretences are challenged through
the representation of ethnoracial difference as a very local issue affecting
the lives of men racialized as ‘Arab’ in France or ‘Turk’ in Germany.
  If ethnic minority detectives across German and French crime narratives
are subject to cultural asymmetries, stereotypes, and mechanisms of social
exclusion, their representation can differ markedly from series to series and
at different moments within the story. From observing the characterization
of the television detectives Kader Cherif, Cenk Batu, Erol Birkan and Khalil
Rachedi, I would like to suggest a typology of the figure of the European ethnic
minority detective. Based on observations of representational patterns, I
classify three categories: one that incarnates discourse on acculturation,
another that follows a hybrid cultural belonging, and finally, one that is
deliberately detached from the nation majority’s mores. Together, these
categories put into question the progressive pretensions of the series and
expose major challenges in the representation of ethnicity in European
crime fiction.


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                                                                                  
      The Acculturated Detective
        A prominent characterization of European ethnic minority detectives
      follows the figure of a citizen with strong codes of ethics who is highly
      acculturated in the dominant group at the expense of the minority culture.
      A prime example of this type of detective is the German undercover agent
      Cenk Batu. The series opens with a mission in which he infiltrates the circles
      of Germany’s biggest money launderer as a French entrepreneur. When
      Batu is put face-to-face with this leader, however, he fails to follow his
      superior’s order to execute him and is subsequently placed on a six-moth
      probation. As a remedial assignment, he is requested to go undercover as
      a Turkish ex-convict to investigate a local Turkish criminal ring that his
      superior notes, cannot be done by a ‘blond Hans.’
        Although the federal police reasoning to send Batu to an ethnic enclave
      suggests that Batu has an insider’s understanding, it takes just a few
      scenes to see that aside from his appearance, he holds little attachment
      to received ideas of the Turkish German community. Indeed, unlike the
      rest of the Turkish German characters in the series who are predominantly
      linked to criminal activities and poverty, he does not speak Turkish fluently,
      is not familiar with Turkish food, nor follows Islamic customs as he drinks
      alcohol and is oblivious to the daily prayers when asked by a local visiting his
      simulated Turkish apartment. Moreover, as a secret police agent, Batu not
      only lives in an isolated and modern apartment complex far from the ethnic
      enclave, but he also works exclusively with white colleagues and the series
      only portrays him dating white women. Perhaps the major exceptions to
      his lack of contact with Turkish culture or stereotypes thereof, are Batu’s
      regular chess games with his father that he does in standard German over
      the phone nearing the end of the episodes.
        If Batu’s representation strongly avoids markers of Turkish identity and
      follows an unquestionable integration into German dominant culture, it
      does not ignore how ethnicity intersects the character’s daily experiences.
      In fact, Batu’s assignment to incarnate a former convict living at an ethnic
      enclave serves both as a narrative device that simultaneously challenges
      stereotyped images of ‘thug masculinities’29 attributed to men of colour in
      Germany and denounces ethnic discrimination. At another interrogation
      with Batu, the duo of white detectives, still unaware of his secret mission,
      profile him as a Turkish assassin as one promptly exclaims: ‘You’d even kill
      your sisters if they fool around with Germans, right?’ By featuring ethnic
      prejudice within the police force, the series thus renders a critique of a
      German justice system that would discriminate their suspects on the basis
      of ethnic origin. In her study of Batu, Katharina Hall adds that his position
      as an undercover agent limits significantly his authority in the series
      and places him in an ‘insider-outsider’ role that is invisible to the public
      within the narrative and in an isolated position within the police structure


130                                  Luna-Dubois, Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives

represented by his white German chief and colleagues.30
  A similar representation can be found in the German television series
Sinan Toprak ist der Unbestechliche (RTL/ORF 1, 1999, 2001-2002) whose
eponymous Turkish German detective (Erol Sander) has been analysed as
showing very few references to his ethnic background to the extent that
actor himself commented that he had played ‘more German than the
Germans.’31 Michele Mattson’s analysis of Tatort’s first Yugoslavia-born
German detective, Ivo Batic, also notes that his depiction as a blue eyed
detective with an impeccable Bavarian accent and complete integration
into German culture detached him significantly for the foreign criminals
he chased and concluded that ‘“ethnicity” (however problematic the
term) is allowed only insofar as it does not go beyond this secondary,
well-circumscribed limit.’32 A more recent example can be Tatort Kiel’s
Turkish German detective Mila Sahin (Almila Bagriacik), whose ethnicity
and family background are unaddressed in the series aside from her
name and in the actress’s interviews mentioning her character’s Turkish
ethnicity. In German literature, Jakob Arjourni’s private investigator Kemal
Kayankaya could be considered an acculturated detective as he was
adopted by a white family and consequently, lacks a connection to Turkish
culture other than his race. By relying on Stephen Soitos’s definition of
the ‘ethnic detective’ as one marked by ethnoracial tropes,33 Sandra
Beck goes as far as calling Kayankaya an ‘inadequate representative of
the ethnic detective.’ However, she admits that Kayankaya does possess
a ‘double consciousness detection,’ which emphasizes the character’s
dissociation from both German and Turkish cultures.34 Similar detectives
are also present in French crime fiction. For example, Hassiba Lassoued
qualified Mo Loumani, the Franco-Maghrebi protagonist of Commissaire
Bastille as ‘a whitewashed character who had no remaining trace of his
Maghrebi cultural heritage.’35 It could be suggested that the detective Lila
Gloanec (Nozha Khouadra) of the series Sur le fil (France 2, 2007-2010)
also downplays her Maghrebi culture with the exception of her son who
joins a radical Islamic group. Novelist Jean-Christophe Grange’s Franco-
Maghrebi detective, Karim Abdouf, parallels Kayankaya since he was
raised in an orphanage and consequently has no attachment to Maghrebi
culture. While these characters defy stereotypes and assumptions about
ethnic minorities, their representation also exposes the importance of
representing cultural markers falling outside of dominant codes.



