I Finally Gave In... This is a review of the fictional television drama: True Detective (Season 1)

Almost without exception, I avoid writing about, often even discussing television shows. But like I said, I do make exceptions... when the material is right, when the program is thought-provoking, or when it simply latches on to my psyche coloring my ideas and influencing my modest written output. This was the case with True Detective many times over.

True Detective on HBO was one of the most awesome television projects I’ve ever scene. It stars Matthew McConaughey as Det. Rustin Cohle and Woody Harrelson as Det. Marty Hart. Some episodes are stronger than others. But all of the writing is strong by former UNC ChapelHill professor and novelist Nic Pizzolatto.  I want to take a look at my favorite, including the extra deleted scene from my DVD copy.

The first thing that I could possibly say is that the actor in the second scene of Episode 3: The Locked Room, Shea Whigham, nails the part of the independent evangelical minister. Having heard all too many of these people speak, I can assure you his speech, cadence, and movements are spot on. There is a difference in the content, however. Some parts fit perfectly with traditional evangelical doctrine, other parts are lock-sync with the show’s theme and particularly with Cohle’s (McConaughey’s) references. I think it’s probably one of the best sermons I have ever heard, what with it’s acknowledgment of frailty, of anger, of doubt, and the minister’s perspective rooted in almost philosophical skepticism, albeit perhaps more of a Kantian kind.

Rev. Theriot (actor Shea Whigham) at Revival Meeting:

You were as blind to Him as your footprints in the ashes, but He saw you. Beneath every disguise, every gesture, false or true, every silent resentment. He saw you in those dark corners. He heard you, O my brothers…He heard those thoughts. Now, I’m here today to talk to you about reality. I’m here to tell you about what you already know! That this, [kicks stage monitor] all this, is not real! It is merely the limitation of our senses, which are meager devices. Your angers and your griefs and your separations, are a fevered hallucination, once suffered by us all, we prisoners of light and matter. And there we all are, our faces pressed to the bars, looking out, looking up, asking the question, begging the question, “Are you there?” Would that we had ears to hear, because every moment, every now, is an answer. Every beat of every heart, every second of every minute, every minute of every hour, every hour of every day is an answer. And the answer is, “Yes!” “Yes!” Listen... Your sorrows pin you to this place. They divide you from what your heart knows. And there are a lot of good hearts out there. I’m looking out there, I’m seeing a lot of good hearts out there. I see a lot of joy out there. And we bandage our soft selves, in hardness, in anger! You are a stranger to yourself, and yeah, He knows you. And when your heard heart made you like unto the stone, and broke you from His body, which is the stars, and the wind between the stars, He knew you! He knew you, yet and forever. Because I ask you, how could a father forget his children? How could the world forget itself? Doesn’t matter that the children do not understand what they are. Doesn’t matter that the world thinks it is many different things rather than one! Him! Doesn’t matter. My sad, and joyous, and frightened and courageous brothers, I want you to do something for me. I want you to… I want you to close your eyes. I want you to close your eyes, and let your chest swell as His lungs, feel His pulsing in us, in each other. Every single one of you sitting here today, each other. And I want you to listen for that answer. If ever your sorrow becomes such a burden, that you forget yourself, forget this world, I want you to remember this truth, this is indelible, as the sun and sky and the ground beneath your feet. This world is a veil, and the face you wear is not your own. The shape of our true face is not yet known to us. And so I press my eyes to the bars and I look out, and I look up, and I ask the question… No, I beg the question [voice breaking], Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ! Your arms opened and close. The echoes of my life could never contain a single truth about You! You move the feather in the ash. You touch the leaf with its flame. You lit your soul to an infinity of a time of creation, and of it, I am less than a drop in the ocean. So, how then, can I know sorrow? How then, can I know despair? Does the rain know sorrow? Does the grass, and the mountains, the beautiful mountains, know despair? Such is not His province, and so not be our purpose. Be in Him, of Him, and then, know peace. That is His gift to us. Our birthright. In the end, we will find ourselves at the beginning. And will at last, know ourselves, and our true faces will weep in His light. And those tears… Those tears will feel like a warm rain. Amen. Amen. Amen! Amen!

Behind Minister Theriot is the inscription upon the tent canvas of Proverbs 3:5, as follows:

Proverbs 3:5 - Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

The characters of Hart and Cohle stand at the back of the tent during Theriot’s sermon, having a discussion. I will present Cohle’s comments only.

