True Detective on HBO

[jakell]

.......I don't understand, though, how this Inception-esque combination of slick cinematography combined with pseudo philosophic plot clutter is becoming so popular. .....

You don't? I'm sure you've seen this plenty of times before, and even more so nowadays.

Try focussing less on the so-called 'source material', and instead on human psychology plus one significantly novel thing... the internet, and that fact that we are increasingly plugged in to this blindingly fast meme machine.

Then an experiment could be tried of actually removing this particular source material, and replacing it with things that are qualitatively and quantitiatively different, and noticing how people behave in a similar way.

[FourthBase]

Feel Let Down by the ‘True Detective’ Finale? Start Asking the Right Questions
TV
MARCH 12, 2014
by MOLLY LAMBERT
There’s too much of a focus on endings in narrative fiction. People expect movies to climax in the third act with a big set piece, for books to wrap everything up in the last chapter and make some grand statement, for a TV show’s finale to be the best episode of all. True Detective laid a trance on viewers that was broken when the final episode’s credits rolled. With no more mystery to unravel, no more clues to parse or insane Internet theories left to populate the space between Sunday nights, viewers had to make peace with the idea that the long, strange trip was over. (At least for now, until there’s a director’s cut Blu-ray with deleted scenes from this season, or better yet, an official casting announcement about the next.)

Your right this is making me physically ill. I actually have to step a way because I don't want to invest more time in this than I have already. Is this a parody of a thesis about True Detective? Whatever happened to finishing the job? What is the difference between failure of vision, shoddy workmanship and just plain sucking and playing the post modern card of fractured, indefinite titillation? People expect good endings with narrative fiction because the mediums they are encapsulated within, books, films, etc HAVE beginnings, middles and ends. The ending is the last sequence that refers back to everything we have experienced. It is a finite experience. It will end. The trance will always be broken. The question is were we enlightened or just doped? Does this lady really want us to start asking the right questions or just submit to the hypnotic spell of continually binge-watching True Detective over and over again until time really becomes a flat circle for us?

The whole essay is laughable. This is the level she's at: There's too much of a focus of roofs in housing construction. People expect houses to have some type of large A-frame roof that covers everything in the houses interior and provide some type of grand protection for the house overall from the elements.

She reminds me of a room mate I once had. She was into the Grateful Dead and we were talking about the Dead and I told her that honestly I just couldn't get into the music. It didn't do it for me. She said she felt the same way for a long time, but you get over that if you listen to them enough. I'm sure, much like smoking, you then think is of some artistic value, and makes you cooler, deep and philosophical. Like the Grateful Dead and smoking, True Detective probably makes sense the more you do it as it becomes an experience you are less critical about.

I don't understand, though, how this Inception-esque combination of slick cinematography combined with pseudo philosophic plot clutter is becoming so popular. Great narrative fiction takes complex matters and simplifies them in dramatic form. Bad narrative fiction often takes simple matters and unnecessarily complicates them. Usually in an attempt to "create" a sense of depth, psychology and meaning. When the depth, psychology and meaning are already there if you honor the source material instead of seeking to pimp it for stylistic purposes. That is what True Detective did really. It prolonged, mystified and saturated a pretty basic movie length story into four movies worth of psychedelic satanic and Americana grunge eye candy, paranormal non-sequitors, camp fire talks over beers about secret societies and psycho-babbling car rides down roads to nowhere. I make no claims to be a great arm chair detective but I thought Childress was suspect in the beginning because he had knowledge about the school's history and was a contract employee of some sort. I mean I thought they should have at least found out who was paying him to keep up the school, or if any of his other contracts were with any of the other closed Tuttle schools just for better background information about the schools. Cohle admits he dropped the ball with him early on. If he didn't, the show really would have run its natural course of 2 hours and spared everyone the expectations that this was going to have a more epic, ground breaking scope than the formulaic and non-controversial arc it fizzled out with.

Round the bases and hit the clubhouse for a respite, brekin, that was magnificent.

[munkiex]

You don't need to overthink this. People enjoy a good mystery that doesn't insult their intelligence. Sure, those of us who know some of the real-life events that may relate to the plot will find those aspects interesting, but the average viewer is no more going to become a RI Detective from this show than they do when similar murders are explored on other shows.

