Midsomer Murders: A Nostalgic Construction of Englishness in Caroline Graham’s The Killings at Badger’s Drift
James Moore 267662 MA Thesis English Language and Culture School of Humanities University of Eastern Finland May 2020
Philosophical Faculty School of Humanities
Tekijät – Author
James Kristinn Moore
Työn nimi – Title
Midsomer Murders: A Nostalgic Construction of Englishness in Caroline Graham’s The Killings at Badger’s Drift
Pääaine – Main subject Työn laji – Level Päivämäärä – Date Sivumäärä – Number of pages
English Language and Culture
Pro gradu -tutkielma X
May 2020 87
Sivuainetutkielma Kandidaatin tutkielma Aineopintojen tutkielma Tiivistelmä – Abstract
This thesis explores the nostalgic construction of Englishness in both the novel and TV adaptation of Caroline Graham’s The Killings at Badger’s Drift. The series is set in rural and village locations with urban settings conspicuously absent. I posit that “place” is being utilised to idealise the past rather than “time” as would be conventional of a period piece. As such, the series is able to project an idealised image of contemporary England and English society through the microcosm of the village. This constructed image calls upon idealised notions of rural life that are nostalgic for an authentic English society defined by a sense of community and connection to nature.
My analysis is supported by theories on nostalgia by Svetlana Boym, Aaron Santesso, and Nicholas Dames, among others, who establish the subjective nature of nostalgia and suggest that it is a longing for an imagined time or place. Santesso also points out that there is a literary tradition of using tropes to elicit emotional responses. I call upon theories of nation and national identity by Anthony Smith, Friedrich Meinecke, and Benedict Anderson who provide a framework for understanding Englishness as an identity. I then explore some of the discourse surrounding the rural-urban dichotomy from Raymond Williams, Howard Newby, and David Matless, and employ Fredric Jameson’s theory of “pastiche” to understand the consumption of rural nostalgia. Lastly, I consider Judith Butler’s theory of performativity as a framework for understanding national identity as a performance. I study notions of an English gentleman as an example of performativity and suggest that this is a symbol of idealised English performance.
My analysis is divided into two key aspects: idealised performativity, and the nostalgic village. I apply the theory of performativity to the key characters DCI Barnaby and the victim Emily Simpson, to demonstrate their idealised performances of Englishness; I then examine how the performance of class is important in the novel and positioned as an accepted social structure. I explore the English village as a literary trope and pay particular attention to the idealised community. Lastly, I examine how the novel employs a narrative technique that mimics gossip to convey social norms grounded in the traditions of Christian ideology.
My analysis reveals that both the novel and TV series idealise the village lifestyle and portray a romanticised image of England and English society. However, the novel holds conservative positions on social structure, with thinly veiled criticism for the aspirant and upwardly mobile working class. However, the TV series abandons class discourse and instead focuses on the performance of English eccentricity and the visual pastiche of the English countryside.
Avainsanat – Keywords
Midsomer Murders, Caroline Graham, Englishness, nostalgia, performativity, gossip, class, English village, rural landscape
1. Introduction ... 1
1.1 Aims and Structure ... 2
1.2 Previous Research on the Midsomer Murders Series ... 3
2. Constructing a Nostalgic Englishness ... 6
2.1 Nostalgia ... 7
2.2 Nation and Englishness ... 13
2.3 Idealising the English Village... 22
2.4 Constructing Identity and Idealised Performativity... 31
3. Nostalgic Englishness in The Killings at Badger’s Drift ... 38
3.1 Idealised Performativity ... 38
3.1.1 DCI Tom Barnaby ... 40
3.1.2 Miss Emily Simpson ... 50
3.1.3 Class and Imitation Class: Henry Trace and the Rainbirds ... 55
3.2 The Nostalgic Village ... 61
3.2.1 The English Village as a Literary Trope ... 62
3.2.2 Expressing Social Norms through Gossip ... 69
4. Conclusion ... 76
Bibliography ... 80
Appendix 1 ... 87
1. Introduction
Midsomer Murders has proven itself an enduring TV series by running for twenty-three years to date and with well over one hundred episodes broadcast. The novels have also been successful; the first novel, The Killings at Badger’s Drift, was included in the Crime Writer’s Association’s top 100 crime novels of all time in 1990. I will focus my analysis on this novel and its adaptation to screen, as this story has set the formula for the whole series. It is my intention to emphasise the continuity between the novel and the TV series rather than identify the differences that inherently arise in adaptations. To clarify, in this thesis, I will differentiate the novel and the TV series by referring to them specifically as “the novel” or
“the TV series”, but the “Midsomer Murders series” or in brevity “the series” will refer to the whole franchise which comprises of both the novel and the TV series.
In 2011, the then producer Brian True-May, claimed that the Midsomer Murders TV series was “the last bastion of Englishness” and controversy erupted over his qualifying remark that the show “wouldn’t work” if it featured ethnic minorities. While much of the debate was framed around the racialised construction of Englishness in his remarks, less attention was given to other aspects that construct a nostalgic sense of Englishness. I would posit that the continued success of the TV series following the introduction of ethnic minority characters after this controversy is evidence that ethnic homogeneity was not a dominant attraction of the fictitious Midsomer county. Moreover, the success of the series has continued for close to a decade after the retirement of actor John Nettles as DCI Barnaby, who had been the much-loved star of the TV series since its inception.
A key feature of the series has always been the rural and village setting, and I would suggest that this has material significance in light of True-May’s declaration of the series as a bastion of Englishness. The binary opposite of the rural village is the urban city, and given
that roughly 80% of the UK population resides in an urban area, I would suggest that there is perhaps an allure for the English village as a desired or idealised “other”. My contention is that the Midsomer Murders series constructs a nostalgic sense of Englishness by idealising the rural village as a site for a lost sense of community and a lost connection with nature.
Accounting for the international popularity of the series, I would suggest that this particular nostalgic form of Englishness has a universal appeal because it is rooted in a desire to escape aspects of modernity and return to an authentic life with better connections to community and environment. Key to my analysis will be theories of nostalgia presented by Svetlana Boym, as well as adopting suggestions put forth by others that nostalgia relates to dislocation and idealisation. Pivotal to understanding the idealisation of the English village will be insights into the urban-rural dichotomy and its historical context; and I will be addressing the concept of nation through Anthony Smith among others, and the performance of nation through Judith Butler’s theory of performativity.
