Murder Mystery – Bitch Flicks

‘Lady Detective’: ‘Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries’ Explores Feminism in the 1920s

Phryne acts just as independent and liberated outside of the bedroom. She knows how to fly a plane, she delights in driving her own car, a Hispano-Suiza, and totes around a golden revolver with a pearl-encrusted handle. Oh, she also has impeccable taste in clothes.

This is a guest post by Lauren Byrd.

The Australian TV show, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (the first two seasons are available on Netflix), is set in the roaring 20s, famous for its jazz, gin, shorter hemlines, bobbed hair, and Art Deco design. The protagonist, Phryne Fisher (pronounced Fry-nee), is an heiress to a small fortune, but she also possesses a sense of adventure and a knack for solving crimes, often outshining her male counterparts at the Melbourne Police Department. Sound like just another Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes? Think again. Phryne is also a feminist.

Based on the series of novels by Kerry Greenwood, Phryne is an independent woman. Having inherited a small family fortune during World War I, Phryne doesn’t have to work. She could have her pick of a husband and spend the rest of her days reading, knitting, or traveling. Instead, she decides to start solving crimes to earn money. She builds her business from the ground up like any modern day entrepreneur.

However, the television series has made one significant change. In the books, Phryne is 28, which according to Downton Abbey, is past marriageable age. This seems modern enough (and probably quite scandalous for the time), but in casting Essie Davis–who is in her 40s–as Phryne, the series has created one of the few “older,” independent, sexually liberated female characters in television history. Davis herself cited Samantha Jones in Sex and the City as the only other television counterpart to Phryne.

So let’s talk about sex. Phryne has a string of lovers, both in the show and the book series. However, she perhaps possesses a unique set of feelings for her emotionally reserved male counterpart on the Melbourne police force, Detective Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page). The show plays off their chemistry by trotting out the somewhat tired will-they-won’t-they dance, yet these two still make it a compelling tango to watch unfold. Their relationship is an example that speaks even further to Phryne’s independence. Like some female characters might, she doesn’t sit around and wait for Jack to figure things out. She continues to be herself, which means falling into bed with next man she takes a fancy to.

But it is precisely for her sexual liberation that Phryne has been criticized by American viewers. In 2013, the first season became available on Netflix. Shortly afterward, some viewers left comments saying the show would be more enjoyable if Phryne wasn’t such a “tramp” and “obnoxious airhead.”

Jezebel wrote a piece about the comments. Miss Fisher author Greenwood said she had been expecting outrage over her liberated, independent heroine for ages. But she didn’t receive a single complaint when the show aired on Australian television. “Not once. Not even from old ladies. Not even from nuns,” Greenwood said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald.

In fact, Greenwood finds Miss Fisher no different than similar male characters who solve crimes for a living. James Bond woos and beds a different woman in every film and is a hero to men and boys. “No one thinks their multiple lovers are indications of slutishness,” Greenwood pointed out.

Davis said in an interview with NPR that she was sent the Jezebel link and thought the reactions to it were fantastic. “The reactions towards the outrage were so powerful and outspoken. And that so many people who, on the Jezebel site, were like, ‘Right, well, if that’s what everyone’s saying about it, I’m watching it.’”

The series, when it comes to sex and violence, is actually quite tame. Even though the show features a different murder every week, the killings and violence are downplayed, and the sexual liberation of Phryne receives the same treatment. There’s the flirting, the first embrace, but then the show cuts to the next scene, leaving everything after implied. Or at the most, the pre-coital scene cuts to the post-coital, a pair of lovers ensconced in bed.

Her backstory, which comes out in bits and pieces in the series, is just as fascinating. She grew up poor in Melbourne and only after her English cousins died during World War I did her father inherit their peerage line, making him a count and her the Honorable Miss Fisher. During the Great War, Phryne ran off to France where she joined a French woman’s ambulance unit, where she received an award for bravery. After the war, she worked as an artist’s model in Montparnasse for a few years, before continuing to hop around Europe. In the book series, she’s returned from England back to her roots in Melbourne.