Rizzoli & Isles (my wife watches it, unfortunately I passively absorb some of the shows) recently had a show about children being abducted and molested by a clown in a white van. These stories came to mind for me: http://www.hauntmastersclub.com/editorials/clowns.html

I doubt it launched any interest into the real-life events behind the story for 99% of the viewers.

[jakell]

People do tend to overthink though. We let this organ between our ears run-on as if that is it's best feature. Even in a place where rigour is highlighted, 'maybe' porn can steal the show.

Why people with self discipline allow their brains to behave in this fashion though is an interesting topic.

An angle on the whole conspiracy theory thing that I've never really deemed particularly signicant before** is conspiracy theory as escapism. In fact I used to see it as almost a component of it.

Of course, there's nothing new about this, it was basically the idea behind Illuminatus and other lesser known works, it does come to the fore though when a serious researcher runs up against this, and is beset by casual (internet fueled?) dippers looking for entertainment, usually ones who are not particularly affected by the issues and therefore lack a sense of context. If such people are prolific, they could arguably be seen as spammers

In the pursuit of rigour, one of the important initial stages is to find ways to tell these people apart in order to improve the signal to noise ratio. This is not at all easy, because it depends on the tolerance of the environment too, still, I have developed one or two yardsticks.

**as times change, and especially worsen, escapism can become exponentially more popular.

In addition to viewing Conspiracy Theory as escapism, I'm going to take that a little further and look at CT as self-indulgence, in other words, broaching the awful thought that there might be some negatives involved. Personally I look at this approach as trying to develop rigour.

Now, there's nothing wrong with escapism or self-indulgence, and to a degree they are even beneficial, but left to run loose they can lead to solipsism and obsession, and in relation to CT, simply the amassing of data inside a poorly constructed or deteriorating framework. One point regarding the framework is that this should be flexible enough to respond to changing times or circumstances, there are plenty of examples of inflexible frameworks around from political ideologies to fundamentalist religions. I tend to put most of these under the heading of fundamentalism.

I only have one real tool to prevent me from falling into self indulgance, and that is to use my own presence as a yardstick (there is the matter of what constitutes 'presence' in cyberspace, but that's another issue). Unless you are confined to a bed in an institution (or self confining), then your presence in the world will have enough depth and variety to produce a decent set of lenses for looking at it, if you don't think it does then you aren't looking properly, are asleep on your feet, or are almost braindead.

Re-focussing on the self is one way of regaining perspective. there are an enormous amount of CT's possible, all with enormous amounts of data linked to them (accurate, innacurate, or a mixture of the two), and a virtually infinite amount of speculation that can be done. If you don't have a functional yardstick or a recognisable framework, then eventual self-indulgence is more likely.

[munkiex]

Fair enough. I think in some respects many people still hope for the fairy tale of the ascended masters who through breadcrumbs and holograms may try to impart their advanced knowledge to the masses. But the appearance of meaning should not be confused with profundity, particularly when the medium is a screen.

[Rory]

Feel Let Down by the ‘True Detective’ Finale? Start Asking the Right Questions
TV
MARCH 12, 2014
by MOLLY LAMBERT
There’s too much of a focus on endings in narrative fiction. People expect movies to climax in the third act with a big set piece, for books to wrap everything up in the last chapter and make sooodyme grand statement, for a TV show’s finale to be the best episode of all. True Detective laid a trance on viewers that was broken when the final episode’s credits rolled. With no more mystery to unravel, no more clues to parse or insane Internet theories left to populate the space between Sunday nights, viewers had to make peace with the idea that the long, strange trip was over. (At least for now, until there’s a director’s cut Blu-ray with deleted scenes from this season, or better yet, an official casting announcement about the next.)

Your right this is making me physically ill. I actually have to step a way because I don't want to invest more time in this than I have already. Is this a parody of a thesis about True Detective? Whatever happened to finishing the job? What is the difference between failure of vision, shoddy workmanship and just plain sucking and playing the post modern card of fractured, indefinite titillation? People expect good endings with narrative fiction because the mediums they are encapsulated within, books, films, etc HAVE beginnings, middles and ends. The ending is the last sequence that refers back to everything we have experienced. It is a finite experience. It will end. The trance will always be broken. The question is were we enlightened or just doped? Does this lady really want us to start asking the right questions or just submit to the hypnotic spell of continually binge-watching True Detective over and over again until time really becomes a flat circle for us?