1.1 Aims and Structure
The aim of this thesis is to explore the nostalgic construction of Englishness in both the novel and the TV adaption of The Killing’s at Badger’s Drift. While this aim presupposes that there is a nostalgic construction of Englishness in the series, I anticipate that my analysis will reveal how certain elements work together to project a particular image of England and English society that can be demonstrated as nostalgic by way of their idealisation of the past.
Chapter 2 outlines the theory that I will apply to my analysis. I have divided the chapter into four aspects that pertain to the construction of identity and nostalgia. Section 2.1 explores different approaches and theories of nostalgia and establishes a means of determining if something can be considered nostalgic. In section 2.2, I will discuss
Englishness within the context of nostalgia to put forth my suggestions about the links and causes for a nostalgic sense of Englishness. In section 2.3, I discuss the appeal of English villages as a site for reconnecting with landscape and identity, with particular attention given to community aspects. Section 2.4 explores Judith Butler’s theory of performativity to explain the construction of a cultural identity such as Englishness. I then examine the concept of the English gentleman as an example of idealised performativity which can be applied to the analysis. Together, these four sections explain how nostalgia can be understood and offer insight into how it is constructed, as well as explain the construction of cultural identity in the context of Englishness.
Chapter 3 applies this theory to the analysis of how a nostalgic sense of Englishness has been constructed in both the novel and the TV adaptation of The Killings at Badger’s Drift. I have divided this chapter into two sections with relevant subsections; section 3.1 analyses the idealised performativity of the main characters, as well as how certain performativities are reproved. Section 3.2 focuses on the village as a site for nostalgia by arguing that the village is used as a literary trope to idealise a past way of living. I will also analyse how gossip is employed by the novel as a narrative technique for conveying the social norms of an idealised society.
By way of conclusion, Chapter 4 will demonstrate how the different points from my analysis work together to demonstrate the nostalgic construction of Englishness in The Killings at Badger’s Drift, as well as addressing possible areas for further research.
1.2 Previous Research on the Midsomer Murders Series
Despite the longstanding success, there has not been much academic research into the TV series and perhaps even less on the novels. Neil McCaw has made perhaps the most
substantial research to date with at least three pieces of published analysis. In his first publication, he brings attention to “the ways in which both the novel and adaptation utilize the locality of the fictional Badger's Drift and its incumbent personalities to define the microcosm of an idealized national community” (McCaw, “Those Other Villagers” 13), and that the conventional use of the crime genre is reassuring “for a middle-class readership”
(McCaw, “Those Other Villagers” 15). However, he develops his argument around an outside or foreign “other” and concludes that the Oriental moments shed light on the
“processes of identity formation and control” (McCaw, “Those Other Villagers” 27). His second publication examines representations of evil and notes that “the prevailing tendency in UK detective television since the 1980s has been to portray British society in crisis, often in a state of collapse and disintegration” (McCaw, “The Ambiguity of Evil” 23). In his third book-length publication, he dedicates a chapter to the English aesthetics of crime and suggests that audiences of the Midsomer Murders series “are distracted from moral and social concerns by the representation of crime as a kind of pantomimic performance”
(McCaw, Adapting Detective Fiction 124). One important observation he makes which is related to my analysis, is the feature of social capital, which he describes as being “the glue that bonds people together” (McCaw, Adapting Detective Fiction 110). While my analysis is thematically consistent with McCaw in discussions of Englishness and the village setting, unlike McCaw, my analysis focuses on nostalgia as a way of idealising the past to alleviate the dislocation of the present.
Another notable article on the TV series is by Tiffany Bergin who suggests that its international appeal can be attributed to its “deliberate evocation of the British crime fiction/drama tradition” and its use of “the conventions of the British ‘Golden Age’ crime fiction tradition” (Bergin 86), however, I will discuss this article in more detail in section 2.1. The most recent analysis was in 2019 by Stefan Zahlmann who approached the TV
series from the perspectives of thrift and dwelling. His analysis offers insight into the TV series’ concepts of sociability and their links to “the phenomenon of heritage and commitment”, however, he conflates Englishness with Britishness and concludes that the TV series is a “battleground of a society struggling for a modern Britishness” (Zahlmann 479). This conclusion is informed by the debate of race and ethnicity sparked by True-May’s comments, mentioned earlier, but overlooks the cultural distinctions between British and English identities. While ethnic homogeneity might be a nostalgic consideration for some, I contend that it is the culture of English rural life that has a greater nostalgic pull, namely for its perceived sense of community, authentic connection to nature, and a romanticised social structure with less ambiguous social norms.
The aim of my analysis is to examine how nationhood can be expressed through nostalgia in fictional narratives by offering new insight into the nostalgic construction of Englishness in the novel and TV adaptation of The Killings at Badger’s Drift.
2. Constructing a Nostalgic Englishness
It is my contention that the Midsomer Murders series portrays an idealised version of Englishness that is nostalgic in its nature. Unlike a period piece, this series is set in the present and not the past, which means that there must be cues other than the temporal setting to elicit a nostalgic response. In this chapter, I will discuss the theoretical framework used for analysing the ways in which the Midsomer Murders series idealises a particular construction of Englishness with nostalgic appeal. In section 2.1, I will begin by discussing the subjective nature of nostalgia, and then consider some of the various perspectives from Svetlana Boym, Nicholas Dames, Tiffany Bergin, and Aaron Santesso on the function and construction of nostalgia which will provide the key concepts that I shall use for analysis.
In section 2.2, I will explore concepts of nation and nationhood, notably by Anthony Smith, Friedrich Meinecke, and Benedict Anderson, which will provide a framework for understanding Englishness. Part of this section will be dedicated to specifying elements of Englishness, as well as considering some of the discourse related to Englishness.
Understanding these aspects is key to framing the nostalgic sense of Englishness in the Midsomer Murders series.
In section 2.3, I will describe the English village as a site of nostalgia and the location of idealised Englishness. I will discuss some of the ways that English village life has changed in the last century, and more broadly since the Industrial Revolution, to draw attention to its appeal compared to its contemporary urban antithesis. While the aesthetics of the landscape are an important part of the ideal English village, I will pay particular attention to the social structure which plays an important role in idealising village life. I will discuss the theory of gossip as a means for social bonding and establishing social norms, and suggest that this is
utilised by the novel to promote Christian values of marriage and sexual relationships, which, through the tradition of English Christianity, provides nostalgic ideals of social norms.
Section 2.4 provides the basis for examining identity construction, and in particular, it focuses on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity as a framework for understanding identity. I then examine the concept of the English gentleman, which firstly serves to demonstrate performativity, and secondly to provide a reference point for idealised notions of behaviour.
This theoretical framework will provide the basis for identifying representations of Englishness and the articulation of their nostalgic features.