Phryne has an amazing cadre of characters she’s befriended and employed. Despite her statement that she’s “never understood the appeal of parenthood,” she’s certainly not selfish and takes in a young girl, Jane, as her ward in the second episode. Her relationship with her new maid/assistant, Dorothy “Dot” Williams, blossoms into a true friendship throughout the course of the series. At first, Dot is quite reserved, sheltered, and very Catholic, but under Miss Fisher’s influence and tutelage, she becomes much more than confident in herself and turns into a true asset to Phryne’s business.

Phryne met her best friend Mac while she was serving on the French ambulance unit. Mac is a physician and dresses androgynously, but her sexuality is never a point of contention or question in her friendship with Phryne. To round out her household, Phryne employs—funnily enough–a man named Mr. Butler as her butler and Bert and Cec, former dock workers, who drive a taxi and conduct odd jobs for Miss Fisher, both around the house and as part of her investigations. In the books, Bert and Cec are also “red raggers,” a term from that era for socialists.

The show is a delightful romp through the decadence of the late 1920s and while hemlines are higher, Phryne still butts heads with menfolk about her line of work. Frequently referred to as a “lady detective,” Phryne seems to have taken this sexist term and turned it into a calling card for herself, but she still gets talked down to by plenty of men. In fact, her relationship with Detective Inspector Jack Robinson is at first antagonistic. He wants her to butt out of his investigations and mind her own business, he threatens to arrest her for breaking and entering, and only allows her to stay in the room during an autopsy if she won’t say a word. Over time, however, they become partners. He wants her opinions on his investigations, and she wants him there for a second line of defense and in order to use his official title to secure records and information she otherwise wouldn’t be able to obtain.

Australia was one of the first countries that gave women the right to vote, passing the law in 1902. Once soldiers left for the war in Europe, women emerged from the home to fill the jobs left empty by men, which included factory and domestic work, nursing, teaching, and clerical and secretarial positions. Of course, women were paid less than men so even once men returned from the war, many employers wanted to keep women on the payroll because they cost less. Australian politician M. Preston Stanley openly confronted male arrogance and encouraged women toward independence. In 1921, Edith Cowan was the first woman to be elected to the Australian parliament. And of course, the 1920s were the age of the flappers, women who believed in social equity, rather than political. Social equity for the flappers meant women were allowed to drink in bars like men and enjoy all the recreational activities that men did. Not all women embraced this new movement, however. Some women of an older generation, called “wowsers,” objected to these new-fangled practices. (See Phryne’s Aunt Prudence.)

If you have a penchant for 1920s fashions, love detective shows, or just enjoy watching a sassy woman kick some ass, then Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is a shiny gem of a show in a sea of superhero movies, True Detectives, and Game of Thrones.

Lauren Byrd has worked in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles and New York. She currently writes a weekly series on her blog, 52 Weeks of Directors, focusing on a female filmmaker each week.

Negotiated Identities and Gray Oppositions in Ridley’s ‘American Crime’

With that said, even the traditional gender binary is flipped on its head—the women of the show uphold the patriarchal system that controls them, while the men are often portrayed as effeminate and oppressed by the same system that is supposed to give them power. Yes. Take a second while you process that.

This guest post by Sean Weaver appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.

When I was a young preteen kid, my dad told me tales of how Miami Vice and Magnum, P.I. once helped him entertain the dream of becoming a private detective. He was so enamored by detectives and the law that he took a college course on crime, criminal investigation, and the law. Unbeknownst to him, I remember stumbling across one of his old tape recorders, hitting play, and listening to his own secret sting operation play out. Perhaps that’s where I began my long career of advocating social justice–justice against a system that is seriously flawed.

With all nostalgia and conspiracy theories aside, at first glance, Jonathan Ridley’s (director of 12 Years a Slave) American Crime seems like one of those old school detective thrillers, the likes of which have entertained American television and cinema since the 1980s. Up to its premiere on March 5, 2015, I had seen previews on ABC. I imagined it would be everything I had hoped in a detective drama: the gritty neo-noir tone, the masculine detective hero out to solve the un-solvable case, and the plot line driven by suspense and a nagging “Who dun it?” Instead, what I came across is a show that is powerfully poignant, thought-provoking, and one that delves the viewer deeper into the conditions of the human experience.