The whole essay is laughable. This is the level she's at: There's too much of a focus of roofs in housing construction. People expect houses to have some type of large A-frame roof that covers everything in the houses interior and provide some type of grand protection for the house overall from the elements.

She reminds me of a room mate I once had. She was into the Grateful Dead and we were talking about the Dead and I told her that honestly I just couldn't get into the music. It didn't do it for me. She said she felt the same way for a long time, but you get over that if you listen to them enough. I'm sure, much like smoking, you then think is of some artistic value, and makes you cooler, deep and philosophical. Like the Grateful Dead and smoking, True Detective probably makes sense the more you do it as it becomes an experience you are less critical about.

I don't understand, though, how this Inception-esque combination of slick cinematography combined with pseudo philosophic plot clutter is becoming so popular. Great narrative fiction takes complex matters and simplifies them in dramatic form. Bad narrative fiction often takes simple matters and unnecessarily complicates them. Usually in an attempt to "create" a sense of depth, psychology and meaning. When the depth, psychology and meaning are already there if you honor the source material instead of seeking to pimp it for stylistic purposes. That is what True Detective did really. It prolonged, mystified and saturated a pretty basic movie length story into four movies worth of psychedelic satanic and Americana grunge eye candy, paranormal non-sequitors, camp fire talks over beers about secret societies and psycho-babbling car rides down roads to nowhere. I make no claims to be a great arm chair detective but I thought Childress was suspect in the beginning because he had knowledge about the school's history and was a contract employee of some sort. I mean I thought they should have at least found out who was paying him to keep up the school, or if any of his other contracts were with any of the other closed Tuttle schools just for better background information about the schools. Cohle admits he dropped the ball with him early on. If he didn't, the show really would have run its natural course of 2 hours and spared everyone the expectations that this was going to have a more epic, ground breaking scope than the formulaic and non-controversial arc it fizzled out with.

Round the bases and hit the clubhouse for a respite, brekin, that was magnificent.

Have you watched more than 0.00% of the show yet, Fourthbase?

[FourthBase]

I have absolutely zero desire to see True Detective. Reading 10 or so synopses plus one after another exegesis plus hundreds of screenshots and quotes, has been plenty. If that is not enough to judge, then we're all screwed, because never-getting-to-see-something-firsthand-but-reading-deeply-about-it-later is essentially what all historiography is. If I have no standing to judge this show simply because I refuse to subject myself to it, then we all lose our standing to judge the past, and history is meaningless. How's that for a deep thought, lol.

[mulebone]

Gee, it's so sad when a TV show doesn't live up to expectations. (snicker) (OOOPS... I meant sniffle)

Alas, I really don't get it. Sam Fuller's 1964 film, The Naked Kiss, covered some of the same ground 40 (ooops, I meant 50 ...must have been caught in a time whorl) years ago, although not in quite as contrived a fashion as True Dicks.

From Wiki:

Kelly (Towers) is a prostitute who shows up in the small town of Grantville, just one more burg in a long string of quick stops on the run after being chased out of the big city by her former pimp. She engages in a quick tryst with local police chief Griff (Eisley), who then tells her to stay out of his town and refers her to a cat-house just across the state line.

Instead, she decides to give up her illicit lifestyle, becoming a nurse at a hospital for handicapped children. Griff doesn't trust reformed prostitutes, however, and continues trying to run her out of town.

Kelly falls in love with J.L. Grant (Dante), the wealthy scion of the town's founding family, an urbane sophisticate, and Griff's best friend. After a dream-like courtship where even Kelly's admission of her past can't deter Grant, the two decide to marry. It is only after Kelly is able to finally convince Griff that she truly loves Grant and has given up prostitution for good that he agrees to be their best man.

