True Detective S1: Cosmic Horror, Southern Gothic & Philosophy

[00:00:00][Music] close your [Music] eyes it's after Imes you're listening to after images a podcast for ciles that takes a deep dive into moving images each episode features a special guest who is invited to explore film of their choice after images is hosted by film writers Franc ble and Marica SE Hayes on our 19th episode we are joined by author Mariana Enriquez to discuss the first season of the Anthology crime drama True Detective it's been 10 years since Nick piz's creation premiered to Universal Acclaim on HBO directed by Carrie joji fukunaga and starring Matthew mccon and Woody harelson the first season of True detective is set in rural Louisiana and spans a period of 17 years opening with the investigation into the ritual murder of Dora Lang imbued with elements of cosmic horror and philosophical pessimism strongly influenced by the Southern Gothic the season dives into the psyche of the case's two lead detectives while taking its audience on a spiraling hunt for a serial killer along the way True Detective evokes the painful Legacy of slavery and social class while exploring concepts of cyclical time grief and the influence of Robert W Chambers short Story collection the King in Yellow among others Mariana Enriquez was born in Buenos AES Argentina in 1973 she is the author of the novel our Sher of KN several collections of short fiction like the dangers of smoking in bed shortlisted for the booker price and also works as a journalist her work has been translated into 30 languages Mariana Enriquez welcome to after images podcast thank you so much for joining us today no thank you so much for inviting me it's a pleasure so for today's discussion you selected season one of True Detective which I think in recent years has become such an iconic piece of Television could you tell us why you chose this and what season one of the series means to you um well I I think it might be my favorite piece of uh of Television personally there's other um uh you know television uh things that I think think maybe are better in quality if I get like a like a Critic like twin PS for example or more iconic but this has been kind of designed for me I love Southern horror and Southern Gothic I love Cosmic horror I love um the whole uh pessimistic nistic uh ideas being behind it um I find it interesting not that I love them they're very gloomy but I mean I I really like occult SS um I'm and I'm a fan also of Noir and characters also like rust that it's a bit a Mystic and uh you know and a I'm broken at at the same time like so there's everything all the references I mean I I remember watching it and screaming at every reference of things that I loved and yes so I think it's the the the TV series I can um you know I I fell in love instantly and I still in love with it did you feel it's something that you could have written I wished yeah yeah there's some things that at in the first view we can go into that I I watched it several times and in the first VI I remember I really didn't like some things and then they started to um I started to understand them or maybe it's me and I you know I I kind of made my own puzzle of it and everything fell to where it was supposed to but um yeah I wish I would write something like that I would like to write something like that but you need those actors too yeah it's such an incredible tour the force for the the lead actors in that season and it's also interesting that it's one television season written by one screenwriter with one director doing everything and I think for American television at least at that time in 2014 it was still something quite special and unusual to have that kind of authorial voice do you agree yeah yeah because it gives an atmosphere I mean the um the writing it's it's what it is it's amazing it's very um there's a lot of talk that is something that I really like um it's also it's very common to have the two detectives talking but still is a lot of it and it's very heavy M the talk um that was a genius casting because we're casting actors that are not only brilliant but are friends so the chemistry is already there and everybody knows their friends so you're really like watching um people play and exchanging ideas in a in a way that it feels really natural maybe because it is and um but also what fukunaga does the director with the atmosphere in the whole series is very special because it's only one I think only one episode is the episode where uh rust it goes under cover to infiltrate this gang of uh uh bikers and drug dealers that has a completely different approach but still it that it still even when he has that um that sequence that never cuts at the end the six minutes of never cutting there's like very accomplished technical things going on there it still is the whole series is um in a way a maze um it's the it's even said directly like there's a it's a maze and there monster at the end of it and the projects in that at night even it's a completely different approach to to the rest of of the film making it's kind of a maze where he's running inside of it and maybe the monster is him is is is himself but the the coast of Louisiana with um its natural beauty and also the evident rural poverty and the let's say invasion of um no not exactly industry because it's not industry but the extractivism of oil it's kind of It's A Wasteland so the whole time not on that episode it's it's different but in the rest the whole time you're