This isn’t a show aimed at entertaining. It is a show that relies on provoking the viewer into moving past that cushy comfort zone of self-identification, and questioning the very foundations that control our daily lives: social justice, race, and gender. In her review on American Crime in The New York Times, Alessandra Stanley beautifully captures the sentiment and driving force of this show. She states, “This series is at heart a murder mystery—someone has been killed, and the show withholds who did it. But solving the crime isn’t the point. The murder is a clue to the mysteries of character, experience, and self deception…”

It is a murder mystery. But, as Stanley so eloquently puts it, it isn’t. It’s so much more. In the introduction to her book Detecting Men: Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective, film critic Philippa Gates writes:

“The detective genre has traditionally been a male-centered one based on the social assumption that heroism, villainy, and violence are predominantly masculine characteristics. The detective genre has traditionally been a male-centered one based on the social assumption that heroism, villainy, and violence are predominantly masculine characteristics…Not only is the genre male-centered, it is also hero-centered, tending to adhere to a structure of binary oppositions— good/bad, civilized/uncivilized, law/crime, order/chaos, and heroes/villains…[However] Not all detective films make absolute distinctions between these oppositions, and the examination of the indeterminate, ‘gray’ area between heroism and anti-heroism also proves illuminating in terms of the social mores and attitudes toward crime and law that it can reveal.”

Gates rightly points that not all detective films, and in this case show, make absolute distinctions in these traditional masculine tropes/themes. American Crime focuses on illuminating this “gray” area that reveals the social mores and attitudes toward crime and law, and in turn attitudes on crime, race, and gender in American society. It forgoes the masculine detective hero out to solve the crime, and instead focuses on those impacted by such crimes—whether they are guilty by circumstance/hearsay, victims in their hurt, or even willing participants. Like Stanley also points out, this “gray” area exists in the things the characters fail to say or do. By focusing on this “gray” area, viewers can truly come to appreciate the complexities of this astounding show.

Set amidst the dark and drug-filled backdrop of San Modesto, California, the show centers primarily on four families and the suspects associated with a high profile murder, all poised to give into the collision course of hate, fear, and suspicion that guide their highly racialized and gendered lives. In short summary for those who haven’t yet seen American Crime, the driving plot is that a White man is killed by a Black man, under the guise of a “hate crime.” Hold on to that for a second. A Black man is charged with committing a hate crime against a White man. Talk about flipping the traditional binary. With that said, even the traditional gender binary is flipped on its head—the women of the show uphold the patriarchal system that controls them, while the men are often portrayed as effeminate and oppressed by the same system that is supposed to give them power. Yes. Take a second while you process that. And finally, each character is hell-bent on seeking a social justice, whatever that may be, that reasserts their own existence. I’d rather not give away to many more details. Take my word for it, watch it.

With all the background stuff out of the way, the task of unpacking the complex lived realities of the Skokie and Nix families is rather daunting. However, at the head of the Skokie family is Barbra Hanlon (Felicity Huffman), mother of the murdered White man, and ex wife of Russ Skokie (Timothy Hutton). Barb fits all the characteristics of the stereotypical suburban middle aged White woman. She is assertive, grieving, and every bit fearful of those she perceives as “other.” She is the walking parrot of the patriarchy, and embodies all its masculine ideals. She wields power, through her very own existence. So much so, that if you hadn’t watched the first few episodes, you would swear that she was the intended murdered victim.

She creates fact from the truths she is unable to face. She decries her son a hero, even after authorities question her son’s involvement in an illegal drug cartel: “You want me to say stuff about my son that isn’t true? He is a war hero, a veteran.” Finally she gives into the easy out of declaring racism and her son’s murder a hate crime, knowing that the lead suspect of her son’s murder is in a relationship with a White woman. She groups people by the stereotypes engrained in her social upbringing—even going as far as declaring, “It was probably one of those illegals.” At one point, she comes into her power and wields it, well, like a man—even going as far as purchasing a firearm. The feminist in me cringes at this description. Because on the surface it seems like the stereotype of the grieving hysterical mother is being perpetuated once again. But there comes a point in the show where the viewer realizes she is not just a woman facing “hysteria.” No, the show is pushing past the perceived identities we take so much stock in. Instead, it shows how easily it is for the oppressed to become the oppressors by wielding fear and distrust. It also shows how people often negotiate the power of their identities at the expense of others.