Shortly before the wedding, Kelly arrives at Grant's mansion, only to find him on the verge of molesting a small girl. As he grinningly tries to persuade her to marry him, arguing that she too is a deviant, the only one who can understand him, and that he loves her, Kelly strikes him with a phone receiver, killing him instantly. Jailed, and under heavy interrogation from Griff, she must convince him and the town that she is telling the truth about Grant's death.

As Kelly tries to exonerate herself, one disappointment follows another, and enemies old and new parade through the jailhouse to defame her. In despair, she is at last able to find Grant's victim and prove her innocence.

Didn't appear to change much though. Even Wiki missed a huge plot point by failing to mention that the "wealthy scion of the town's founding family" was responsible for a string of child rapes & murders. &, if I'm not mistaken, he targeted orphans & used his position to dodge suspicion. Of course, that neat-o occult element that everybody loves these days was missing, but still...

Coincidentally, all the reviews that Wiki quoted from didn't even bother mentioning the pedophilia, using the generic term "deviancy" instead.

The staff at Variety magazine gave the film and acting a positive review, writing, "Good Samuel Fuller programmer about a prostie trying the straight route, The Naked Kiss is primarily a vehicle for Constance Towers. Hooker angles and sex perversion plot windup are handled with care, alternating with handicapped children 'good works' theme...Towers' overall effect is good, director Fuller overcoming his routine script in displaying blonde looker's acting range."

Critic Jerry Renshaw liked the film and wrote, "The Naked Kiss finds Sam Fuller's tabloid sensibilities boiling to the surface, as it dwells on the uncomfortable and taboo subjects of deviancy, prostitution, and small-town sanctimony. In typical Fuller style, it's a hard look at a nightmarish world, lurid and absorbing enough to demand that the viewer watch. It's part melodrama, part sensationalism, and part surreal, but above all it's absolutely, positively 100% Sam Fuller, with all the nuance and subtlety of a swift kick in the butt."

Eugene Archer, writing in The New York Times, wrote that The Naked Kiss "has style to burn" and shows that Fuller is "one of the liveliest, most visual-minded and cinematically knowledgeable filmmakers now working in the low-budget Hollywood grist mill", but denounced the plot as "patently absurd" and "sensational nonsense", judging the whole as a "wild little movie".

Of course, we all know that if True Dicks would have been written by a true member of the Elite Pedophile Battle Clan, it would have opened eyes & opened hearts & oodles of concerned citizens would have descended on orphanages worldwide to rescue all those poor at risk orphans from their lives of sad despair.

Or millions of concerned citizens would have just sat around their Internipples and gossiped about how awful those elite pedophiles are, interspersing their deep & heartfelt concern with fawning adulation for the show's stars as they blissfully awaited next seasons journey to "THE DARK & EDGY SIDE."

Oh yeah, maybe they would have googled shit too.

& tweeted.

& Facebooked.

& Instagrammed.

& blogged.

&....oh fuck it........

What's the use?

[IanEye]

.

If someone read Stephen King's novel "The Shining" when it first came out, really enjoyed it and one of their favorite parts of the novel was the topiary animals that come to life, it seems like a fair critique from that person regarding Kubrick's "The Shining" would be that he abandoned the topiary animals.

If someone views the documentary "Room 237" and buys into the idea that part of what Kubrick was doing with "The Shining" was providing a commentary on the Native American genocide as a manifestation of destiny, then one might offer the opinion that Kubrick went about this in too subtle a manner.
That this style of commentary is too opaque.

But these observations would be a critique of a style choice, and not a critique of the execution of a goal and one's success or failure in achieving that goal.

.

if i should be short on words
& long on things to say

.

[barracuda]

Unfortunately, the structure of ritual occult killing and pedophilia by the elites offers more than a few daunting roadblocks to mainstream didacticism, the first of which is that we really don't know exactly why it is practiced at all. It's assumed an element of power accrual lies behind it, but beyond such a vague notion, we can only guess.

Almost everyone in this discussion has been studying the subject for at least the better part of a decade. Motivations regularly presumed or hinted at on this board are those involving:

- simple inbred perversion,

- control mechanisms for inclusion in various power-elite circles, i.e. consensual blackmail,

- feeding off of pain or life-force, and

- the summoning of non-human, extra-dimensional actors for dark purposes unknown.

