In my opinion, the difference between males and females in detective work can be traced back to the fact that their brains just work in completely different ways. I'm not sure who, but a male comedian recently had an entire skit based off of this concept. He claims that a man's brain is like a filing system-- when they want to talk about cars, they take out the car file. When they're done it goes right back into its place. No overlap with any other subject. Women's brains on the other hand, resemble a huge spider web--every single topic is connected to one another through emotional attachments. This would explain the fact based detective styles of men and the more instinctual and emotional search that seems to be common in women.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Detectives and Gender
Although we discussed this topic in class on Friday, it was the main thing that was on my mind when reading both of these short stories. It's funny to me how two different interpretations of the same event may lead to the same conclusion, but make an entire different story in the process. Being a huge fan of mysteries, I may have had preconceived notions about this concept. Both Nancy Drew books and the Veronica Mars tv series emphasized the female attributes of a detective-- their focus on emotional attachment, close observance of relationships and behavior, and basing a lot of their research off of hunches or instincts are all distinct from the natural methods of men. The difference in the two short stories makes this clear, but it is also perfectly epitomized in the show "Law and Order: SVU." The team of detectives is composed of one male and one female--Elliot and Olivia. Their success in solving these mysteries is completely based on the fact that they have the best of both worlds--Elliot focuses on mere facts and solid evidence, whereas Olivia is able to look into the depths of emotional reactions and relationships. It may be that they would be able to solve these problems on their own, but being exposed to the other's thought processes definitely speeds up the solving as a whole.
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I found this post very interesting because I am a big fan of crime shows, but more along the lines of Bones and NCIS and Criminal Minds. What's interesting to me in particular is the comparison to a man's brain being more like a filing cabinet, whereas a woman's is more like a web. When I put this in respect to say, Bones, her mind is so intelligent that it is actually more of a filing cabinet of facts, etc that she knows. On the other hand, Gibbs, from NCIS, seems to me to pull from both the "cabinet" theory and the "web" theory: he pulls both from his previous experiences as a NCIS agent and as a former Marine, but he also has a filoing cabinet of sorts of facts about the Marines that he gathered over the years. I do agree that on a surface level the two associations may be true, but when looking deeper (and granted these are TV characters) perhaps men and women merely have MORE of one than the other, but are still capable of thinking both ways.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your views that men and women are intrinsically different in the ways that their brains work, but I noticed there is no clear pattern in the difference in the books we read so far. In a Jury of Her Peers, the women are the ones that end up solving the mystery. They are driven by emotions by this method proves superior to the mens'. However, in Northanger Abbey, Catherine is another female detective who simple goes off the deep end. Her fantasies and emotions are too much for her to handle and she traps herself in a self delusion searching for mysteries. Then, in Wieland, we have Clara who becomes stuck deciding between natural vs supernatural - a similar situation as Catherine in Northanger Abbey. Clara ends up in a strange love affair with Carwin and proves to be a weak character rather than the strong character she claims. Her detective skills are not that great, but prove to be vastly superior to her brother's. Catherine fails to solve natural vs supernatural in a creepy setting, but Clara ultimately does. But then in Sherlock Holmes, we see the women running to Holmes for answers and he sweeps in to save the day with his logic.
ReplyDeleteAll the books we have read so far are kind of all over the place in terms of the different gender's ability to reason. There is no pattern of one being more superior to the other in similar situations. I feel you are correct in reality, but these authors keep presenting us with inconsistencies.