The Culturally Hybrid Detective
  Other ethnic minority detectives can appear as having strong cultural
connections to their minority culture while still being integrated into their
nation’s majority culture. A pertinent example of this type of detective is
Kader Cherif. In contrast to Cenk Batu, Cherif is a Lyons local and captain


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                                                                                  
      of a police squad who speaks fluent in Algerian Arabic (although he only
      speaks it briefly while singing at home and other succinct scenes). He is
      also very close to his mother, who frequently calls him over the phone in
      an accented standard French and frequently sends him Algerian dishes.
      Cherif’s house is carefully decorated with Maghrebi paintings and often
      drinks Oriental tea with his guests. When in duty, he holds a strong sense
      of ethnics and, unlike his white partner, he rarely carries a gun. He also
      has a friendly relation with his Jewish ex-wife and is a carrying father of his
      teenage daughter.
        Later in the series, it is revealed that he joined the police force partly
      because he wanted to be different from his convicted money counterfeiter
      father, but also because he was an avid fan of American crime series such
      as Columbo and Kojak. It is noteworthy that on nearly every episode, Cherif
      makes direct references to American ethnic crime fiction such as the poster
      of Shaft that decorates his office, illustrating further his hybrid culture. The
      series even includes a crossover episode36 in which Cherif meets Starsky
      & Hutch’s African American detective Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas). These
      connections to American ethnic crime fiction may reflect the attested
      inclination of French racialized minorities to look towards Anglophone
      popular culture to compensate for the limited cultural diversity in French
      television.37
        Cherif’s cultural hybridity has also been subject to critique. Annabelle
      Laurent criticized his characterization by comparing him to the black British
      detective Luther (Idris Elba) whose ethnicity is minimally discussed aside
      of a set of clichés.38 In his review of the series, Franco-Maghrebi journalist
      Redwane Telha notes that while he was happy to finally see a French TV
      series character who ‘looks like him,’ he did not feel as connected as he
      would be with American minority characters:

               There’s something that bothers me about the character. I
               talked to my friends –Arabs and non-Arabs – who had the same
               impression. In fact, we don’t believe in this Arab cop. He is not
               realistic enough to represent anything. And this lack of realism
               I find it unfortunately in every Arab character on French TV.39

        This interpretation emphasizes that although the representation of Cherif
      includes more cultural traits than the proposed acculturated detective,
      viewers may still find him unrealistic or even insensitive to experiences
      of the Maghrebi minority in France. Yet, some considerations should be
      made when drawing conclusions about hybrid detectives because their
      hybrid character development can be modifiable. In the case of Cherif, it
      must be acknowledged that as the series unfolded into later seasons, the
      protagonist’s ethnicity and family history are further explored. For example,
      the fourth season’s episode ‘La Mort de Kader Cherif,’ directed by Franco-
      Algerian filmmaker Akim Isker, centres on a fantastic storyline that is
      ignited by the ghost of one of Cherif’s Amazigh ancestors. Similarly, since


132                                  Luna-Dubois, Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives

the fifth season, his mother stops being simply a voice on the phone as
Cenk Batu’s father and becomes the recurring character of Salima Cherif
(Tassadit Mandi). Such changes in the series might suggest that longevity
could help solve some representational issues of hybrid detectives.
  In German television, the detective Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) from Bruder-
Schwarze Macht (ZDF, 2017) follows a similar hybrid representation. Indeed,
she is a successful police officer who is able to maintain her links to Turkish
culture as she occasionally speaks in Turkish to her daughter, practices
Islam and wears an Islamic headscarf in several scenes at a mosque or
in a funeral. It is noteworthy that the series contrasts Sibel with her young
brother who is involved in a radical Islamic group, arguably positioning her
as a model minority. In German literature, this type of detective resonates
well with Su Turhan’s Turkish German detective Zeki Demirbilek who is
presented as perfectly integrated into German dominant culture, while also
speaking Turkish fluently and being well acquainted with both cultures.
Demirbilek has been analysed as an idealized characterization of Turkish
German detective because he only embraces aspects of Turkish culture
that are not threatening to the dominant culture.40 It thus sets this type of
detective as a model of successful hybridity and cultural integration whilst
demonstrating the limits of representing cultural difference in European
crime narratives.