Among others. The fact remains that it's routinely only the lower orders of the structure that're opened to us for examination. The protective layers and cloaking devices of the upper hierarchies have apparently been perfected to bulwark the true elites within a firewall through which almost no light or noise can escape. It's truly occulted to us. I'm beginning to think its purpose may be equally unfathomable to even most of the practitioners themselves. Perhaps they don't know or care about the why, but are only concerned with the mundane, earthly, benefits to themselves.

This isn't a story about the effects of nuclear war, which, though certainly shocking, were known to everyone long before they were dramatized by The Day After. This isn't feel-good promotion of the struggles of African American history ala Roots, in which the villains are well-defined and understood. This is a story of which the main plot elements are not just murky, they are so outrageously and horrifyingly vile and ambiguous as to be properly characterized via the Lovecraftian leitmotifs and metaphors commonly employed hereabouts. If a dramatic narrative were able to turn over the rock and show the underside to the world, how many could come to terms with the breadth of its baroque insanity? Its sound is the thin, excruciatingly high-pitched whine of madness that runs a fair share of the world.

I don't doubt that there exists an art which can shine light on that powerful and poisonous worm-tangle, but at this point I'm not really confounded by failures or false starts. The subject matter is the single most base wickedness which exists, bar none. In the face of it, metaphor is a disaster. There can be no commercial breaks.

I don't really blame anyone for being disappointed though. Even the smallest unmet expectation in the direction of justice can seem criminal.

[FourthBase]

If a dramatic narrative were able to turn over the rock and show the underside to the world, how many could come to terms with the breadth of its baroque insanity?

Wouldn't it be great if a show tried one of these days?
So that we could, you know, find out?

This wasn't just a false start.
It was bad faith.

[brekin]

I don't get peoples complacency about this. There were so many people trying to watch the finale of True Detective that it crashed their HBO GO servers.

Look at these stats:

True Detective went out on a high note Sunday, with the Season 1 finale drawing a series-high 3.5 million viewers — a 50 percent increase from the 2.3 million that tuned in for the premiere.
Per HBO, with an average gross audience of 11 million viewers season to date, the acclaimed thriller ranks as the cabler’s most watched rookie series since Six Feet Under‘s 11.4 million in 2001.

http://tvline.com/2014/03/10/true-detec ... gs-finale/

And once that shit gets passed to Netflix, the numbers will only climb. Your trying to tell me that with such huge viewership there wasn't a chance to actually present something more tangible to chew over?
Even telenovelas have caught on that it is a great way to foster social change, or to not, and maintain the status quo.

Cultural influence

And beyond the world of dreams, some telenovelas, it seems, have began to push the envelope a bit further and deal with issues that before were considered taboo.
For decades, the main telenovelas producers in Mexico and Brazil were often criticised for being aligned with the political powers of the moment and not allowing any criticism of the government.
But the opposite is also happening, says Maria Luisa Alves, of Mexico's Television Azteca.
"They have started making more political telenovelas," she says.

"More controversial events are being included in the Mexican telenovela - and that is a new trend. They have featured homosexuality, having a child with special needs, abortion, and sex before marriage. In a very Catholic society, I think that is a lot to say on public television at prime time."And the more global telenovelas become, the bigger the cultural influence they seem to have.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4842220.stm

Most Americans barely read. What they do is usually trash. "Television" films have had and continue to have enormous impacts culturally. The "movie of the week" is basically Breaking Bad now. The industry knows this:

“It felt like a lot of preaching to the choir,” said Mr. Johnson, who spoke of the limited ability of a blatant message movie like “An Inconvenient Truth” actually to change minds. “It’s not reaching people, it’s not expanding the choir.” By contrast, he said, a popular adventure like “The Day After Tomorrow,” which wrapped its global warming message in a rip-roaring story, appeared to alter attitudes among young and undereducated audiences who would never see a preachy documentary.

