Sinister Spirals and Female Bodies – Revisiting The First Season of ‘True Detective’ (2014)
In a world of police procedurals, be the first season of HBO’s True Detective. Cary Joji Fukunaga’s critically acclaimed nonlinear narrative descends into an ever-complex helix of cultish sacrifice and terror. In Season 1, disparate detectives Rust Cohle and Marty Hart are plunged into the seemingly impenetrable murder case of sex worker Dora Lange, slowly uncovering violence and ferocity hidden in plain sight that emanates from the seat of power. The show’s eight episodes increasingly gravitate inward, mirroring the symbol of the cult of Carcosa – a jagged spiral etched onto victims’ bodies and crafted within twig sculptures. As the narrative flits between three time periods, it delves into the conflicted consciousnesses of Rust and Marty, as well as inching toward the belly of the beast, the heart of the ritual practice that is uncomfortably close to home.
True Detective’s first season is rooted in literature, both in its production and in its influences. Nic Pizzolatto initially devised the script as a novel, and later assumed a solitary role as sole writer, executive producer, and show-runner with Fukunaga directing. Thus, the script was weighted with literary monologues steeped in philosophical pessimism, Rust’s existential soliloquies at odds with the detective duo formula that True Detective reinvents. The repeated motifs of Carcosa and the ‘King in Yellow’ allude to Robert W. Chambers’ 1895 short story selection The King in Yellow, which contains stories connected by the titular fictitious play about the mythical realm of Carcosa, reigned by a malignant entity; inducing madness in characters who read it. Likewise, the esoteric, enigmatic figure of Rust is intensely drawn to the Dora Lange murder to the point of obsession. The King in Yellow directly influenced H.P. Lovecraft in his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos, highlighting the season’s proximity to the world of weird fiction, only translated to screen. Additionally, the “spaghetti-faced man” who chases a young girl in rural Louisiana (later revealed to be a central member of Carcosa) calls back to the octopoid cosmic entity of Cthulhu himself.
The show’s elusive propinquity to the preternatural is complicated by its murky portrait of human nature and the shifting dichotomy between light and dark, moral and monstrous. This is not a simple narrative of good cops and bad murderers. Rust and Marty repeatedly commit glaring transgressions in order to track down Carcosa’s members, and wield police department resources at will – such as Rust stealing drugs to infiltrate a biker gang – convoluting morality and justice. As the detectives become enmeshed with the sprawling murder case and its eldritch overtones, they too become polluted by its mystique. This can be linked to the spiralling vortex reoccurring within the show. Either the spiral begins at the centre, curling outward, infecting those outside its radius with a madness reminiscent of the fictional play, The King in Yellow, as well as echoing the spider web nature of the expansive occult circle. On the other hand, the spiral could be seen as curving inward, gravitating toward ‘Carcosa’ and otherworldly ascension. This sign appears throughout the episodes, from delicate twig sculptures and Rust’s hallucinations, to Errol Childress’ labyrinthine lair. Whichever way the vortex moves, it is symbolic of both the ritualistic cult as well as the magnetic pull of the transcendent. It can also be related to Rust’s Nietzschean statement that “Time is a flat circle. Everything we've ever done or will do, we're gonna do over and over and over again” – cynically assuming that the spiral of time simply reiterates, and that nothing is ever solved, a view he appears to revoke in the final line of Episode 8, ‘Form and Void’: “If you ask me, the light's winning”.
The prominence of the female body in the show is striking, and intrinsically linked to the inhuman fear of True Detective. In the opening scenes of the first episode, the naked murder victim Dora Lange is posed kneeling in a mockery of prayer, by a tree in a burnt sugarcane field. Her bare form is analysed critically by male officers. A significant element of her violation is this performance of unveiling, creating a dynamic of watcher and watched: this can also be observed in the horrifying pictures snuck into church Bibles and the tape of missing girl Marie Fontenot’s abuse and murder. Just like The King in Yellow, the cult constructs a stage for their violent brutalisation, littered with props of painted spirals and deer antlers. Its victims are voiceless, from the dead Dora Lange and missing Marie Fontenot, to the catatonic victim Kelly Reider; while their bodies can be found, their agency will never be. Marty’s mistresses, his young secretary, and later a former victim of child exploitation, are undressed in a display ripe with echoes of Carcosa, revealing his power dynamic that is, at best, deeply concerning. The silent female form is simultaneously revealed to and removed from the viewer, voiceless, sex workers and mistresses dually bared to an unflinching gaze – correspondingly, the cosmic horror of Louisiana’s dark underbelly is at once strikingly visible and yet infuriatingly impenetrable. Which horrifies a person more: the systemic injustice within institutions of government and religion permitting and perpetuating the most brutal of crimes, or the supernatural terror of cult sacrifice marked with otherworldly symbols? Or is it the unshakeable feeling that neither can truly be seen?
This body horror additionally delves its tentacles into the ecological. The main title theme, ‘Far from Any Road’ by The Handsome Family, details a deadly cactus personified in the form of a woman that renders unsuspecting victims insane. She can be interpreted as metaphorical of the poisonous nature of Carcosa, or alternatively, the form of Dora Lange. Her unclothed form eventually drives detectives to obsession and merges them with the Louisiana landscape, just as she herself is devoured by the fields and fused to deer antlers. Shots of the title sequence outline the detectives’ empty profiles replaced with rural horizons, the stage of the crimes – the claustrophobic, untethered environments are partially constructed within their mental landscape and decay. The primitive stick structures that frame the narrative further root the show in the natural world, while at the same time remaining distinctly fabricated, locating beacons of violence and diabolism. Juxtaposing components of the ecosphere with the preternatural results in a grating tension: perhaps such ferocious rituals revert to a natural instinct deeper than the modern mind can comprehend. By interlacing these two elements, the sweeping Southern landscape – appearing in childlike ritual drawings and lingering in a shot’s peripheral vision – is transformed into something more sinister. This is a reversal of Mother Nature as stereotypically benevolent, inverted as a sovereign force that swallows you whole.
Ten years on, True Detective Season 1 remains as enthralling as ever. Its rich, serpentine narrative, its arcane protagonist and its intricate exploration of human nature cement it as a truly iconic piece of television. Maybe time is a flat circle, and once you submerge yourself in True Detective’s cavernous depths you become compelled to revisit it time and time again, a Sisyphean fate.
This article was first printed in the 2024 Fresher's Issue of STRAND Magazine.
Edited by Emily Henman, Co-Film & TV Editor
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