True Detective & feminism

photo from here

I recently read this article regarding the HBO show True Detective being a "turnoff" for female viewers. As a female viewer who just finished season one (holy cow, did not sleep for days) the premise of the article intrigued me, but actually ended up confounding me:

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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the best episode of girls

photo from here

My favorite episode of the t.v. show Girls is "Welcome to Bushwick a.k.a. the Crackcident" from season 1 — Shoshanna smoking crack, could it get any funnier? I think not.

The episode that surprised me the most, and continues to make me think about what it is to be a young, independent woman is "One Man's Trash" from season 2. In this episode, as everyone on the internet knows, Hannah goes to confess to a man (Patrick Wilson playing JoshUA) that she's been putting trash in his cans from her work and ends up staying for two nights.

This episode caused all sorts of controversy because Hannah looks like a fairly normal 24 year old woman, and JoshUA looks like a hot actor person. I have a lot of trouble with this sort of backlash for many reasons, most of which revolve around how stupid it is to assume someone like him would not like someone like her physically or otherwise. As someone who is not doing 500 squats a day, partaking in Crossfit, or otherwise going above and beyond to look like someone's idea of ideal I can say this episode made me happy to be watching t.v. and happy they showed this interaction taking place the way it did.

What stuck with me more than their physical relationship was their last interactions. Hannah tearfully admits that she just wants to be happy, and after JoshUA says of course, that's what everyone wants she explains that:

I made a promise, such a long time ago, that I was going to take in experiences, all of them, so that I could tell other people about them and maybe save them. But it gets so tiring, trying to take in all the experiences for everybody, letting anyone say anything to me. Then I came here, and I see you, and you’ve got the fruit in the bowl in the fridge with the stuff. … I realize I’m not different. I want what everyone wants. I want all the things. I just want to be happy.

In part this touches the core of my current existence. While I never made myself a promise to choose experiences over happiness that is the path of least resistance my life has chosen for the past several years. I choose partners, jobs, situations, based on adventures and how interesting they might be, not on how much joy and happiness they might bring me. I choose interactions that challenge me over those that are safe, and from those come exactly what Hannah/Lena Dunham are talking about, "so that I could tell other people about them and maybe save them". 

In college I chose to date men who challenged my views on basically everything and at times that meant my views on my own self-worth. Finding someone who creates that feeling of safety Hannah is talking about, perhaps not physically but tactilely, the "fruit in the bowl in the fridge with the stuff" has been something I myself have avoided for a very long time. I never thought much about marriage, having children, or buying a house until the last year or so; I never wanted to admit I was so stereotypical in my desires for my life, so ordinary. That, I believe, is at the center of this episode — when it's right in front of you, no matter how hip and counter-culture you are, it's hard to decide to choose a life of experiences over a life with a full fridge, a nice partner and some normalcy. 

I don't think Hannah, or I, can give up our love of these experiences any time soon but I do think admitting we want what most people want, happiness, a fairly normal domestic life is the first step towards self-acceptance. It's okay to want these things, it's okay.