Mr. Johnson made a study of what his group calls “the science of influence,” with the help of friends like Kenneth Broad, a director of Columbia’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, and Eric Johnson, a professor of business and marketing at Columbia, both of whom are now on the institute’s advisory committee.
Michael Douglas, the actor, who according to a spokesman is related, through his mother, to Mr. Johnson’s family, became involved after a conversation in which Mr. Johnson argued that movies like “The China Syndrome,” about the dangers of nuclear power, pointed the way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/busin ... .html?_r=0

I've already laid out the reality that mini-series and some films used their power to change people's minds and influence the cultural on unknown or taboo subjects here:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37728&start=180#p538346

I can understand if some people thought True Dectective did a weensy bit. I disagree strongly, but I see their point. I nod to barracuda that the subject matter isn't so neat or nifty to lay out origin wise or perpetuation wise (I quibble that either is nuclear Armageddon or institutional slavery in the country that practiced it, or current commercial fare dealing with the war on drugs or sex trafficking) but yeah there a big central unknowns. I even understand people who think TD was a successful piece of clever art. Again, not me, but what I don't get is how people don't see the influence True Detective could have had, how it missed and botched a golden opportunity. I mean if your only expectation is to be fed weak commercial crap, then why are you coming to the table? And I'm hardly a guy who wants an expose or political statement in every show. I don't get it. And I'm a guy who liked TD as he was watching it. Guys, I didn't have grandiose expectations. I didn't expect the finale to be a live feed where Harrelson and MaCounaghey step out of character and drive to Washington D.C. to confront real senators. I just expected after being promised back stage passes, some reveal of the power structure would happen and then to not to even get into the parking lot? How can you pick up the subject matter TD did and then fumble the ball, spike the ball really, at the 5 yard line? How could you throw yourself on your own sword like that?
And then have so many fans turn around and go "We Won!", "We Won", "Light and Dark!" "Light and Dark!" "We got OUR man!" "We got OUR man!"
How?

(The Writer and Show Runner of True Detective below & actually, really the champion of the Super Bowl)

[FourthBase]

IanEye, the danger of being a genius interpreter is that you could wind up giving just about anything credit for being profound and enlightening, when it's actually just you doing the being-profound, doing the enlightening.

[Wombaticus Rex]

[Rory]

Unfortunately, the structure of ritual occult killing and pedophilia by the elites offers more than a few daunting roadblocks to mainstream didacticism, the first of which is that we really don't know exactly why it is practiced at all. It's assumed an element of power accrual lies behind it, but beyond such a vague notion, we can only guess.

Almost everyone in this discussion has been studying the subject for at least the better part of a decade. Motivations regularly presumed or hinted at on this board are those involving:

- simple inbred perversion,

- control mechanisms for inclusion in various power-elite circles, i.e. consensual blackmail,

- feeding off of pain or life-force, and

- the summoning of non-human, extra-dimensional actors for dark purposes unknown.

Among others. The fact remains that it's routinely only the lower orders of the structure that're opened to us for examination. The protective layers and cloaking devices of the upper hierarchies have apparently been perfected to bulwark the true elites within a firewall through which almost no light or noise can escape. It's truly occulted to us. I'm beginning to think its purpose may be equally unfathomable to even most of the practitioners themselves. Perhaps they don't know or care about the why, but are only concerned with the mundane, earthly, benefits to themselves.

This isn't a story about the effects of nuclear war, which, though certainly shocking, were known to everyone long before they were dramatized by The Day After. This isn't feel-good promotion of the struggles of African American history ala Roots, in which the villains are well-defined and understood. This is a story of which the main plot elements are not just murky, they are so outrageously and horrifyingly vile and ambiguous as to be properly characterized via the Lovecraftian leitmotifs and metaphors commonly employed hereabouts. If a dramatic narrative were able to turn over the rock and show the underside to the world, how many could come to terms with the breadth of its baroque insanity? Its sound is the thin, excruciatingly high-pitched whine of madness that runs a fair share of the world.

I don't doubt that there exists an art which can shine light on that powerful and poisonous worm-tangle, but at this point I'm not really confounded by failures or false starts. The subject matter is the single most base wickedness which exists, bar none. In the face of it, metaphor is a disaster. There can be no commercial breaks.

I don't really blame anyone for being disappointed though. Even the smallest unmet expectation in the direction of justice can seem criminal.

Terrific post.