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Notes -
True Detective Night Country
There is a culture war internet discourse happening around HBO’s newest show True Detective Night Country. The discourse can generally be summed up as follows: HBO newest show TD Night Country is the 4th season of an anthology mystery/crime miniseries. The first season came out ten years ago and it starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as two detectives searching for a killer in Louisiana. The plot does not particularly matter, but the show is widely viewed as one of the greatest single seasons of TV ever. Speaking for myself, I agree with this assessment. I return to it every few years and I am still impressed at how good the acting, story, and cinematography are.
Fast forward ten years…two mediocre seasons (2 and 3) were released, and HBO announced the release of True Detective Season 4, co-named Night Country. Season 4 stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as two detectives unravelling a murder mystery in Alaska and people were very, very excited for this season. Prior to release, Night Country received overwhelming critical reception from TV critics. It currently has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score (RT can be gamed, but the 93% score shows the general reception).
I was also very excited for this show. Critics were calling it the best season of True Detective since season 1; some were even saying it was better than season 1. With these very lofty expectations, I watched the show as it was released, week by week.
By episode two, I knew this show had problems. By episode four, I knew it just wasn’t very good. By episodes 5 and 6, I was hate watching. Many people have reviewed and discussed the show’s problems much more eloquently than I. This video is quite good and sums up the many many problems the show has:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=y2TCOd_YZF4
What I will say is that the show is simply…boring. It is a six-hour miniseries and at least 70% of the show is filled with boring relationship drama (the remaining 30% being focused on the actual…criminal investigation). The characters are uninteresting, low stakes, and unlikeable. The easter eggs paying homage to season 1 are like a frying pan to the face in their obviousness. The story carries no emotional weight, has major plot holes, and the ending is unsatisfying and bewildering. It’s bad. I would not recommend this show to anyone.
Now here is where the culture war comes into play. Online, fans of the True Detective series are panning the series. Go check out the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, it is a paltry 61%. The True Detective subreddit is especially critical of the show. People are especially disappointed and confused given how critically hyped it was before its release.
But what has happened is that many critics, podcasters, even Issa Lopez, the director, are blaming the backlash on sexism and misogyny. They say that male fanboys of season 1 are brigading review sites and review bombing the show. They are saying that the viewers dislike the show because it features two women lead detectives and that viewers can’t stand the lack of masculinity that was so integral to season 1. Even the professional critics who have dared to post their negative opinions on Twitter are being called misogynistic.
The problem with this read is that…the show sucks. It’s just not good for all of the reasons I’ve listed above. It’s extremely frustrating to see people called misogynistic and “anti-woke” for criticizing a show with two women leads. I find it particularly unfair because other detective shows with women leads, such as Mare of Eastown or Sharp Objects, were fantastic. It didn’t receive the critical backlash because those shows were actually good. We now exist in a bizarre universe where a magazine like Rolling Stone overwhelmingly praises the show while a magazine like Forbes pans it.
I’m not one who normally gets involved in the culture war, but I found this discourse particularly egregious. I don’t know what the future of this series holds, but I’m hoping someone at HBO sees the light.
Update: Issa Lopez has been hired to write and direct season 5 of True Detective. Whoosh.
Issa Lopez is a telenovella writer. She just (obviously) doesn’t have the skills to take on a show like this.
Hiding behind “that’s sexist!” makes the problem of sexism worse, since it means we are to believe that this is what a top tier female writer is capable of producing.
I think something that needs to happen for stories like this to be taken seriously is that they need to be more realistic about the shortcomings of the characters. For instance: one of the opening scenes is a female cop absolutely [wo]man-handling a guy twice her size. This scene plays a lot better if she tries to [wo]man-handle this guy, and gets the shit beaten out of her for it. It establishes this character as arrogant (which she is) and humanizes her. We should see multiple instances of these two lady-cops being unable physically interact with the criminals they are supposed to be policing. Maybe at some point they can play this to their advantage somehow.
There is also a weird culture war happening right now where suicide is being presented as hip and cool. This is a serious problem. I have a teenage niece who has had multiple friends kill themselves. This is obviously happening in Canada with the bizarre commercials for their suicide program, and then the end of this show one of the main characters killing herself (seemingly out of nowhere) as a means of "closure" or something? Ridiculous and actually bad for society.
Is there a scene of a heroine getting manhandled in a fight, anywhere? I can't think of this happening in media at all. It's all Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Black Widow, Peggy Carter, Emma Blunt, Rey... Probably there is stuff that I can't think of. Edit: replies show I haven't watched many recent action films.
I recall there was a backlash when the advertising for X-men Apocalpyse had Jennifer Lawrence getting manhandled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men:_Apocalypse#Billboard_controversy
Emily Blunt's character gets overpowered twice in Sicario. Once in the apartment scene with John Bernthal's character, and once in the bunker by Josh Brolin's character.
This was praised for subverting expectations in being a relatively more realistic depiction of how a normal sized female would fare against a normal sized male in actual close-quarters combat, but also heavily criticized for the same reason (perhaps moreso). Yet the two scenes were still very much non-gorey, especially compared to the experiences of John Bernthal's character.
However, it's noteworthy how Sicario is... noteworthy... for this reason—that Emily Blunt's character was not some hyperagentic badass #GirlBoss—but a novice who's only there for technicality-related reasons, and who gets dominated and/or in-over-her-head multiple times.
In Dragonball Z, a scene that Western audiences commonly pearl-clutch at (and in-universe, it's also viewed as especially despicable) is where Majin Spopovich beats up Videl at a World Tournament. Spopovich is viewed as disgustingly evil, but he could be hailed as the ultimate feminist and gender egalitarian in treating a teenage girl as he would a teenage boy. Good for Bibidi and Babidi in maintaining a company culture that doesn't see sex.
I've not seen a mainstream Western film (or any film for that matter) that comes close to depicting a woman experiencing the level of extended physical brutality commonly inflicted upon men in movies and having her #GirlBoss illusions shattered as happened in the Videl scene.
Even explicit gore movies tend to cut away and/or make the camerawork more ambiguous when it comes to violence inflicted upon females.
To nitpick, she was not a novice FBI agent when she was assigned to the legally shady task force as the liaison.
Her level of tactical experience doing law enforcement operations doesn’t particularly effect her ability at grappling.
But it does make the non-stop screaming just as irritating as it was in her role in Gravity (bonus points for accomplishing nothing without a man present in that movie, too).
Emily Blunt wasn't in Gravity.
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