Decoding HBO’s True Detective Season 1

The philosophical backbone behind True Detectives seems to go far deeper than the pages of the script. Inspiration, influences and theories have been identified to be in direct correlation with the storyline, or, at least, may have influenced writer Nic Pizzolatto.

Detective Cohle’s philosophical rhetoric in each episode (or even almost every scene) has not only spawned a hysterical meme tumblr, but also a closer look at the influence of the character’s grim overview of humanity. In horror writer Thomas Ligotti’s 2010 nonfiction work The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Ligotti calls consciousness “the parent of all horrors” …a concept that could easily droll from the murmuring forewarning of Detective Cohle. While Cohle refers to humans as “biological puppets,” the same motif rings true in Ligotti’s writing on the nature of humanity in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: “Now we know that we are uncanny paradoxes. We know that nature has veered into the supernatural by fabricating a creature that cannot and should not exist by natural law, and yet does.”

But the weird fiction correlation doesn’t stop there. We learn through the diary of the 1995 murder victim, Dora Lange, that she had met “the Yellow King” and mentions “Carcosa.” These both are referenced in Robert Chambers’ 1895 supernatural, weird short stories The King in Yellow; composed of ten short stories, the first four of which, “The Repairer of Reputations”, “The Mask”, “In the Court of the Dragon” and “The Yellow Sign”, mention The King in Yellow– a play that turns anyone who reads it insane. Sound familiar, right? The supernatural element of True Detective is blatant when Rust hears the booming voice throughout the maze. If this “Yellow King” is a supernatural force, and that ethereal vortex was not just another hallucination of Rust, a theory could suggest this to be completely evil entity not of this world. If that theory is plausible, this force could pass between human vessels warping their conscious—like Errol and the cult. An excerpt from The Yellow King is eerily identical to the crusade in True Detective:

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

But beyond the theories that may have influenced the show, and also aided in revealing the grim world we live in, True Detective novelist Nic Pizzalatto carries the secret behind the subtext of his work.

 “I don’t want to restrict an audience by telling them that ‘this means this’ and ‘this means this.’ My intentions are the inalterable definition of things. For people who thought Cohle’s philosophy was simply hogwash, be aware that you’re calling Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche hogwash. Just be aware of that. That is not, in fact, a college freshman stoned eating a pizza talking about life; that’s Arthur Schopenhauer’s thoughts on life. But I thought that was part of the tension within Cohle. It might not all fall into relief until you’ve watched all eight episodes, but yes, these things are eloquently stated, and they do make sense, and they are no more or less true than the story Preacher Theriot is telling you during the tent revival service. Somebody asked me, ‘Well, what does this all mean?’ Obviously, as an artist, I hate questions like that, but I could tell they were asking for a governing theme that could encompass everything else that happened. And so I had to think about it. And to me, if there’s one governing thing in True Detective that encompasses everything that is happening in True Detective, and that the show is telling you — constantly, the show keeps telling you — is that everything is a story. Cohle tells you that who you think you are, your identity, is a story you tell yourself. He tells us that religion and philosophy are stories we tell ourselves. Cohle describes them as cathartic narratives, but in confession he’s so good at getting confessions from suspects because he gives them room to create a cathartic narrative. Hart says an investigation is the act of trying to put together a story after the fact, and when he goes over his story in episode 5, you can tell that Hart used to tell himself one story and now he tells himself another story. The show was never concerned with the supernatural, but it was concerned with supernatural thought, and it was concerned with supernatural thinking to the degree that it was concerned with storytelling. So if there was one overarching theme to True Detective, I would say it was that as human beings, we are nothing but the stories we live and die by — so you’d better be careful what stories you tell yourself.” via HitFix 

If it’s stories Pizzalatto wants us to focus on questioning our faith, existence and purpose, theories jumping passed supernatural thinking into supernatural beings goes against what Pizzalatto is trying to project.

“There’s never been anything I didn’t love that I didn’t connect with on a personal level because to some degree, I projected upon it. That said, I think I’ve made clear that my only interest in the Chambers stuff (Robert W. Chambers wrote The King in Yellow) is as a story that has a place in American myth. And it’s a story about a story that drives people into madness. That was mainly it. Beyond that, I’m interested in the atmosphere of cosmic horror, but that’s about all I have to say about weird fiction. I did feel the perception was tilted more towards weird fiction than perhaps it should have been. For instance, if someone needs a book to read along with season 1 of True Detective, I would recommend the King James Old Testament. I wouldn’t tell anyone to go buy Robert Chambers. It’s not that great a book. Joseph Conrad and William Faulkner I think are in there far more than Chambers or Lovecraft. But again, I guess I hope that these 8 chapters, once the totality of it is evident, it might provoke a re-evaluation. But if it doesn’t, I’m very happy with the reaction we’ve had. It couldn’t have been better. I’m just surprised by it. I remember talking to you three months ago and having to convince you: ‘This just sounds like every other show,’ ‘I know, I know.’ And now my wife read a comment the other day that said I live out in the desert, and I run some kind of cult. (laughs) I don’t know what I can say about that. I think this show answers everything it told you to ask. The questions it didn’t tell you to ask are questions best left to one’s self.” via HitFix

A second season for True Detective has already been green lit. What we know already is that it won’t feature McConaughey nor Harrelson nor the creepy marshes of rural Louisiana. All writer Nic Pizzolatto can reveal right now is that the next season will be about “hard women, bad men and the secret occult history of the United States transportation system.”