Detroit 1-8-7

by Courtney Hilden
Spoiler Alert!: The mystery's ending is revealed in this review.

Given the city of Detroit's reputation as the world's most dangerous city, Detroit 1-8-7, a cop show, should have probably existed before. Given the show's depiction of race, it might be possible to imagine that this was the reason the show as only just premiered. The show's depiction of race is not outright racist, but there are some strange moments that deserve dissecting:

1. Although it is great to see so many of the characters are people of color, it is sad that the main character, Finch, is white. Detroit, save its metro area, is predominately African American, and it feels wrong that the story is told from a white perspective. A story set in Detroit should be told by a person who does a better job of representing its population.
2. It is also really sad that the comedy is being done mostly by the sidekick African American character, Washington. He is inept, he is comical, he is suppose to be a minstrel character, which is so disappointing, again, considering that he is a better representation of the city's population than Finch.
3. Some of the suspects were white, which was a nice change of pace, considering so many of the bad guys on other cop/detective/procedural shows are minorities. Two of the suspects, including a drug addict, were white. The night's bad guy, James Burke, was white. Although many (white) people imagine that there is a lot of black-on-white crime, the case is actually the opposite. Within the episode, the bad guy committed violence against both whites and African Americans, again, different from the mainstream, white imagination. Of course, the drug dealers were African American, so for every bit of progress of racial subversion, something typical and cliche seemed to happen.
4. The episode also depicted an interracial family, one that was sadly dealing with a father in prison and a recently-murdered mother. No comment is made, by anyone, on the fact that a white woman was raising her biracial grandchildren with her African American daughter-in-law. Is this what the so-called post-racial America looks like? Imaginary Detroit?
5. The choice in homicide itself was significant. If you have ever watched Detroit News, you know that the most common murder appears to be the "Baby Momma Murder." By that, I mean husband/boyfriend kills his wife/girlfriend, who is almost always the mother of his children. It is so common that these murders are barely given more than thirty seconds on the news. Often, these murders involve only African Americans, but here it involved a biracial family, one where the white man was killed his African American wife and tried to kill his biracial kids and white mother. This was both confirming to certain ideas about murder in Detroit but also subverted it. It adheres to an all-too-common and tragic story, but it also changed the stereotype, by showing white men just as capable of that sort of violence that is so linked to African American men. It implicitly questioned the idea that this violence is inherently linked to African American men, who are so frequently stereotyped as dangerous savages.

Some other non-race-centric notes about the pilot episode:
1. I also loved how the medical examiner does roller derby in her spare time. Finally, a cop show where the characters at least make attempts at having a life outside the job. And points for giving her a cool, feminist-hailed hobby.
2. The phone conversations between our two main characters, Finch and Washington, were an interesting detail. Previously, the audience had been led to believe Finch is unable to express himself. Those calls show he is capable, he is just choosing not to do so.
3. And finally: Coney Islands! Any good Detroiter can tell you their favorite Coney, and usually knows what is best at a few of them. Points for adding something all too real.

Little Dorrit

 by Courtney Hilden

Little Dorrit is one of Charles Dickens last (his eleventh, to be exact) and lesser known novels.  It follows the main character, Amy "Little" Dorrit, who, because her father is a debtor, is imprisoned in the Marshelsea Prison of London.  The story is a classic rags-to-riches story, in that the family regains their wealth, but it also twists this storyline by making sure no one is actually happier for it.  Meanwhile, Arthur Clennam, a friend of the family, is discovering that his connection to the Dorrit family is much deeper than he realized.  The novel is famously based on Dickens's own personal experience with debtor's prisons.  (His father having served time there himself.) 
There are a lot of good things happening withing Little Dorrit.  The central metaphor of the novel (the prison as existing in more ways that simply the obvious one) is explored in multiple ways.  When the Dorrit family becomes respectable once again, they become entrapped in the expectations of their class, which of course means that everyone continues to suffer, especially Little Dorrit herself, who finds it difficult to simply forget the entire beginning of her life.  Every character within the novel is imprisoned in some way or the other.  Mrs. Clennam is imprisoned to her chair and her house because of illness and old age.  Arthur Clennam is imprisoned by societal norms and his family's own poor choices.  Mr. Dorrit is imprisoned not only by his debt and later society, but by his own pride and ignorance.  Every marriage (except the last one, of Dorrit and Arthur) is a marriage of convenience, based on money and social standing; no one is in love with one another.  Many of the women within the story are imprisoned by ideas of what women should or shouldn't do.  Those female characters who stand up to those ideas are shot down and those who acquiesce are miserable. 

The novel is considered one of Dickens's most radical and severe works, and it's easy to see how much he detests certain institutions within society.  His chapter on the Circumlocution Office (meant to stand in for the British bureaucracy at large) is the sort of writing that would make Sinclair Lewis proud.
But the novel is also has troubling parts.  Little Dorrit as a character is an idealized woman of the 19th century: industrious, loyal and quiet.  She is always working for the men in her life, mostly her father, but later on for her husband, Arthur Clennam.  She never asserts her own needs, always simply doing as they demand of her, regardless of what it does to her emotionally.
The "bad girls" of the novel, the ones that are annoying, selfish, and apparently undesirable, are the ones who are more independent.  Flora, Arthur's once flame, is now a widow, and is independently wealthy.  So she's apparently not good enough for Arthur to desire anymore (or for the audience, who sees much of this novel through his eyes, despite the fact that the title is of a female character.)  Fanny, Dorrit's sister, is undesirable because she is a woman who works for herself and because she is determined to marry whomever she wants, so clearly, she must also be a catty, witchy woman, the kind that the audience is suppose to find detestable. 
Other women are demonized within the novel.  Pet spurs Clennam's affections, so clearly she has to be miserable for the rest of her life with an artist husband.  Tattycoram, a young woman treated as a slave by a family who insists they are good because they have "adopted" her, is mocked in the novel for being stupid enough to run away.  And Miss Wade, another woman, is motivated only by revenged at being jilted by her once lover.  Women are nothing more but examples of "good" and "bad" behavior, the good girls being the ones that do as they are told and the bad girls being those who somehow threaten masculinity.