Text/One Tree
With the scheduling of the three major websites in April, a "Miss Elsevice Detective Collection" featuring a female detective in the Republic of China is quite eye-catching.
In domestic criminal investigation dramas, most of the female characters appear as members of the detective team, and the female police officers ("Cold Cases") and female forensic doctors ("Bone Whisperers") as the main body of reconnaissance are mostly detectives who are "within the system" of the Eight Classics. Although the background is in the Republic of China period, "Miss Aisi" seems to have no special cases, even if it is a Famous Lady in Shanghai, she must become an agent in the Central Patrol House in order to exert her excellent reasoning ability.
In several domestic reasoning works that try to take women as the protagonists, there are references to foreign TV dramas with the same title. "Cold Case" is similar to the logic of the American drama of the same name, "Bone Whisperer" has the shadow of "Bone Finder", while "Miss Aisi Detective Collection" is a remake of the Australian drama "Miss Fisher Detective Collection".
Compared with China, the American dramas that have been exploring the role of female detectives since the 1980s are the "old rivers and lakes" in this regard, and the further improvement of women's status in recent years has made the image of female detectives in American dramas mature and diverse.
Such an exaggerated combination of celebrities and criminal police officers is not uncommon in Japanese reasoning works. In the past, there was Miwako Kobe ("Regal Police"), who took a private jet to the scene to solve the case, and then there was Reiko Hoso ( "Reasoning After Dinner" who repeatedly solved cases by relying on the reasoning of the housekeeper).
With a more delicate depiction of women's psychology and images, female detective dramas in the Japanese market combine the expectations of women in traditional Japanese culture with the demand for equality between men and women in contemporary society. Idol detectives, teenage detectives, housewife detectives... The seriousness of social events and the consumerism of entertainment supremacy exist at the same time in Japanese dramas, which are divided but harmonious.
<h2 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > sweethearts, wives, and defenders</h2>
The female detective characters appear in the image for not too short a long time. But in the West, the shaping of the image of female detectives is always mixed with men's fantasies about the perfect female image or a perfect relationship. They are either beautiful but impulsive, sexy but reckless; intelligent but not necessarily upright, full of wisdom, but not knowledgeable about the world.
In Blue Moonlight Detective Agency, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, sexy actress Maddie Hayes goes from a model to a detective. Cunning, clever, reckless, and often needs her male partner to rescue her from the bad guys.
As a "female detective", Maddy seems to be somewhat unqualified, however, as a female detective who meets the imagination of male audiences, Maddy Hayes is interesting and "informative" enough. The sexual tension and ambiguous sparks generated by the opposite-sex partner shuttling through dangerous events make this combination a very popular match in detective dramas.
When Holmes, the world-renowned detective, was defeated for the first time by "The Woman", Irene Adler, Sir Conan Doyle may not have imagined that the woman he had created enough to deceive London's brightest detective would influence the image of fiction in the centuries to come, just like Holmes's nemesis, Moriarty.
In the original book, even Watson couldn't help but ask Holmes several times if he and Irene Adler had an emotional relationship. It can also be seen that even in the narrative environment of "reasoning", which requires calmness, meticulousness and objectivity, the emergence of female characters, regardless of their identity, will inevitably be related to "emotion".
In the American dramas that have always been stingy in expressing the love of men and women, this is vividly reflected. Two plays that aired almost at the same time, Detective Spirit (2009–2016) and Detective Super Sense (2008–2015), both received a high score of 8.1 on IMDb.
The Magic Book of Spirits
In these two dramas, the two male protagonists are a detective novelist with a lot of gold, and the other is a "psychic magician" who carries the revenge of his wife and daughter being killed, and the identities of the two heroines are female police officers who cooperate with the male protagonist in the police station to solve the case. The mutual rescue between the male and female protagonists is the similarity between the two dramas on the emotional line. And whether it is a novelist detective who does not lack a red face and confidant, or a detective who likes to pretend to be a ghost and has amazing observation ability, after a thousand sails, in the end, he still chooses to walk with the beautiful female policeman who has been with him for many years.
Fans reminisce about the wedding of the two protagonists at the end of "Super Sense Detective"
In the first season of "Unbelievable" broadcast in 2019, in order to prove that what a young girl said is true, the two female policewomen calmly and humanly threw themselves into the investigation of the rape case. Perhaps because the play is adapted from real events, a more serious proposition makes the play's image of the female detective character completely abandon the previous eyebrow communication, wind and snow.
With long blond hair, wrinkles, and slightly bloated and tired, the images of the two female detectives did not deliberately approach the males in order to present a "capable and cool" screen image. In reality, even some sloppy shapes, the female detectives in "Unbelievable" do not have this extraordinary INTELLIGENCE and observation, but out of female empathy and sense of responsibility, they work hard to find the murderer for the victims of sexual violence who are also women, and give the victims a comfort in their hearts.
Looking back, plays that do not bind love and men, and declare the independent status of female detectives, have appeared from time to time since the classical Benge reasoning work "Female Writers and Murders" in the 1980s. This light-hearted collection of speculative sketches, which ran live from 1984 to 1996, features a female mystery novelist over half a hundred years old, who, after losing her husband, moved to a coastal town and became an amateur detective.
In 2004's "Crush School Detective," a high school student became a detective at school because his father was forced to resign as a police officer. In a fictional rich town, the heroine Veronica, beyond reasoning, expresses the undaunted attitude of young women in the face of crime and power.
