A
Review of the TV Series True Detective starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.
This
is for those of you who have seen this series. Be warned - it’s a spoiler piece
for those of you who haven’t….
So a
smart script, great acting and moody cinema photography set in Louisiana U.S of
A. Music by T Bone Burnett. What’s to gripe about? Let me tell you…..
The
director/writer Nic Pizzolatto gives us a story that he himself advises is
shaped by binary opposites - of light
and dark, good and evil, good cop/bad cop, science and religion. Opposing forces clash throughout the story – even
the environment is shot through with a lingering on its natural beauty constantly
being pitted against the ugly detritus of industrial and urban surroundings.
At the
heart of the story pulses the tension between two men who are posited as
radically different in their approach to life and work. They are in fact the
only well-developed characters in the whole 8 hours plus story. Everyone else around
them are really just human ciphers who help carry the plot and enable the
growth and ultimate transformation of these two central, compelling personalities.
The men are police partners who are held together by their job and their
particular task in tracking down a serial killer of women and children.
At
the beginning, the two men collide repeatedly and seem unable to comprehend
each other’s motivations. Their insensitivity to each other is staggering.
Woody H plays a social, gregarious man who idealises the concept of family (which in his stated opinion is there to solely support and nurture him). He has a wife and two small girl children. He also enjoys a younger woman whose role is to succour him in transgressive sex.
His
partner played by Matthew Mc had a marriage that broke up after his 2 year-old
daughter was killed. He is an atheist misanthrope, an intellectual (although we
never do see him with a book) who when he does deign to communicate (no small talk
for this guy) sees no need to play the social game. He offends authority
figures and around his partner, spouts metaphysics, science and philosophy, creating
an intellectual defence system that justifies his self-hatred, and grief.
These
altercations are needless to say, a refreshment and delight for the viewer.
Ultimately
these two men over the course of the series become true friends. They traverse
deep into the heart of darkness in true heroic fashion, they conquer the evil
monster, find honour in near-death, and the movie ends with their metaphysical
conversation about how the dark holds the light. The misanthrope finds his
humanity and their animosity is transcended.
A rollicking good story-line is
played out along the way with lots of action, amusing word-play and
psychological tension to keep the viewer in thrall.
The
interesting thing to me about the story-telling though, is the way the creators
of the show quite consciously use dialectics to contain and grow the story - but
in very selective ways. Quite significant binary opposites are either neglected
or blurred. Gender and race dialectics are a case in point, not to mention the
way in which violent means are never questioned as to whether they are
appropriate methods to reach a desirable end.
This
is a storyline that sets itself up to discuss the human condition through the
use of binary opposites, attempting to reconcile them through the two main
characters. However it seems a problem when deeply embedded binaries such as
gender, race and means vs the ends are neglected or half-pie addressed then
left hanging. The binary opposition between the two men is resolved, but not
much else.
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| Man - Clothed |
As
for the creators of this series, it is hard to know how conscious or
unconscious is their negligence and inattention to these matters. Sexism,
racism and violence are so embedded in our culture that their prevalence in all
forms of media has normalised and backgrounded them.
 |
| Woman - Unclothed |
In
America, land of the free, the tension between black people versus white people
creates one of the biggest dialectical tensions constantly being played out in
the culture.
In
this script we find two black men investigating the two white protagonists, yet
the binary opposition in this situation is ambiguous and remains unexplored.
This
story is situated in Louisiana. Consequences of its tragic history of slavery
and deeply rooted oppression of black people by white, leak into the script
rather than being addressed openly. The interviews are conducted as if the men
involved are all the same, except for issues of rank. However once, one of the
black investigators loses his cool and calls one of the protaganists “whitey”.
So we know there are hidden unacknowledged racial tensions between them.
There
is one big scene when a drug raid on a black ghetto is enacted by a white Biker
Gang. The all-white male production team discuss this scene in the Special
Features solely in terms of their pride in overcoming the challenges of
shooting it.
At
the conclusion of the series, the black men are duped both by Matthew Mc’s cunning,
and the collaboration of the two white partners joining forces against their
investigators. The ‘resolution’ of any black/white tension that was present
throughout the script, finds the black men having to eat humble pie. Mmmm….
