Men be like this creepy song about death and fear is a shit choice for the theme of a murder mystery because it’s sung by a woman and it’s popular with women. No I’m not a misogynist why do you ask
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"for we do not know what beasts the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even Gd to be awake"
Into the Night Country was the best show I've ever seen in the mystery genre.
On the show website you can also check out a list of Inupiaq and indigenous led organizations advocating to end the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and 2Spirit, for sovereign science, and for environmental justice
(Trigger warning for the show for the MMIW crisis, police brutality, and suicide)
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First episode of True Detective: Night Country is VERY promising.
Looks like they're getting back to the roots of the show with a bit of ambiguity about supernatural stuff.
Also, The Spiral™️ is back.
Also, Alaska is a very different environment than Louisiana, obviously, but it has a threatening wildness to it like Louisiana does. In the Deep South, along the Gulf Coast, there is this nebulous sense that the land wants to take back control...the swamps, the bays, the deltas, the woods...
Just from the first episode of Night Country, I'm getting a similar vibe. The land can support human life, but maybe it doesnt want to...
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i almost posted this on the true detective subreddit episode thread but thought better of it:
I've gotta say…
I feel like a lot of complaints people are having about this season of the show don't pass muster objectively when held up against Season 1. Melodrama, "unrealistic" dialogue, complaining about being shown too much about people's personal lives and not caring about the characters…
There is so much unrealistic dialogue in season 1. The way Marty and Rust during their video interviews just come in talking about some big philosophical idea or "life wisdom" nugget in the middle of the episode (nobody talks like that IRL). The scene with Marty's daughter and the princess crown, for example. Marty cheating on his wife multiple times isn't like, objectively "more interesting" than Evangeline's sister having mental health issues or Liz being sexually promiscuous and a mess.
I've seen season 1 probably 10 times and I adore it but a lot of the angry comparisons people are making to S1 kind of just come off as straight up misogyny at a certain point. Like it rubs people the wrong way because it's women. Complaining about Liz and Evangeline going to the dredge without backup but when Rust and Captain America Marty Hart do something like that it's believable?
I don't think anyone's obligated to like the season by any means but you can just say you aren't feeling it as opposed to trying to make these apples-to-apples comparisons to season 1 that really don't hold water; I think people are just a lot more willing to accept this type of storytelling when it's about men and kind of has a fetishization/shame angle with masculinity in general. Like S1 is very masculine but it's also a love story. idk. I'm gay so I should probably stick to Tumblr for talking about this show, ya'll are wild.
----
idk watching people who are probably white dudes complain on Reddit that we are seeing too much "native culture" on the show strikes me as really icky.
i recognize that these are reddit comments and not like, actual media criticism but i think it says a lot about how people are conditioned to understand storytelling in general. like there's still so much fucking misogyny and white supremacy in our mainstream media and i realize a lot of people wouldn't say it out loud but i think they genuinely just find it exhausting that they're being asked to contemplate the interior lives of native alaskans and women by watching this show lmao
(that's not a value judgment about how well it is doing at depicting Iñupiat culture because i'm not the person who gets to make that judgment but it REALLY rubs me the wrong way that people can't STAND even seeing it depicted)
(i think the fetishization of the American south also has a lot to do with it, like people are very willing to accept the aesthetic style of the American south as a vehicle for crime/mystery/possibly supernatural storytelling because it really doesn't challenge any conceptions they might have about the genre) (it helps that Woody Harrelson and Matthew McCounaughey are native southerners with great acting talent and natural screen chemistry who really took Season 1 to a higher level, in no small part thanks to their uncredited script doctoring. with lesser actors I think the story falls flat as hell because you need them to sell a rich relationship and complex inner lives with their performances because SO MUCH of their relationship is subtextual) (so when people see these great acting performances in the context of a police procedural set in Louisiana i think they're very pre-conditioned to elevate it to an almost mythical status in the genre because it doesn't present TOO many challenges to a conventional worldview about who has power and agency in stories)
like I said i've watched season 1 probably 10 times. it's very good. but it does MANY of the same things that people are complaining about regarding season 4/night country in terms of showing a lot of relationship/sexual drama for the leads and their Tragic Pasts. they just don't like it. which is fine. i just think it's a disingenuous angle to approach criticism of the show.
like if any actor other than McConaughey were doing Rust's monlogues in S1 it would not have been very good because it would have come off like self-serious edgelord shit, which is what it actually was (pizzolatto sucks) before it ended up in the hands of competent producers and performers. instead it really comes off like a man who has suffered and developed this worldview genuinely, within himself, not as a way to wield power over others but to protect himself from harm.
anyway....
for my part, i wanna know what the fuck is up with the spirals and the bad CGI polar bear visions and i'm going to be disappointed if it's not just some massive red herring designed to freak people out a little because that's what we deserve.
but in terms of like, the characters' lives, i generally find them very interesting. the opening scene of episode 3 with annie genuinely moved me to tears. annie seems like a fucking cool person and i would love another flashback about her.
i love that liz is a fucking asshole who is constantly being forced to confront her own behavior as racist, self-centered, impulsive, etc.
i love that evangeline is a very lonely person just barely keeping it together. kali reis is putting on an amazing performance. also, for the record, i'm VERY gay.
i wanna know more and there are only 2 episodes left and i hope it sticks the landing so i can write a big actual essay about what it did well from a storytelling perspective!
gosh i just love serialized fiction on the television
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