Cohle (at Revival Meeting):

-What do you think the average IQ of this group is, huh?

-[About the congregants]: Just observation and deduction. I see a propensity for obesity, poverty, a yen for fairy tales. Folks putting what few bucks they do have into little wicker baskets being passed around. I think it’s safe to say that nobody here’s gonna be splitting the atom, Marty.

-Yeah, but if the common good’s got to make up fairy tales, then it’s not good for anybody.

-[What people would do if they didn’t believe]: The exact same thing they do now, just out in the open… If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then, brother, that person is a piece of shit. And I’d like to get as many of them out in the open as possible.

-What’s it say about life? Hm? You got to get together, tell yourselves stories, that violate every law of the universe, just to get through the goddamn day? No. What’s that say about your reality?

-Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. It’s catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, he’s effective in proportion to the amount of certainty he can project. Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain, dulls critical thinking.

Cohle and Hart’s Discussion in the Car:

Marty: “Think a man can love two women at once, I mean, be in love with them?”

Rust: “I don’t think that man can love, at least not the way that he means.

Inadequacies of reality always set in.”

Marty: “Do you think– Do you wonder ever if you’re a bad man?”

Rust: “No. I don’t wonder, Marty. World needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.”

Despite his critique of Rev. Theriot, notice the similarity in approach of the minister to Cohle’s interrogation technique.

Cohle’s Interrogation:

I know son, I can read this off you. You’re not bad. It’s not you. There’s a weight. And it’s got its fishhooks in your heart and your soul. Now, what you did is not your fault. It’s not. You was drug to the bottom by that same weight. The same weight that won’t let you get along in a job, the same weight that wouldn’t let you get along at school. The same weight that wouldn’t let you have a mom. I know these things, Chris… Listen to me, son. You got one way out. And it’s through the grace of God. You are only how the Lord made you. You are not flawed. We, you, me, people, we don’t choose our feelings. There is grace in this world, and there is forgiveness for all, but you have to ask for it.

Rustin Cohle (actor Matthew McConaughey) in a video statement to Louisiana CID detectives:

Detective: You figure it’s all a scam, huh? All them folks.

Cohle: Um hm.

They’re just wrong?

Oh, yeah. Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey, “He said for you to give me your fucking share.” People are so goddamn frail they’d rather put a coin in a wishing well than buy dinner.

See, we all got what I call a life trap. A gene-deep certainty that things will be different. That you’ll move to another city and meet the people that’ll be the friends for the rest of your life, that you’ll fall in love and be fulfilled. Fucking fulfillment. And closure. Whatever the fuck those two… Fucking empty jars to hold this shit storm. Nothing’s ever fulfilled. Not until the very end. And closure. No. No, no. Nothing is ever over.

The ontological fallacy of expecting a light at the end of the tunnel, well, that’s what the preacher sells. Same as a shrink. See, the preacher, he encourages your capacity for illusion. Then he tells you it’s a fucking virtue. Always a buck to be had doing that. And it’s such a desperate sense of entitlement, isn’t it? “Surely this is all for me. Me. Me, me… I… I’m so fucking important. I’m so fucking important. Right? [voice cracking with emotion]” Fuck you.

Detective: Your assist record, man. That’s something else. Any pointers?

Cohle: No, I never really found it that hard. You just look at somebody and thing like they think. Negative capability. I mean, I guess it’s a skill. But most times, you don’t even need that. You know you just look them in the eyes, the whole story’s right there. Everybody wears their hunger and their haunt, you know? You just gotta be honest about what can go on up here [pointing to head with pocket knife], a locked room. But then again, I’m terrible with cards.

Yeah. So while we were grilling B and E jerk-offs and burn victims, I decided to put insomnia to good use. People… I’ve seen the finale of thousands of lives man… young, old. Each one is so sure of their realness, that their sensory experience constituted a unique individual with purpose, meaning. So certain that they were more than a biological puppet. Well, the truth wills out, and everybody sees once the strings are cut, all fall down.

Each stilled body so certain that they were more than the sum of their urges, all the useless spinning, tired mind, collision of desire and ignorance. You asked about the interrogations. You want to know the truth? I never been in a room more than 10 minutes I didn’t know whether the guy did it or not. How long does it take you?