watching a wasteland and there's not that atmosphere it it's only possible if you do it with one director that really gets that we are exploring um a land that has been abandoned yeah here and um and that is dying in a way it's very decadent the whole situation is very decadent but this land is a land that is dying he dying because of the Hurricanes he's dying because of the extractivism it's dying because of the of the corruption it's dying because it's forgotten M and that is something that he can create with images but also with mood yes the mood in the images I mean the the everything that he chooses it's it's quite amazing so yeah I think it was I don't think they got along very very very well which is um also interesting because sometimes happens between creative partners that the best stuff comes when there's some kind of friction M and uh and yeah it happened it didn't happen in the other Seasons they're not that bad but you know they they they don't have that kind of precision and you mentioned this role of the landscape and also the fact that you enjoy Southern Gothic and I'm wondering about this relationship to place that becomes like a character in the work and the fact that your own writing has often been labeled or compared to the gothic as well could you maybe tell us a little bit about that relationship to the gothic and the sense of place yeah well the gothic is very based on on the sense of of place and uh but the European Gothic with the castles with the cold with the old abies with even with the cities but it's different cities is there is the very dirty in industrial cities is very um distant for me um because for me place is a character intro detective place is a character the coast of Louisiana is a character and uh the Southern Gothic being American Gothic American I mean from from the continent not from the US is it's in a way New World Gothic so it implies a different kind of power that it's uh fallen or or has or has fallen a long time ago but the the land is still has uh its evil imprinted on it let's say Louisiana the coast of Louisiana what happened there and what does the family that is the the family behind the ritual killings what has have they done well they had because the the since there's no problem spoiling it the killer lives in an old plantation house so it makes it very obvious that it was a family that now is exploting other kind of uh disadvantaged people but they made their money to make that possible with slave with slavery so that's a crime that it's in the land and that the land remembers and that cannot be erased there's no way even if they come the two detectives come and they basically they get the bodies but they can't get all of them at one point Russ says we didn't get all of them and Martis says to him uh we can't and that means not only that they can't get the whole family but they can't erase what has been done there and also in the rest of um of um of uh America of of of the rest in the rest of the continent to me the gothic it's very similar to the SN Gothic because wealth in general is in the hands of big families big amilies that inherited the Earth the the land then that's also part of the Christian kind of imaginary that it's in the in the show and it's in the in the way that these families that are also very religious all of them got rich they got the land and they got the land in the rest of in in in the us too but also in the rest of of of Latin America they got the land from the indigenous people and built by the further south you go but more indigenous people than slaves but indigenous people treated as slaves so this is a wealth that has to do with the landscape in the sense that that landscape doesn't mean Freedom or beauty although it might be beautiful and it might look free but that land has an owner and that owner made uh its Fortune of that land with blood most fortunes are done with blood but this is a direct direct connection with the landscape I mean you have those empty spaces of land in Argentina for example because they are owned by someone it's not they are empty because uh it's the Pumas that is flat they are empty because there's Scouts there from someone that is very very very rich and made inequality something that is persistent persistent and equivalent so uh to me that kind of you know um sociopolitical um reference to the gothic in in the Americas is much more near to me than the Southern Gothic the tradition of the Southern Gothic than um in Europe and the families of course because um in since we don't have um royal families um since we you know that that's the the basis of of uh of America is that uh we we've got independence from from the Kings um but we do have the extended families that are of course in Southern Gothic absolutely prevalent think fer for example and uh that's Direct that's uh realism that that's the the big extended families that have the power that they are not Aristocrats but they are and they also have like in True Detective the you know the bastard children they're very they're very um resentful and um so there is something to me literary and personally that you you would say but how if you're from Argentina well you know um we have more things in common with South America has more things in common with uh the US than with Europe and also uh more um friction there's a lot in what you just said but I really like this idea of the landscape um related to the gothic in the sense that um you've mentioned the go um the