Sunday, March 2, 2014

TRUE DETECTIVE & GREEK TRAGIC THEATRE

For anyone who has been watching True Detective on HBO you have come to know Rust Cohle's strange, seemingly rambling, existential monologues really well.

Case in point, the following now famous, or infamous (depending on how you feel about it) example of speechifying to the two African American detectives from Episode 5, “The Secret Fate of All Life,” has divided many on the internet, as well as friends and loved ones close to me, who watch the show. (Full disclosure: I love it when Rust goes on these little metaphysical “rants.”)


COHLE: You ever heard of something called membrane theory, detectives?

PAPANIA: No. That's over my head.

COHLE: It's like, in this universe, we process time linearly. Forward. But outside of our space-time, from what would be a fourth-dimensional perspective, time wouldn't exist. And from that vantage, could we attain it, we'd see – [he crushes a can of Lone Star between his palms] --our space-time look flattened, like a seamless sculpture. Matter in a super-position—every place it ever occupied. Our sentience just cycling through our lives like carts on a track. See, everything outside our dimension—that's eternity. Eternity looking down on us. Now, to us, it's a sphere. But to them, it's a circle.


Theories, and opinions, abound about this little monologue. There are those who see this as nothing more than mumbo-jumbo Cohle is spewing to throw the two rube detectives off his track of either evil deeds, or being a “TRUE DETECTIVE,” as opposed to (as Rust calls them later), “company men.” Others see it as an ongoing shout out in the series that goes back to H.P. Lovecraft and other writers of his era. There are hints of Cthulhu-type descriptions of an infamous “green-eared, spaghetti-faced man,” or “Carcosa” and “The Yellow King,” which are a references to an influence and contemporary of Lovecraft's, Robert W. Chambers and his work, The King in Yellow.

I've read a bunch of theories how people have sees this series as nothing more than a bunch of fanboys who got together to write their pay-network-TV episodic homage to weird literature and its themes and structures. There have also been a great many individual theories that have stated the references are just pointers to plot points in the series' narrative in specific and nothing more.

Rust is the “True Detective” and will end up saving the day, while Marty will end up being exposed as a “company man” involved in the rituals.

Rust will be exposed as a “False Detective” covering his tracks.

All of this has been a red herring just to keep us away from the real “Yellow King!” Marty's now ex-wife!
And they go on and on...

So I figured I'd offere my interpretation.

Well, actually, the theory belongs somewhat to Jan Kott, who wrote a book about Greek tragedy called The Eating of The Gods, a book that looks at the structure, history, and present day relevance of ancient Greek tragedy. I picked up the book today for the first time in a long time and reread the first chapter...which started to sound, at times, oddly like Rust's seemingly meandering monologues.

The first chapter is called, “The Vertical Axis, or The Ambiguities of Prometheus.” Replace Promethesus's name with Rust's and we're talking about a present day HBO TV show, instead of the physical structure of Greek theatres, and their relation to society and the narratives of their plays. Other lines in Kott's first chapter struck me as somewhat Rust-esque. The opening line is:


Gods are above, men are below.” (Kott p.1)


Sure that line is too frank and direct to sound like Rust, but it immediately fits in with his “membrane theory.” If you're ready to turn this theory down, just read what Mr. Kott has to say later in the same chapter about the structure of Greek theatre:


In Aeschylus' drama [Promethesus Unbound] the entire cosmos takes part: the gods, men and the elements. This cosmos has a vertical structure: above, the seat of the gods and power; below, the place of exile and punishment. In the middle is the flat circle of the earth and the flat dish of the orchestra around it where the action unfolds. The vertical structure of the world with its definite functions, symbols and destiny, the above and the below, is one of the most universal and perennial archetypes.” (Kott p.4)


In True Detective there are definite people who can be considered gods (the Tuttles, the man with scars, etc.), men (the detectives, Marty's wife, others), and the elements...? Well, Rust's “visions,” the birds flying in one episode into the definite formation of the symbol that appears again and again drawn on dead women's backs, and more.

What about this “orchestra.”

Well, we're watching it...WE...the AUDIENCE.

This is our Greek tragedy. We can watch it again-and-again, over-and-over, trying to behave, ourselves, like a Greek tragic audience, like True Detectives. Don't believe me yet? Let me offer up this last bit of Kott from the end of Part I of Chapter 1. Tell me if you don't hear equal parts Kott Greek tragic analysis, and Rust Cohle metaphysical mumbo jumbo in this:


Prometheus is crucified by the emissaries of the gods who have come from above to punish him for his excessive love for men who are below. Zeus is not seen, but it is to him that Promethesus directs his reproaches and threats—to him, and to men who are the audience. God and man are both parties in the drama. Promethesus is the accused; but the accused turns into the accueser, whereas in the Oedipus of Sophocles, it is the accuser who becomes the accused. Above, a political drama is being performed, and the rulers change. Below, men have emerged from their primeval animal condition. Men change; so do the forces of nature and the gods. The entire cosmos moves in time but still preserves its vertical structure, with Olympus, Tartarus and earth's flat (orchestra-like) circle in between. A topcosm moves in time, but a time that runs at different speeds for gods and for men. Gods are immortal, men mortal-- brotoi who die but once. Emissaries of the gods derisively call them “ephemerids”: for an ephemerid, a damselfly, one day is all time.” (Kott p.7)


I wish I could have Rust give a dramatic reading at an interrogation of that passage. It would fit if he just randomly started spouting nonsense about Greek tragedy just as equally as when he talks about Membrane theory.

Anyway, for those of you who watched tonight's Episode 7 (“After You've Gone”), instead of the Oscars sleep-inducing boredom, look again at the last scene of the man on the lawn mower as the camera pulls away from him. He has mown a concentric circle, similar to the ancient Greeks' playing space, “orchestra.” There are white objects piled in the background that vaguely resemble a skene, or some sort of backdrop, and the whole area surrounding him looks like an almost perfectly rounded amphitheatre.

Noir tropes be damned! WE are the gods. These people on the screen are our “brotoi” playing out a day for us. We are Rust's version of “eternity” looking down on them playing out this drama over and over. The makers of this show are actually honoring several major tropes of Greek tragedy. The reversal at the climax of this story should be one hell of a cathartic reveal, if they continue on with following Kott's interpretation...or nothing will be revealed, reversed, or resolved...and it will end having been all about a green, spaghetti-faced weirdo named Cthulhu.


That would just be stupid.