And
then there’s the gender issue which is treated in a highly problematical and
disappointingly stereotypical manner.
The
opening scene is set in place with the classic investigation of a murder of a female
victim. She is left dead under a huge beautiful tree, in a field. She is naked
and mutilated and there are deer antlers attached to her head. Her back and bottom
are filmed – she remains a faceless body. She appears to be in an attitude of
prayer and ritual artefacts made of wood and twigs are hanging from the great tree,
which in Special Features we are told is symbolic of the Tree of Life.
There
is this extraordinary long shot of an army of all-men – clothed policemen –
striding towards the sole, naked, dead women’s body. She comes under the detached,
collective scrutiny of many men.
Now
apart from the occult or pagan aspects of this particular murder, this is a
pretty typical trope we are all familiar with in every TV cop show and movie. Woman
as object; woman as victim. The viewer’s gaze is the male gaze – she is dead, disfigured
flesh. Alongside the clothed men, we, the viewer subject her to their/our
“objective” investigation. She is acted
upon by those in control.
This
theme is really too, too trite. It is the subject of every damn cop show and
boys’ own movie we watch every run-of-the-mill day. Men investigate and solve
the murder of female victims, preferably mutilated in more and more horrific and
graphic ways.
In
this particular storyline, children as victims are quite quickly thrown into
the mix.
This
is patriarchy at work, formulating and shaping our view of the way life is.
Action heroes save the passive (female) victims in every thriller and are not
loathe to use a little or lots of violence along the way to keep us on the edge
of our seats.
The
male/female dialectics in True Detective are also rather tired – or should I
say – tried and untrue.
Woody
H’s character has a lovely wife and two young daughters, so we get not only
adult man vs adult woman playing out, but later father/daughter relationship tension
to observe.
Two
women are involved in Woody H’s life. His wife who holds the family in place for
him, and his young beautiful mistress. Again we have the clichéd, classic sexist motif
– the nurturing mother/wife versus the whore - that women are subjected to
again and again in all forms of media.
There
is never any resolution or transcendence offered to these two female characters
themselves. Untidy ends are left untidy. Woody H goes ballistic and behaves with intolerable
and illegal cruelty towards his whore when she dumps him. She is left to pick
up the pieces of her life - unobserved and forgotten very soon by the viewer as
the men’s action propels us further into the conquest of the beast.
As
for his long-suffering wife; she mothers both him and his partner, swallowing her
husband’s paternalistic crap for the sake of the family. When his cover is
blown, she then has a go at becoming the whore. With a flash of her bottom (the
male gaze in this show is quite taken with women’s bottoms – very sexy
obviously) she seduces poor old Matthew Mc much to his chagrin of course.
Because
he’s a “real” man, he then goes on to dominate the sex scene by taking her from
the behind, so doesn’t give her the pleasure of face-to-face contact. The men
who wrote the script definitely have something going on with women’s bottoms.
Her
motivation is something only a male script writer could dream up. It was all a
manipulating ploy to get her husband out of her life. She immediately tells him
what she’s done, knowing he’s a red-blooded good old boy whose honour will be
smitten to the core when he discovers his partner has slept with his possession
(ie wife).
It
was interesting watching in Special Features the young men who made the movie,
animatedly discussing this aspect of their storyline. To me it is one of the
least authentic scenes – not because there wasn’t real sexual tension between
Matthew Mc and his partner’s wife, but because her motivation just didn’t ring
true. She had shown real kindness to him and using him in this cold-blooded way
to get back at her husband just seems too much of a stretch. Sure it’s a
possible scenario, but not really probable. The viewer has to take on trust
that a woman can be that calculating in this emotional scenario.
The
wife/whore never has a real character to develop – her job in the plot is to
play a role that will carry forward the ‘real’ story dynamic between the two
male buddies.
The
other woman who is brought in briefly to keep Matthew Mc’s bed warm for a
while, is constantly shown through her body language as completely emotionally
involved with him, while he is the emotionally unavailable man playing the role
of partner- for- the- time-being.
