{"id":946,"date":"2014-11-02T12:17:39","date_gmt":"2014-11-02T10:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=946"},"modified":"2014-11-02T12:17:39","modified_gmt":"2014-11-02T10:17:39","slug":"true-detectives-and-serial-killers-both-sides-of-the-atlantic-dehumanised-girls-and-male-cliches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2014\/11\/02\/true-detectives-and-serial-killers-both-sides-of-the-atlantic-dehumanised-girls-and-male-cliches\/","title":{"rendered":"TRUE DETECTIVES AND SERIAL KILLERS (BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC): DEHUMANISED GIRLS AND MALE CLICH\u00c9S"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week I have watched the US series True Detective<\/em> (9 episodes, 2014) and have read book 19 in Ian Rankin\u2019s series about Edinburgh cop John Rebus, Standing in Another Man\u2019s Grave<\/em> (2012). Blame a nasty cold for my sluggish mind but at points the missing girls in Nic Pizzolato\u2019s screenplay would get mixed with their peers in Rankin\u2019s novel, the remote corners of the Louisiana bayou with the lonely tracks in the Scottish Highlands. Both set of girls were blurry, undistinguishable, mere appendages to the madness of the sick male that killed them (off screen) and of the obsessive males who hunted him. The cases were solved by flimsy, far-fetched coincidences. Nobody really cared nor mattered.<\/p>\n

The first paper I ever presented in public, back in 1994, was a positive reading of FBI trainee agent Clarice Starling in Thomas Harris\u2019s novel The Silence of the Lambs<\/em> (much less conservative in this sense than Jonathan Demme\u2019s film, despite the subsequent horrors to which Harris subjected Clarice). I remember a senior female academic asking me whether I did not feel disgusted with this obvious misogynistic trash, in which women were always victimised. Young that I was then, I was puzzled by her remark: not at all, I answered, Harris offers a strong female character who is a good role model to empower other young women in the fight against male violence. I still stand by that. Now, what makes Clarice so unique is that, unlike the men surrounding her, she learns who each individual female victim is and this way she eventually tracks their troubled male killer. I think this is what irked this woman and what irks me now: not so much the femaleness of the victims but their dehumanisation, intensified in current fiction.<\/p>\n

I knew I would not like True Detective<\/em> already by minute ten. Where are, I complained, the police women? Has none heard of Clarice and her many descendants? The series turned out to be, indeed, a bare-faced male ego trip. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson were simply marvellous, giving total credibility to bickering partners Rust and Marty. Yet, somehow the pretentious Pizzolato convinced himself that the more Rust spoke, the deeper the series would be when actually all his pseudo-mystical, depressive chatter only deflected from what should have mattered: the victims. Me, me, me both true detectives proclaim to the world: I\u2019m so unhappy, I\u2019m so lonely, life is dark (but light\u2019s winning??). Promising to unmask a confederacy of villains, they unmask in the end \u2026 a clich\u00e9, seen one hundred times (for the hillbilly\u2019s point of view see the very funny comedy Tucker and Dale vs. Evil<\/em>). Two things have been stuck in my dizzy brain for the last few days: Rust\u2019s Texan drawl preaching to me endlessly and the beautiful opening credits (with the song \u2018Far From Any Road\u2019 by Handsome Family). Oh, well: 9,3 according to IMDB audiences. Really?<\/p>\n

I read Standing in Another Man\u2019s Grave<\/em> a little edgy, as I wrote a while ago an article on the whole Rebus saga. Once Rankin published Exit Music<\/em> (2007), supposedly to be the closing volume, I embarked on an article about the strange bond between his detective and the gangster Cafferty: \u201cAging in F(r)iendship: \u2018Big Ger\u2019 Cafferty and John Rebus,\u201d published in Clues: A Journal of Detection in 2011 (see http:\/\/ddd.uab.cat\/record\/116052<\/a>). I wrote with much caution, as I very much suspected Rankin would go on and follow Rebus beyond retirement, as he has done. Luckily for my argumentation, Rebus and Cafferty are still \u2018best fiends\u2019 since they cannot be \u2018best friends\u2019 (a bit like Rust and Marty). Rankin has a great subplot about Cafferty\u2019s misleading attempt to become the overlord of a young upstart, who actually becomes the next big thing in Edinburgh\u2019s gangsterhood. Yet, Rankin needs a case\u2026 so here we go: serial killer it is.<\/p>\n

Rebus has been accompanied in the series since 1993 (The Black Book<\/em>) by Siobhan Clarke, a very solid female character who is crying out for her own series. In Standing\u2026<\/em> she has made it to Detective Inspector; she is now aspiring boss. Keen on the last criminal advances, she suggests that a profiler be brought into the case of the missing girls but her (tepid) attempt to sound properly up-to-date is dismissed. Obviously\u2026 for just as happens in True Detective<\/em> not only the victims lack interest for the writer but also the killer. Perhaps aware that the figure, borrowed from American fiction, fits awkwardly the Scottish landscape, Rankin tries even less firmly than Pizzolato to convince us that his male wacko has a solid reason to kill. He is just there in both cases as the excuse for the cranky hero to succeed in the face of unadventurous authority. Siobhan simply looks on, letting Rebus proceed. In Marty and Rust\u2019s case there is no female peer about (just a disappointed wife).<\/p>\n

Let me recommend at this point Isabel Santaul\u00e0ria\u2019s excellent study of the serial killer, El monstruo humano<\/em> (http:\/\/laertes.es\/monstruo-humano-p-815.html). My problem with this figure is not that it exists at all, even though clearly the fictional representations must multiply by now thousandfold the real thing. My problem is that he is used too often in a lazy way. Perhaps Se7en<\/em> (1995) went too far to make any other serial killer interesting. Yet the problem with the ones these three true detectives have faced for me this week on each side of the Atlantic is that, I insist, they\u2019re clich\u00e9s (and blurry ones at best).<\/p>\n

My colleague Bill Philips from UB, who leads a research team on the post-colonial detective novel, explained to me recently that readers no longer seek the thrill of the well-made detection story: they value detective fiction as social fiction. Fair enough \u2013 after all, I read Rankin for what he says about the dark side of Scotland. Yet, possibly as series as diverse as Bones<\/em> or Sherlock<\/em> show, detective fiction is and has always been about the main character. Both Pizzolato and Rankin (I don\u2019t know about the female authors) are suggesting that it would be altogether nice to do away with victim and killers, let the detective be our own nihilistic, existential hero. This as odd as doing away with love in romance\u2026<\/p>\n

The matter with genre in fiction is that labels make promises: if its romance, it has love; if it is detective fiction, it has a case. I\u2019m not against mixtures (SF and \u2018noir\u2019 blend beautifully in Blade Runner<\/em>) nor against eccentric detectives. It\u2019s just that if you\u2019re willing to work on their characterisation you should also be willing to work on their case, for a very basic reason. A poor case spoils the picture, making the oddball detective just that, an oddity, instead of what he was meant to be: someone with a deeper insight into life\u2019s dark side. <\/p>\n

And no, Pizzolato, the light is not winning, at least not for the victims.<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. Follow on Twitter the blog updates: @SaraMartinUAB. Visit my web http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I have watched the US series True Detective (9 episodes, 2014) and have read book 19 in Ian Rankin\u2019s series about Edinburgh cop John Rebus, Standing in Another Man\u2019s Grave (2012). Blame a nasty cold for my sluggish mind but at points the missing girls in Nic Pizzolato\u2019s screenplay would get mixed with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categoria","tag-gender-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}