True Detective (2014), Nic Pizzolatto
Introduction
True Detective is a drama series that first aired in 2014. This article will focus on the first season, which starred Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as joint leads. Penned by Creative Writing graduate and novelist Nic Pizzolatto, the first season was critically acclaimed, receiving a number of Emmy and BAFTA nominations and awards. The season focussed upon Louisiana State Police homicide detectives Martin ‘Marty’ Hart (Harrelson) and Rustin ‘Rust’ Cohle (McConaughey), and their 17 years-long quest (1995–2012) to solve a murder case. The victim in question was a young woman who had been ritualistically murdered. The show depicted the material and metaphysical toll the case took upon the protagonists, as well as their personal evolution.
Much like the pioneering HBO series, The Wire, True Detective is a visual novel, laden with philosophical themes. In essence, the traditional ‘whodunit’ is employed as a central strand of the narrative, but it is what takes place on parallel lines that is of most interest, philosophically speaking. Whilst the show has been analysed through theological, feminist and horror lenses, the cheery(!) main themes this review will focus upon are: nihilism and antinatalism.
Marty and Rust
McConaughey was initially approached by Pizzolatto to play Marty. In line with his personal convictions — McConaughey is a devout Christian — Marty is a believer who believes in the sanctity of family and community. Upon reading the script, McConaughey insisted on undertaking the role of Rust; an atheist and nihilist. In his personal life, Harrelson is an atheist and vocal supporter of veganism and legalisation of marijuana; in sum, the casting had the actors play characters that differ in fundamental ways from their personal beliefs. The result is explosive, especially in the case of McConaughey, who admitted in an interview that what drew him to Rust was the challenge the script posed to his personal beliefs, particularly through intense monologues critiquing religion and the supposed inherent value of human life. In order to prepare for the role, McConaughey created a 450 page analysis, charting what he deemed to be four stages of his character’s development. This intensive undertaking is commensurate with the ‘McConnaisance’. Following 2011’s Lincoln Lawyer, McConaughey has gone on to star in a number of hard-hitting dramas. Dubbed the McConnaisance, this phase of his career is in sharp contrast to the 2000s, in which he became typecast in formulaic rom-coms. Whilst Harrelson is excellent as Marty, and engages both the viewer’s sympathy and criticism, as he repeatedly hits the self-destruction button through hypocritical behaviour, he is very much the side-show to McConaughey’s tour de force as the troubled genius, Rust.
Eternal Return
Pizzolatto has read his Friedrich W. Nietzsche (1844–1900), of that there is no doubt. Throughout the series, there is repeat mention of Nietzsche’s concept of ‘eternal return’. First presented in aphorism 341 of The Gay Science (1882), this is a highly contested concept within Nietzsche’s oeuvre. To better understand its significance and implications, it is necessary to first analyse an earlier aphorism in the same text. As a diagnostician of 19th century fin-de-siècle malaise, and in the face of seismic changes in narratives governing social-life, in the (in)famous aphorism 125 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche presents a parable of a ‘madman’, who proclaims that ‘God is dead’, and that ‘we’, as modern subjects, have killed him. In sum, Nietzsche’s madman is deemed as so by the mob, who observe the passing of God as no bad thing. The madman, however, discerns that the death of God symbolises an epoch in which the narrative of religion as governing social life and morality to have come to an end. With this shift will come a belief in alternative neo-religions, as we the mob, swirling in a metaphysical abyss, will seek to create and sustain meaning in the face of realising that there is arguably none. The challenge this poses is one of nihilism, a belief that there is no ultimate meaning or purpose to existence. This, Nietzsche argues, is the greatest challenge facing humanity in the twentieth century. His mature to late works from 1882 onward are an attempt to confront this challenge. One potential solution is the eternal return. In aphorism 341 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche proposes the following:
‘What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’’ … Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘’You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine’’’.
If God is dead, and there is no ultimate meaning to existence, nihilism is a likely outcome. To confront this, eternal return is posed as an ethical challenge. This challenge can be met through amor fati, or, a ‘love of fate’, best articulated in section 10 of Ecce Homo (1888), in which Nietzsche postulates: ‘My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear the necessary, still less to conceal it — all idealism is mendaciousness before the necessary — but to love it’. In other words, Nietzsche’s gambit is to advocate an inversion of the unremitting pessimism of one of his major early philosophical influences, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), with a fervent ‘yes’ saying in the face of the tragicomedy of existence.
The Common Good?