The Unorthodox Detective
  A third variation of the European ethnic minority detective are those who
do not strictly follow dominant culture’s codes and instead, decide to play
by their own set of rules. Such characterizations tend to occur when the
investigators challenge their justice system because they deem it corrupt
or unfair. One of such characters is the Turkish German detective Erol
Birkan (Fahri Yardım) from Dogs of Berlin who is an openly gay police
investigator from the Berlin’s drug squad. In a similar scenario to Cenk
Batu’s undercover investigation, Birkan is assigned the investigation of
the murder of a Turkish German football player because the homicide
unit needs a ‘Turk’ for communication purposes. Birkan initially rejects
the assignment because he prefers to investigate a drug trafficking ring
affecting the marginalized community where he grew up. As the story
unfolds, it is revealed that Birkan grew up in the ethnic enclave where the
Tarik-Amir mafia operates and was bullied as a child by its members. As
soon as the mafia murders his life mentor and is beaten by a group of men
who he thinks are from that mafia, Birkan agrees to join the police squad,
thereby holding a personal motive to carry the investigation.
  Contrary to Batu or the short scenes of Cherif speaking Arabic, Birkan
speaks Turkish fluently in several scenes and is well known in the Turkish
German neighbourhood. While his work ethics and moral codes are


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                                                                                 
      generally strong, he falls from protocol when he tracks the phone of a
      teenager who befriends the mafia, and ultimately, accepts a deal with his
      unethical white partner to break his official police oath and not denounce a
      Neo-Nazi leader so that he and his partner could receive federal funds to
      combat Berlin’s organised crime.
         Another character fitting this type of detective is the Franco-Maghrebi
      detective Khalil Rachedi (Tahar Rahim) from the Franco-British series
      The Last Panthers. Like Birkan, Rachedi is assigned to investigate an
      international diamond heist because he is a former petty criminal hailing
      from a Marseilles ethnic enclave. Similarly, the detective is teamed with
      a corrupt white chief investigator who removes him from the assignment
      as soon as he tracks relevant information about the crime. Working
      against the system, Rachedi conducts a counter investigation along with
      his criminal brother Mokhtar. With Mokhtar, he intimidates criminals in
      order to expose his partner’s corruption. However, his unorthodox strategy
      crumbles when his colleague is murdered and learns that his brother was
      also collaborating with the crime ring. At the end of the series, Rachedi
      breaks his ties with his brother, signalling his choice of moral duty over
      personal agendas.
         Other representations of unconventional detectives can be found in
      novelist Lakhdar Belaïd’s Franco-Maghrebi detective duo of Lieutenant
      Bensalem and journalist Karim Khoja who, against the white anti-terrorist
      police’s orders, launch their own investigation on a local terrorist cell.
      The tenth season of Profilage (TF1, 2009-) depicts the unorthodox lead
      investigator of colour, Elisa Bergman (Tamara Marthe), who in a theft
      gone wrong is mistaken for a criminal psychologist at the police station
      where her uncle happens to be the police chief. Bergman’s detection is
      characterized precisely by her disobedience of orders.
         The unorthodox ethnic minority detective is also prominent in comic
      crime fiction. We may think, for example, of the foolish and inept detective,
      lieutenant Khalid Belkacem (Booder), in Djamel Bensalah’s comic crime
      film Beur sur la ville (2011) who is assigned a major homicide investigation
      simply because of a new affirmative action initiative at the national police
      level. His incompetence prevents him to follow orders, but ultimately his
      ruses help solve the major crime. In British crime fiction, Stephen Knight
      sees a similar comic unorthodox detective in Joe Sixsmith, who he considers
      to be more of a comic character narrating lower-middle-class life than
      a crime-focused detective of multiracial Britain.41 All these characters
      counter the previous representational types discussed with regard to their
      relation to dominant culture while simultaneously criticize justice systems
      and occasionally, the crime genre itself.