2.1 Nostalgia
Nostalgia is generally understood as a wistful longing for something from the past. We might consider this universal and familiar, however, a deeper examination reveals it to be a complex experience. The first point to consider is that nostalgia “is not a property of the object itself but a result of an interaction between subjects and objects, between actual landscapes and landscapes of the mind” (Boym 354). Hutcheon states that “nostalgia is not something you ‘perceive’ in an object; it is what you ‘feel’ when two different temporal moments, past and present, come together for you and, often, carry considerable emotional weight” (Hutcheon and Valdes 22; emphasis original). Together, these assertions suggest that the complexity of nostalgia comes from its subjectivity, as it is an emotional experience of the individual with innumerable variables in terms of triggers and responses, and as such, it is not necessarily reproducible in all individuals. Consequently, it is not possible to speak definitively about anything being nostalgic because of the reliance upon subjective responses, and therefore we can only speculate about nostalgic sentiments based on reasoned
assumptions. To gain more value, we need to better understand the emotional experience associated with nostalgia, and why someone might feel nostalgic in the first place.
Nicholas Dames suggests that “dislocation is the dilemma nostalgia is invented to solve” (Dames 12). The term “nostalgia” was coined in the 17th century in response to “the state of moral decay arising from a forced separation, when an individual is torn from the social and geographic environment of his childhood and youth” (Fuentenebro de Diego and Valiente Ots 405) . It was used to describe the “melancholy that originates from the desire to return to one’s homeland” (Fuentenebro de Diego and Valiente Ots 405), which is a feeling of dislocation by place rather than by time. Only in the last century has the term shifted in meaning from place to time, and thought of as a mental process rather than a physical condition (Santesso 14). If we accept “dislocation” as the emotional experience of nostalgia, then perhaps we might be able to describe that more precisely as a sense of anxiety about aspects of the present time or place. That anxiety is expressed through nostalgia as a longing for a time or place in the past which is perceived as a counteragent to the present anxiety. If this is true, then there must be some positive effects derived from engaging in nostalgia. And in fact, recent research in psychology has suggested that “nostalgia increases positive mood, self-regard, and social connectedness” and that it “facilitates perceptions of meaning in life” (Routledge, Arndt and Juhl 648), which would indicate that nostalgia is a way in which people can alleviate certain anxieties.
We can make two assumptions concerning nostalgia based on Dames’ suggestion that dislocation is the fundamental malaise triggering it: firstly, that an alternative time or place is desired in preference to the present time or place; and secondly, the alternative time or place is necessarily better in some way to the present time or place. This is important to point out because the alternative time or place must be a construct of our imagination, since obviously we cannot be simultaneously in more than one place or time. And since this
alternative time or place is a construct of our imagination, then the accuracy of that construction can always be called into question as it can be coloured by our subjectivity.
Therefore, the nostalgic sentiments that are reliant upon those constructions are equally subjective, making it impossible to lay claim to any universal truths. Another way to consider this would be to suggest that my nostalgia is not the same as your nostalgia, even if we are nostalgic for the same thing. This is an interesting thought to keep in mind if we consider the international popularity of the series; even if all audiences experience nostalgic sentiments towards the Midsomer Murders series, they are no doubt nostalgic for varying reasons.
Perhaps key to understanding this international phenomenon is rooted in the origins of the term itself. The word “nostalgia” is derived from the Greek “nostos”, meaning return home, and “algia”, meaning longing (Boym xiii). It was coined during the Industrial Revolution and it seems likely that much of the iconography associated with nostalgia can be traced back to that period. Aaron Santesso notes that “many of the nostalgic poems of the eighteenth century can be seen as a general response to the modernizing world” (Santesso 17). Santesso makes his central concern of nostalgia to be the idealisation of the past rather than a desire for it and suggests that nostalgia can be understood “as an impersonal, highly literary mode of idealization responding first and foremost to the concerns of the present”
(Santesso 13). He claims that a work may look to the past but “it is only truly nostalgic if that past is idealized” (Santesso 16). This requirement for idealisation is in line with the idea that nostalgia is a longing for something not found in the present. He claims this is “largely the invention of eighteenth-century poetry” (Santesso 16), which can be seen as a general response to the “upheavals of early modernisation” (Santesso 17). The need to create a sentimental reaction in a broad range of readers led to a literary tradition of using familiar tropes, such as children, villages, ruins, and schooldays, that were recognisably nostalgic
(Santesso 21). Santesso claims that “today, nostalgia is presented as a collective experience, and that presentation is organized around familiar tropes and motifs. In this sense, modern nostalgia is a clear descendant of the idea of the trope-driven nostalgia developed in a poetic context in the eighteenth century” (Santesso 24). And I would suggest that the dramatic social and cultural changes that have occurred since the Industrial Revolution are common amongst an international audience who are thus primed to respond to idealised notions of the past, such as an idealised English village, which could account at least to some degree for its international popularity. Based on this idea, I would argue that “change” is an important tension characterised by Dames’ notion of “dislocation”. Contemporary audiences around the world have witnessed dramatic social and technical changes in their lifetime. The pace of change has been so rapid that we now mark eras by the decade rather than the century or monarchic reign.
However, Tiffany Bergin argues that “one of the central reasons for Midsomer Murders’ global popularity is its deliberate evocation of the British crime fiction/drama
tradition. More specifically, the programme draws upon the conventions of the British
‘Golden Age’ crime fiction tradition” (Bergin 86). But she adds that “what distinguishes Midsomer Murders from much ‘Golden Age’ fiction is the programme’s acknowledgement of its own artificiality” (Bergin 87). She notes that nostalgia for rural England is consistently a feature of the TV series and claims that “nostalgia for an idyllic English landscape has spread beyond Britain’s borders” (Bergin 90). To understand this development, Bergin calls on Jonathon Simon’s use of the term “wilful nostalgia” to explain this phenomenon.
Nostalgia in its wilful form is “no longer a longing for some specific virtues of the past that are deemed particularly meaningful, but rather a longing for the very quality of meaningfulness that is perceived as having been more available in the past”, and “it seems to thrive precisely on its improbability, falseness, or artificiality” (Simon 5). Such nostalgia
could be thought of purely as a type of escapism because it does not belong to one’s personal past or social narrative and it does not have a critical perspective that is informed by something lacking from the present.