landscape as something that is spread in space but also as something that is historical there's a historical landscape of families and of um um inherited traits that come from former um moments in the past uh and connected with the gothic and at the same time you talked about the maze um figure which I think is also interesting um in relationship with rust uh and I think that rust is really the the the center of the vortex of all these themes uh into detective because um my feeling is that this vision of lisana this vision of the world that we see is basically an expressionist vision of his own psyche would you agree with this yeah I mean in a there's two there's two um there's many but um two versions of the of the classic Laban rth of there's more but through two that interest me in particular in in detective one is the classic one that it's the you know Theos going into the Lain R and killing the monster with the aid of ARA that it's Marty in this case um and there's a way out and the other one one that is not an opposite to that is what you can call it that like the romatic uh um Laing race that also happens here is that you open branches one branch another Branch another branch and that is kind of what Ras does uh both of them he's in both of the labin r i mean he is in the one where he Rel with a lot of relu reluctance accepts the help to get the monster that it's the real let's say monster but is also himself and I'm I always wondered uh the burden that he has the guilt that he has and the the kind of uh um he his whole pessimistic nealis view of the of the world and he's basically his anti-natalist um philosophy I think it comes after losing the child and I don't know why I think I remember the first time I saw the the the series I thought that he was the one that um by accident killed the child but then I saw it again I said he doesn't say that but it's an effect of the the the Prof how profound is his pain and his guilt it's like there's something else here because he never explains the accident he tells tell the accident to Maggie to to Marty's a wife and he talks about it several times and he says there was a car and he always stopped himself there so we lived in a corner and there was a car and and what what happened and I always thought that maybe he was you know taking the car out of the garage and and you know stepped on on the girl because it's that kind of that kind of grief it's it's a grief that is very um the grief also with with a child I think always um implies a s of a sense of self um It's Your Child So if if it dies it's kind of you failed you failed your child in a way so it can it comes with a little self hatred but this is beyond and so I always thought that but it's not the case h the in the at least in the in the in the iceberg I I don't know what's going floating underneath but I always thought that that was happens but anyway the other labing R is the one that has no way out because it's all is branches branches opening open open and you never find the the monster because you are always veering from it because there's one Theory and another theory and another theory and that's what he does during all those years that he's not there and basically in the second when the second investigation begins so um but these two labin r that are obviously also represented in the in how they are marked with the with the spiral in the back the victims and the and and also the cultists M um are not incomp incompatible I mean he uh those thing both things happen it's um it's a non he pisol doesn't choose one of the of the two for his uh for his detective because um of course the mind and what in a way rust decides decides that he thinks because he decides that in know way um the mind is elastic so at one point if you decide to go out of the LA R you can and or you are capable of let's say it's not maybe you can't but you are capable of so um I guess that is s super super smart and as many in many pieces of writings I don't think that he thought about it that much at the beginning or or or or or Al in depth that there's uh there's two Laing race and there's two monsters on this and you and there's too um uh and there's too you know R gets out and doesn't at the same time so he gets on he gets out with his life having killed the monster and probably a little bit more able to live his life without so much suffering but the work is not done and will never be done his grief will will never be appeased and the grief of the world let's say will never be aasted and these people will never be stopped so that's super super smart that he does both things but I don't think he thought about it uh before it just happened in the writing in this second I'm sorry in this second version of the the maze that you're mentioning U would you say that it might be slightly Argentinian in the sense that it is the garden of fing path of fores is that the model that you're talking about a bit Yeah a bit like uh and it's also very I in 2000 when it when it opened the Series in 2014 the paranoid thinking and the and the conspiracy theories were there but I don't think they were um pop culture like they are now like today uh people just think like that and make connections like that all the time uh it happened in the pandemic it's happening um all the time with the with rich people and I mean you see the series now again and it really looks like you know conspiracy theorist that a lot of people uh take us truth or really believe that there's a cult of