The Glaring Superiority of Top of the Lake, Compared to Season One True Detective

Both shows are mysteries, following a detective’s journey to find a faceless, lurking villain. Both are incredibly moody. Both make no promises of delivering a resolution, or identifying the culprit. Breathtaking landscapes. Complicated characters. So why have we heard about one and not the other?

This was the question I asked myself on the umpteenth conversation with a peer, pitching that they watch Top of the Lake if they’re such a fan of True Detective season one. I will state that these convos are almost always with male peers, which shouldn’t matter but does just a little. Because while Top of the Lake quietly received a handful of accolades, True Detective was a smash hit, with people wildly proclaiming it the best show they’ve seen in years. They’re so similar, 'cept for the fact that one is by and about women. Give you one guess of which show raked in the $$$.

It was convos like these that brought me to writing the ultimate mash-up list of why Top of the Lake unconditionally has over on True Detective. So here we go.

1: The Characters

 Looking for a shit-kicking detective? Yeah Matthew McConaughey wouldn’t be my first pick either. Admittedly McCounaughey and Woody Harrelson give a bang-up performance, but I hesitate when tasked with supporting the revival of a vaguely problematic white dude on the block. But yes, yes friends I think we can all agree that McConaughey and (unsurprisingly) Harrelson delivered in spades. So let’s take a moment and think about what makes True Detective’s characters great and Top of the Lake’s greater.

While Top of the Lake maintains a consistent flow of philosophical insights, Jane Campion accomplishes this with fewer over the top diatribes and more thoughtful one-liners. She also does not make the mistake of dropping all her deeper reflections into one character, as True Detective does with Rust Cohle. While she evens out the complexity of her characters more effectively, that isn’t to say her cast is devoid of the Rust Cohle types, that is to say, someone larger than life who focuses most of their energy around their own earth-shattering insights.  The two differences is that the Rust Cohle of Top of the Lake isn’t a main character, and she isn’t a man either.
 

Left, Rust Cohle of True Detective, right, GJ of Top of the Lake

2: The Setting
 

You get the idea, New Zealand = beautiful shit

3: The Theme Songs

One of the noticeable strengths of True Detective (across both seasons) is the aesthetic of the opening credits. The music choice, coupled with vivid images of the landscape, establishes the mood. And yet, when comparing directly True Detective’s opening credits with Top of the Lake’s, I find a more artistic and abstract bent in Top of the Lake’s. It’s shorter and includes images that develop deeper meaning as the show progresses.

4: Content on Sexual Assault

A common concern in television’s treatment of rape is determining whether a (more often) woman’s rape is being used as a plot device. I will avoid being overly specific, so as not to share elements of each show that are introduced later in the season, but I will say both confront the rape of little girls. The big difference here is that one show, focuses on the experience of survivors and the pain they feel. True Detective’s depiction of rape only goes insofar as the effects on the main characters, learning of these heinous acts. In other words, True Detective is one of many shows to use rape of women as a catalyst for the character development of third party male characters. Not cool.

5: Rule #1 of Being a Boss-Ass Bitch

The film/television world is still notoriously slanted towards male directors and male-focused narratives (as is the case with True Detective).   

 

Top of the Lake is a show by and about women. Or by and about bad bitches, more like.

The director, Jane Campion, was anticipated to introduce a wave of feminist cinema after her 1993 film The Piano. While the loss of a son was an undeniable weight affecting her career, Campion was also struggling for acclaim and funding in a still no less male-dominated field. 

Then there’s the narrative of each show. Is True Detective a compelling program? Yeah. Is it set in a palpably misogynistic, male-centric narrative? Fuck yeah it is. 

When I recommended the show to a friend, she asked if it was too sexist to watch. I will admit that the thought didn’t cross my mind, though there is objectification and decentering of women throughout. 

 

Now here’s a little stipulation for the people who want to throw down the whole “but the patriarchy of True Detective helps to create the world and the showrunners are not uncritical of the misogyny of their characters”. First of all, I do not for a minute buy the fact that a fictional world would not be as rich, the narratives as robust, if it was divorced from the patriarchal shit that I experience in my real fucking life. And let’s also state that if you’re a male showrunner profiting off of this fictional world of your own construction (created from your own wealth of artistic creativity and certainly not your ability to erase and objectify women), you are profiting off my real fucking experience. You are using your cultural reach, your artistic talent, and your production funding, to propagate images off objectified, disempowered women, and it’s not cool. You're reinforcing the system that has in part positioned you to create the show you are making that reinforces the system... 

So holla at me David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

But let’s say that I’m not gonna even say fuck you. How ‘bout I just say: cool you can make those worlds that honestly depict patriarchy, that do not subvert the man’s privilege, but why would your show be at the top of my list for images to consume? In the words of bell hooks, “This is not an empowering image.” Your show does not lift me up, quite the opposite. I’m better spent reinvesting my time and $$$ into the feminist narratives, often created by women, and depicting the female experience. 
  

