True Detective - HBO (1 Viewer)

[Hector Grey]

why was Marty buying all those tampons? that was a bit weird. were they for his daughters or the girls he has locked up somewhere because he's The Yellow King?

That's awful considerate, for a psycho. Buying a load of tampons, that's one thing. Turning it into a chat up line, that's a whole other level.

 

[washingcattle]

I assumed it was for all the women in the house. Women's bodies tend to sync up when living together. It's weird.

Bulk buying. The small town/suburbanites eternal chore and raison d'etre.

well she covers it in this



which I think is a fair point.

I'm still enjoying the show but some people have reacted VERY badly to the above article which probably means it touches a nerve they'd rather not be touched. For me it brought to light some uncomfortable truths that I feel I'd noticed but had been trying not to think about before.



Um, sure.

I really don't see the point in articles like this it's like 10 years ago when everyone was up in arms for normalising violence and started taking pot shots at people like Scorsese and Tarantino while completely missing the point that the real targets which should have been much lower brow trash like Michael Bay or whoever.

This reminds me of those feminist statements like "If you want to get a painting into the natural portrait gallery you better pose naked for a man". An argument which seeks to simply ignore the fact that galleries like that are historical institutions and there is a historical bias towards the male gaze. So should we just ignore our history in favour of a version of it which sits more comfortably with our modern ideals ?


My personal favourite of these kinds of arguments is the claim that Amalie is a racist film because all the characters in dream like Paris are white.

That's right Amalie is a racist film.

True Detective is ostensibly steeped in the history of the detective novel and film noir, and that brings it's own inherent rhetoric with it. If it fails to escape that rhetoric and be a more PC modern thing it's probably more through it's steadfast reading of those influences or simply through oversight rather than deliberate misogyny.

So basically this seems to be rhetoric vs rhetoric which again is pointless when there are far bigger fish to fry out there. CSI for a fucking start.

 

[Lili Marlene]

This reminds me of those feminist statements like "If you want to get a painting into the natural portrait gallery you better pose naked for a man". An argument which seeks to simply ignore the fact that galleries like that are historical institutions and there is a historical bias towards the male gaze. So should we just ignore our history in favour of a version of it which sits more comfortably with our modern ideals ?

This show was not written 50 years ago. It is a modern show, modern thoughts apply. Hell, half of its philosophy is supposed to be very modern as per previous discussions. It's perfectly possible to create a show that has a misogynist character in a misogynist culture without having to make the show misogynist itself. If the show doesn't recognise that the people watching it live in 2014 then the show is the one ignoring history.

My personal favourite of these kinds of arguments is the claim that Amalie is a racist film because all the characters in dream like Paris are white.

That's right Amalie is a racist film.

The argument isn't that Amélie is "a racist film". The argument is that Amélie has a problematic relationship with race that ignores the realities of 1997 Paris where it is ostensibly set. Pointing these problems out doesn't make it a lesser film but it is something that is worth bringing to peoples attention. If you were a black Parisian you might find it pretty relevant when you watch it. It's unfortunately become a terrible internet catchphrase at this point but I think you need to check your privilege here.

True Detective is ostensibly steeped in the history of the detective novel and film noir, and that brings it's own inherent rhetoric with it. If it fails to escape that rhetoric and be a more PC modern thing it's probably more through it's steadfast reading of those influences or simply through oversight rather than deliberate misogyny.

True Detective is steeped in a lot of things. There are female characters therefore it is steeped in the history of treatment of female characters. And whatever about the women, it's treatment of men is pretty fucking weak as well. I'm not impressed by how paper-thin a character the oh-so-clever anti-hero Rusty has turned out to be (so far).

I really don't see the point in articles like this it's like 10 years ago when everyone was up in arms for normalising violence and started taking pot shots at people like Scorsese and Tarantino while completely missing the point that the real targets which should have been much lower brow trash like Michael Bay or whoever.

