Mindhunter: A Great Choice, My Friend!

In the Netflix original Mindhunter, a hostage situation gone wrong makes FBI negotiator Holden Ford rethink his philosophy on the “irrational” human. Right from the first episode, the viewer can tell that Holden is going to have a lot of trouble finding ways to fight crime in his own way. Unfortunately, the other investigators at the academy see no sense in embracing the “soft approach” of looking deeper into the human psyche. Not long after his latest hostage negotiation attempt, Holden finds himself on the road with Bill Tench, a behavioral science professional from another branch of the FBI. Together, the two of them plan to educate small town police precincts on the new age of crime.

Mindhunter seems to start out following the common plotline where a main character sees a problem with society or common method of doing things. While Bill and Holden travel, all of the local police think the two of them are crazy for suggesting that serial killers aren’t completely evil. It seems kind of ridiculous, but nobody save for the main characters stop to think that serial killers have a deeper thought process than just going on blind killing sprees. I would expect that out of further episodes, Holden will start to get a grasp of the challenge at hand, and he’ll start to actually make some progress.

After watching the first episode of Mindhunter a second time, I started to pick up on some possible foreshadowing. Holden meets Debbie Mitford in a bar, and begins a relationship with her. Debbie is a post-grad student who makes some understated, yet ominous comments about sociological deviance and “playing against type”, suggesting that she isn’t who she appears to be. It may be too early to tell, but plots like these usually end up with the love interest of the main character somehow involved with the more obvious challenge that surrounds the show.

The cinematography of Mindhunter works well with the central theme of the show. Set in the 1970’s, the show frequently displays vintage cars and interior design. We see a lot of this in one of the first scenes at Holden’s apartment and in the car rides with Bill. The color scheme of the show feels bland compared to other shows that take place in a modern setting. Pausing the episode and looking at the scene feels like looking at a photograph from the 1970’s, and I think that is a really neat effect to give the audience. On an even more obvious note, Mindhunter covers a very dark topic, and so it is fitting that the majority of the scenes of the show are dark. I would note that the acting feels somewhat out of place though; characters seem to interact with each other the same way people do nowadays, instead of how I would imagine they would in the ‘70s. I would assume that Holden would talk similar to my grandparents, since he is around the same age that my grandparents would have been in the 70’s, but he seems to talk more like a Millenial.

From what I’ve witnessed in the first episode, I would highly suggest watching Mindhunter. I am left wondering what will happen next, and I expect the rest of the show to be entertaining.

Mindhunters

Recently for a class activity, we played a clip of Mindhunters, with only the audio, to evaluate it for subtleties that we recognize and relate to things that we have seen previously. As I watched the entirety of the first episode of this series, I began to relate it to series I have watched previously. Most notably, I was able to relate it to both Barney Miller and NCIS. Barney Miller is a show based on detectives that ran from 1974-1982. The subjects that Mindhunters brings up, along with the fashion and lighting techniques used are very reminiscent of Barney Miller and create what feels like a valid atmosphere where you believe it is taking place in that time period. NCIS is a series that is based on naval crime, where they focus on minute details, and it always relates back to motive. For these fictional cases, it is always the least likely scenario, tied to some tiny overlooked detail, as that is what makes for good television.

Addressing motive, that is entirely what the introductory episode to this series focuses on. We are introduced to the main character, Holden Ford, and learn that his motive is to understand the psychology of criminals. A quote from a lecturer at the very beginning of the episode is as follows, “Where do we go when motive becomes elusive?”. In kind of a roundabout way, this describes the way that Holden’s life is going. Holden struggles to implement newer psychology knowledge in his first real life attempt, when confronted with a hostage situation. After this “failure”, he takes this discouragement, and follows it to accept an offer to accompany another FBI guy, Tench, on his journey to different communities and their police departments. We learn from a very aggressive, seasoned cop from one department that Holden is book smart, but has little real life experience. As this fact gets presented to the crowd, they automatically disregard him. When he tries to present information on thinking and psychology, he is shut down hard, because the room of officers think that he is trying to get them to empathize with the killers. This is not what he is trying to present at all. I think Holden’s presentation of his information is encouraging society to understand and explore the human mind. However, he does not know his audience, the resistant police officers that spend their days in the field, not in a book, and it is not accepted whatsoever. Conversely, it may be accepted for the viewer of the show.

