Herstory

Judging by the “self-help” offered to working women, we are, as a category, case studies in failure. The history of such books and articles dates back to at least 1873, when Harvard professor Edward Clarke warned that a college education would make a woman’s brain too heavy and her womb too barren. Centuries later, cover stories like “The Myth of Work-Life Balance,” “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” and, of course, “Are You Mom Enough” emphasize women as a social project. Whether it’s why we aren’t marrying or why we can’t have it all, the cycle of trend pieces turned best-selling books remains invested in corrective measures.

This portrayal is dicey enough as is, but True Detective also implicates viewers in the objectification of exotic dancers. Even if the “stripper” scenes look abusive, we are simultaneously offered money shots of thongs, nipples, and gyrating hips as some sort of titillating way to allow us to join in the leering. This contradicts any attempts to condemn the “villains” that pay these dancing women, because the audience is offered its own array of sensual shots. And don’t forget, some of the naked bodies on the show are dead, and we all get to gaze at them, too.

The biopic tracks Arendt's experiences reporting on the trial of Nazi SS-Officer Adolf Eichmann, unapologetically centralising her role as a public intellectual. Relationships with friends and her husband, including notable author Mary McCarthy, are also rather sensitively depicted. But they are subplots to the real deal, Arendt's ideas.

Unlike the majority of films or television shows when they deign to give airtime to women, “Hannah Arendt” refuses to replicate the stereotypical territory of acceptable-woman-characters. It is not about Arendt the lover (see: almost all women in films), Arendt as a writerly version of the oh-so-“normal” woman hung up on weight and boyfriends (see: Bridget Jones), or Arendt the supposed high-flyer beseiged by mental health issues (see: Scandinavian drama).

“Hannah Arendt” is, instead, about Hannah Arendt the thinker. It rightly credits Professor Arendt, responsible for some of the most publicly enduring theories in 20th century philosophy, with an intellectual interiority mostly reserved – at least in the public eye – for white men.