Then there’s the characters. While True Detective barely maintains two plot-b females, Top of the Lake is overflowing with leading ladies. And let's be real, I’d like to see Elisabeth Moss tote a gun and kick ass before McConaughey any day of the week. K thx.
 

6: Top of the Lake is on Netflix
 

In conclusion...
Watch Top of the Lake. Keep using your consumer power to empower that feminist filmmaking. And when you have feelings/thoughts reflections when you finish the series, check up on this Ms. Magazine article about the show's commentary on rape culture.

Japan, 35 Photos

 

Lean In and Pseudo-Feminist Icons

In February 2015 talk show personality Jon Stewart announced his eventual exit from Comedy Central’s Daily Show. After the initial wave of pre-emptive nostalgia, the media quickly shifted its attention to who would take Stewart’s place. Online there was a groundswell in favor of one woman: Jessica Williams.

Williams was, in the eyes of many bloggers, fans, and pundits, the ideal pick. She regularly delivered some of the strongest zingers on the Daily Show. She had made repeated appearances on Lena Dunham’s hit show, Girls. Being a black woman, she was poised to contradict the white man’s domination of talk shows today.

A petition emerged on Change.org to make her the next host, which garnered over 10,000 signatures in two days.  It was beginning to seem that execs at Comedy Central would be hard-pressed to deny her the position.

Then something strange happened. Williams took to Twitter and stated outright that she did not want the position, that there were many others more qualified. The online response was to basically give her a pep talk. She just needed to believe in her abilities more.

Before taking an ongoing hiatus from Twitter, she told people to lean the fuck away from her going on to say, “I am a black woman and I am a feminist and I am so many things. I am truly honored that people love my work. But I am not yours.” 

A 2010-2013 Recap: the Rise of Sheryl Sandberg

Jessica Williams’ comment was not introducing a new concept to the public, the basic tenets of “Leaning In” were foregrounded five years ago with the work of Sheryl Sandberg. Chief-Operating Officer at Facebook, Sandberg’s networth clocks in at over a billion dollars. She graduated from Harvard College in 1991. Upon graduation she began her rise in the private sector, with a continued interest on the state of women in the workforce.

Her traction with mainstream feminist discourse can be credited by a number of things, the most obvious being her business-savvy. When we consider the list of Fortune 500 CEOs, and remember that there are more Fortune 500 CEOs with the name John than female CEOS, Sandberg’s words carry more weight. What does she have to say about the clearly pervasive patriarchy in the context of the topmost tiers of the private sector?

Before writing her 2013 bestseller, Sandberg gave a TED Talk (which garnered over 5.4 million views) followed up with a commencement address at Barnard College. Both followed the same rhetorical patterns as her book, in a more condensed form.

With the release of her book came increased public discourse around the state of women in the workplace. The gender imbalance in corporate leadership, the wage gap, and the ways women can combat these systemic inequalities. Lean In found its footing in audiences disturbed by these inequalities and looking for implementable solutions in their daily lives. Her offering was a helpful one, because it was not the practice of movement-building or a feminist revolution. Things could get a lot better if women simply kindled the will to lead and asserted themselves more.

Kiss with a Fist: Sandberg’s Pseudo-Feminism

The problem with Sandberg’s school of thought is that there’s a thread of truth in it. Women do need to be encouraged to assert themselves, to take up space. It’s when the leaning in becomes the focus of the conversation that it becomes an issue. New wave feminism or any move towards female empowerment gets twisted when it gravitates around the “you just need to speak up more.” It swerves to a dangerous place where women are held responsible for their substandard position in society. It confronts the symptom rather than the cause. Resolving the fact that women are socialized to be passive, occupy less leadership positions, it doesn’t start with a well-worded peptalk to those women already conditioned by patriarchy. It starts with breaking the system’s legs, until patriarchy cannot walk or crawl into the minds of the next generation of little girls.

And let me also say, there are many women out there, myself included, who have 99 problems and being a bitch is one.  That is to say that passivity has not been the brunt of my struggle. Resistance to assertive women, women who do not preemptively apologize, has been a problem for me. What that I cannot easily resolve by adapting my outward presentation.

Are there ways in which I reach for the nice, lady-like phrasing of an idea? Are there times when I speak less than the men in the room? Yes, and yes this is laced with the workings of patriarchy. But I, and most women in the workforce today, are not the problem. Even if we were to all eradicate the socialized tendencies towards femininity, even if we were to all to unilaterally, unconditionally lean in, would the country be ready? Would the workforce drop its preference for the tall, decisive, white man?

What’s more, by framing the discussion around leaning in, that we all just need to lean in, it quiets the women who, for centuries, have been doing just that. This isn’t to say Sandberg denies the existence of these women, it’s more that she unintentionally diminishes them. By so quickly taking the focus away from these women, past and present who are pushing hard and getting nowhere.

