"True Detective" The Long Bright Dark(2014)
The intricate mapping of Louisiana below Interstate 10 in HBO's 2014 series True Detective generates more than just the obvious voyeurism of extreme poverty that marks so many shows about Louisiana, such as Swamp People (History Channel) and Duck Dynasty (A&E)1Duck Dynasty, a reality show about a family in the duck call industry, is not only a voyeuristic show about poor country living in Louisiana, but one whose subjects are actually wealthy, performing poverty and capitalizing on nostalgia for old-fashioned living. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1548_1_1', content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1548_1_1').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true ); or about "true crime" in rural areas, such as Cajun Justice (A&E). True Detective is a show about precarious life as much as it is about catching a serial killer. The mystery plot is standard fare: two male detectives, on the trail of perpetrators of an apparent "Satanic ritual abuse" killing, uncover a dusky underworld of cults and corruption. However, the way True Detective links a critical understanding of Louisiana with a type of cartographic character development relies more on the intensities of place than a sequence of defining moments. Rust and Marty, played by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in virtuoso performances, travel from Lake Charles to Avoyelles to Lafayette to lower Terrebonne to Beaumont, Texas, to suburban New Orleans to Erath, tracing intensities and textures of relationships in particular places to income, education, landscape, and health disparities. Rust is a Texan, a detail that is constantly used to justify his utter strangeness, to portray him as an intruder, and to set up a Louisiana only understood from the inside. He is also a mystical nihilist whose popularity gave rise to fans hunting down and interpreting his allusions to nineteenth century weird fiction, Nietzsche, and M-theory during the run of the show. Before moving to Louisiana to work homicide, Rust spent too long deep undercover in vice, heavily drugged, delivering gun justice to cartel thugs. Marty, a University of Louisiana at Lafayette alum and good old boy, is his more or less straight-laced partner. Their story begins with investigating the death of a young woman found in a canefield, naked and trussed, wearing a crown of antlers. It ends with them killing a man who had done the murdering, but who was only a relative of one the real masterminds: a cabal of politicians, nonprofit leaders, businessmen, police, and meth cookers who stage gruesome murders, kidnap children, and control state politics, education, and revenue. Rust and Marty will not pursue them because True Detective is an anthology series, and their story is over.
"True Detective" The Long Bright Dark(2014)
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