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Can a show about murdering women actually be feminist?
(I quit watching these kind of shows-- got bored, and a more than little sickened with the parade of dead women-- who seemed to be 'punished' in someway for murder, a sex worker, a mistress, a scheming wife, an oh, so inncent girlfriend etc. so I'm not sure if I agree with this, but I also haven't seen the show)
The endless parade of serial-killer dramas on TV today raises an uncomfortable question: What does it mean that we as a society seem to find violence against women endlessly entertaining? ”The Fall,” a BBC2 series now streaming on Netflix, forces us to take a hard look at ourselves as viewers and what we like — and makes the powerful point that killers who target women aren’t as deep or interesting as other shows make them seem.
At first glance, the show might look like “Law & Order: SVU,” or pretty much any murder series of the last decade. A man, a grief counselor, married with two adorable kids, cannot control his urges to hurt and control women. We don’t know much of his background, or his past crimes, but we come upon him in the beginning of a killing spree in which he stylizes the dead body. The police try to track him down with the help of a super-detective, one devoted solely to the job, so much so that she sleeps at work.
What makes this show uniquely feminist is the way it handles this seemingly familiar subject matter. It showcases the electric talent of a top-tier actor (Gillian Anderson) as a complex and brilliant detective solving gruesome crimes against women. It focuses on the explosive relationships between men and women, on misogyny, on the nature of violence, and it deeply cares about women, feminism and the ways in which men mistreat women, from petty judgments to torture, rape and murder.
The show is not subtle in its embrace of feminist themes. It purposefully paints male characters as both limited and flat. The hollow men, the stupid men who think largely with their cocks, the men who delude themselves into thinking that somehow they are worth more or are just better than women, are shown not as fully sympathetic human beings, but as dumb, or violent, or impetuous men. Though the serial killer on the show is indeed a male, he is a cipher with no real inner life. He is one-dimensional, and purposefully so. Anderson herself tells us so in the final speech of the season, a stunner, in which she explains to the serial killer in an indignant, but almost triumphant declaration:
You are a slave to your desires, you have no control at all, you are weak, impotent, you think you are some kind of artist, but you are not… you try to dignify what you do, but it’s just misogyny, age-old male violence against women.
At first glance, the show might look like “Law & Order: SVU,” or pretty much any murder series of the last decade. A man, a grief counselor, married with two adorable kids, cannot control his urges to hurt and control women. We don’t know much of his background, or his past crimes, but we come upon him in the beginning of a killing spree in which he stylizes the dead body. The police try to track him down with the help of a super-detective, one devoted solely to the job, so much so that she sleeps at work.
What makes this show uniquely feminist is the way it handles this seemingly familiar subject matter. It showcases the electric talent of a top-tier actor (Gillian Anderson) as a complex and brilliant detective solving gruesome crimes against women. It focuses on the explosive relationships between men and women, on misogyny, on the nature of violence, and it deeply cares about women, feminism and the ways in which men mistreat women, from petty judgments to torture, rape and murder.
The show is not subtle in its embrace of feminist themes. It purposefully paints male characters as both limited and flat. The hollow men, the stupid men who think largely with their cocks, the men who delude themselves into thinking that somehow they are worth more or are just better than women, are shown not as fully sympathetic human beings, but as dumb, or violent, or impetuous men. Though the serial killer on the show is indeed a male, he is a cipher with no real inner life. He is one-dimensional, and purposefully so. Anderson herself tells us so in the final speech of the season, a stunner, in which she explains to the serial killer in an indignant, but almost triumphant declaration:
You are a slave to your desires, you have no control at all, you are weak, impotent, you think you are some kind of artist, but you are not… you try to dignify what you do, but it’s just misogyny, age-old male violence against women.
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/16/can_a_show_about_murdering_women_actually_be_feminist/
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