134                                 Luna-Dubois, Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives

Shaping the European Ethnic
Minority Detective
  In addition to the proposed typology, the four characters share several
storylines and visual imagery that problematize further what it means to
be a detective of colour in French and German television. The existence of
such patterns hints that even though crime series have opened new roles
to minorities in these European television cultures, they are still confronted
to forms of typecasting, stereotypes, and tropes that continue to evolve into
new representational processes.
  In her analysis of Cenk Batu, Berna Gueneli notes that the recurrence
of shower scenes exposing the character’s athletic naked body function
as exoticizing and eroticizing moments of voyeurism directed at the ethnic
Other.42 This eroticized ethnicization, she argues, puts into question the
perceived social progress in casting ethnic minorities in lead investigator
roles. The characterization of the Cherif who frequently flirts with most
female characters also seems to follow such a sexualization as seen in a
series review: ‘[…] he is a charming charmer, charmed by his strict partner,
who is also attracted to him.’43
  Family links to criminality and violence are widely recurrent among the
studied French and German ethnic minority detectives. With the exception
of Batu, in whose case little is known about his family, all the selected
detectives have an explicitly criminal or violent male parent. Cherif’s father
and Khalil’s brother are unemployed former convicts who, in the course
of the series, betray the protagonists, while Birkan’s father is a practicing
Muslim homophobe estranged from his family. As previously noted, the
German series Bruder-Schwarze Macht and Sur le fil also include stories
of women detectives of colour with a relative who joins a radical Islamic
group. Profilage’s Elisa Bergman is also haunted by her criminal past and
her convicted ex-lover. The majority of the series studied, then, seem to
ultimately embrace a narrative of reformed exceptional minorities-within-
minorities saved by the justice system.
  It is noteworthy that the displayed romantic relations of all ethnic
minority detectives studied as well as those in the series Sinan Tropak,
Profilages, Bruder-Schwarze Macht and Sur Le fil are exclusively with
white characters belonging to the nation majority’s culture. I must stress
that in the mixed-couple scenes, ethnic difference is seldom evoked, thus
putting into question the series’ active engagement with discourse on race
and multiculturalism. According to Catherine Squires, interracial couples
in television have the potential to function as a post-racial aesthetic device
that integrates a cast and brings racial controversy and difference to the
small screens, but often do so by disregarding institutionalized racist
regimes.44 This trend could also be understood as forms of ‘symbolic
multiculturalism,’ which consists of strategic content diversification in


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      order to satisfy inclusion demands while preserving the cultural hegemony
      of the dominant cultural group.45
        The presence of all these representational patterns in the selected
      series is a complex issue, and one which is bounded by competing
      factors. Certainly, it cannot be overlooked that biased representations
      relate to racist violence of early and recent European history. As Tore
      Björgo and Rob Witte note, since the 1980s, Europe has seen increased
      waves of nationalism, ethnocentrism, and racism, which has influenced
      the representation of non-white minorities in public discourse and media
      as threats and causes of socio-economic problems and crime.46 Studies
      on German media and crime fiction indeed confirm that ethnic minority
      characters, and especially Turkish Germans, are often presented as
      foreigners47, immigrants48, thugs49 and terrorists in post-11 September
      media.50 Angela Kimyongür also relates negative representations of ethnic
      and religious minorities in French crime literature and media to pervasive
      colonial literary tropes.51
        Without minimising the role of racism and colonial heritage in the
      representation of detectives of colour, I believe it is important to address
      some patterns from other perspectives that account for the complexity of
      the audio-visual medium. For example, one dynamic that could partially
      explain constructions such as the acculturated detective or the series’
      reluctance to represent prominent markers of ethnicity or superficial
      representations of interethnic couples, is indeed the imprint of the
      European pretence of colour-blind citizenship. Here, such a narrative and
      aesthetic strategy, although far from unproblematic, could be alleged to be
      in place in order to eschew communitarian structures and promote social
      equality within the characters and among viewers.
        Beyond ideological considerations, broader discussions of commercial
      trends in French and German mainstream television should also be
      considered. The observed erotization imposed to the detectives of colour,
      for instance, correlates with studies showing the over-sexualization
      of ethnic minorities in both television cultures.52 Mainstream viewer’s
      preferences have also been evoked in the discussion of the absence of
      ‘foreign-sounding’ titles of French crime television series. Screenwriter
      Luc Fouliard notes that marketing strategies of French productions seem
      to favour titles that include either common or familiar names and words,
      such as Navarro (one of the five most common surnames in French Algeria),
      Julie Lescaut (echoing the classic novel, Manon Lescaut) or Falco (echoing
      the French word for falcon), and systematically discourage non-European
      names because they are deemed ‘divisive.’53 He links this practice to the
      naming of the crime series Commissariat Bastille [Bastille Police Station]
      which features a Franco-Maghrebi detective, but also of Cherif, which he
      associates with the English term ‘sheriff.’54
        Other representational patterns might be better explained by considering
      broadcasting limitations and concerns of European mass media. For