So
the dialectics between men and women in this show are really boring and not
really even dialectics. There is never any authentic clash between two equals. The
story is all about the men and from their point of view. The women are used as
plot devices and are complete clichés. Stereotypes replace archetypes.
We
gaze upon the murdered woman at the beginning as if she is an object. She too
was a whore to be used and abused by men. She starts and finishes as the victim,
the subject who is acted upon. She is shown only as a beast – although it is
her murderer who is the real beast. There is no female agent/hero who can
redeem her feminine body as a vessel of life. There is no transcendence for her
or any other woman in the show - only loose ends.
Then
there is the daughter/father tension played out through Woody H’s inability to
be a loving father. Much is made of the disquiet that both men face when
confronting the dialectic between the devastated female and child victims they
are dealing with on the job - versus the live, loved and known children. The
stress comes to climax when Woody H erupts in violence towards his own teenager
(verbally) when she becomes sexually active. In a cowardly act of masculist dominance,
he viciously beats up her boyfriends.
Another
dynamic is intertwined within this –
that of good cop and bad cop. Matthew Mc speaks in an earlier scene, of how a
cop can behave with complete impunity to punishment. Here his partner acts this
out when he mercilessly violates two cowering young men who had been jailed for
fooling around with his daughter (his possession). The cop is shown vomiting
afterwards, but the lost boys are another forgotten strand of no consequence.
Male
violence and dominance always demand a blood sacrifice, and the story offers no
counter-balancing argument. Do not the means and the end constitute a
dialectical argument? In order to get their man, these men go far beyond the
law and any moral imperatives around violence and murder. Maybe it’s the
American way? (rapidly becoming the New Zealand way).
Isn’t
the tension between the means and the ends an extremely important theme in our
culture? Isn’t it a philosophical given that the means always shape the end?
We
know and observe every day that violent means always perpetrate and perpetuate
violent ends.
In
their creators’ eyes, these two charismatic men are heroes. They are not in
mine.
The
heart of darkness they confront needs a lot more light bought upon it than the
kind of courage these two men show us. The darkness of the human condition
demands we urgently attend to more than just male bonding if we are to defeat
the beast within.
We
must surely learn to synthesise the binary opposites that are posited in this
show – science vs. spirituality, love vs. evil, the “locked room” of alienation
vs. our interconnectedness with the living mystery of nature.
But simultaneously
we must not neglect or abandon the fundamentals of gender and race. Actually, the
complexity and tension that resides in the current societal inequality between
those competing and complementary forces makes for powerful story-telling. But
it is imperative that we have female voices to tell alongside the male version.
We must learn to weave together a new kind of story that carries hope for our
shared future.
The
tree of life is a recurring visual symbol in the show. It is one of the more
ancient universal symbols in our world. It marks the threshold of death and
life and connects these two binary opposites. The tree is where life and death
are transcended - a sacred place where unity can exist.
Traditionally
the tree is associated with women for it is a woman’s body that is the vehicle
for birth. Here are 3 images from the past that express this idea.
1489 (B. Furtmeyr)
1862 (L. Burger) and 1892 (F. Leighton).
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| Tree of Life Flanked by Eve and Mary |
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| The Garden of Hesperides |
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| The Norns under Yggdrasil |
The modern story begins with a murdered woman in a parody of prayer at the foot of the tree. She is the original problem the TV series sets out to solve.
The
dead woman – a blood sacrifice - at the foot of the tree of life is the problem
posited by patriarchy.
That
army of men marching through the fields to solve the problem are the very cause
of her death. Individually and institutionally, it is their methodology of dominance
and violence that have produced her death.
Violence
is antithetical to life.
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| Tree Goddess |
Until
women’s experience and voices are fully involved in that army - behind the
scenes and on screen - working together to transform our present rapist,
murderous society into a life-giving culture again –– women and children will
go on dying under the tree.
The
tree of life represents the anima mundi
– the soul of the world - dancing life
for us all. Male experience doesn’t own or solely represent the physical or the
metaphysical world – we all hold up the sky.