As an example to illustrate the depiction of wilful nostalgia by an international audience, consider the episode “The Fortress”, from the TV series How I Met Your Mother, in which the main characters watch their favourite British drama “Woodworthy Manor”, a fictional TV series that is a parody of Downton Abbey. They watch the episodes whilst drinking tea from a fine china tea set and eating a traditional looking spread of biscuits and cakes. This visual is humorous because of its perceived cultural incompatibility for young contemporary American adults, but I would describe it as a caricature of the wilful nostalgia that takes place for an international audience; it does not seek to restore something lost from the present, but rather, indulge in an alternative place and time that portrays a quality of meaningfulness, which is further emphasised by their excitement for the innocuous plot about who overwatered Lady Chillsbury's prize-winning roses. Their passion for these absurd plotlines playfully highlights the wilful indulgence of this form of nostalgia. This brings attention to the subjectivity of nostalgia as well as some of the complexity and diversity of its consumption.
Some scholars claim that nostalgia is not singular in its nature, and so a range of nostalgias have emerged. Svetlana Boym offers a typology that consists of two types of nostalgia: reflective nostalgia; and restorative nostalgia. She claims that “reflective nostalgia dwells on the ambivalences of human longing and belonging and does not shy away from the contradictions of modernity” (Boym xviii). This type of nostalgia is “more oriented toward an individual narrative that savors details and memorial signs, perpetually deferring homecoming itself. […] reflective nostalgia cherishes shattered fragments of memory and temporalizes space” (Boym 49). Importantly, this is not a desire to return to a place or time,
but merely indulging in the wistful longing. This is in contrast to restorative nostalgia which
“attempts a transhistorical reconstruction of the lost home” (Boym xviii). It considers itself as truth and tradition, and “characterises national and nationalist revivals all over the world, which engage in the antimodern myth-making of history by means of a return to national symbols and myths” (Boym 41). A common feature of restorative nostalgia is restored or invented traditions; this “builds on the sense of loss of community and cohesion and offers a comforting collective script for individual longing” (Boym 42).
While there are elements that can be considered as reflective nostalgia in both the novel and TV series, overall, the series is characterised more by reflective nostalgia as it restores the English village as a location of idealised Englishness. Brian True-May’s declaration that the TV series was the “last bastion of Englishness” (Wilson 20) demonstrates the nationalist impetus of the TV series and his comments imply that there is a disappearing sense of Englishness being restored. The lost sense of community and cohesion that underpins restorative nostalgia is an important issue I will address in my analysis.
Andrew Higson claims that nostalgia “is not a singular phenomenon; it is multi-layered, diversely experienced and variously exploited” (Higson 140). Higson looks at an interesting postmodern version of nostalgia: the “retro” consumption of recent past culture. He claims that “the modern, temporal version is founded on the unattainable distance between the past and present”, while “the post-modern, atemporal version erases this sense of distance”
(Higson 120; emphasis original). This highlights an important aspect of our contemporary consumer culture, the reproducibility of the past for present consumption. This brings to light an important question: why do people want a vintage item? And even more interestingly, why would someone want a faux vintage item? The answer perhaps can be explained by some of psychology’s insights into our relationships with our possessions. Helga Dittmar proposes that “material goods and identity construction are closely interrelated” (Dittmar
206). She claims that “people often buy consumer goods because of their psychological benefit, rather than their economic and utilitarian value” (Dittmar 206), and adds that “brands are often used as symbolic resources for the construction and maintenance of identity”
(Dittmar 210). This relationship between identity construction and material goods is particularly important when we consider how the characters are represented through their material possessions in Midsomer Murders. We can analyse the use of material possessions not only for their construction of Englishness, but also examine how particular characters are constructed through their material possessions.
What I have so far demonstrated, is that nostalgia is a subjective experience with a typological diversity that ranges from wistful longing and escapism through to a restorative identity construction. It is most notably characterised by a sense of dislocation and an idealisation of an alternative place or time and it is from this perspective that I will explore a conceptual framework of Englishness.
2.2 Nation and Englishness
Before discussing Englishness in detail, I will briefly explore the concept of a nation and examine some of the political and cultural complexities of England. To avoid the many tangential debates, I will focus on discussing Englishness as a national identity, outlining briefly what a nation is and how its identity is constructed. We can understand England as a nation, but the common use of the term “nation” betrays the complexity of its definition. It is often used interchangeably with the terms “country” and “state”, though this is possibly because many countries today are thought of as nation states. It is worth noting that England is generally considered to be a country within a country as it is culturally and politically
distinct from Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, but together they form the United Kingdom.
At the turn of the 20th century, Friedrich Meinecke, distinguished “cultural nations”
from “political nations”, which is to say “nations that are primarily based on some jointly experienced cultural heritage and nations that are primarily based on the unifying force of a common political history and constitution” (Meinecke 10). This identifies two critical aspects of a nation: culture and politics. It can be difficult to separate culture from politics because politics emerges from culture, and to a greater or lesser extent, culture is controlled by politics. However, there is one more important aspect to consider: territory. The complexity behind the concept of a nation is due to a lack of natural harmony between these three factors, which often leads to contested territory, contested political power, and contested culture. However, the distinction between political and cultural nations does not in itself define what a nation is or how it is constructed.
Anthony Smith defines a nation as “a named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members” (Smith 14). In this definition, Smith withdraws the division between cultural and political nations, and instead places that distinction between nations and states. He claims that states refer “exclusively to public institutions, differentiated from, and autonomous of, other social institutions and exercising a monopoly of coercion and extraction within a given territory” (Smith 14). In this sense, a state can be seen as the apparatuses of sovereignty, while a nation can be understood as signifying “a cultural and political bond, uniting in a single political community all who share an historic culture and homeland” (Smith 14).
Smith recognises that there is some overlap between the two concepts of nation and state, but the important aspect is what Quentin Skinner describes as “the distinctively modern
idea of the state as a form of public power separate from both the ruler and the ruled, and constituting the supreme political authority within a certain defined territory” (Skinner 353).
Smith claims that “Conceptually, the nation has come to blend two sets of dimensions, the one civic and territorial, the other ethnic and genealogical, in varying proportion in particular cases” (Smith 15). The former referring to “external” objective consequences relating to territory, economy, and politics; the latter referring to “internal” objective consequences, most notably, the socialisation of the members as “nationals” and “citizens” (Smith 16).