136                                Luna-Dubois, Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives

example, studies on European television have previously attributed the
avoidance, or at least the moderation of scenes of racial intolerance, as
an effort to prevent viewer emulation.55 Within the context of Western
European broadcasters, the series’ limited engagement with discussions
of race and ethnicity could also reflect European hesitations to follow
formats imported from American series featuring ethnic minorities.56
Such a practice could thus constitute a way to avoid the Americanization of
content, which is a matter of constant debate in European media policies
against cultural homogenization.57
  When considering all these commercial and ideological limitations
together, the figure of the European detective of colour becomes that
of a character closely intertwined with societal discourse and audio-
visual conventions. If in literature John Ball defines the ethnic detective
as ‘someone who appears as a minority representative in the eyes of the
reader,’58 in television, it could be argued that it is also a representative
of national, regional, and global discussions about diversity, which are
constantly evolving. Indeed, the four detectives studied are heroes whose
representation is inherently unstable and unfinished, and inevitably,
conjure issues of authenticity. By ‘authentic’ I am referring to the subjective
standards by which minority or mainstream viewers may measure the
characters’ ethnicity or their detective status itself. Whether German or
French, the European detective of colour seems to be a catalyst for societal
debate but also full of representational possibilities.



Towards a Narrative
of a Postmigrant Europe?
  Although the studied detectives embody stereotypes and biases, there
are aspects in the series that point towards the weakening and overcoming
of othering categories of French and German societies. Such subversive
moments do not embrace post-racial ideologies or symbolic multicultural
policies, but rather a postmigrant perspective that describes a historical
condition in which migration and social plurality are central to everyday life
in Europe. The concept of Postmigration describes a new type of society
that emerges when dominant narratives acknowledge the reality of being
a site of migration rooted in social diversity.59 Here, migration becomes
a twofold trigger concept that simultaneously conveys a metanarrative
of social division as well as acts as currency of social diversity, which
emphasizes the heterogeneity of individuals as an essential condition.60
It stresses, above all, that such a society as a whole has and continues
to experience migration, not only those who have actually migrated. As
a result, its members are said to be no longer predominantly defined by
‘native-migrant’ binaries or by race and ethnicity, but rather, by political


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                                                                                  
      attitudes and ideologies towards plurality, heterogeneity, migration, and
      diversity. Far from being a utopia, postmigrant societies are characterized
      by multiple conflicts, debates, and negotiations that arise as societies
      struggle with coming into terms with social plurality.61
        If I resort to the concept of postmigrant societies to analyse the European
      series, it is because they all evoke two central questions of Postmigration.
      First, a theoretical one, about how to think of the ambivalences and
      ambiguities on national identity in societies where migration is no longer
      regarded as an exceptional event;62 and second, the practical one of how
      cultural artifacts can contribute to a better understanding of sociomaterial
      transformations brought about by former and ongoing migrations.63
      Certainly, the scenes of discrimination against the detectives of colour as
      well as the controversies surrounding their representation remind us of
      the social struggles taking place in France and Germany, but they can also
      reflect broader issues of contemporary Europe. In fact, they can also be
      analysed as narratives of European societies fraught with challenges and
      exchanges that occur upon the recognition of the evolvement of cultural
      diversity in society. After all, although the series present their protagonists’
      identity as unbalanced, they do so without putting into question their
      belonging to their national cultures.
        It is notable that the crime series’ inclusion of ethnic minority lead
      detectives in their thirties and forties also shows a clear change from 1980s
      and 1990s French and German crime fiction, which had predominantly
      centred on younger or immigrant minority characters. Similarly, none of
      the detectives seem to be confronted with tropes of ‘culture of solidarity’
      with other minorities nor live in societies without ethnic conflict. All the
      protagonists face complex relations with their ethnic community as seen in
      Birkan’s conflict with the local mafia or Rachedi’s rejection of his criminal
      brother. The white majority society is also represented as heterogenous,
      especially in regard to accepting cultural diversity. European whites include
      on the one hand, the protagonists’ lovers, friends, and colleagues who
      accept plurality in their European societies, but on the other, the Berlin
      Neo-Nazis or the soldier who tells Cherif that if French politicians would
      have ‘left the army’s hands free’ during the French-Algerian War, ‘he would
      be playing less smart.’64 The crime series show precisely contradictory
      societies that at times reject and accept plurality.