The antithesis to Barb’s masculine ideals is her ex-husband, Russ. Like his wife, Russ takes stock in illusions that the exterior just needs to be brushed off. Russ is the failed man. When I say failed man, I mean he fails to live up to the expectations of the patriarchal world that controls his life. He is weak, timid, and ultimately unable to hold ground with his wife. At one point Barb delivers the ultimate emasculation speech, concerning where and who should bury their dead son exclaiming, “You walked out. You no longer get to say you’re his father.” The viewer becomes perplexed and is left with figuring out whether she is right or wrong. Is he the hero because he has returned? Does he return to step into the perceived masculine role of putting the pieces back together? Does his masculinity rely on the perceived social norm that the man is the back bone of family? Has he really overcome his gambling addiction? For Russ, the answer is yes, because countless times he declares, “We need to be a family.” In the end, Russ can only reclaim his own lost masculinity by taking his own sense of justice. In the final episode, Barb is distraught that the man she deems murdered her son is released. Her masculine veneer fades, and the viewer is left with a defeated woman realizing the realities she has fabricated are nothing but lies. After being cast off by Barb in a moment of rare intimacy between the two, Russ returns home to the gun that Barb has entrusted in his care. She has rejected his last attempt to once again reunite the family, his last attempt to be a man. He fails to be the hero, and instead becomes the villain he has tried to protect his family from by murdering Carter Nix (Elvis Nolasco).

On the receiving end of the prosecution is the Nix family. Carter Nix stands accused for the murder of Matthew Skokie. While the show never reveals whether or not Carter killed Skokie (which to me is a nod to the infamous system in which the guilty go free and the innocent accused), the viewer is left to come to their own conclusion. The facts are plentiful, but the truth is even harder to discern, and is found only in what is left unsaid. On the surface, it might seem like the show is reproducing the Black “thug” stereotype; Carter is a drug addict dating a White woman with the same problem. In fact, every chance they get the prosecution tries to save Carter’s girlfriend Aubry (Caitlin Gerard) from the menacing Black man: “Give us something to put him away.” However, Carter is far from the stereotypes that seem to define his life, and consequently his actions. Like his White counterpart Russ Skokie, Carter is a defeated man, emasculated in every sense of the word. While the circumstances differ, the same power structure is at play. The reason Carter relies on drugs is to create realities he wishes to see as truth. In one scene, Carter discusses how Aubry has saved his life with his sister Aliyah Shadeed (Regina King). He states he was miserable being an accountant, subservient to the White men that controlled his life. He then shares with her a magazine clipping of a Black man and White woman, the reality he wishes to share with Aubry, but cannot due to the interference of what is socially acceptable and not. He must negotiate his identity for drugs, and perceived lived realities, all while fighting an impenetrable system of control.

Finally the last person who seems to take a central role in the unfolding drama is Aliyah, Carter’s sister. She is every bit the counterpart to Barb Skokie. In fact, she is just as strong and willfully powered. She becomes the spearhead of a campaign to free Carter and is right to point the finger at a system that is massively corrupt. In one brilliant dialogue with Carter she states, “You sleep with their women, use their drugs, and take their guns. And you don’t expect to be locked up here?” She is a strong figure and is masculine in her own rights. However, in her fight to free Carter from his metaphorical chains she becomes just as guilty of upholding and instilling fear and hate. Like Barb, she becomes the victim; it is no longer her brother’s fight. In doing so, she manages to push Carter into breaking up with Aubry, forcing Carter to take sides in an invisible war. Just before the final scene in which her brother is murdered, Aliyah gives a speech in her mosque stating, “If we as a people cannot forgive, then we are cursed to hate.” The irony is that Aliyah was only able to forgive once her cause had been won. But her victory comes at the cost of her own negotiated identity, proving that the true American crime is not the physical act of murder itself, but something far more harmful: the negotiation and deception of one’s self.

