Jessica Witte, "The “Donna Reed Type": True Detective’s Woman Problem (Season 1, Episode 2)

            Episode 2 of True Detective is appropriately titled “Seeing Things”; while Rust hallucinates visually, Marty suffers from ideological delusions about women due to his attachment to the paradigmatic nuclear family.  This becomes clear both during and after the men’s interview with Dora’s mother, Mrs. Kelly, at the beginning of the episode.  Disconcerted by Mrs. Kelly’s migraine attack and ruined fingernails, Marty describes her as a “piece of work.”  Mrs. Kelly, who “worked in dry cleaning for 20 years” as a single mother to support her daughter, is the complete opposite of Marty’s “Donna Reed type” mother.  Marty fondly recalls how his mother “packed lunches” and “[read] bedtime stories” as the quintessential mid-century housewife.  In idealizing this cultural lie about the nuclear family, Marty also idealizes women who passively submit to men.  In other words, Marty can only accept the virginal woman within the virgin/whore dichotomy.

            So, who is a virgin and who is whore on True Detective?  Although not biologically “virgins,” the virginal women on the show rarely (if ever) appear outside of a Donna Reed- or June Cleaver-approved domestic setting, like the kitchen or the living room.  On the other hand, the “whores”—who are literally prostitutes—appear in public places, such as truck stops and bars.  Perhaps the only exception to this rule within this episode is the Kathleen, Marty’s “little vixen” secretary responsible for little more than making coffee.  Her unquestionably subordinate role in the office is in this way acceptable within the sphere of masculinity, and she can remain a “virgin.”  And, although Mrs. Kelly admits to working outside the home in the past, she appears in her living room during the episode.  Additionally, her fingernails--a classic symbol of femininity--were destroyed due to her work.  Is this her punishment for transgressing against the nuclear family by becoming her own breadwinner?              

            The episode shifts from the world of the virgins to the realm of the whores when Marty and Rust follow the trail of clues to “The Ranch.”  Here, we begin to learn the true extent of Marty’s delusional ideas about female sexuality.  He assumes that the young prostitute, a friend of the late Dora, is underage, and perhaps she is; the madam neither confirms nor denies Marty’s accusation.  However, it is clear that something besides the suspect legality of the young girl’s employment motivates his anger.  As the madam remarks, women “[screw] for free” all the time, but men are only threatened when women mix “business” in with sex.  While the “virgins” in this episode occupy an approved submissive relationship with men, the “whores” use their sexuality to exploit men financially.  In other words, female sexuality is permitted provided that men can “own,” or control, it.

            Marty’s relationship with his mistress, Lisa, is a particularly shocking example of masculine attempt to own female sexuality.  Lisa cannot be anything other than Marty’s sex object, and he even rebukes her for going out with her friends (or having a life of her own).  In an attempt to convince Lisa to stay home, away from the bars where she could “keep her options open” and perhaps “meet a nice man,” thus rejecting her role as his sex object, Marty warns her that a murderer is on the loose.  Although this could be interpreted as concern for Lisa, she does not live a high-risk lifestyle, and so it is unlikely that she will become the murderer’s next victim.  As Rust remarks earlier in the episode, “[Dora] was just an easy target” for the killer as a drug addict and prostitute.  So, Marty’s seemingly innocuous remark becomes a threat to his “virginal” mistress that, if she continues to rebel against his wishes, she will become nothing more than a “whore.” 

            While this episode focuses mainly on Marty’s treatment of women, it is seemingly unclear whether the other male characters share his views.  Rust, unlike Marty, appears indifferent to sex; he refuses advances from prostitutes and never discusses women other than his ex-wife.  However, Rust violently confronts Marty about his affair.  What motivates this confrontation?  Is it Rust’s alluded-to attraction to Maggie and his desire to possess her for himself, or is he truly repulsed by Marty’s behavior on moral grounds?  We need only consider the opening credits of the show to understand that Marty’s beliefs about women are, in fact, the series’ as well.  The images presented during this minute-and-a-half sequence depict human silhouettes overlaid with scenic images of rural Louisiana.  While the male silhouettes wear business attire, the female silhouettes are half- or totally naked.  Furthermore, the female silhouettes suffer a voyeuristic dismemberment which the male silhouettes do not.  Viewers might recall the particularly striking image of a woman crouching in such a way that only her buttocks and spiked stilettos--which appear to be sadistically digging into her flesh--are visible.  Her dismembered lower half is overlaid with scenery in such a way that she herself becomes a “frame,” signifying that women in True Detective must be like Donna Reed and fade, like the scenery, into the background.

            Perhaps “The Ranch” presents an alternative to female repression within the series.  The ranch women live in an isolated, matriarchal commune, whose only contact with men is to exploit them financially as customers.  As soon as we consider the connotations of the word ranch, though, we lose hope that this any type of “matriarchy” could exist within the series.  Just like cattle, the women of “The Ranch” are simply supplying a market-driven demand for “meat.”  Additionally, the protected communal status the women enjoy is only possible due to the sheriff, who uses his power within patriarchal society to permit the male-serving community to illegally exist.  Unfortunately, then, the women of True Detective are finally condemned to submissive secondary roles behind the men of the police department, virgins and whores alike suffering a “dismemberment.”