Girl+detective

 Veronica Mars: Girl. Detective =  Opening VO: pilot episode   = This is my school. If you go here, your parents are millionaires, or your parents work for millionaires. Neptune, California: a town without a middle class. If you’re in the second group, you get a job: fast food, movie theatres, and mini-marts. Or you could be me. My after school job means tailing philandering spouses, or investigating false injury claims.  · Imagine it bring spoken by Humphrey Bogart  · Cigarette smoke, men in fedoras, femme fatales with great gams  · Rob Thomas has created a hard-boiled detective protagonist out of a little blonde Californian girl The VO narration captures the hard-boiled detective feel, also unmistakably feminine. Read the VO from a lunch-period scene in the pilot: It’s not like my family met the minimum net worth requirement. My Dad didn’t own his own airline John Enbom’s, or serve as ambassador to Belgium like Shelly Pomroy’s, but my Dad used to be sheriff and that had a certain cachet. Let’s be honest, though. The only reason I was allowed past the velvet ropes was Duncan Kane, son of software billionaire Jake Kane. He used to be my boyfriend. · Imagine it being spoken by Carrie in // __Sex and the City__ // · No way, Veronica is almost the anti-Carrie By using a VO with short, cynical sentences, the writers hark back to hard-boiled detective thrillers. This fits, as Veronica as much a professional detective as her dad. Works because VO has become increasingly feminine. · Was used to capture cynical view of Hammett’s Spade or Chandler’s Marlowe · Hard-boiled detective an American archetype · Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple not action heroes · Didn’t rub shoulders with criminal under-class, avoided violence themselves · Hammett “took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley”, Chandler’s // __The Simple Art of Murder__ // · American hard-boiled detective tough, poor, urban, gritty, rebellious and independent · America born out of rebellion, a country of rugged individualism, where what you can do is more important than having money or what class you were born into · The tougher the cowboy, the less he said. Men who talked a lot less than manly · Think // __Everybody Hates Chris__ // or // __My Name is Earl__ // · Veronica is tough and gets away with VOs all the same. Why? Girl Talk · Girls allowed to talk, Mary on // __Desperate Housewives__ // & Dr Grey on // __Grey’s Anatomy__ // Veronica narrates about clothes and boys J Geils was right: love stinks. You can dress it up with sequins and shoulder pads but one way or another you’re just gonna end up alone at the spring dance strapped into uncomfortable underwear. (Ruskie Business 1.15) She narrates about girl magazines and boys: Dear // __Seventeen__ // magazine. How can I tell if the super cute boy in my class likes me? No. Scratch that. Dear // __Seventeen__ //. How can I tell if the super cute boy in my class killed his own sister? (Weapons of Class Destruction, 1.18) Yes, okay, and murder. She narrates about social embarrassment and boys: There are a million things Duncan could have written about me that I’d sooner impale myself on a rusty spike than have someone else read. I must get that computer back. (An Echolls Family Christmas, 1.10) But more than just her romantic musings, Veronica discusses relationships. In general, women openly prioritise there relationships highly. Veronica does too. Her narration, as well as her actions, shows how she values her relationship with her father, like in “Drinking the Kool-Aid” (1.9): “Jake Kane could be my father, but whether he is or isn’t, would I really claim him as such and deny the man who raised me?” Her VOs explore her lost relationship with her mother, with all the 09s who turned against her, and with the late Lilly Kane. They relate her current friendship with Wallace Fennel and, later Cindy “Mac” Mackenzie. Veronica’s narration is filled with commentary that shows the priority she gives to the people in her life. =  Tough Talk   = Veronica uses her feminine ease with words to keep her VOs natural, she is far more than your average boy-happy, clothes-shopping “chick”. She’s a detective. Which brings us back to neo-noir? The Wikipedia entry on “Hard-Boiled American Crime Writing” lists several traits of the typical investigator. He’s a PI, “both a loner and a tough guy.” He’s no family man and does not associate with many friends. Hangs out at “shady all-night bars” and “shoots criminals if necessary.” He’s “always short of cash” and he “has an ambivalent attitude towards the police.” Rob Thomas succeeds in catching the hard-boiled voice for Veronica. See pilot stakeout voice-over. =    =