Smith elaborates on what is involved in the socialisation process. Along with institutional processes such as education, Smith claims that “the nation is also called upon to provide a social bond between individuals and classes by providing repertoires of shared values, symbols and traditions” (Smith 16). It is through symbols that community members are
“reminded of their common heritage and cultural kinship and feel strengthened and excited by their sense of common identity and belonging” (Smith 17). National identity also provides
“a powerful means of defining and locating individual selves in the world” (Smith 17) and they can perceive themselves through “a shared and unique culture” (Smith 17). Smith claims that the “process of self-definition and location is in many ways the key to national identity” (Smith 17), but is aware of the problematic nature of constructing that identity because of “the many kinds of national self that present themselves in practice ([which is] a natural result of the multifaceted nature of the nation)” (Smith 17).
I would posit that, among other issues, in the context of Englishness religion is an important aspect of the shared values that Smith discusses. Harttgen and Opfinger argue that
“Practicing the same faith and performing the same religious rituals can be a form of signaling conformity with the majority, which in turn leads to the formation of a common (national) identity” (Harttgen and Opfinger 348). The choice of religion is important, as they argue it “as a signal of conformity with the values exercised in the nation – is more important
for the formation of a national identity than coincidental ethnic differences” (Harttgen and Opfinger 348), and they found that “[their] results indicate that there is a statistically significant negative relationship between [their] measure of national identity and religious diversity” (Harttgen and Opfinger 364).
It is thus important to highlight that, in the context of Englishness, the Church of England holds a privileged position within the culture and power structure. Geoffrey Roper points out that despite the present day discourse that emphasises equality, diversity, and freedom of beliefs, Christianity is embedded in the constitution in a number of ways: “a royal arms with the motto Dieu et mon droit [French for “God and my right”]; an anointed sovereign sworn to uphold protestant reformed religion; the royal title Fidei Defensor [Latin for “Defender of the Faith”]; an anthem praying ‘God save the Queen’; [and] legislation by lords spiritual as well as temporal” (Roper 26). He also points out that there are daily prayers by legislators and other institutions to mark special occasions. Thus, if we consider restorative nostalgia that returns to national symbols and myths, then Christianity is a prime location for constructing Englishness. Timothy Edensor notes such an emphasis on Christianity in the rurally nostalgic publication This England, with its feature of political issues such as “the ordination of women Anglican priests, the decline of the ‘traditional’
family, and the demise of Christianity and ‘authority’” (Edensor 42). I will argue that the novel strongly favours Christian ideals of marriage and sexual relationships by idealising those characters who are consistent with Christian ideals, while those who are not consistent with Christian ideals suffer in some way.
To avoid vagueness, I will specify the Church of England’s ideals for marriage and sexuality, though I will point out that the Church’s position on human sexuality has been evolving over the past several decades. However, I will refer to the Church of England’s
statement on human sexuality from 1991 as it provides their explicit views on the matter and informs the cultural context of the novel and TV adaptation of The Killings at Badger’s Drift.
Firstly, the Church is clear that chastity before marriage is essential: “For all these positive reasons God's perfect will for married people is chastity before marriage, and then a lifelong relationship of fidelity and mutual sharing at all levels” (The House of Bishops 22). Chastity is further emphasised by the Church’s position on single people: “full physical sexual relations, or behaviour that would normally and naturally lead to such relations, have no place in friendship or, indeed, in the life of the single person in general” (The House of Bishops 24). There is also an implicit idealisation of the nuclear family since “It is also the marriage committed to loving stability which alone can provide the best home for our children” (The House of Bishops 21). And relevant to The Killings at Badger’s Drift, the Church has “A Table of Kindred and Affinity wherein whosoever are related are forbidden by the Church of England to marry together” (The Church of England), which declares the incestual relationships, including brother and sister, that are forbidden. Lastly, I will highlight that the Church privileged heterosexual relationships by declaring that
“Heterosexuality and homosexuality are not equally congruous with the observed order of creation or with the insights of revelation as the Church engages with these in the light of her pastoral ministry” (The House of Bishops 40). Since, at the time of the document’s publication in 1991, homosexuals could not marry, and unmarried people should remain chaste, the Church’s position was effectively that sexual intercourse was the exclusive domain of married heterosexual couples.
The final concept I put forth in understanding the construction of a nation is Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation: “it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson 6). He explains that it is imagined because
“the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members,
meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion”
(Anderson 6). Thus, in a fictional portrayal of English community, such as in The Killings at Badger’s Drift, identifying how the community is imagined reveals a construction of
Englishness because the image of the English nation is reflected in the imagined community.
My contention that the series constructs a nostalgic sense of Englishness is premised on the aforementioned concepts of nation and national identity, and it can be understood as part of the socialisation process that Smith outlines. I would suggest that novels and TV series, such as the Midsomer Murders series, are arena for the self-definition of national identity because it is through such media that shared values, symbols, and traditions can be defined, refined, or otherwise expressed through narrative. This can also be linked to the psychological benefits of nostalgia posited by Routledge et al. in the previous section and help to explain some of the appeal for nostalgia in the construction of Englishness: as an identity, Englishness offers a common bond for individuals and thus strengthen their social connectedness; it also offers individuals a place within the English narrative and thereby provide meaning or purpose to life. Therefore, for people who are feeling socially
“dislocated”, to use Dames’ terminology, or perhaps lack a sense of meaning or purpose in life, they may find relief from those anxieties by indulging in idealised representations of Englishness that portray qualities missing from the present.
For the sake of clarity, I will briefly distinguish the English identity from the British identity in so much as to say they are not the same even though the dominance of England and English culture has blurred and obfuscated the two identities; England makes up half the land mass of the United Kingdom, and the imbalance in population is a major factor in allowing England to “dominate the union” (Childs 42). England and Englishness are constituents of Britain and Britishness but defined by and distinct from the other Union countries Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. And while the English identity is arguably
fractured by very distinct regional identities as well as class identities, there is nonetheless a
“unifying” identity for people who live in or come from the geographical location of England.
However, since a “unifying” identity does not entail an identity shared by all, it is perhaps more useful to take a perspective on Englishness by considering who or what we are defining Englishness against, or in other words, define who or what Englishness is “other” to.
While Englishness could be defined against other national identities, such as French, German, or Japanese, I will suggest that the nostalgic nature of Englishness in the Midsomer Murders series leads us to “other” Englishness not by place but by time. This means that Englishness is not contrasted by say Frenchness, but rather, contemporary Englishness is othered by an older, more genuine sense of Englishness. This stimulates nostalgia in the form of a sentimental longing for a true Englishness that might be considered lost. It is from this perspective that we can more clearly see how the present is contrasted by the past in a process of “othering”. The term othering consists of the “‘objectification of another person or group’ or ‘creating the other’, which puts aside and ignores the complexity and subjectivity of the individual” (Dervin 187), but importantly, it “allows individuals to construct sameness and difference and to affirm their own identity” (Dervin 187).
