True Detective Feels
For the past fortnight I have experienced just how potent a symbol a flat circle is for time, as I have watched True Detective, been to hyped up to sleep an appropriate amount, marvelled at what life must be like for friends and colleagues who have not discovered its beauty… and then by night watched True Detective and been too hyped up to sleep an appropriate amount….
This was is an absolutely fabulous show, and I must admit I feel a bit hollow at the thought of it being an anthology series with the promise of a new season without Matthew McConaughey’s subtitle worthy southern drawl and Woody Harrelson’s crinkly forehead in moments of tension.
True Detective set out as an ambitious project, a crime thriller centring around the same mystery for 8 1 hour episodes geared toward filling the void left by Walter White’s exit from the HBO schedule.
However, though commonly proclaimed as ground breaking by every person of taste with uTorrent, True Detective actually fulfilled a lot of the tropes and conventions of the regular crime thriller show in a pretty uniform way.
Both Rust and Marty were damaged men who had to go through immense trauma to confront their demons and reach a sense of peace in the dark, swampy world of Louisiana. Two guarded, mysterious detectives unravelled emotionally by a close proximity to death and ambiguity, who end up as unlikely bffs- sound familiar?
Ultimately, the crime itself, the murder of Dora Lang (and subsequent crimes uncovered of course), was merely a vehicle for this reaching of personal growth- though an incredibly suspenseful and well crafted one. It seemed apt that the only way for these men to recover from their familial estrangement issues (Rust grieving the loss of his young daughter and Marty the nuclear family he passed up for ex underage prostitutes he helped out of their situation) and talk openly about their feelings, was through a very macho coffee and donut cop search for a man to feel superior to. Well, you wouldn’t really call those 8 hours all coffee and donuts, but lets say that their transition from degenerates to self actualized human beings was treated in a very typical way by a male spear headed production team.
After the very first episode, creator Nic Pizzolatto said that the entire mystery would be able to be unravelled in a close viewing of the premiere. The point was, viewers would have to wait a week to see if their theories had legs. And this I think, is what sparked the incredible online fan community which built around the show’s 8 week run. I think Pizzolatto’s comment was a very telling one, as the show did absolutely set out to feed its viewers with little blink and you’ll miss it niblets of relevancy alongside big bad red herrings. In post finale retrospect, Pizzolatto admitted to Buzzfeed that certain occurrences of the signature Carcosan ‘spiral’, threaded menacingly though the mis en scene of the show in bird formations and inept mowing activities, were actually accidental production errors. However, since the show had been so successful in setting up a climate of fan hysteria not seen since a one direction concert, little details like this were turned into thesis long treatise of ‘Why Maggie is involved’, ‘Why Audrey hears about the abuse at school’ etc.
And all from a simple formation of miscellany in Audrey, Marty’s daughter’s room.
Although the creator said such goofs were unintentional, I’m sure he was secretly chuffed at the observation.
Fan theories were also set ablaze in the show’s fascinating manipulation of cause and effect. In so many cases, we saw the effect before the cause and the rest of our viewing was dedicated to finding out how point A could have possibly collided with point B. From the very beginning we are first introduced to the 2012 pot bellied, balding versions of Marty Hart and the philosophising degenerate Rust Cohle (an immediate subversion of any inherited expectations of McConaughey’s heartthrob-esque role in the piece). As we dip into the case of Dora Lang, the two true detectives of 1995 are young and almost spritely in comparison to their latter selves- immediately setting up a distinct narrative possibility that there is something about this case which has led to the two men’s ruin.
At the end of only the third episode of the series, we are supposedly introduced to the killer, Reggie Le Deux in a memorable final shot of a monster roaming through what looks like a Viet Kong bunker wearing only a freaky gas mask and jock strap. Later episodes follow the detective’s efforts to catch the err, ‘unmasked’ man, however the journey they take is still open to much interpretation. But, in one of the show’s biggest red herrings, it ensues that Reggie isn’t quite the bad guy they were looking for in 95′, and Dora Lange’s killer is in fact the lawn mower man we are similarly introduced to in the final shots of episode 7. Again we are introduced to the bad guy before the detectives are, and this extra narrative information causes us to do crazy things like stay home from 21st birthday parties to watch the next episode. In a masterstroke by Pizzolatto, we know from the Le Deux debacle that our extra information still won’t aid in predicting the point of climax Hart & Cole are spinning toward at break neck speed.
The show really knew how to plunge an audience into full blown reddit hysteria.
In some cases, even though their theories may have been disproven, the amount of factual information and analysis compiled from the show to support these may even stand up to the creators in its own right. Barthes’ ‘The Author is Dead’ hypothesis might apply well to this text, as it matters little what the original intent of the creators was, it was how the story was re appropriated by the fans and how particular narrative info (unwitting or intended) was hijacked to surmount distinctive interpretations.
True Detective masterfully tapped in to the modern audience’s fascination with putting their own take on great stories, it gave us the foundation and let it up to the audience to decide on what they would use to embellish their own interpretations.
In any case, even after the end of the series, and perhaps as True Detective makes way for a new storyline next year, fans will STILL be theorising- a fabulous and unique result for any show hoping to grab the attention of the reddit generation.