Dramaet sitrer ikke kun i serien men også i hukommelsen
DR’s new series “Cry Woolf” is painfully recognizable
The drama vibrates not only in the series but also in the memory.
The nausea moved up through the throat. I sank and sank. Meanwhile, I got a stomach ache, looked away from the screen, got up, lit candles, considered whether to turn off the television. »Is it too much for you? Is it getting too close? ”My husband asked.
Old emotions, even in a new life in a safe environment far away from sudden blows and mood swings, lurked just below the surface.
One identifies with the concerned social worker and the school teacher
Yesterday, Danmarks Radio premiered the series “The wolf is coming”. In a Danish style, Holly accuses her stepfather of violence, and the Danish teacher involves the municipality, which takes custody of the mother and places Holly and her little brother with a foster family.
Holly is brave. At least as a 14-year-old I did not dare to tell anyone about what was going on at our house.
There were several things that made the hairs stand up in the nape of my neck. The actors play their roles excellently and convincingly. It is easy to imagine the social worker from the municipality who sees a child in need and wants to help. The teacher who reacts after reading a Danish style, which for him is a cry for help, is also sympathized with. Holly’s mother who is confronted with a reality she cannot or will not relate to is played convincingly.
And then there’s Holly. Holly is 14, and it is her Danish style, in which she describes a violent episode at home in the family’s villa in a suburban neighborhood in Central Jutland, that makes the social authorities in top gear and the family drama roll.
Holly is brave. At least as a 14-year-old I did not dare to tell anyone about what was going on at our house.
Biggest of all is the Failure
DR portrays the mother’s reaction absolutely fantastic, frighteningly well. I can hardly be the only viewer who has experience with a mother who refused to believe the evidence presented by both her daughter and by the public authorities but instead accused her daughter of needing attention, inventing stories – yes, to definitely lie.
Holly’s reaction to the failure, her quiet but desperate pleading on the phone in an attempt to get her mother to be there for her, is raw and painfully recognizable. Holly hopes that by revealing the family secret, she will now have a mother who is there for her, shielding her, giving her the faith and feeling that Holly means everything. That she as a mother will be there for her daughter. Those feelings are coldly and dismissively put to shame with the classic “What, though, have you done?”
I wonder if my school at the time in the 1980s would have reacted if I had raised the tab for what everyday life looked like in my family far out in the country in V. Velling, where violence, humiliation, social control and mental illness were part of everyday life ?
The mother’s reaction is perhaps very human when one puts one’s own needs above those of one’s children and deliberately closes one’s eyes to dissatisfaction and failure. I do not know. One thing I do know, though: When you, as a child or young person, finally take courage and tell the world outside what is really going on behind the facade, you hope that someone, preferably your mother, listens and takes you seriously.
I wonder if my school at the time in the 1980s would have reacted if I had raised the tab for what everyday life looked like in my family far out in the country in V. Velling, where violence, humiliation, social control and mental illness were part of everyday life ? I hardly think so. The signs from 3 out of 5 school-going children must have been there, but no one responded. I hope they would today.
DR puts an important theme on children’s dissatisfaction and society’s responsibility under the microscope
DR plays on the fact that we as viewers do not really know if Holly is telling the truth. Is she just a hurt teenager with a budding young mind who has a hard time coming to terms with the fact that her mother has a boyfriend and a sexuality? Is she lying to get attention? Did the Danish style prevail, so that fantasy mixed with the characters in her everyday life?
I can not imagine that a public service channel like DR in a drama series that is broadcast in prime time, intends to run the situation so far that after the last episode we are sitting with a social worker who has overreacted and a young girl , we’ve found out we can not trust. It would be against the spirit of the times and all that the public debate, including Mette Frederiksen, has focused on since Frederiksen’s New Year’s speech, where she announced that she sided with the children and was “the children’s minister.”
Although I will probably get nausea and stomach ache again, I am grateful that DR dares to focus on the difficult topics. Surely it’s that I’m sitting ready in front of the screen next Sunday hoping Holly gets a smile on her face and that her little brother gets the shine off her broken arm.
(Google translate)
Danish-American Eyes on Society 