The way things used to be done are contrasted by the way things are presently done, and likewise a contrast in the changing morals of society is a process of “othering”. While idealising the past is part of the process of creating a nostalgic sentiment as Santesso would suggest, one might infer that this entails a rejection of the present. However, it is not necessarily the case that the present need be entirely rejected as dystopian or apocalyptic, and in fact, some synthesis between new and old ways might be considered part of the process of creating an idealised Englishness, one where the present is assimilated with the past to construct an idealised version of Englishness. This is because on a subjective level, individuals feel something lacking from the present, or to use Dames’ term they are
“dislocated” from the present, and incorporate the “missing” elements from the past into the present to construct an idealised identity.
In order to contrast past Englishness with present Englishness, it is necessary to discuss some of the changes that inform the transition from past to present and which might be considered sources of anxiety. Perhaps the most pertinent of changes was the decline of the British Empire which occurred after the end of the Second World War. While there is a considerable amount that could be discussed in relation to this topic, I will limit my discussion to merely pointing out that this had a tremendous impact on the national psyche, and brought up questions about their place in the world after no longer being the dominant superpower they once were. No longer being a superpower required redefining their identity, and with the loss of an outward focussed British identity, notions of a more internally focussed English identity could flourish.
One major change occurred following The British Nationality Act of 1948 which allowed for large numbers of ethnically diverse migrants to come from across the Commonwealth. In England, race has been a potent issue because “Englishness has always carried a racial signature” (Hall 109). In 2011, the then producer Brian True-May, claimed that the Midsomer Murders TV series was “the last bastion of Englishness” (Wilson 20), and controversially, that the show “wouldn’t work” if it featured ethnic minorities. His remarks implied that ethnic minorities are incompatible with Englishness, and that the TV show was the last remaining attempt to protect English identity. He was accused of racism and resigned shortly after being suspended by the production company.
I would suggest that the pursuit of such a vision of nostalgic Englishness demonstrates an anxiety reflected by Paul Gilroy’s claim that Britain “has been dominated by an inability even to face, never mind actually mourn, the profound change in circumstances and moods that followed the end of the Empire and consequent loss of prestige” (Gilroy 98), and more
specifically to the “aching loss” of the country’s “long-vanished homogeneity” (Gilroy 95).
Virdee and McGeever remark that “decline, though necessarily a multi-ethnic process, is experienced in a racialized frame and is increasingly responded to by some sections of the working class through the politics of English nationalism” (Virdee and McGeever 1811).
This demonstrates that to some extent there is an identity crisis taking place in England, one where a decline in global dominance and a “structural decline […] since the 1970s and the onset of neoliberalism” (Virdee and McGeever 1810) has produced a racial divide that pits the “resentful nationalist” against the “liberal cosmopolitan” (Fenton 465). This binary classification also largely reflects a divide between urban and rural dwellers, whereby 22.8%
of urban residents belong to ethnic groups other than White British, compared to just 5% in rural areas (Office for National Statistics 22). Important to note, however, is that the more liberal views towards non-whites occurs in areas with higher proportions of ethnic diversity, which reinforces a geographical dimension to racial tension, thus pitting the rural-resentful nationalist against the urban-liberal cosmopolitan. Between 2001 and 2011, the total percentage of non-White British across England and Wales increased from 12.5% of the population to 19.5%; there has been political motivation, especially evident during the Brexit referendum, to draw a causal link between the increase in “foreigners” and the declining economic and social conditions, especially for the working class. The logic behind this argument might also explain the desire for a nostalgic Englishness with an ethnically homogenous society, as such idealisations allow for the projection of a society free from the
“problems” of racial contamination which have been attributed to the present economic and social malaise.
However, race and global dominance are only a part of the anxieties that inform English introspection. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, there has been rapid and dramatic changes to the social structure. None perhaps more dramatic than urbanisation and
the dislocation from nature that has coincided with it. This notion of change can be seen in a cartoon published by Punch in 1919 (Appendix 1), which shows an image of Mr. William Smith leaving his small rural village to fight for his country in the war in 1914, only to return in 1919 to see it has developed into an urban sprawl that has consumed the landscape. This image was reproduced by Clough Williams-Ellis in his 1928 book England and the Octopus, which David Matless suggests shows “the betrayal of ordinary Mr William Smith and his green and pleasant land” (Matless 25). I would argue that this cartoon informs the discourse of urbanisation and depicts an anxiety over the changing landscape. The village becomes a site of nostalgia and portrays an idealised past way of living, which is the focus for section 2.3.
2.3 Idealising the English Village
The English rural landscape is a fundamental element of the Midsomer Murders series; each novel and each episode is set in a village or rural location in the fictional county of Midsomer, while large towns and cities are notably absent. It is important to note that the rural setting is contemporary, which marks a distinction from period dramas that are set in the past. I would suggest this means that rather than using “time” as a instrument for idealising the past, the Midsomer Murders series uses “place” for idealising the past. This is achieved by suggesting that the English village is still a place where past ways of living still exist and carry ideals that have been lost in the modern urban world. I will argue that the rural landscape is constructed as a nostalgic trope in the Midsomer Murders series, and in this section, I will attempt to address the subjective nature of nostalgia by exploring cultural and psychological aspects that will help understand the nostalgic appeal of the English village.
To suggest that villages are nostalgic simply because they are associated with a past way of living would be to overlook reasons that they are desirable to an urban audience.
Discussing the problem of perspective, Raymond Williams observes that writers for centuries have been nostalgic for a rural past that has somehow changed or disappeared, and notes that “Old England, settlement, the rural virtues – all these, in fact, mean different things at different times, and quite different values are being brought to question” (Williams 12).
Nostalgia for a rural past would seem to be a historical constant, but the underlying changes that arouse nostalgia are not. To understand the present context, I would agree with David Matless who argues that “the rural needs always to be understood in terms relative to those of the city and suburb, and approached as a heterogeneous field” (Matless 17). This is because, as he states, there is “a powerful connection between landscape, Englishness and the modern” (Matless 16). Williams expresses this connection as a tension, identifying that:
[…] the common image of the country is now an image of the past, and the common image of the city an image of the future. That leaves, if we isolate them, an undefined present. The pull of the idea of the country is towards old ways, human ways, natural ways. The pull of the idea of the city is towards progress, modernisation, development. In what is then a tension, a present experienced as tension, we use the contrast of country and city to ratify an unresolved division and conflict of impulses […]. (Williams 297)
We have already noted Santesso’s view that eighteenth-century poetry produced a great deal of nostalgic tropes in response to the upheavals of early modernisation, which indicate at the very least unease towards the changes of the Industrial Revolution. But a greater part of today’s audiences have never experienced the rural lifestyle of the past, and even the experiences of today’s rural people is vastly different from that of the past. This
begs the question then, why are they nostalgic for a past that they have not experienced? I will attempt to answer this from both psychological and cultural perspectives.