      Conclusion
        In this article, I have highlighted the role that typologies and narrative
      tropes play in the representation of ethnic minorities in a selection of
      French and German crime television series. More specifically, I showed
      that despite the presence of lead investigators of colour, they remain
      marked by known stereotypes and topoi that have been used to portray


138                                  Luna-Dubois, Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives

ethnic minorities. Thorough reflections of ethnic difference continue to
be limited in these television cultures, an aspect that casts doubt on the
effectiveness of the productions’ diversity initiatives. Despite these issues,
the progress that the characters bring to European screens cannot be
underestimated: they offer identificatory figures for minority and majority
audiences and attests changes between the ‘us’ and ‘the others’ that have
long defined Europe’s self-understanding.
  The representational shortcomings and arguable successes of the
selected series propose that it is through processes of cultural negotiation,
hybridity, and conflict that new understandings of Europe and Europeans can
emerge. But my study also contributes to the bigger question of how crime
fiction scholarship can partake in the processes of social transformation
that characterize postmigrant societies. As Regina Römhild pointedly
notes, critical migration research has been traditionally understood as
‘research about migrants, which has produced a ‘migrantology’ that is
capable of little more than illustrating othering ascriptions.65 She suggests
to shift our perspectives towards ‘demigrantising’ migration research
while ‘migrantising’ research into culture and society.66 Although critical
studies on the so-called ethnic detective have been invaluable to identify
representational patterns across the European series, they also forge a
‘migrantological’ approach that places the detectives at the margins of
European crime fiction. By analysing the protagonists of Cherif, Dogs of
Berlin, The Last Panthers, and Tatort Hambourg as French or German
detectives whose representation and stories inscribe in major dynamics
of their respective European television and literary cultures, this study
stresses how crime series offer a rich field for critical examinations of the
ambivalences and changes of European postmigrant societies.




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Notes
 1
     The research presented here has been financed by the research project DETECt — Detecting
Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives (Horizon 2020, 2018–2021) [Grant
agreement number 770151].
  2
    Fatima El Tayeb, European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe (Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 2011), p. xxvii.
  3
    Cf. Alec Hargreaves and Antonio Perotti, ‘The representation on French television of immigrants
and ethnic minorities of third World origin’, New Community, 19.2 (1993), 251–261; Jessika Ter Wal,
‘Introduction’, in Racism and Cultural Diversity in the Mass Media (Vienna: European Monitoring
Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, 2002), pp.11–26; Jakob-Moritz Eberl et al., ‘The European
Media Discourse on Immigration and its Effects: a Literature Review’, Annals of the International
Communication Association, 42.3 (2018), 207–223; Katharina Hall, Crime Fiction in German: Der
Krimi (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016).
  4
     Sylvie Dumerlat, ‘The Algerian War and its Afterlives Painted Noir in Sérail Killers by Lakhdar
Belaïd: Beur Literature or Roman Noir?’, Expressions Maghrébines, 7.1 (2008), 148–158, (p. 142–143).
  5
     Claire Gorrara, The Roman Noir in Post-War French Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003), p. 92.
  6
    Stephen Soitos, Blues Detective: A Study of African American Detective Fiction (Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press, 1996), p. 33.
  7
    Axel Stähler, ‘Screaming “Black” Murder: Crime Fiction and the Construction of Ethnic Identities’,
English Studies, 100.1 (2019), 43–62 (p. 43).
  8
    Ivi, p. 60.
  9
     Stephen Knight, Crime Fiction 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity (New York: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2004), p. 187.
  10
     Durmelat, p.156.
  11
     Novotny Lawrence, Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre (New York: Routledge,
2008), p. 29.
  12
     Gina Macdonald and Andrew Macdonald, ‘Ethnic Detectives in Popular Fiction: New Directions for
an American Genre’, in Multicultural Detective Fiction: Murder from the “Other” Side, ed. by Adrienne
Johnson Gosselin (New York: Garland, 1999), p. 60.
  13
     Cf. Sam Neath, ‘Loftier Ideals? France, Big Brother, and the Banlieues’, Contemporary French
and Francophone Studies, 8.2 (2004), 13541; Éric Macé, ‘La Fiction télévisuelle française au miroir
de The Wire’, Réseaux, 5.1 (2013) 179–204.
  14
     Ginette Vincendeau, ‘From the Margins to the Center: French Stardom and Ethnicty’, in A Companion
to Contemporary French Cinema, ed. by Alistair Fox, Michel Marie and Raphaëlle Moine (Chichester:
John Willey & Sons, 2015), pp. 1279–1334, (p. 1291).
  15
     Ibidem.
  16
      Michelle Mattson, ‘Tatort: The Generation of Public Identity in a German Crime Series’, New
German Critique, 78.1 (1999), 161–81, (p. 169).
  17
     Vera Alexander, ‘Investigating the Motif of Crime as Transcultural Border Crossing: Cinnamon
Gardens and The Sand Glass’, in Postcolonial Postmortems: Crime Fiction from a Transcultural
Perspective, ed. by Christine Matzke and Susanne Muehleisen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), pp.139–
160, (p. 142).