The point of articles like this is to counter and give balance to articles like this:

Why True Detective is the best show I’ve seen since the Wire - Independent.ie

Which tells you you are a fool if you don't love this show unreservedly and makes ridiculous claims such as that the love-hate buddy cop bromance-by-numbers between Marty and Rusty is in some way profoundly complex and nuanced

True Detective does not tolerate fools – the dialogue and the accents are dense (at one stage, Cohle waxes at length on the very nature of human consciousness in his partner’s car)...
Forget the murder, the sheer complexity of the relationship between Hart and Cohle would be worth tuning in for.

Give me a fucking break.

So basically this seems to be rhetoric vs rhetoric which again is pointless when there are far bigger fish to fry out there. CSI for a fucking start.

This isn't about things being 100% good or 100% bad. True Detective is a great show and a great watch but that doesn't mean its somehow immune to having problems embedded in it.

Here is a decent defence of it's treatment of women to counter the New Yorker one. Although I don't find it quite as convincing:

True Detective: The women on the show are treated badly. But there’s a good reason.

 

[Lili Marlene]

So who thinks Marty is the Yellow King then??

 

[washingcattle]

This show was not written 50 years ago. It is a modern show, modern thoughts apply. Hell, half of its philosophy is supposed to be very modern as per previous discussions. It's perfectly possible to create a show that has a misogynist character in a misogynist culture without having to make the show misogynist itself. If the show doesn't recognise that the people watching it live in 2014 then the show is the one ignoring history.

We're just going to have to disagree there. I don't think art has to be totalising or moralistic. TD is a cop show, that's all it's not making any comments on gender roles as much as it's just trying to tell a particular type of story. This whole thing seems as pointless to me as arguing that westerns are racist/misogynistic etc. Sure they are but you can't just supplant one convenient truth onto another because that's the one that suits your world view. It's a show about macho cops and serial killers for fuck sake.

The argument isn't that Amélie is "a racist film". The argument is that Amélie has a problematic relationship with race that ignores the realities of 1997 Paris where it is ostensibly set. Pointing these problems out doesn't make it a lesser film but it is something that is worth bringing to peoples attention. If you were a black Parisian you might find it pretty relevant when you watch it. It's unfortunately become a terrible internet catchphrase at this point but I think you need to check your privilege here.

Terrible internet catchphrase ? News to me I heard that from a lecturer in my college about 8 years ago and haven't ever encountered the argument since. Personally I think it's a ridiculous and pointless argument.


Check my privilege ?

Here we go again, disagree with an argument you don't find compelling or just plainly disagree with and all of a sudden you're a racist/misogynist/homophobe.

Fuck my privilege.

True Detective is steeped in a lot of things. There are female characters therefore it is steeped in the history of treatment of female characters. And whatever about the women, it's treatment of men is pretty fucking weak as well. I'm not impressed by how paper-thin a character the oh-so-clever anti-hero Rusty has turned out to be (so far).

Right so then we're on the same page then.

The point of articles like this is to counter and give balance to articles like this:

Why True Detective is the best show I’ve seen since the Wire - Independent.ie

Which tells you you are a fool if you don't love this show unreservedly and makes ridiculous claims such as that the love-hate buddy cop bromance-by-numbers between Marty and Rusty is in some way profoundly complex and nuanced

True Detective does not tolerate fools – the dialogue and the accents are dense (at one stage, Cohle waxes at length on the very nature of human consciousness in his partner’s car)...
Forget the murder, the sheer complexity of the relationship between Hart and Cohle would be worth tuning in for.

Give me a fucking break.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...how_are_treated_badly_but_there_s_a_good.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...how_are_treated_badly_but_there_s_a_good.html

So yeah it's another example of rhetoric vs rhetoric then is it ?

This isn't about things being 100% good or 100% bad. True Detective is a great show and a great watch but that doesn't mean its somehow immune to having problems embedded in it.

Here is a decent defence of it's treatment of women to counter the New Yorker one. Although I don't find it quite as convincing:

True Detective: The women on the show are treated badly. But there’s a good reason.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...how_are_treated_badly_but_there_s_a_good.html

When did I say anything about good or bad ?