It is important to firstly mention some of the conventional ways in which the rural country has been represented in art and literature. Timothy Edensor lists a number of aesthetic elements that are held to epitomise Englishness:
Parish churches, lych-gates, haystacks, thatched or half-timbered cottages, rose-laden gardens, village greens, games of cricket, country pubs, rural customs, hedgerows, golden fields of grain, plough and horses, hunting scenes, and a host of characters including vicars, squires, farmers, gamekeepers. (Edensor 41)
We can note from this a long list of icons that are instantly recognisable as rural, which reflects Santesso’s observation of the tradition of using familiar tropes to create a sentimental reaction in readers. Williams suggested that the “rural innocence of the pastoral, neo-pastoral, and reflective poems” (Williams 46) was achieved by contrasting the country as “nature”
with the city depicted as “worldliness” (Williams 46). Typically, this involved featuring
“fields, the woods, the growing crops, and animals”, in contrast with “the exchanges and counting houses of mercantilism, or with the mines, quarries, mills and manufactories of industrial production” (Williams 46). Other depictions of the countryside also featured “The magical country, yielding of itself, […] seen as a working landscape filled with figures: the mowers and haymakers, the ‘Villagers in common’ coming to graze their cattle” (Williams 56). Williams argues that “the contrast between country and city is one of the major forms in which we become conscious of a central part of our experience and of the crises of our society” and that there is a temptation to “reduce the historical variety of the forms of interpretation to what are loosely called symbols and archetypes” (Williams 289).
This suggestion of symbols and archetypes is particularly relevant to Fredric Jameson’s postmodern concepts of the “Pastiche” and “schizophrenia”. Jameson describes pastiche as being “like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a stylistic mask, speech in a dead language: but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry […].
Pastiche is blank parody” (Jameson 114). I would argue that the symbols and archetypes that Williams alludes to, are repeated in cultural texts as pastiche, that is, repetitions void of satire or commentary. The persistent repetition of these symbols and archetypes detaches them from meaning. This can be understood as a process which Jameson calls schizophrenia, and he illustrates this with the example of children who repeat a word to the point where the word is reduced to an incomprehensible sensory sound. He makes the point that “a signifier that has lost its signified has thereby been transformed into an image” (Jameson 120). In this respect, many of the cultural images of rural life, for example grazing animals and people making hay, might continue to be repeated in cultural texts, but the reality of industrial farming and mechanisation may be far removed these rural images. The effect of this pastiche then, is to mythologise rural life through signifier images that no longer represent the signified reality. In this way, the Midsomer Murders series can employ pastiche images of the past to construct a village with the qualities of an undefined past, and thereby rely on a cliched understanding of the past to evoke nostalgia.
As noted earlier, Tiffany Bergin argues that “one of the central reasons for Midsomer Murders’ global popularity is its deliberate evocation of the British crime fiction/drama […]
‘Golden Age’” (Bergin 86). While conventions of the genre are beyond the scope of my analysis, I would point out that in line with my analysis of nostalgia, the Midsomer Murders series could be understood as a pastiche of Golden Age crime fiction and thus a metonymically historical or nostalgic series in the same way that Jameson describes Star Wars as nostalgic for the Saturday afternoon serials of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s
(Jameson 116). As Bergin points out, the Midsomer Murders series seems “particularly inspired by Christie’s Miss Marple novels, which were also set in chocolate-box English villages” (Bergin 85), which suggests that nostalgia possibly overlaps both genre and setting.
Urban audiences may have other reasons to be drawn to the rural setting; I would argue that rural landscapes have a psychological appeal for urban audiences who are primed for a positive emotional response to nostalgically constructed rural settings. A study into the status of urban-rural differences in psychiatric disorders in 2010 found that “even when controlling for a relatively large number of confounders, the urban environment seems to be associated with the prevalence of psychopathology” (Peen, Schoevers and Beekman 91). While their research is not able to identify the reasons for this correlation, their analysis nonetheless suggests that urban living in some way negatively impacts mental health. Their findings are also supported by a 2011 study which used functional magnetic resonance imaging in three independent experiments, and showed that “urban upbringing and city living have dissociable impacts on social evaluative stress processing in humans” (Lederbogen, Kirsch and Haddad 498), suggesting that their results “identify distinct neural mechanisms for an established risk factor” (Lederbogen, Kirsch and Haddad 498).
These scientific findings lend credibility to the premise of there being underlying or general anxieties associated with living in urban areas which do not necessarily manifest as mental health problems. Therefore, it is plausible that nostalgically imagined past ways of living, such as those found in English villages and rural landscapes, might offer some relief for the anxiety of urban living. And there is research to support this view; a 2008 report recognised “the vital importance of nature in effective cognitive functioning”, and showed that “simple and brief interactions with nature can produce marked increases in cognitive control” (Bergman, Jonides and Kaplan 1211), and importantly, that even “viewing pictures of nature produced cognitive improvements” (Bergman, Jonides and Kaplan 1211). This
perhaps suggests then, that at least for viewers of the TV series, they may feel some cognitive benefit just from watching the English rural landscapes.
However, it is not merely the physical landscape that is potentially appealing for viewers, as the social structure of the village and rural life may also have some appeal. There is perhaps a perception that small villages provide a stronger sense of community because of the stereotype that everybody knows everybody among a small population. There is evidence to suggest that community is considered an important aspect of well-being in the United Kingdom. In 2010, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) conducted a nation-wide debate to establish which factors should contribute to the measurement of the “national well- being”. It received around 34,000 contributions, coming in the form of completed questionnaires, blogs and comments, contributions on social media, and discussions from 175 events held across the country. The key question asked was “what things in life matter to you?”; if we assume that the answers express anxieties about the present day, and if those anxieties can be considered in Dames’ terms as a “dislocation”, then I believe that the responses could provide important indications for the appeal of certain nostalgic elements.
Based on the responses, the report highlighted the importance given to themes of “health, relationships, work, and the environment” (Office for National Statistics 6). Interestingly, the majority of comments relating to the environment “focussed on the importance of access to good quality local green spaces rather than wider environmental issues” (Office for National Statistics 6), which indicates that people might generally feel dislocated from nature because they have a lack of access to it, giving further credence to the notion that merely viewing natural landscapes is desirable as it provides some psychological benefit.
