The Honest and the Bent: an investigation of Representation and White Hegemony in Mercurio’s TV series Line of Duty

Abstract

This essay analyses how whiteness is portrayed and its hegemony reinforced through the practice of representation in Jed Mercurio’s highly acclaimed TV-series Line of Duty. It analyses scenes from the first season using Sara Ahmed’s affect theory and her extension of phenomenology, along with Roland Barthes definition of myth, and demonstrates that the series contributes to the idea of whiteness as universal and ordinary. Looking at characters, symbols and dialogues, the essay shows that by privileging one perspective over the other and representing a familiar polarity of the foreign threat and white hero, Line of Duty reinforces white hegemony at the same time as it rejects common stereotypes.