Fuck the New Yorker, if this piece wasn't about misogyny in TD it would be about racism in some other show or classism or some other bullshit. The point of that article is that some upper middle class white collar overachiever looks at some piece of art which doesn't share the same world view as they do and so they have to have a go at it on "moral" grounds.


Remember having the exact same arguments 10 years ago about The Sopranos ?

I especially like the fact that she mentioned The Fall which is a show about an intelligent upper middle class over achiever who hunts down a serial killer who preys on intelligent upper middle class over achievers.

 

[Lili Marlene]

We're just going to have to disagree there. I don't think art has to be totalising or moralistic. TD is a cop show, that's all it's not making any comments on gender roles as much as it's just trying to tell a particular type of story. This whole thing seems as pointless to me as arguing that westerns are racist/misogynistic etc. Sure they are but you can't just supplant one convenient truth onto another because that's the one that suits your world view. It's a show about macho cops and serial killers for fuck sake.

I agree that art doesn't have to be totalising or moralistic. If True Detective stops being so steeped in philosophy, stops putting on airs and trying to be clever and just becomes a trashy crime show then none of this would really apply.

Westerns do tend to be dripping in racism/misogyny and all that but a) that doesn't mean you can't enjoy them and b) they were mainly made decades ago. This is being made now.

Terrible internet catchphrase ? News to me I heard that from a lecturer in my college about 8 years ago and haven't ever encountered the argument since. Personally I think it's a ridiculous and pointless argument.


Check my privilege ?

Here we go again, disagree with an argument you don't find compelling or just plainly disagree with and all of a sudden you're a racist/misogynist/homophobe.

Fuck my privilege.

Sorry, I meant "check your privilege" has become a terrible, overused internet catchphrase. I'm not calling you racist or misogynist or homophobic nor am I making any kind of massive moral judgement on you. Who the fuck am I to do that? As an educated, western white man I'm dripping in privilege enough.

Enough to know that I should consider these arguments and where my privilege is before acting so dismissive of them.

So yeah it's another example of rhetoric vs rhetoric then is it ?

Everything is an example of rhetoric vs rhetoric.

When did I say anything about good or bad ?

As an example when you were saying that people call Amelie a racist film there was an implication that racism = bad. These terms are very loaded as I'm sure you know.

Fuck the New Yorker, if this piece wasn't about misogyny in TD it would be about racism in some other show or classism or some other bullshit. The point of that article is that some upper middle class white collar overachiever looks at some piece of art which doesn't share the same world view as they do and so they have to have a go at it on "moral" grounds.

Listen Mr. Daily Mail, if you think this is an example of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD just go out and say it.

Remember having the exact same arguments 10 years ago about The Sopranos ?

Me? No. But the whole thing about debate is that it never ends so I'm sure people were.

I especially like the fact that she mentioned The Fall which is a show about an intelligent upper middle class over achiever who hunts down a serial killer who preys on intelligent upper middle class over achievers.

Haven't watched it but that sounds like a very valid criticism. I bet she'd be willing to listen to your take on it as well.

 

[hugh]

I think that New Yorker article makes a lot of good points and I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand at all. But it's a show that plays on genre and the genre(s) that it plays on have misogynistic aspects to them. I don't think that, just because it's a "clever show", it has some sort of obligation to subvert that. Westerns can be enjoyed in the full awareness that they propagated all sorts of racist and sexist ideologies but the difference now is that we are aware of that, whereas at one time this was presented as "normal". Raising questions about a contemporary show that trades on these past genres and asking whether it gets a pass just because it's engaging in some sort of exercise on postmodern genre appropriation is perfectly valid.

In short, I can see these problems, but I'm perfectly willing to ignore them since the show it has so many other good things going for it.