In the same year, "Detective Miss Marple" was broadcast in the United Kingdom, and the two female detectives, one old and one young, have been looking at each other since then. Adapted from Agatha Christie's classic work, "Detective Miss Marple", adds a bold description of the current social situation such as ethics, extramarital affairs, and homosexuality to the traditional framework of the original novel. Whether this adaptation is in line with modern society, or whether the screenwriter makes the reasoning in the play more "gossipy" interesting, it is a matter of opinion.
<h2 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > idol, freak, and most unfortunate female detective</h2>
For Japanese female detectives and policewomen, some of them live in a "paradise" where they can eat and wear, and some of them have to experience the beatings of life from time to time.
As a popular profession in the middle of novels and comics, the emergence of female detective characters usually makes the worldview of the work seem more confusing and interesting. And these wonderful settings, rich elements of reasoning sketches, with beautiful actors, from the point of view, more like a special flavor of the idol drama.
Therefore, in the female detectives of Japanese dramas, there are always some strange habits. The heroine of "Unresolved Daughter" broadcast in 2018, Narumi, is a policeman with a "word fetish". Although she was transferred to the database to manage the documents, she could deduce the truth of the incident through a variety of handwriting and documents related to the case.
2016's "Other Shore Flowers: Seven Lessons of the Metropolitan Police Department Search" adds a fantasy setting, which is more surreal, so that although six "problem women" are gathered to form a female detective team that is enough to be interesting, the setting of the "synaesthesia ability" of the protagonist is not enough to let the audience ignore the paleness of reasoning. This female detective work with some fantasy overtones is far less popular than the equally surreal SPEC.
"The Other Side of the Flower: Seven Lessons of the Metropolitan Police Department Search"
In addition to the bizarre character settings and reasoning methods, there are a series of "big heroine" reasoning dramas such as "BOSS" and "Daughter of The Science And research".
In the fast-paced Japanese unit-type dramas, professional women with strong aura have always been warmly sought after by the market. The idealistic shift in the idealistic transformation of a woman who seems to be in a socially disadvantaged position can "subdue" male colleagues who once looked down on her with her personal charm and quality, which is also in line with the traditional "inspirational" theme of Japanese TV dramas.
Different from American dramas, the emotional lines in Japanese female detectives usually do not unfold at the moment of story development, but mostly as the background story of the characters, or in the form of past pain. The creators of Japanese dramas are more willing to focus the abundance of emotions that women have on their sympathy for their victims and on the excavation of the motives of murderers.
How people who have suffered misfortunes will face their victims and perpetrators seem to be particularly keen to discuss this topic in many japanese social reasoning works.
Yukiko Mabi in "Emergency Interrogation Room" may be the representative of such female detectives. Due to the exclusion of women, the husband who is also a police officer died in the line of duty, leaving a son and a daughter to be raised alone, and in the design of the life, the screenwriter created a background full of triviality for this fierce female police officer.
Since the stage of the show's confrontation with the perpetrators is mainly in the interrogation room, Makoto's life and emotions become its weapons to break the prisoner's psychological defense line. There is no shortage of golden sentences in the play that make people have screenshots, but after three seasons, just relying on verbal attack and defense and pouring a bowl of emotional chicken soup, the plot that makes prisoners cry and cry and tell the truth makes people aesthetically tired. No matter how perfect the setting of the real wall is, it is inevitable to become a "tool man".
But fortunately, the Japanese drama market is a "mixed" place, and there will always be works that push niche culture and negative reality to the extreme, hidden in non-golden files and late-night stalls.
The just-concluded "Ye Cunjing: The World's Most Unfortunate Detective" is a work with a strong "funeral culture" brand. The dark color tone and gloomy atmosphere give the play a rather special melancholy temperament. The misfortune of the female detective is more like a gimmick, or to imply that she was born in a most "unfortunate" era, and must face the malicious intent hidden under the intimate relationship and the "murderous gas" that can be seen everywhere in the network of social relations.
Although women are the main body of reasoning, the texture of "Ye CunJing: The World's Most Unfortunate Detective" is reminiscent of the old-school tough guy reasoning of the Showa period. For Japan, where gender is becoming more tolerant, blurring the gender of the protagonist and leaving him with an emotional experience as a "person" is also an innovative means.
Whether in literature or film and television dramas, female detective roles appear later than men, and in order to let them independently provoke a work, creators in various countries at home and abroad have worked hard for a long time. In the case of fictional characters, it wasn't until 1930, when Agatha Christie created the shrewd and arrogant Miss Mapple, that a thin, eccentric, elegant female detective appeared in fiction that was as popular as Holmes.
Beginning with the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, intelligent women are often seen as dangerous beings rather than as seekers of justice and truth. In the East, where gender equality is more arduous and far-reaching, there are still people who regard women as symbols, even tools. In such a subconscious way, highly intelligent women are essentially "unreal." Therefore, when shaping the image of female detectives, the creators will also unconsciously imitate men in appearance.
The role of the detective, both intellectually and socially, naturally possesses a certain superiority, and they are not only the embodiment of wisdom, but also the leaders of truth. The active role of female detectives in American and Japanese dramas today is a good thing with their changing character images, personalities, and functions. Although not every female detective can be directly involved in the investigation of sexual crimes and put forward thoughts on the protection of women like the two detectives in "Unbelievable". But for female audiences, these female detectives who can "jump out" of the male imagination and truly solve crimes from a female perspective have meanings beyond the work itself.