Sean Weaver has a MA in English/Literature from Kutztown University. He is currently News Editor at Vada, an online magazine from the UK with a new queer perspective. When he isn’t reading or writing, he is hard at work looking for new ways to understand what it means to be queer.

Twitter: @levirush8

Blog: http://post-colonial-scholar.blogspot.com

‘The Killing’ and the Misogyny of Hating Bad Mothers

Vilifying mothers is a national pastime. Absent mothers, celebrity mothers, helicopter mothers, working mothers, stay-at-home mothers, mothers with too many children, mothers with too few children, women who don’t want to be or can’t be mothers–for women, there’s no clear way to do it right.

The Killing promotional still.

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

In AMC’s The Killing, “bad” mothers have been woven throughout all three seasons.

It would be easy to see this as a failing on the show’s part; instead, I think we can see it as a realistic depiction of how we treat mothers in our culture represented in both in the fictional world of the show and in critics’ responses to the series.

In the first two seasons of The Killing, the plot centers around the murder of Rosie Larsen, a 17-year-old girl. Her grieving parents–Mitch and Stan–have a difficult time (understandably) in the aftermath of her death and in the investigation. Mitch (Michelle Forbes), in the midst of a breakdown, leaves her two sons with Stan and her sister as she hits the road to try to heal or find something to ease the pain.

Mitch Larsen: bad mother.

In last year’s “The 10 Worst Moms on TV” on Yahoo TV, Mitch Larsen was featured as one of the worst. The critic wrote:

“Her daughter may or may not have been a prostitute or involved in some illegal doings at a casino. And she ended up dead seemingly because of it. But instead of hunkering down and paying more attention to her remaining children, Mitch left her sons to be raised by a depressed father and their hooker aunt while she went off to live in a motel and act creepy around wayward runaway girls.”

Mitch’s interaction with the runaway girl was a direct response to her feelings of inadequacy about her failings as a mother to Rosie. She was attempting to heal and grow. She mothered the runaway girl the best she knew how and was still abandoned and hurt. Mothering is difficult and complex–it’s not a simple equation of just being there all of the time.

In season 3, the victim pool has grown substantially–a number of teenage girls are found murdered, and the suspect appears to be a youth pastor at a homeless shelter.

One of the missing girls who is still unaccounted for, Kallie Leeds, has a terrible no-good single mother, Danette Leeds (Amy Seimetz), who seems to prioritize cigarettes, beer and getting laid over her difficult relationship with her daughter. Her neglect and indifference are seen as central to Kallie’s victimization.

Danette: bad mother.

As Danette and another mother of a missing girl sit next to each other at the police station, Danette notices that the other mother has a binder full of photographs and composite photos. She seems uncomfortable, as if she’s understanding the depth of her neglect. She recognizes that Kallie’s life trajectory closely mirrors her own, and the weight of that is pushing down on her. She was being the kind of parent she knew how to be, and she didn’t know how to be June Cleaver. Most mothers don’t.While these supporting characters’ relationships with their daughters are troubled, and it would be easy for the audience to “blame” the victimization of the daughters on their mothers, it wouldn’t be correct. We are so used to complex, fallible male characters that we are also conditioned to see them as complex and fallible, not good or evil. When we’re presented with women with the same depth of characterization–especially mothers–we don’t know what to do except what we’ve been conditioned to do: criticize them and blame them.

This is blatantly obvious when we consider the show’s protagonist, detective Sarah Linden (played by the amazing Mireille Enos).

Linden has consistently been portrayed as a terrible mother in critics’ reviews of the series. She is a realistic female lead character–she is good at her job, works tirelessly and struggles with her failings in her personal life and professional life. Complex female characters are a good thing, and The Killing consistently delivers them (it can’t hurt that the show’s producer and many of the writers are women).