powerful people uh abusing children and you know and the Hollywood is in it and whatever so um but those days it wasn't that obvious the paranoid thinking so that is very special too but the yeah but the the garden of many pathes I don't know how you say it in in in in English it's it's um it's the this idea of uh you know multiple points in time dots that you connect one thing and and with the other and paranoid thinking is a bit like that at first it can be you know an investigation and at one point it really ve to Insanity when you say okay this four there's four letters here and there's four I don't know cars here so one thing and that then and it's very thin line and um there's many times when Marty that is kind of the voice of reason the voice of of the common says to him okay this sounds very crazy and you are going there's many many times where he says you're going this is crazy and it's not but um uh what's kind of because that maze is a maze is a mental maze that that that Maze of of connecting things is what keeps you up but that's it's amazing that that that's true crime and the prevalence of True Crime these days amaz many True Crime shows and many people obsessed with True Crime is that it's connecting dots the times that I've been let down I don't listen to two crime anymore uh because I've been let down so many times because it's just many of them are just people connecting things and getting nowhere so now that kind of thinking is kind of prevalent the paranoid conspiracy thinking is kind of prevalent which is very scary because you are in La R where you can't get out of and it's also it makes reality that is another theme of the series seem like a veil all the time as we are you know recording this yesterday uh there was an attempt of assassination of of of former president Trump the first thing yesterday I was talking to friends like everybody was at night and the first thing was a friend of mine that seems very um normal most of the time said to me I think it was orchestrated and I'm like but it was from far away it's too dangerous to be orchestrated if you say to me that they shot his leg maybe yes but in the head yeah 10 ctim away from the brain yeah what how much how how much he's he was going kind he was going very doing very good in in the polls anyway so I don't think he needed to risk his life at that point for winning the election if he can win it anyway but and this is a person that seems very very rational in in the rest but there's something in he thinking that and is in through detective kind of anticipates that and it's uh that's sometimes as good art that's that it becomes prophecy of its own time in in a in a bit like Ballard it's not the B is not really talking about the future it's like taking elements that are already in the present and taking them very very far so the investigation that it's you know opening itself like that when you get to that to to the place where where rust is with all his stuff uh he become he becomes also an accumulator in the same way that the killer has become they become uh uh mirrors of themselves and um that uh it's classical procedure but that's also his mind and uh and his m is like that's entering the locked room that he mentions in a in in previous in in previous episodes as the mind has been this locked room where the dream of Life happens and then you enter his locked room where his investigation is going on and that's that's the locked room of his mind so that really resembles that's his mind and that's very scary is that we are like I love rust rust as as a character and he to me he's very attractive he's hot I mean but that is you know like heat Cliff you know that kind of the Blake and Demon is that kind of super super you know Superman of Nish kind idea but that that has become you know the flat earth flat Earth now with time is a flat circle I don't know there's many many things in there that later later a few years later have become like a common sense when Marty is supposed to be the common sense because Rost I love him but his borderline psychopath but he is a psychopath functional but you know and I mean yeah it's very it's amazing it's amaz they done it's amazing what they done and without you know I don't think without thinking that much about it but in terms of this idea of the labyrinth and all of the different layers that are at work in the series I wondered if we might talk about some of the intertextuality happening in this season and the different references to Robert Chambers the King in Yellow um some people have spoken about Alan Moore's the courtyard and some links with the character of Rusty Cole um just wondering what you think you know you've mentioned some of the mythological and philosophical ideas that are also at play in that intertextuality what are some of the references that stand out to you and enhance our appreciation of the Season well first um he takes the whole um Cosmic horror tradition um the the the imaginary that he chooses is not Lovecraft is Chambers but then Robert W Chambers for for the readers that wrote a a book in published in 1894 I think called the king yellow who's American and the the king in yellow that in the series is called the yellow King but the same it's um it's very similar to and then um of course Lovecraft takes a lot out of it it's just a couple of short stories is not that much it's it's not an immense lore um but it's very subtly scary and uh what implies is same Lovecraft there's a God King in