 

[washingcattle]

I think that New Yorker article makes a lot of good points and I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand at all. But it's a show that plays on genre and the genre(s) that it plays on have misogynistic aspects to them. I don't think that, just because it's a "clever show", it has some sort of obligation to subvert that. Westerns can be enjoyed in the full awareness that they propagated all sorts of racist and sexist ideologies but the difference now is that we are aware of that, whereas at one time this was presented as "normal". Raising questions about a contemporary show that trades on these past genres and asking whether it gets a pass just because it's engaging in some sort of exercise on postmodern genre appropriation is perfectly valid.

In short, I can see these problems, but I'm perfectly willing to ignore them since the show it has so many other good things going for it.

That's pretty much how I feel about it except for saying that article is valid. I personally think debates like this are fairly redundant. It also irks me that like you say "trash" can get away with anything while if you make something even slightly intelligent suddenly there's this wave of criticism from some group who don't feel that their world view is represented in the work. My main problem though is that what you have in most of these kinds of debates is an academic usually from a sheltered background who don't have any connection to the culture that's being portrayed on screen and are up in arms because that culture is either racist or homophobic or misogynist or whatever pick one. I'm not saying that TD is a fair depiction of it's setting far from it but seriously is it news to anyone that serial killers and cops are misogynists? I seem to recall academics in the states blasting The Wire for being racist a few years ago, Mad Men is misogynistic so is The Sopranos. Then there's the same misogyny debate about Spring Breakers which is quite baffling because the whole film is not supposed to be read as anything other than a form of insult to begin with. Then there's hip hop which has been the whipping boy for middle class academics for the last 30 years. the problem for me is A. what the fuck does a journalist from New York know about backwater Loiusianna or inner city Baltimore etc? and B. It probably isn't possible to make a show/film/ art in general about a subject like race without being accused of racism. That's just how fiction works there has to be some sort of antagonism in the story or else nothing would ever happen. Personally I'm on thinking of Orson Wells a bit. I want all of my art produced using the ideals of Sodom and Gomorrah rather than Switzerland.

Basically these kinds of articles and debates seek to normalise art in line with a set of ideals which, are well-intentioned, sure, but ultimately anything that seeks to make make art less edgy or limits the scope of what is "acceptable" for art to discuss and sets rules for how certain cultures should be discussed is a bad thing. A kind of elitist censorship of sorts.

Anyway, not much of this actually pertains to TD which is nothing more than a hard boiled detective story. I'm just tired of articles like that, I find them redundant and tiresome. It's like someone going "that's racist" every time you mention someones ethnicity.

The massive irony in all of this is that The New Yorker and the rest of these types of magazines want to discuss the problems in high brow work but at the same time they're funded by advertising which is by far the worst culprit when it comes to misogyny and any "ism" you can think of. So you can read this article and side by side there will be a glossy full page advert where a blonde with massive breasts tries to sell you beer.

 

[Jerry Twig]

The massive irony in all of this is that The New Yorker and the rest of these types of magazines want to discuss the problems in high brow work but at the same time they're funded by advertising which is by far the worst culprit when it comes to misogyny and any "ism" you can think of. So you can read this article and side by side there will be a glossy full page advert where a blonde with massive breasts tries to sell you beer.

You were right on the money until your last paragraph. The ads in the New Yorker don't try to sell you beer, and there's no blondes with massive breasts. The last one's ads were for Cadillac and Louis Vitton, for fucks sake.

 

[Lili Marlene]

In short, I can see these problems, but I'm perfectly willing to ignore them since the show it has so many other good things going for it.

Yeah me too. Except I'm apparently too dumb to automatically see these things so personally I require articles like the one in the New Yorker to open my eyes a little.

You can find fault with something without having to therefore dismiss the entire thing outright. That's one of the main problems with the world these days imho but can probably save it for another thread.

 

[Lili Marlene]

I'll stop posting in this thread presently but here's a good counter argument -

TheVine - On the shallowness of 'True Detective' - Life & pop culture, untangled

 

[Jill Hives]

This is why I never read anything on shows or films. I don't care what anyone else thinks while I'm watching it. I'll read it after, if interested but generally I'm not. I take away from it what I take away from it. End of. Dissecting everything in pop culture, especially when it deals how women are depicted bores the hell out of me. I'm the worst feminist ever.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

I hope they don't bump it this week for the Oscars like they did with the Super Bowl

 

[Unicron]

Related to the discussion about the show in the last couple of pages, (as opposed to the discussion of the show) the show runner has suggested that the leads next season might be women.