Look. Me talking about what happened back then, that ain’t gonna do you any good now. This is what I’m talking about. This is what I mean when I’m talking about time, and death, and futility. There are broader ideas at work, mainly what is owed between us as a society for our mutual illusions. Of 14 hours of staring at DBs, these are the things you think of. You ever done that? Hmm? You look in their eyes, even in a picture. Doesn’t matter if they’re dead or alive. You can still read them, and you know what you see? They welcomed it, mm-hmm, not at first, but right there in the last instant. It an unmistakable relief, see, because they were afraid and now they saw for the very first time how easy it was to just let go, and they saw–In that last nanosecond, they saw what they were, that you, yourself, this whole big drama, it was never anything but a jerry-rig of presumption and dumb will and you could just let go finally now that you didn’t have to hold on so tight to realize that all your life–you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain– it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person… And like a lot of dreams there’s a monster at the end of it.

Of course, in episode one Cohle had already established his basic philosophical premise:

-I consider myself a realist; in philosophical terms I’m a pessimist.

-I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law.

-We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self. The secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody. When in fact, everybody is nobody.

-I think the honorable thing for us to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction. One last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.

From the sermon, to Cohle’s diatribes later that “time is a flat circle” echoing the Nietzschean idea of eternal recurrence, to the final revelation of the killer and his insistence on “take off your mask” there is a pervasive theme that not only does this world not matter, it doesn’t exist in the first place—or it exists all at once. Whatever the true meaning, and I think the best function of the show is to actually make you think about some of these notions. If you reject this pessimism, why? On what grounds? Even the minister explains that this world is not real and the face you wear is not your own. Thus, the theology and the philosophy (as so rarely is the case) agree on some central points. There are a lot of things to say about this dialogue and the ideas it presents but I’m woefully under qualified and not at all up to the task. However, I have found some excellent discussions on-line that might be worth your follow through. 

Perhaps for further reading: Cohle's "aphorisms" were revealed by series creator Pizzolatto as being strongly influenced by Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race.  

Well, I leave you with some interesting links that discuss this in a much more erudite and lucid manner. Happy learning!

http://www.vulture.com/2014/02/philosopher-assesses-true-detective-characters-rust-cohle-marty-hart.html

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/but-not-simpler/2014/03/03/depressing-things-true-detective-says-self-true/#.U7D_MLFurSc

http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueDetective/comments/1yhm08/what_philosophy_booksreading_are_similar_to_that/

The Inexplicable Universe with Neil deGrasse Tyson

The Inexplicable Universe with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Recently, I completed viewing Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Teaching Company lecture series The Inexplicable Universe which is currently available on Netflix streaming. Dr. Tyson is one of the great communicators of scientific ideas to the general public since Carl Sagan. He evangelizes proper science frequently on television shows such as The Colbert Report. His most recent exposure to the public was in the form of the revamped, contemporary version of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the original version of which was hosted by the aforementioned great astrophysicist Carl Sagan. Dr. Tyson has distinguished himself through his great willingness to make scientific ideas (and more importantly attitudes toward science) more palatable and relatable than they might otherwise be.

The Inexplicable Universe is divided into six 30-minute lectures: 1) History’s Mysteries, 2) The Spooky Universe, 3) Inexplicable Life, 4) Inexplicable Physics, 5) Inexplicable Space, and 6) Inexplicable Cosmology. As I said earlier, I watched this series on Netflix which means I could only view the lectures. Should you choose to purchase the course from The Teaching Company, it will, like all of their courses, likely include a course outline with more in-depth notes and bibliographical references for further reading. Of course, you choose your level of involvement, so it is not essential to complete the readings or view Dr. Tyson’s notes and comments to understand and benefit from the lectures.

I’ve seen Dr. Tyson lecture and sit for interviews numerous times and I must say that in this Great Courses series he is at his finest. With the first lecture, “History’s Mysteries,” Dr. Tyson reviews myriad problems from the history of science. These puzzles were only solved through the application of modern science and its focus on experimenting rather than pure reason. Dr. Tyson walks us through the solution to many of the mysteries of the past which were solved using science and have become almost mundane at this point. A great example is 18^th century scientists’ insistence on the existence of ether, an invisible substance through which sound waves travelled. This was later proven to be wrong. That is, scientific rigor in experimentation (specifically, the Michelson-Morley experiment) demonstrated that light travelled at the same speed all of the time; therefore, the ether that was supposed to transmit light in wave form didn’t do it.