another dimension that it's the real Dimension this world being not the real world but some something that it's um behind it's a it's a spectacle it's um it's something that when you when you break it when you when you go let's say to the other side you get to that real world that it's a world of horror and it's a world of power and it's a world where we are puppets and we are puppets um playing to you know to the music of in this case the king yellow that lives in the L city of carosa and and there's a few reference in in the whole um in the whole series about kosa obviously uh but also the black stars that rise in carosa and also the mask that works in many ways because the King in Yellow is supposed to wear a mask the story of the King in Yellow is not in the short stories but it's in a play that is referred to in the short stories that you're not supposed to read Because you go crazy the same way that you're not supposed to read the Necronomicon because you go crazy or to see the Gods in the Lovecraft uh mythology because you go crazy or you become a devout devoted uh you know um uh religious person to them but um in this one of the most scary I think parts of the king yellow in the little fragments of the play that are there in the in the in the book mostly As epigraphs at at the beginning of the short stories and in one of them the the woman in the place says to the king yellow um you can take no not to the king is sticking yellow but it's just the guy at that point of the place says can you you can take off the mask now and he says something like I'm not wearing a mask and she says no mask no mask there's a there's a um scene in True Detective at one point uh both of them rescue two children one is dead They Don't Really rescue them one is dead and the other one is katonic from um the let's say the the the den the cave of these two uh cultist killers and pedophiles uh and also uh drug dealers and um the girl Kelly it's in a in a you know in in in a psychiatric home because she never recovers but at one point rust goes to see her to see if if he can get some information kind of very cruel uh scene and she doesn't really pay attention to him until she remembers the face and she says the face the face that really resembles that part of the king yellow the mask the mask and then of course Cosmic horror um really um as Southern Gothic amazingly relies on extended families and its monstrosities if you if you read something like the shadow of in in mouth in in Lovecraft it's um it's a young man that goes to um in inmou that is this this town and where he somehow sees the cult sees the result of the relations between the gods and people that is this hybrid creatures when they have sex and afterwards it's a long thing but afterwards realizes that he is one of them too he's an hybrid creature to it doesn't really show that much but the idea of incest and uh mix it's very it's very much in Cosmic hor and in Southern Gothic and I think one of the relations Is that well obviously LCRA was a racist like massive racist I was think that he was a white supremacist at this point if you read especially his letter his horror his fear his deep horror was of that people being mixed which is kind of um the sin of the South the horror of of of white people not being the owners of it and that's why all the beauty the beauty of the land the beauty of the houses um uh the beauty of the plantations the beauty of the furniture the beauty of the architecture the beauty of the food the beauty of the cemeteries everything that is really beautiful in this house is impregnated by this original sin and uh and the same it's it's the opposite in Lovecraft is everything is horrific but the fear is the same it's the fear of mix of mixture and then you have a new um of course the mythology of this orth Arthur mahen which his a his British and he has this uh this late 19th century and he has the whole idea of place uh as something that you can't really control that nature has its own mind and that mind is um control but all gods but in this case mostly the god pan but of course the god pan is uh has in in the name Panic so it's also very related to to horror and fear and also so when you meet the great God pan for example the short story by mahen also if you meet him you go crazy the thing is that rust that rust has met this are the reality in his beliefs and also I think in um a plane in some plane of reality in that mixture of grief going undercover and be becoming a heroin addict ending up in a psychiatric hospital too and getting out of there and in that place that is only only referred to there not even a flashback is the time where he met that other reality where everything is horror and where this reality seems like a veil seems like absolutely unreal let's say he met the the the the reality on the other side and the author that pisat uses for this is uh well there's many is the the pessimistic uh philosophers um like Emil soran in a way in the anti-natalist way there's another one that's a Norwegian that's called Peter Wessel saet that it's a recommend to you the last Messiah it's crazy it's from the 30s it's like the money is very very bad but I think the main the main one is uh because of all these references is Thomas liotti Thomas liotti is a contemporary horror writer very much in the vein of Lovecraft but much more accomplished writer technically uh he has a bit of surrealism too like twinpig fans would love him a lot because of his idea of uh uh I mean