True Detective explores the function the Christian church plays in giving meaning to the lives of country folk in rural Louisiana. In a striking scene where Marty and Rust overlook a sermon, before interrogating the preacher, Rust scathingly remarks: ‘What do you think the average IQ of this group is, huh? […] I think it’s safe to say nobody here’s gonna be splitting the atom, Marty’. To which Marty replies: ‘You see that. Your fucking attitude. Not everybody wants to sit alone in an empty room beating off to murder manuals. Some folks enjoy community. A common good’. Rust’s reply alludes to Nietzsche’s parable of the madman, and the problem of constructing meaning in the face of a seismic narrative shift: ‘Yeah, well if the common good’s gotta make up fairy tales, then it’s not good for anybody’. This echoes Nietzsche’s sentiment in section 43 of Beyond Good and Evil (1886), when he argues ‘how should there be a ‘‘common good’’! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value’. Pizzolatto, following Nietzsche, sees religion as a powerful narrative which imbues existence with meaning. The writer grew up in a devout Catholic household, and once observed in an interview that he grew to see organised religion ‘as an escape from the truth’. Pizzolato’s mouthpiece, Rust, argues that the narrative of religion is unhelpful and represents an ‘ontological fallacy’: ‘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’. Rust is thereby, ironically, on an anti-religious crusade: this has become his reason for existence.
Antinatalism
In the opening episode, an iconic scene depicts Marty attempting to get to know his recently appointed partner, Rust, who is only a few months into his role as homicide detective, having previously worked for half-a-dozen years in narcotics in a different state (pun intended). Marty attempts to make small talk, and is met with a lukewarm response by Rust. Marty then enquires after Rust’s religious beliefs. Ever the nihilist crusader, Rust snaps into action: ‘I’d consider myself a realist, alright? But in philosophical terms I’m what’s called a pessimist’. The conversation develops rapidly, with Rust laying his cards firmly on the table by espousing his antinatalist beliefs. It is worth sharing his monologue in detail:
‘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 labour under the illusion of having a self, this accretion of sensory experience and feelings, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody’s nobody. I think the honourable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction. One last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal’.
Marty is, understandably, taken aback by his partner’s observation. He asks Rust: ‘so what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning?’. Rust’s response clearly demonstrates both his penchant for deep critical analysis, as well as his Schopenhaurian philosophical pessimism: ‘I tell myself I bear witness, but the real answer is that it’s obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide’.
First popularised in 2000 by Belgian philosopher and activist Théophile de Giraud (1968 — ), antinatalism is a position concisely explicated through Rust’s tirade above. A seminal work in this theory is Peter Wessel Zappfe’s (1889–1990) The Last Messiah. Rust (in other words, Pizzolatto) basically paraphrases Zappfe in the above. Zappfe argues that repression of a ‘damaging surplus of consciousness […] is a requirement of social adaptability and of everything commonly referred to as healthy and normal living’. Returning to the Nietzschean criticism of ‘common’, antinatalism logically builds upon the problem of the death of metaphysical narrative.
It is important to note that Rust’s outlook owes, in part, to his circumstance. Through the course of the season, it is revealed that he is an alcoholic, experiences psychosis brought about by his time in the narcotics division, and is in mourning after losing his two year old daughter in a car accident, and, subsequently, his marriage. Linked to Nietzsche’s call of amor fati, and a childlike love of what is (see Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1883–1885), Rust reconciles his personal narrative along with his antinatalist beliefs, to create meaning out of his loss:
‘I think about my daughter now, and what she was spared. Sometimes I feel grateful. The doctor said she didn’t feel a thing, went straight into a coma. Then, somewhere in that blackness, she slipped off into another, deeper kind. Isn’t that a beautiful way to go out, painlessly as a happy child? Trouble with dying later is you’ve already grown up. The damage is done. It’s too late’.
Rust’s message, then, is no cheery one. Whilst Nietzsche advocates amor fati as a response to the challenge of the eternal return, the homicide detective has been consumed by bitterness and longing, with his acute intelligence leading him to what he deems a necessary antinatalist position. There is, however, some light to be had at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
Legacy
Unfortunately for the uninitiated, it is not possible to conclude this review without a spoiler. A self-proclaimed philosophical pessimist, Rust displays a different outlook after a near-death experience during a successful raid to capture the culprit of the murder case running throughout the season. In a moving closing monologue, Rust reveals how he ‘let go’ whilst his consciousness faded, and in so doing, felt the love of his lost daughter: ‘it was like I was a part of everything that I ever loved … There was nothing but that love. Then I woke up’. In tears, Rust shares a new found meaning to existence, one that resides in the metaphysical, as opposed to material. Ascribing to Buddhist, pantheistic and quantum theory schools of thought, Rust finds meaning in that as a species we are connected, and that mental cognition is but a part of the totality of who we are. Rust has found hope. This is best summarised in his closing line of the show. Observing the night sky, he muses to Marty: ‘once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light’s winning’.
Sunny Dhillon is, like Rust, an antinatalist, an alcoholic and an atheist. He has also had a near-death experience, but, alas, didn’t see the light.
