Mindhunter
Oct. 15th, 2017 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitThis weekend I've binge-watched Mindhunter, the new Netflix series about the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit in the late 1970s, as it began developing the modern practice of profiling by interviewing incarcerated serial killers (and even invented the term "serial killer").
Mindhunter owes a lot to Hannibal in some obvious ways, but in the end its focus and tone are Hannibal's antithesis. Hannibal is heightened, operatic--it's all about love and death, about people so special that they are the only ones in the world who can understand each other, about passion. Mindhunter is emotionally cool, detached, and everyday. It's full of people who can't truly connect--and not just the killers--and relationships tend to hit emotional barriers and then fall apart. Hannibal's central serial killer is enigmatic, fascinating, profound, nearly superhuman, while in Mindhunter the killers are simply caricatures of ordinary failings. Their misogyny and narcissism are the misogyny and narcissism of their culture, but a little larger, a little chillier.
The closest thing Mindhunter has to a functional relationship is the partnership of its main characters, FBI agentsHudsonHolden Ford (young, straitlaced in his behavior but increasingly radical--for better and worse--in his thinking) and Bill Tench (middle-aged, cynical, both impressed by and doubtful of Ford's methods). In the early episodes their main job is not serial killers but "road school," in which they train police departments around the country in basic FBI methods. We see them together on long drives and long flights, eating in diners, sharing hotel rooms because the FBI won't budget for separate ones. They arrive at a kind of strained intimacy (interestingly, the show at a couple of points highlights the erotic potential of their relationship, but in such a way that I'm still not sure what meaning we're meant to draw from it) that is nevertheless emotionally warmer than Ford's relationship with his girlfriend Debbie, a graduate student in sociology, or Tench's with his wife Nancy, a nurse. But the same kinds of pressures and problems act on all three relationships; nominally-heterosexual male bonding isn't a sacred thing here, isn't somehow exempt from all the ways love can falter and fail.
Ford and Tench eventually acquire some colleagues; I won't say more about them because spoilers. Just this: you know how in a lot of shows, women are there to do the emotional labor and be the "heart" of the team? Not in Mindhunter.
I don't want to overpraise the show, although I like it a lot. But it has problems: it's talky and stagy, which on the whole I don't mind but may not be to everyone's taste. The early episodes (especially the first) drag on a bit without much purpose, and overall the narrative is meandering rather than tight and focused. Again, I tend to consider this a feature rather than a bug, but YMMV. In the early episodes there's one scene of gratuitous violence and several fairly graphic heterosexual sex scenes that I found unnecessary, but later episodes are better on both these counts. With that one exception there's no onscreen violence at all, and some grisly crime-scene photos are only shown briefly. But there are verbal descriptions of violence, often told by the men who committed the acts. Serial killers and their violence are absolutely not romanticized, but they are central to the story. And while I think Mindhunter is aware of its own slightly dubious premises (why do so many people--me included--like serial killer stories? what does that say about us? do these stories have anything really worthwhile to offer?), it can't help being implicated in the whole troubling cultural fascination with violent psychopaths.
So, a qualified recommendation, I guess? If you're in the mood for a fairly grim and grubby metacommentary on serial killers and the culture that makes and publicizes them, Mindhunter is a solidly-written, well-acted show to scratch that itch.
Mindhunter owes a lot to Hannibal in some obvious ways, but in the end its focus and tone are Hannibal's antithesis. Hannibal is heightened, operatic--it's all about love and death, about people so special that they are the only ones in the world who can understand each other, about passion. Mindhunter is emotionally cool, detached, and everyday. It's full of people who can't truly connect--and not just the killers--and relationships tend to hit emotional barriers and then fall apart. Hannibal's central serial killer is enigmatic, fascinating, profound, nearly superhuman, while in Mindhunter the killers are simply caricatures of ordinary failings. Their misogyny and narcissism are the misogyny and narcissism of their culture, but a little larger, a little chillier.
The closest thing Mindhunter has to a functional relationship is the partnership of its main characters, FBI agents
Ford and Tench eventually acquire some colleagues; I won't say more about them because spoilers. Just this: you know how in a lot of shows, women are there to do the emotional labor and be the "heart" of the team? Not in Mindhunter.