 

[Lili Marlene]

This is why I never read anything on shows or films. I don't care what anyone else thinks while I'm watching it. I'll read it after, if interested but generally I'm not. I take away from it what I take away from it. End of. Dissecting everything in pop culture, especially when it deals how women are depicted bores the hell out of me. I'm the worst feminist ever.

Now I'm aware I can't convince you otherwise because you're only interested in what you take away from things, end of, but I'll give it a shot anyway:

Criticism is not about telling people your opinion nor is it about ticking the boxes of a cliché, e.g. "this is a feminist critique therefore I'm here to tell you that women are treated bad in this work."

Criticism is there to encourage you to think about art in different ways. A good critic is like a good artist in that they apply their training to their work and can illuminate a piece of art in a way that allows you, the reader/viewer/listener/whatever, to consider it from a different perspective. If art illuminates life then criticism illuminates art. Sometimes art says life is ugly and sometimes criticism says art is ugly. It's not there to supplant art nor to make value judgements on whether art is 'good' or 'bad'.

For me, most of my favourite art hits me in a gut-way that I initially can't explain and I may turn to criticism to help me both understand the art and, in turn, myself. I think one would be foolish to assume that they understand everything in the world and therefore have no need for criticism or, indeed, for art.

Of all the articles written about this show I've found the New Yorker one the most convincing partly because it's been the best written one, i.e. a superb piece of writing; a piece of art.

 

[Jill Hives]

Criticism is there to encourage you to think about art in different ways.

Yeah, I get that I suppose I just don't want to do it while I'm looking at something. I'd rather watch the whole thing and come to my own conclusions on it before exploring others. Watch a film, talk about it after. Read a review or criticism after, if my conversation isn't enough to satisfy my thought process. A multipart series as on going critique is like discussing only one photo in a triptych. I'd rather have the time take it all in and make my own connections. I watch everything like a puzzle and don't want it ruined by anyone. Speculation here and there like on this thread, fine. Huge articles, no thanks. Not for me, at least until it's over. Otherwise it feels like cliff notes and cheating plus ruins the enjoyment of it.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Yeah, I get that I suppose I just don't want to do it while I'm looking at something. I'd rather watch the whole thing and come to my own conclusions on it before exploring others. Watch a film, talk about it after. Read a review or criticism after, if my conversation isn't enough to satisfy my thought process. A multipart series as on going critique is like discussing only one photo in a triptych. I'd rather have the time take it all in and make my own connections. I watch everything like a puzzle and don't want it ruined by anyone. Speculation here and there like on this thread, fine. Huge articles, no thanks. Not for me, at least until it's over. Otherwise it feels like cliff notes and cheating plus ruins the enjoyment of it.

It's a fair point, we live in a strange world now where everything is so instant. I was more addressing the second bit of what you said though

I'll read it after, if interested but generally I'm not. I take away from it what I take away from it. End of. Dissecting everything in pop culture, especially when it deals how women are depicted bores the hell out of me. I'm the worst feminist ever.

which to me read like you don't get criticism. But if you do and you still don't feel a need for it, grand, so be it. World takes all sorts.

 

[Hector Grey]

So who thinks Marty is the Yellow King then??

Might explain why he shot the cook in the face.
We're totes assuming people who are reading this have watched all available eps, right?

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Might explain why he shot the cook in the face.
We're totes assuming people who are reading this have watched all available eps, right?

That's a given for an ongoing show.

I embargo myself on Sunday nights until people in GMT have had a chance to torrent.

 

[Unicron]

That's a given for an ongoing show.

I embargo myself on Sunday nights until people in GMT have had a chance to torrent.

Post away, I don't come into these threads until I've seen the episode in question.