In the first two seasons, Linden had custody of her young teenage son, Jack. Her work means long hours away from him and dinner from vending machines. Linden herself was a foster child and has difficulty negotiating her upbringing and being the kind of mother that she’s supposed to be, but cannot. In the third season, Jack has moved to Chicago to live full-time with his father–he’s thriving, and living with his father. That’s good, right? No, Sarah Linden is evidently still a piece of shit mother.

Sarah Linden: bad mother.

In reviews of The Killing, writers often take an acerbic tone when mentioning her as a mother.

For example, this reviewer seems to think taking a jog makes her a bad mother:

“We all struggle with the work-life balance thing, and detective Sarah Linden is hardly an exception. Finding time to mother her son, for instance, seems to be a challenge. Jogging, however, she manages to squeeze in. And it’s a good thing, too. Because Linden (finally) got a major break in the case this week, and it’s all thanks to the fact that she prioritizes cardio over sleep, parenthood, marriage, friendship, or updating a sweater collection that appears to have been sourced from Dress Barn circa 1997.”

This reviewer fails to make the connection that she’s preoccupied by an intense case, so she needs to stay in Seattle (or maybe the fact that she’s putting her career first figures into this assessment):

“But she’s still the World’s Worst Mother — her son lives in Chicago and she won’t visit because, well, he’s the only person she knows there. Wow, Linden. Just, wow.”

In a Salon review from last year (which, remarkably, denounces The Killing for not being “fun” enough), the reviewer slips in, “Yes, it’s still raining, and Linden’s still a bad mother…”

Even the New York Times, in a review from the first season, comes to the conclusion that the “scariest aspect” of the show is the theme of absent motherhood. Crooked politicians, murders, prostitution… those don’t hold a candle to bad mothers.

“Sarah Linden refuses to accept that her inattentiveness is gravely affecting her son until she is forced to reckon with her absence around him. And in Mitch Larsen (Michelle Forbes) we bear witness to a character who is present in her daughter’s life and yet still positioned at a significant remove from the darkest secrets of her adolescence. In the end, of course, this is the scariest aspect of all.”

And in the aforementioned Yahoo TV list, Linden gets first place. The manifesto against her begins: “She’s not actively trying to kill her son, but she may end up doing so anyway.”

OK then.

I’m not going to try to defend Sarah Linden’s parenting. That would be ludicrous–she doesn’t need defending. She’s a complex, realistic character with real issues.

At Bitch Flicks, Megan Kearns posted in the first season how it was “refreshing” to see this kind of character trying to navigate her different roles, and that “the lead character is an accomplished single mom striving to keep her son out of trouble all while maintaining her demanding career.” She manages to do that by the third season, but it’s still not good enough.

Instead, audiences and critics alike focus much too closely on the female protagonist’s failings as a mother. We do not do that with male protagonists. (OK, six seasons in, after an episode highlighting parenting, Jezebel posted about how Don Draper was a “shitty dad.”)

Is Dexter a good father? What about Rick Grimes? Walter White?

Certainly there are lists of “bad dads” in TV/film, but the tone is different, more tongue-in-cheek. And a focus on these characters’ fathering abilities doesn’t run throughout conversations about the show, especially not with the same venom we see about Linden. When there’s a bad father in the mix, it’s just a poignant piece of a Joseph Campbell hero’s journey. Bad mothers, however, deserve to be burned at the proverbial stake.

There is a dearth of female antiheroes in film and television. The response to Sarah Linden shows why this is. When audiences see female characters, they think primarily in critical terms, especially about their roles as mothers and wives. (Of course this extends past fictional characters; there’s consistent and persistent hand-wringing about real-life women working too much and not being good enough mothers.) Women aren’t perfect (especially within the narrow confines of perfection that our society has put in place). Female characters shouldn’t be perfect.

My son is doing fine and my sweaters are warm and comfortable, assholes.

Linden’s role as a parent, girlfriend and ex-wife is just one small part of the grand scheme of the show. Her partner, Stephen Holder, has a girlfriend this season. He forgets Valentine’s Day and is never home. He is not painted as a villain, because he’s out getting shit done. He’s doing his job. That is what is important in The Killing. So when critics focus (in depth, or just in passing) on how terrible a mother Linden is, that further erodes what should be good about having strong, complex female characters.