140                                                     Luna-Dubois, Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives

  18
     Kerry Dune, ‘Detecting Identity: Reading the Clues in German Language Crime Fiction by Klüpfel
and Kobr and Steinfest’, in Detectives, Dystopias, and Poplit: Studies in Modern German Genre
Fiction, ed. by Bruce P. Campbell and Allison Guenther-Pal (New York: Camden House, 2014), p. 154.
  19
     Ivi, p. 159.
  20
     Monika Mueller and Dorothea Fischer-Hornung, Sleuthing Ethnicity: The Detective in Multiethnic
Crime Fiction (London: Associated University Press, 2003), p. 299.
  21
     Naika Foroutan, ‘The Post-migrant Paradigm’, in Refugees Welcome: Difference and Diversity in
a Changing Germany, ed. by Jan-Jonathan Bock and Sharon Macdonald (New York: Berghahn Books,
2019), pp. 142–170.
  22
     Claudia Breger,‘Hardboiled Performance and Affective Intimacy: Remediations of Racism in the
Cenk Batu Tatorte’, Transit, 9.2 (2014), 1–19.
  23
      Anon.,‘Un Chérif parmi les flics’, Le Parisien, 13 October 2013, https://www.leparisien.fr/culture-
loisirs/un-cherif-parmi-les-flics-25-10-2013-3257207.php [accessed 10 January 2021].
  24
      Jakob-Moritz Eberl et al., ‘The European Media Discourse on Immigration and its Effects:
ALiterature Review’, Annals of the International Communication Association, 42.3, (2018), 207–223.
  25
     “Les Liens du Sang”, Cherif, S01xE01 (directed by Vincent Giovanni, 2013).
  26
     Auf der Sonnenseite, Tatort Hamburg, E708, (directed by Richard Huber, 2008).
  27
     Cf. Katelyn E. Knox, Race on Display in 20th and 21st Century France (Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2016), p. 14; Boulou Ebanda de B’beri and Fethi Mansouri, ‘Contextualising Multiculturalism
in the Twenty-First Century’, in Global Perspectives on the Politics of Multiculturalism in the 21st
Century (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 2.
  28
     Fatima El Tayeb, European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe (Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 2011), pp. xv-xxix.
  29
     Arlene Teraoka, ‘Detecting Ethnicity: Jakob Arjouni and the Case of the Missing German Detective
Novel’, The German Quarterly, 72.3, (1999), 265–289, (p.270).
  30
     Katharina Hall, Crime Fiction in German: Der Krimi (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016),
p.136.
  31
     Cf. Monika Mueller and Dorothea Fischer-Hornung, ‘Introduction’, in Sleuthing Ethnicity: The
Detective in Multiethnic Crime Fiction, (London: Associated University Press, 2003), pp. xvii-xxii.
  32
      Michelle Mattson, ‘Tatort: The Generation of Public Identity in a German Crime Series’, New
German Critique, 78.1 (1999), 161–81, (p. 172).
  33
     Soitos suggests four tropes prominent in the representation of African American detection: a black
detective persona socially and politically aware of racial prejudice, double-consciousness detection,
the presence of vernaculars and ethnic signfiers such as hoodoo. Cf. Stephen Soitos, Blues Detective:
A Study of African American Detective Fiction (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).
  34
     Sandra Beck, ‘Blood, Sweat, and Fears: Investigation the Other in Contemporary German Crime
Fiction’, in Contemporary German Crime Fiction, ed. by Thomas W. Kniesche (Boston: De Gruyter,
2019), pp. 197–198.
  35
      Hassiba Lassoued, ‘Le Français d’origine maghrébine face au prisme médiatique’, Présence
Francophone, 65.1 (2005), 150–167, (p. 159).
  36
     “Quand Cherif rencontre Huggy”, Cherif, S05xE07 (directed by Karim Ouaret, 2018).
  37
     Kathryn Kleppinger and Laura Reeck, Post-Migratory Cultures in Postcolonial France (Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 2018), p. 6.
  38
     Annabelle Laurent, ‘Chérif, le nouveau flic “cool” de France 2’, 20 Minutes, 22 October 2013,
https://www.20minutes.fr/television/1240163-20131022-20131022-cherif-nouveau-flic-cool-


