ANGELINAMANZUK@YAHOO.COM 815-212-6346
HIS VISION, HER BODY:
On Noir, Masculinity and True Detective
by Angelica Jade Bastién
In the first episode of True Detective, Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) looks upon the body of murder victim Dora Lange. Her body has been positioned like a piece of art, hunched over, with stark…
Oh my word. This is perfect.
Watched: True Detective, Season 1
There are two tweets from two people whose opinions I respect that almost entirely sum up my feelings about this show:
The “True Detective” finale was terrific. Now I want to go back and watch them all together at some point.
— Taylor K. Long (@taylorklong)March 11, 2014
Basically unconvinced that True Detective was really about anything but how hard the rape and murder of women is on the men detecting it.
— Katie Coyle (@krcoyle)March 10, 2014
I think there are wider themes in this show, about the fallacy of ideal masculinity, and the emptiness of aphorisms, and how obsession can take over one’s life, but at the same time I’m not convinced that they really deserve sober recognition, because the tone is so hard to parse. I think some of this comes down to the way that HBO treats female nudity; viewed through their programming lens, it makes sense that just after a graphic discussion of the murder of young women, Woody Harrelson’s character might have an equally graphic conversation with a woman twenty years his junior where she begs him to fuck her in the ass; that said, it was moments like that where the show felt at its weakest.
Nic Pizzolatto, the show’s creator, postulates that the show’s limited view of women comes down to the largely POV perspective of the two men guiding the show. I think there is some credence that can be lent to this assertion; yes, there are other concerns here, and other perspectives that may well have greater value, but the stylistic method by which the show reveals those perspectives necessarily diminishes them. Sometimes, I think the show gets the balance just right; Michelle Monaghan does a great deal with very little material, and evolves from a harridan archetype to someone whose own impulses and agenda can be glimpsed through the testosterone-fuelled haze. Others, like the shell of a character that Beth (“fuck my ass”) inhabits, are less successful, and only serve as distractions for the protagonists.
The thing that makes this show defensible is how well-defined those protagonists are, though. Matthew McConaughey is fascinating in this show, and every line is dripping with intelligence; even the ending, which divided audiences, is a brilliantly ambiguous note to end on. Yes, they’re consumed by their work (and their work involves investigating the rape and murder of young women), but it would be hard at least to complain that in real life, work like that is simply non-existent; there are male detectives investigating this level of violent crime, and some are presumably invested in their work. That’s not to say that the show represents a reflection of some real-world reality, but that when you come to questions of moral justifiability (and as someone who by now tends to view a lot of media through a feminist-tinted lens, that comes into play), I think it’s there.
It’s a show that isn’t about women, and on a wider cultural level that represents a depressing trend of shows about complex men that put women in narrative second place, but as its own piece, the men it represents are wonderfully complex. Rust Cohle is the sort of man you could explore for another season, but it’s probably sensible that we won’t. The next season, assuming it runs, will have an entirely different cast and storyline; here’s hoping they shake up the formula to their advantage.
Thanks for visiting, we look forward to hearing from you.
