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Reflecting on processes of (post)modernization in the crime and detection genre resulted in an examination of artistic canons, completed with an analysis of changes in gender representations and poetical-medial alterations surfacing in novels and films. The idea that emerged as the most widespread (post)modern characteristic in my research corpus can be summarized as follows: the process of human representation achieved through media technologies is of a deadly nature. It is therefore by no means accidental that along the axis from the modern to the postmodern the genre of crime fiction is showing more and more medially (self)-conscious moments, segments and story lines, as these are potential exits towards murders and crimes to be committed. While narratives, photographs, letters and moving images are apparently transparent and can serve as traces and clues in modern(ist) detection (although they don´t always do), in the postmodern(ist) paradigm they will lead to the identification of the medium at most, instead of the perpetrator of the criminal act.

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Andrea Virginás is assistant professor in the Department of Film, Photography and Media at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania (Cluj-Napoca, Romania). She has published two volumes of scientific work (2008). Her research interests are genre, gender and mediation theories related to the screen, in a postmodern/postcommunist context.

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