Sarah Linden may not be a full-time mother. But she’s a bad-ass mother, and that is what should matter the most.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Gillian Anderson, Feminism, and BBC’s ‘The Fall’

The most important thing The Fall is doing, though, is calling out misogyny. Yes, Gibson gets to hand it to Spector, the serial killer, labeling him a “weak, impotent” misogynist, but we already knew that. What I find more intriguing is the way the show implicates the police force and the audience itself for the casual misogyny, assumptions, and stereotypes that perpetuate victim-blaming.

Spoiler Alert

The Fall is a BBC2 crime series starring Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame as Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson in charge of a serial killer case in Belfast. In a lot of ways, The Fall reminds me of the show The Killing because both feature female leads who are strong, capable, and dogged. The way in which The Fall differs, though, is that it impressively wears its feminist agenda on its sleeve.

Before I get into all the amazing things that The Fall is doing right, I want to get out of the way the biggie that I think it’s doing wrong. While this series is taking huge strides to turn a particularly sexist genre on its head, The Fall, like many crime shows, exploits the bodies of the women who are victimized. The camera lovingly caresses and lingers upon these women’s terror, their struggles, their bound limbs, their exposed flesh, and finally their corpses. The excuse can be given that it’s all in the name of “getting into the killer’s head”, but the camera’s gaze goes too far into the realm of prurience, ultimately becoming gratuitous and indulging in fantasies of rendering women helpless and objectified. This is a dangerous trope that threatens to dehumanize its female characters (and women in general), which is the OPPOSITE of what The Fall is trying to do.

Granted the objectification and sexualization of victimized women is disturbing (to say the least), but conversely The Fall provides its lead heroine a strong, unapologetic sexuality. Stella Gibson picks out a sexual partner at a glimpse (fellow officer James Olson who seems to be working the Irish equivalent of Vice), openly propositions him for a one night stand, has sex with him, and then refuses to engage with him afterwards because he can’t keep it casual. Gibson takes on the traditionally ascribed male role as sexual pursuer as well as the one who dictates the terms on which the encounter occurs.

Superintendent Stella Gibson is a woman who knows what she wants.

Due to an unexpected turn of events, Gibson is repeatedly questioned by her police force colleagues about her relationship with Olson, each interrogator is male, and each is accusatory and incredulous at Gibson’s behavior, judgmental of her unapologetic sexuality, her unwitting role in Olson’s infidelity to his wife, and her lack of remorse for her actions as well as her lack of attachment to a man with whom she spent a single night. In a way, these men even go so far as to heap some measure of blame on Gibson for Olson’s death. With a self-satisfied smile, one of her questioners asks, “When did you first meet Sergeant Olson?” Gibson replies,

That’s what really bothers you, isn’t it? The one night stand. Man fucks woman. Subject: man. Verb: fucks. Object: woman. That’s ok. Woman fucks man. Woman: subject. Man: object. That’s not so comfortable for you, is it?

DSI Gibson seems to always have to hold her ground when it comes to her male colleagues. — DSI Gibson has to hold her ground when it comes to her male colleagues.

My jaw dropped when Gibson delivered this speech. She simply and elegantly exposes all the sexism inherent in everyone’s attitude toward her private sexual relationships. She unearths the wider cultural misogynistic discomfort with female sexual agency. I wanted to clap or call someone and say, “It’s happening! Feminism is hitting mainstream TV with a brutal right hook!” Yes. Yes. YES.

Inherent in Gibson’s self-assurance about her sexuality is an even greater independence and self-possession. Gibson is the shining star of a cast full of strong, capable women who take charge when necessary and are very professionally accomplished. In fact, the serial killer solely targets women he finds threatening and emasculating due to their career success (we may or may not learn more about this in the as-yet unproduced Season Two). Not only are many of the female cast members strong, but they’re well-developed AND friends with one another. First, we’ve got the up-and-coming Constable Dani Ferrington played by Niamh McGrady.

