- Title
- The emotional detective: gender, violence and the post-forensic TV crime drama
- Creator
- Ford, Jessica; Boyle, Amy
- Relation
- MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture Vol. 7, no. 21
- Relation
- https://maifeminism.com/issues/mai-issue-7-female-detectives/
- Publisher
- MAI
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- The second episode of Top of the Lake (2013, 2017) opens with Detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) literally putting herself in the victim’s place, lowering herself into the cold and potentially deadly lake water, re-enacting a pregnant girl’s descent in the previous episode. In the first episode of Jessica Jones (2015-2019), the titular private investigator (played by Krysten Ritter) gets drunk and has sex with the man she is investigating, experiences flashbacks of her own trauma, and compromises her own safety in an attempt to prevent the further exploitation and abuse of young women. Marcella (2016-present) opens with Detective Marcella Backland (Anna Friel) bloody, distressed, bruised and naked in a bathtub; this is the audience’s introduction to the crime solving genius who is the anchor of the series. In Sharp Objects (2018) journalist Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) relives her childhood sexual abuse and traumatic homelife, while investigating the brutal murder of young girls in her hometown. In Mare of Easttown (2021), Detective Sargent Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) is grieving her son’s suicide and is haunted by the unsolved disappearance of a local teen girl, when the body of another young local woman is found naked and dead in a local creek. In each of these recent television depictions of women investigating violence against young women, either as a detective, private investigator or journalist, the protagonist is deeply physically, psychically and emotionally affected by her work. Aesthetically, narratively, and thematically, Top of the Lake, Jessica Jones, Marcella, Sharp Objects and Mare of Easttown are distinct, employing different kinds of storytelling techniques and ways of rendering gendered violence, investigative labour and crime; but they are united in their centring of a truth and justice seeking female investigator who is emotionally invested in and traumatised by their work. We propose that characters such as Robin, Jessica, Marcella, Camille and Mare represent a different kind of female detective on TV: the emotional detective.
- Subject
- emotional detective; gender; violence; post-forensic
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1432746
- Identifier
- uon:39100
- Identifier
- ISSN:2003-167X
- Language
- eng
- Reviewed
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