Interrogating the Sound Byte

There is a certain extent to which Sandberg’s popularity can also be credited to the media, to what the audience is ready for. Because when her message is boiled down to a two-sentence sound byte, or the cover of her book is mixed in with a news segment, it’s all very disarming. Her book is not titled “fuck this system, I’m getting mine” or “Surviving the Patriarchy and Tricking Men into Listening”, it’s just her smug smiling face and that strategic title. When men discuss this new wave feminist thought, it is comfortably distanced from their role in patriarchy.

The reductionist perspective on Sandberg’s book is also aligned with patriarchy. Because regardless of how much I may disagree with her school of thought, there is no getting around the fact that Lean In is a book, not devoid of truth and even some statistics. It is also not entirely patriarchy-blind. More like we put on beer goggles, looked at sexism in the workplace, and described the problem. I kid. Sort of.

And while we can look at the ways in which Sandberg’s message has been reconstructed, simplified, and manufactured, there is the obvious and important fact that she is an active participant in these appropriations. In her 2010 Ted Talk, she defined her own message, not in 240 pages of text, but in a 10 minute speech. The simplified, self-constructed message, was what the media had framed her as saying all along. The problem is that women just aren’t confident enough.

A Lesson in Movement Building

One of the more apt points made by Sandberg is regarding how the feminist movement is losing momentum. In her words “It is time for us to face the fact that our revolution has stalled.”

What she disregards, is how her work has become complicit in the pause on the movement. If we were to look at women’s position in society and say, “you know, have you tried leaning in? Just speak up more. Negotiate your contract. Ask for more”, there would be no need for a movement. The problem is the docility of women, after all.

And let’s say, this is where the toxic, sound-byte Sandberg becomes more relevant. I do not anticipate that Sheryl Sandberg genuinely believes that leaning in will resolve the broader struggle against patriarchy. But that does not detract from the fact that that is exactly what the media has been telling me. Mainstream media allowed Sandberg’s work to exist in a vacuum, one of the eminent voices in the feminist movement today. Her voice has become the microphone for a movement, a voice, that when distorted and given undue attention, essentially denies the need for a movement.  

Although some critics emerged in 2013 to explore Lean In more, we can probably start and stop with the analysis of bell hooks. While I have made many points aligned with Dr.hooks’ assessment, there is one place where our understandings of Sheryl Sandberg depart. In her article "Dig Deep," Dr.hooks states:

“Even though many advocates of feminist politics are angered by Sandberg’s message, the truth is that alone, individually she was no threat to feminist movement. Had the conservative white male dominated world of mass media and advertising not chosen to hype her image, this influential woman would not be known to most folks. It is this patriarchal male dominated re-framing of feminism, which uses the body and personal success of Sheryl Sandberg, that is most disturbing and yes threatening to the future of visionary feminist movement.” 

While the re-framing of feminist thought is certainly the most toxic, hooks' also makes a pointed rejection of Sandberg's obvious influence. Here, I believe we understate the value of allies such as Sandberg. A billionaire corporate exec who wants to be on her feminist game promoting feminist values? If the movement is to live and gain traction within the system, within our capitalist economy that disproportionately values the voice of the rich and affluent, we are missing an opportunity to radicalize Sandberg, to embrace the access to mainstream politic that she wields. We should not dismiss the potential power one widely recognized figure can offer in propelling a movement forward, and certainly not an executive that is credited with the increased profitability and popularity of the most expansive social network to date. If Sandberg's access and capital were introduced without making her a point of focus, we may be stronger for it.

Where the Angry Feminists At? New Leaders Plz.
  

There is another, even more important need in new-wave feminism that Sheryl Sandberg misses. And that’s being fucking angry. Not frustrated, not disappointed in a world that has a deficit of female leaders. But genuinely, hell-raising, movement-building, wheels spinning, all kinds of angry. The kind of emotional feminist leader that is respectability-bucking. The fire of new-wave feminism will not be kindled by soft-portraits of affluent women telling us to look inward to resolve the world’s ills.

In a 2014 panel Gloria Steinem was asked to name the biggest mistake of first-wave feminism. Her words answer Sheryl Sandberg’s statement about a stalled movement. “We were much too nice.”

As much as the basic tenets of Lean In frustrate me, it is not Sandberg we need to spend so much time discussing. It is why she has been the point of focus, why the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy presents her as a feminist vanguard when she is not. Why her message has reached as far, compared to deeper, more reflective feminist contemporaries of our time. We must not only give feminist contemporaries permission to be publicly angry and active, we must actively ask for it. We must ask for a leaders who confront not just the symptoms of patriarchy, but the causes. And when the white-male dominated media delivers an excessively palatable, watered down leader, we must be critical.