Another important factor that was widely brought up was community spirit, which was considered to be “very important, but lacking” (Office for National Statistics 6). Interestingly, a dissection of the different age groups showed that “some older people were concerned
about the loss of a sense of community” (Office for National Statistics 7), which offers some explanation for a perceived desirability of village life, where a strong sense of community seems possible in such a small population. Howard Newby claims that a “powerful tradition of cultural Romanticism” has supported the view that English villages are ideal communities characterised by social harmony and meaningful social intimacy (Newby 23). Perhaps it is the text’s intimate examination of the community, enabled by the police murder investigation, that allows a reader or viewer to feel immersed in the fictional community and thereby provides them a catharsis for their real-world loss of community spirit.
Newby further claims that “ideas about the English countryside as a visual phenomenon and ideas about the English countryside as a social phenomenon have therefore merged” (Newby 23; emphasis original). This suggests that an inconsistency has emerged between the perception and reality of rural life. Since the start of the twentieth century, the proportion of people living in rural areas has remained relatively consistent at around 20 percent. However, the last century has seen a dramatic change to the social fabric of the village, and therefore its culture. The landscape has also had to change to accommodate a growing population, which has grown by more than 80 percent since the start of the twentieth century. The experience of living in rural England has drastically changed; the modernisation of agriculture and transport are perhaps the two most significant factors that have impacted rural life and have fundamentally changed the social structures. Mechanisation made many agricultural jobs and skills redundant, and the development of cars and roads meant that people could be socially and professionally active across a greater geographical area, and more critically, that urban workers could live in rural areas. This brought a change to the social structure of the village and introduced new tensions and problems. Not only were rural workers struggling to find work because of mechanisation, from things such as tractors and combine harvesters, but they were also increasingly being priced out of living in their village
because of the influx of urban workers on higher wages, leading them to move to urban areas for work and accommodation. Thus, the image of old agricultural ways in contemporary texts can be understood as a form of pastiche because of their empty parody of an imagined past that is nostalgic for an imagined rural way of life that no longer exists.
Urban newcomers also brought a new social division that cut across the social classes.
According to Newby, those who moved to rural areas because of cheaper housing did not feel it necessary to “adapt to the hitherto accepted mores of the village” (Newby 165;
emphasis original) and their indifference to the sensibilities of the local population caused much friction. But at the other end of the spectrum, some newcomers were “oversensitive to what they believe the needs of the village to be” (Newby 165; emphasis original), as they sought to protect their preconceived stereotyped expectations of rural life and landscape in their search for the mythologised rural life. According to Newby, “what has been ‘lost’ from the countryside has been the village as an occupational community” (Newby 191) because of the underlying changes in the economics of agriculture. Importantly he notes that when the village was an occupational community, people “identified closely with the other inhabitants, deriving both standards of behaviour and a sense of self-esteem from their neighbours” (Newby 191). This reveals that the reality of living in a present-day English village is very different from the past, with not only a changing landscape, but also a more discordant social structure. While the Midsomer Murders series may play on some of the social disharmony, it is the resolution of the crime that provides a return to an idealised harmonious village community.
I would argue that an idealised view of rural life is the primary driver of nostalgia for the TV series, but the novel has a more intimate focus on moral behaviour by establishing nostalgic village community ideals based on conservative and Christian values. I will focus in particular on what I see as the novel’s use of a narrative device that mimics social gossip
to promote Christian social norms of sexual behaviour. I will argue that gossip is employed in the novel to construct knowledge about socially normative standards of sexual behaviour by demonstrating the hazards of transgressive behaviour. Gossip can be “broadly defined as communication about the behaviour of others” (Peters, Jetten and Radova 1610) and understood as “a certain recognizable discourse; the mutual interpretation, evaluation and moral judging of a particular kind of knowledge” (Jerslev 182). In line with this understanding of gossip, I would maintain that the novel utilises gossip to establish discourse and moral judgment of particular kinds of behaviour, most notably sexual behaviour, which would be in agreement with Clare Birch’s assertion that “knowledge is socially constructed and determined” (Birchall 12).
To understand how accepted standards of behaviour can be learned through gossip, research in the field of psychology has suggested that “Gossip can be understood as an extension of observational learning, in the sense that people can learn about the complexities of social and cultural life by hearing about the successes and especially misadventures of others” (Baumeister, Zhang and Vohs 120). This suggests that when the novel mimics gossip, it is enabling an instance of observational learning for the reader. Kim Peters et al. claim that
“people who engage in deviant acts make an important contribution to the functioning of societies by drawing people’s attention to, and clarifying their understanding of, the existing social norms” (Peters, Jetten and Radova 1618). This suggests that identifying behaviour perceived as transgressive in the narrative provides an opportunity to clarify and draw attention to the socially accepted norms of the village, which I will claim are informed by conservative and Christian ideals.
So, looking at the idealised village of Badger’s Drift in the Midsomer Murders series, there are different layers of analysis to be explored. My premise is that there is a nostalgic construction of Englishness in the series, but the appeal of that nostalgia is not just towards
a past ideal, or wistful nostalgia as Bergin suggests, but rather as a response to a present-day malaise felt by both urban and rural dwellers alike. Within the construction of this nostalgic Englishness, we should also consider that an appreciable majority of audiences are not longing for a rural past that they themselves have experienced, but rather an imagined rural life that has been mythologised in cultural texts and well-established tropes. Whilst we cannot definitively say that English villages are nostalgic, this section has tried to address the subjective nature of nostalgia by offering a reasoned perspective which supports the view that the village setting can be widely understood and experienced as nostalgic.
2.4 Constructing Identity and Idealised Performativity
When we speak about English identity, let me first draw a distinction between political and cultural identities; while Meinecke emphasises that cultural nations “are based on jointly experienced cultural heritage” (Meinecke 10), and Smith identifies common myths, and historical memories in the construction of national identity, I will differentiate between national identity as a legal status and national identity as a cultural identity by suggesting that a person can have an English identity by way of their passport or other legal status, giving them a political national identity; but that their cultural identity is constructed through performance. This means that two people can have the same political identity, but one might be considered an outsider because of the way they look, sound, or act. The boundaries and definitions of a cultural identity are fluid but I will use Judith Butler’s theory of performativity as the basis from which to understand the mechanics of cultural identity, and I will use the construction of the English “Gentleman” as an example of the performativity of Englishness. This will also serve as a reference point for a desired performance of Englishness because the concept of a gentleman has historically had an elevated status and