Lecture 2 is titled “The Spooky Universe” and generally covers quantum mechanics and fundamental particles, explaining how fantastical many of our accepted concepts are. The third lecture, “Inexplicable Life,” talks about the uniqueness of human life in the universe and the conditions that allow life to flourish, as well as the possibility of life outside of our Earth-bound existence. Lecture 4, “Inexplicable Physics” might be the most interesting of the six-part series. Dr. Tyson reviews the development of the field of physics and the search for a unifying theory such as “String Theory.” The fifth lecture is “Inexplicable Space” and it reviews humankind’s search for understanding of the cosmos. The most fascinating bits in this lecture cover dark energy and dark matter as well as the theoretical experience of being at or near a black hole. The final and sixth lecture “Inexplicable Cosmology” goes into depth about the current edges of study in cosmology. The multiverse, antimatter, tachyons and other theoretical advances of the past few decades are covered in Tyson’s inimitable style.

So that is a brief review of some of the content of The Inexplicable Universe. I had been exposed to most of its ideas from other books, lectures, and even podcasts; however, I have to give a strong recommendation for this lecture series because of its accessibility. It is one of the few series that talk about such complex ideas that requires no previous exposure to mathematical or scientific ideas. All you need is an attentive and open mind and you will gleam something or many things from the lectures. As always, happy learning!

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Recently, I stumbled upon an article on the Web (http://www.listmuse.com/how-well-read-short-novels.php) that purports to help one to be “well-read” through a list of 40 books. I find such lists very appealing; however, I have my own general idea about the kinds of “classics” that make one well-read. I browsed through the volumes composing the list and discovered I had read approximately 1/3 of them already. It seemed a reasonable conjecture, based on this correlation, that this list might prove very useful. This idea is not unique. A close friend of mine had the collection The Harvard Classics or the essential bookshelf or something like that. I read a couple of volumes from his collection, most notably The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which made a considerable impression upon me.

The first volume on the list that I had not read before was To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Going into the reading, the only familiarity I had with Ms. Woolf was through the 1966 film, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? That film struck me as an intense study of the breakdown of a relationship, particularly a marriage of two intellectuals. It had even been quite a long time since I had seen the film—on AMC when AMC actually showed more quality, classic films instead of original programming like Mad Men or Breaking Bad. Let me be clear, I have no problem with either of these shows and the latter is one of my favorite series of all time. I mean simply that AMC and Bravo channels used to function as a sort of distance study film school but original and reality programming has changed that forever.

I didn’t do much investigating about the character of the author Ms. Woolf prior to tackling the novel. That might have been a mistake. Ms. Woolf writes in what is generally referred to as a “stream of consciousness” style. Thus, To the Lighthouse is filled with page after page of interior monologue—the “self talk” that goes on and on. I mean that literally, the voluminous verbosity of each of the significant characters in the book makes you wish these people would take up Buddhist meditation, to try and quiet the mind a bit.

To the Lighthouse runs around 320 pages and was first printed in 1927. More than anything, the novel is a character study of what appears to be an intellectual, upper middle-class family during the period between World War I and World War II. The central characters of the novel are Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. Mr. Ramsay is highly intellectual and keeps his focus on the few achievements in his life. He wonders whether anything he’s done will have lasting value for the human race. At one point he says that even a stone will outlive the works of Shakespeare. Mrs. Ramsay, on the other hand, seems to “suffer in silence” at the behest of her husbands tremendous yet fragile ego. She takes comfort in caring for her children, supporting her husband, and making sure their house guests (many of whom are frequent, long-term occupants) are properly fed and cared for.

The novel is pretty short on plot. There is some focus on the youngest son James’s desire to visit the lighthouse near to their vacation home. However, the novel’s main focus is on the dynamics of relationships: The relationship of the individual to him or herself as well as the interrelationship of each of the characters.

Ms. Woolf’s writing style might be compared to that of James Joyce in novels such as Ulysses—a book I have tried to get around to reading for years. I think the politics of relationships would lend Ms. Woolf’s work to an easy critique from either the Marxist, feminist, or deconstructionist traditions of literary criticism. Luckily, that is beyond the scope of my little blog post here. I tend to prefer non-fiction in general but I do recognize the value inherent in a careful examination of classic fiction. As of now, I plan to continue to read (in order) those titles that I have not yet read on the 40-volume list.

Do you have any suggestions for books, documentaries, or free courses I might checkout? If so, I welcome these responses by e-mail or in the comments section of the blog forum. As always, happy learning!