I don't want to overpraise the show, although I like it a lot. But it has problems: it's talky and stagy, which on the whole I don't mind but may not be to everyone's taste. The early episodes (especially the first) drag on a bit without much purpose, and overall the narrative is meandering rather than tight and focused. Again, I tend to consider this a feature rather than a bug, but YMMV. In the early episodes there's one scene of gratuitous violence and several fairly graphic heterosexual sex scenes that I found unnecessary, but later episodes are better on both these counts. With that one exception there's no onscreen violence at all, and some grisly crime-scene photos are only shown briefly. But there are verbal descriptions of violence, often told by the men who committed the acts. Serial killers and their violence are absolutely not romanticized, but they are central to the story. And while I think Mindhunter is aware of its own slightly dubious premises (why do so many people--me included--like serial killer stories? what does that say about us? do these stories have anything really worthwhile to offer?), it can't help being implicated in the whole troubling cultural fascination with violent psychopaths.
So, a qualified recommendation, I guess? If you're in the mood for a fairly grim and grubby metacommentary on serial killers and the culture that makes and publicizes them, Mindhunter is a solidly-written, well-acted show to scratch that itch.
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Date: 2017-10-15 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-15 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-15 08:05 pm (UTC)That's neat and not something you see often in this genre.
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Date: 2017-10-15 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-16 03:10 am (UTC)And I like that a lot, even if it's not a central theme or even necessarily a conscious one: (heterosexual) romantic relationships are so often front and center as the only thing worth putting work into, ergo the only that takes work, I like the acknowledgement that friendships are also susceptible to stress or misunderstanding or long-term fraying, but then not automatically disposable, either.
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Date: 2017-10-15 10:44 pm (UTC)I'm just up to Episode 4 and what I got from the Holden/Debbie scenes is that Holden is really pretty hopeless in bed but at least he *wants* to give Debbie pleasure, so I have to give the poor schlubb some credit.
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Date: 2017-10-15 11:49 pm (UTC)I don't know quite what to make of all those hotel-bedroom scenes and "please sit on your own bed." It could be an acknowledgement and refusal of the potential eroticism by the showrunners, but it could be something else, and I think the show does often take things in unexpected directions.
I guess I see Holden as someone who wants to be less hopeless in bed, but keeps running into his own fears, and his work doesn't help in dealing with them.
ETA: I don't know how I kept hearing Ford's first name as "Hudson." I think my brain just refused to acknowledge "Holden" because of fucking Catcher in the Rye. It casts a new and unwelcome light on his character.
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Date: 2017-10-15 11:42 pm (UTC)Thank you!
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Date: 2017-10-16 12:04 am (UTC)I've also seen some negative reviews from people who have only watched the first couple of episodes. It takes a little while for the show to find itself, and it also takes a little while for the female characters to start showing their depth and agency. It did seem at first like there weren't going to be any women who weren't victims or love interests, but that doesn't end up being the case (although the men are still the central characters).
no subject
Date: 2017-10-16 05:36 pm (UTC)I ended up weirding myself out by guessing who the guy in the cold opens from episodes 2 on is, due to a reference in an early Criminal Minds episode. (and as a side note, the flickering crime scene images(?) in the credits irritates me so much - I'm not quite sure why they decided on that)
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Date: 2017-10-19 03:21 am (UTC)Agree about the credits, too. After the first episode I always used the "skip intro" option.
I had no idea who that guy was until I read a review that named him. I don't know much about him/his crimes, actually--I have this weird thing where I'm fascinated by serial killers but squeamish about my own fascination, so I tend not to read a lot about them.
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Date: 2017-10-18 06:35 pm (UTC)(I'm currently watching "The Good Place' because it was the most popular nom in Yuletide this year and that piqued my interest. I'm finding it fun enough although I'm interested to see whether they can keep the concept going beyond the first several episodes)
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Date: 2017-10-19 03:24 am (UTC)Oh, The Good Place! I'd love to hear what you think once you're caught up.