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                                                                                                       
france-2 [accessed 20 February 2021]
  39
     Telha Redwane, ‘Cherif, fais-moi beur’, France Inter, 5 January 2018, https://www.franceinter.fr/
emissions/capture-d-ecrans/capture-d-ecrans-05-janvier-2018 [accessed 20 January 2021].
  40
     Katharina Hall, Crime Fiction in German: Der Krimi, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016), p.
100.
  41
      Stephen Knight, Crime Fiction 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity (New York: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2004), p. 187.
  42
      Berna Gueneli, ‘Mehmet Kurtulus and Birol Ünel: Sexualized Masculinities, Normalized
Ethnicities’, in Turkish German Cinema in the New Millennium: Sites, Sounds, and Screens, ed. by
Sabine Hake and Barbara Mennel, (New York: Berghahn, 2012), p.136–148, (p. 136).
  43
     Isabelle Morini-Bosc, ‘La Série Chérif est un miracle’, RTL, 15 January 2016, https://www.rtl.fr/
culture/medias-people/la-serie-cherif-est-un-miracle-7781378446, [accessed 20 Janurary 2021]
  44
     Catherine Squires, The Post-Racial Mystique: Media and Race in the Twenty-First Century (New
York: New York University Press, 2014), p. 105.
  45
     Michele Wallace, ‘The Search for the Good Enough Mammy: Multiculturalism, Popular Culture
and Psychoanalysis’, in Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader, ed. by David Goldberg (Cambridge:
Blackwell, 1994), pp. 259–268.
  46
     Tore Björgo and Rob Witte, Racist Violence in Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 2.
  47
      Margaret Sutherland, ‘Images of Turks in Recent German Fiction: A Comparative Case Study
in Xenophobia’, in The Foreign in International Crime Fiction: Transcultural Representations, ed.
by Jean Anderson, Carolina Miranda and Barbara Pezzotti (London: Continuum, 2012), pp.188–199,
(p.189).
  48
     Katharina Hall, Crime Fiction in German: Der Krimi (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016), p.
12.
  49
     Arlene Teraoka, p. 270.
  50
     Claudia Breger, ‘Hardboiled Performance and Affective Intimacy: Remediations of Racism in the
Cenk Batu Tatorte’, Transit, 9.2 (2014), 1–19.
  51
     Angela Kimyongür, ‘Social Conflict in the Contemporary French Roman Noir’, Australian Journal
of Crime Fiction, 1.1 (2015), 1–11.
  52
      Cf. Mehammed Amadeus Mack, Sexagon: Muslims, France and the Sexualization of National
Culture, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), p. 244; Berna Gueneli, ‘Mehmet Kurtulus and
Birol Ünel: Sexualized Masculinities, Normalized Ethnicities’, in Turkish German Cinema in the
New Millennium: Sites, Sounds, and Screens, ed. by Sabine Hake and Barbara Mennel, (New York:
Berghahn, 2012), pp. 136–148; Nicki Hitchcott, ‘Calixthe Beyala: Black face(s) on French TV’, Modern
& Contemporary France, 12.4 (2004), 473–482.
  53
     Luc Fouliard, Le scénario de A à Z, (La Madeleine: Lettmotif, 2018), pp. 250–251.
  54
     Ivi, p. 251.
  55
     Tore Björgo, ‘Role of the Media in Racist Violence’, in Racist Violence in Europe, ed. by Tore Björgo
and Robe Witte (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 99.
  56
     Imports and adaptations of American productions such as reality shows have played an important
role in the representation of visible minorities in Western European television, where they were
historically less prominent in television series as opposed to documentaries, news coverage, and film.
In France, researchers and the broadcasting regulatory body, the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel
(CSA), have noted that American productions offer the largest site of visible minorities in French
television, an observation that also resonates with studies on German media. Cf. Timothy Havens,



142                                                       Luna-Dubois, Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives

Black Television Travels: African American Media Around the Globe (NewYork: New York University
Press, 2013); Magali Nayrac, ‘La question de la représentation des minorités dans les médias, ou le
champ médiatique comme révélateur d’enjeux sociopolitiques contemporains,’ Cahiers de l’Urmis,
13.1, (2011), 1–17; Marie-France Malonga, Qui a peur de la télévision en couleurs? (Montreuil: Aux
lieux d’être, 2007); Damani Partridge, ‘Occupying American “Black” Bodies and Reconfiguring
European Spaces-The Possibilities for Noncitizen Articulations in Berlin and Beyond’, in Transforming
Anthropology 21, 1.1 (2013), 41–56; Margreth Lünenborg and Elfriede Fürsich, ‘Media and the
Intersectional Other, Feminist Media Studies’, 14.6 (2014), 959–975.
  57
     Eli Noam, Television in Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 27.
  58
     John Dudley Ball, The Mystery Story (San Diego: University of California Press, 1976).
  59
     Naika Foroutan, p.155.
  60
     Ivi, p.153.
  61
      Riem Spielhaus, ‘Studien in der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft: Eine Kritische Ausein-
andersetzung’, in Kongressdokumentation 4. Bundesfachkongress Interkultur, Hamburg 2012, ed.
by Marius Koniarczyck, Claudia Niemeyer, Natascha Tomchuk and Anja Turner, (2014), 96–100.
(p.96–97).
  62
     Naika Foroutan, p. 152.
  63
      Anne Ring Petersen and Moritz Schramm, ‘(Post-)Migration in the Age of Globalisation: New
Challenges to Imagination and Representation’, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 9.2 (2017), 1-12 (p. 2).
  64
     “Code d’honneur”, Cherif, S02xE04 (directed by Vincent Giovanni, 2015).
  65
     Regina Römhild, ‘Beyond the Bounds of the Ethnic: For Postmigrant Cultural and Social Research’,
  Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 9.2 (2017), 69–75 (p. 73).
  66
     Ivi.




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