Just like anything else, initial ideas are rejected almost automatically if they do not conform to the way that things have been previously. Watching this show in 2017, most people can understand what Holden is trying to do and say, to help them understand that not everything is black and white. For people that grew up in this time period, I think that this message hits home harder. They are able to see both sides of the equation. Watching this show, I can see the blending of elements of both Barney Miller and NCIS. The old set ways of white male cops, and the analyzing of details. As far as lighting, the dusky and hazy scenes when Holden, Tench and the aggressive cop are in the restaurant are exceptionally relatable to older television. The one quality that Mindhunters is lacking, where I would hope it would improve in subsequent episodes, is a little bit of comedy, in some fashion. Only a slight bit of comedy could add to this, without it being taken in a completely different direction. I hope that a few lines of dry humor are added after this episode to increase the ability to continue watching, if the dense content itself does not already draw you in.

Searching for Motive: Society’s Interest in Killers

This week, I have concluded two of Netflix’s new series Mindhunters and Alias Grace. The first took my notice for its casting of Jonathan Groff as the protagonist, a name who any musical fan (especially for 2015’s Hamilton) will remember. The second garnered my attention while watching the opening credits and seeing another buzz phrase for 2017, “Based on the Novel by Margaret Atwood.” Besides both shows utilizing their pop culture icons as  promotional ploys, Alias Grace and Mindhunters share another theme; they both focus on trying to unravel the mind of a killer.

While viewers may already be drawn in by both these shows storylines, it is even more fascinating to discover both Alias Grace and Mindhunters are based off of real life people (with fictionalized liberties taken in their filmatic construction). Alias Grace is about the famous 1840s “murderess” from Canada, Grace Marks, and the mystery that surrounds her case. Mindhunters is about the real life behavioral science unit at the FBI in the 1970s and their interviewing of famous serial killers. If you want a starting point for more research on this, check out the Smithsonian article “The Mysterious Murder Case that Inspired Margaret Atwood’s ‘Alias Grace’” or Vulture’s “The Real FBI Agents and Serial Killers Who Inspired Netflix’s Mindhunter” (note that this second article will contain spoilers, so read at your own risk). However, as much as these shows may want you to think they are novel ideas, interest in unnatural human behavior is not a new craze.

Both Alias Grace and Mindhunters are exploring the sensationalism behind murderers that has been society’s fixation for at least the past two hundred years. The first modern day serial killer that dominated the western world was London’s famous Jack the Ripper in the 1880s followed by Chicago’s H. H. Holmes a decade later. Both of these men flooded newspaper headlines and inspired the horror and curiosity of the western world. While there are numerous killers throughout history, the American public found a resurgence in its fascination of killers in the 1960s with the release of Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood, and media sensationalized killers like Ted Bundy, Ed Kemper, and the Zodiac Killer. Since then, our interest has only grown with shows like Hannibal, Dexter, or American Horror Story: Hotel placing the murderers as the protagonist (that we sometimes even root for).

While we may root for Grace Marks in Alias Grace, it is less likely we are fans of the killers in Mindhunters due to the heinous crimes that are described. Both shows involve a psychologist interviewing the killer, but due to the show’s point of view, the audience is far more likely to feel empathy towards whoever’s point of view is depicted in the story. In Alias Grace, the story of these murders is being told by Grace Marks herself, depicting out her abusive childhood and hard life she had endured leading up to the crime. Grace’s voiceover throughout the series keeps the audience focused on her, and the series follows the story she is recalling for the psychologist by visualizing the events on the screen for us viewers. We know this is supposed to be depicting what is in her mind due to her quick “flashbacks” she has in episode one when the doctor asks her simple questions, and we can’t help but understand her plight. In Mindhunters, the main storyline follows the actions and life of Detective Holden Ford with his partner, Detective Bill Tench, and we get to see their personal struggles within their families, romantic partners, and work life. While Detectives Holden and Trench also interview the killers, because we are not given the visual play by play for the killers’ stories (instead we only see men being interviewed), we are not going to reach the same level of empathy. We essentially are not “walking in their shoes” as we do with Grace’s story, and ultimately, while we may be fascinated by them, we aren’t going to wish for their freedom in the end.

If anyone out there decides to view either of these shows, I challenge you to consider the commentary it makes on society’s psyche when we elevate stories of killers as our popular media. Are we encouraging society to explore the human mind or find empathy in the least likely of places, or are we glorifying and encouraging these gruesome acts? Let me know below!