Ferrington deeply regrets not taking the break-in at the house of future victim Sarah Kay — Ferrington regrets not taking seriously the break-in at Sarah Kay’s home.

Ferrington very casually comes out as gay to Gibson, her commanding officer. Gibson takes the information just as casually, which is refreshing. Ferrington also strives to protect Gibson by cleaning up her hotel room of its evidence of “male company”. Gibson doesn’t hide her encounter with Olson, but Ferrington’s effort to shield her friend and superior’s private life is admirable. Not only that, but Ferrington comes clean about having responded to a break-in call from one of the serial killer victims and admits that she may have been knocking on the victim’s door while the murder was occurring. Though this admission means Ferrington may face potential charges of incompetence and blame, she behaves with integrity, putting the case above her personal stake in the matter. Ferrington is ambitious, honest, and loyal, and Gibson recognizes and appreciates those qualities and promotes her onto the serial killer case.

Another example of powerful women not only liking each other but working together (and not competing) is the relationship between Gibson and the case’s pathologist, Dr. Tanya Reed Smith, depicted by the talented Archie Panjabi (Panjabi also adds a bit of much needed diversity to the cast).

Chief Medical Examiner Reed Smith & DSI Stella Gibson — Pathologist Tanya Reed Smith & DSI Stella Gibson

Reed Smith is a highly respected police medical professional…who arrives at a crime scene on her motorcycle (badass).

Together, Reed Smith and Gibson examine crime scenes, review the details of the case, and talk about their personal lives. We find out Reed Smith has two daughters and is deeply troubled when she has to perform exams on live victims. With Reed Smith, Gibson lets down her guard and is far more open and honest than she can be with her male co-workers about her transient lifestyle and the duality she finds necessary to separate her professional and private lives. The women bond, sharing coffee and alcohol in friendship and as an important release from the stress of the case.

Strong female characters: Reed Smith & Stella Gibson.

In an unexpected turn of events, Reed Smith shares with Stella a bit of information gleaned from a college friend about an old abusive boyfriend who may match the killer’s M.O. Gibson interviews the victim, and we see this as a potential break in the case. This plot development is crucial because it illustrates the power in the unity of women. Though the old abuses went unreported, this network of women remembers the crimes. Gibson is then able to use her new-found knowledge against the serial killer (Paul Spector played by Jamie Dornan).

The most important thing The Fall is doing, though, is calling out misogyny. Yes, Gibson gets to hand it to Spector, the serial killer, labeling him a “weak, impotent” misogynist, but we already knew that. Even other misogynists can probably recognize that murdering women for sexual pleasure is over-the-top. What I find more intriguing is the way the show implicates the police force and the audience itself for the casual misogyny, assumptions, and stereotypes that perpetuate victim-blaming.

Gibson must insist that the victims not be identified as “innocent” because it implies some women, especially ones coded as sexual, might then be more deserving of brutal murder. Gibson refuses to indulge the media in the virgin/whore dichotomy, and she also declares that no judgements against the victims or their life choices are allowed. With the early blunder in which Ferrington and her partner didn’t take the break-in at victim Sarah Kay’s house seriously, we begin to see that this kind of stereotyping and victim-blaming can be deadly. It takes the emphasis off the perpetrator, and it increases the likelihood of repeat occurrences of crimes against women while also making those crimes less likely to be solved. The Fall is then exposing institutional sexism and misogyny in a radical and important way.

I’m excited to see what Season Two of The Fall will have in store. I trust it will continue to depict its female characters with integrity while ferreting out corruption within the police force and illuminating the nuances of institutional misogyny. It’s wonderful to have a well-produced, well-written, and excellently performed TV show that really strives to advance a feminist agenda. Though this approach seems revolutionary, it’s bizarre that we have so many crime shows that focus on the victimization of women that somehow do NOT employ a feminist lens. I hope The Fall is the first of many crime shows that don’t use the abuse and murder of women as a punchline or an empty premise, but as a means to expose a great inequity in our world that must be corrected or else women will continue to be beaten, abused, raped, and murdered at an alarming rate.

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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.