In The American Bridge Character Analysis

Leading characters in both versions of the Bridge played a significant role in the success of the series. Since the success of X Files, the couple of contrasting-in character and gender- detectives constituted an important element of crime series. In the last decades, there was a shift towards strong female detectives. Nicci Gerrard (2014), analyzing the success of female characters in crime TV series in the last years (the Killing, the Bridge, the Fall, etc.) underlined that, “[f]ictional detectives are often loners, but being women makes them doubly alone”. Saga and Martin challenged perceptions of male/female emotional stereotypes. Martin’s chaotic personal life is a mess. He himself seems unable to control his libidinal instincts. On the
Her character disclosed a lot of her background: her sister’s murder, her relation to Dobbs, her sister’s killer, her alcoholic mom. We got to know Sonya more than Saga in season 1. Sonya attracted, even unintentionally, male and female protection (Marco’s, Hank’s, her boss, the police female secretary). This need was strengthened by the fragility that Diane Kruger, who impersonated Sonya, seemed to emit. On the contrary, Saga put more at distance social affinities. At the same time, the character of Mexican Marco was much more passionate and extrovert than Martin, as one expected from a ‘Mexican man’. Although Martin’s unrestrained sexuality contradicts perceptions of the Nordic temperament, whereas in Marco’s case stereotypes were confirmed. Saga and Martin’s relation allowed for humourous overtones deriving from Saga’s social detachment and national stereotypes. Sonya and Marco did not have the same chance because of the relocation at the US/Mexico borders and its political inequalities. Space played an important role in both series, as it will be discussed below.

The success of the characters of the series was connected to transnationalism as a form of consciousness which went beyond bounded localities and cultures. The characters of the Bridge crossed physical and symbolic borders. They moved between states and cities; between societies, languages and cultures trying to understand each other in order
Following the narrative strategies that the creative teams followed showed different approaches to transnationalism as part of the narrative as well as the production process. Nevertheless, the success of the two series did not mean that audiences did not stand critical to the fictionalisation of transnationalism. In many online fora, fans from both series challenged the limits of the transnational collaboration of the two detectives and its representation as an easy transborder mobility that can be adapted in every context. For example, one of the fans wondered about the absence of political commentary in the US version, which hid the tensions between the US and Mexican authorities. Another one pointed out that transnational collaboration should be represented less through spatial borders like a bridge, but through the negotiation of social and cultural boundaries[5]. This remark was revealing of how transnationalism concerns more the everyday experience of boundaries than state borders. Moreover, these comments produced an interesting contradiction between fictionalised transnational politics and the lived experience of transnationalism where political and economic hierarchies could forbid