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| photo from here |
How can it be so intelligent on matters of slow-burning grief and small-town bigotry and yet so dumb – really dumb – on the subject of women?Ummm yeah, easy — the show wasn't written to be kind to the feminist agenda (whatever that is). It was written to be a devastating, creepy look at small town violence and the detectives who work to bring the perpetrators to justice. And it does all those things really really well.
Things I like most about True Detective include how raw the two main characters, Marty and Rust, are portrayed by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. In particular McConaughey's character reminds me of Jimmy McNulty, aka Dominic West's character on the other HBO cop-masterpiece that wasn't particularly kind to women, The Wire. I also enjoy that while Marty's relationships with women are not functional or fun or feminist they are real things that happen to men with jobs like his. What's being portrayed isn't fun to watch both because it's misogynist (which it is), but also because it's heartbreaking.
Now, if you've read my blog or know me you know that I am a lunatic feminist who constantly talks about body image, powerful females in film & TV, Claire Underwood on House of Cards, and LGBTQ issues as discussed at the Oscars but in this case I think we've gone too far, fellow feminists.
But what the show is implicitly – if unintentionally – saying, is that true detectives are men.True Detective is set in rural Louisiana in the mid-'90s. I don't know about you but I kind of doubt there were a ton of Louisiana State Police Criminal Investigations Division homicide detectives who were women during that time in that place. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps my experience working in the same building as a small police force at a University in Washington State that has only had 2 female police officers in the last 6 years on a staff out of about 20 was an illusion.
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In the end I'd rather watch True Detective with all its misogyny than shows like Girls or Sex and the City that portrayal the lives of women in other weird lights.
Lena Dunham has done a great job pretending to know what it's like to be an unemployed middle-class white girl living in a two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, oh wait, no she hasn't. I was an unemployed middle-class white girl in Bellingham for about a month after I graduated college and I could barely afford to put gas in my car. Working semi-part-time-kinda at a coffee shop would not afford you the apartment Hannah has here, let alone in Brooklyn. Dunham's writing reflects a major flaw I find with Girls: the situations seem too good or too bad to be true because they are, Dunham can't write about characters being poor because she herself (as well as the entire main cast) has never been poor.
In the case of True Detective Nic Pizzolatto, the creator of the show, wrote about what he knows, Louisiana, and writes from the perspective of how a man would deal with the situations presented for Marty & Rust. Had he written the scenes involving Maggie and Marty's crumbling relationship more focused on Maggie's plight would it have had the same impact on Marty's character? I think not.
Feminism is great, feminism is the reason some great strides have been made in the entertainment industry, but feminism is not something to be pushed into all media in order for audiences to feel comfortable. If we were comfortable with how the women in this show are treated would we feel the same way about the show in general, I don't think so. Would the dramatic conclusion to the series, that I am not about to spoil, have come about if Rust stayed home with his daughters, painting their nails and watching Sweet Valley High with them? No.
True Detective doesn't make me uncomfortable because I understand that these characters aren't supposed to be feminists but they are also just that — characters on a television series. And, in the case of most amazing television, most are not feminists because the shows was written/directed/and produced by a man. The biggest thing this article made me realize is whining about current shows portrayal of women does nothing — writing shows focused on strong female leads, directed by strong women, and produced by women will do something.
To end this rant on feminism and modern television I leave you with a few shows that are baulking traditional roles for female characters and doing some amazing things:
- House of Cards – Claire Underwood, Jackie Sharp, etc.
- The Fall
- Top of the Lake
- Nurse Jackie
- Sherlock
- Bob's Burgers (I had to)
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