the Black Lodge is there all the time and um but he uh has this idea of this reality is just um you know um theater and there's another one and horror starts when you meet that other one and horror fiction happens that way when there's no more language to tell to talk about it like uh reality has a bit of uh you know it gets it starts to get weird and more weird and more we and you deny it and you deny it and then that weirdness impregnates everything contaminates everything and then it opens the door to the other reality and in horror fiction in general there's no more language that's what liotti does but also liotti is kind of a he's a reuse he's absolutely um a man of you know many troubles I guess and and he wrote this um book uh that is a conspiracy against the human race that um doesn't Russ doesn't really quote from it but it's very near I mean there there are some uh very intense leoty Lovecraft fans that even tried to get pizolato and HBO um take take him to they take them to court for plagarism plagarism is not really a legal term it's a copyright infringement is is the term but anyway as a as a writer I know these kind of things but it's like a moral thing mainly and GTI never said anything but there's many things as uh you know as U we should kill ourselves because the fact that we have conscience is a mistake in evolution uh it's something that liotti takes from sa from the from the Norwegian uh philosopher uh puts it in more uh simpler words and terminology and then in True Detective is even more easy but it really really it's similar and in many parts it's similar to liotti so there's a whole um uh there's a whole family tree of cosmic horror going on through the whole series in philosophical fiction lore Etc and very very smartly put with Southern Gothic that has things in common with that and uh so that for me were the reference that would reference that stand out the most like the first time they say carosa I was like because I have you know I have pins and you know I have three versions of the king in yellow and I was like what is what how why why in you know in television what in in in True Crime not true crime but in Thriller television you know made with a lot of money and Superstars and stuff are quoting this very to me at that point very weird [ __ ] and um I was absolutely amazed and at the same time I was a bit like I don't want people to know about this Lovecraft everybody knows it's okay but you know Chambers and and and mahen and and liotti this is my stuff this is the stuff of the freaks we own this thing I I don't know I I I don't want this to be popular and you know people to make memes out out of it and and stuff but they want me yeah it's very well done so do you think that Cole made a niche and shopen Hower cool yeah um um more seriously I mean you were talking about um The Maze and mythology and listening to you um I was thinking and especially when you mentioned the fact that he had reached Beyond the Veil to this uh Dark Realm of cosmic Terror uh if there was not also something of Icarus in him because you're talking about the black stars and you know I've got the feeling that he flew too close somehow to these black stars and got burnt with and his name he cold isn't it I mean it's like I mean he's been burnt he's a dark stone himself isn't it yeah and rust also is you know it's kind of uh not the word in English is not wasted but it's kind of yeah corrupted um SP yeah damaged and in a way not burned but yes burned but not by the not by the not by uh the heat but by time and uh so yes I and I think there's the E thing if he flew too high but not not because of ambition maybe or maybe yes but just out of um you know looking to escape in a way and then he has of course a lot of the blakean uh uh the blakean Satan that uh has fallen because of his rebellion and in in the way the BL blakean and also the Milton Satan is quite moral if you think about it like he's um why why should shouldn't why should we uh obey you if you're not that great like it's a rebellion that is it's not a rebellion of uh they're arrogant they're beautiful but it's not a rebellion that comes from being evil in themselves but it's a rebellion that comes from being disobedient and rth is disobedient he's there he does the job but he's disobedient and he's disenchanted in the job I mean and uh and he uh he has fallen he has done his job very very good in in the same way as um Lucifer has he was the best he was the favorite he was the he was the best I mean he was the was chosen to be underground to be um yeah to to be to do that you have to be very good in what you do he's the best interrogator of all he's super cruel in his interrogations um and uh and yet he's not accepted by the institution let's say at all and uh and he's of course very attractive and so there some and and the the way that he kind of confronts with Christ in his little room in his little Spartan room he has pictures of dead people and a crucifix and that crucifix he uses to say he says to to Marty he uses for meditation and from meditation on what and it's on meditation of if I think if it's worth it to is how how much pain can you endure is it worth it to um give yourself or give your life to another um and it's also a confrontation all the time it's all the time there to you know him to kind of tell him why why do you give hope to a hopeless World why why you're so cruel and so yeah that that's a lot of all that those fig the figures of the hero like Theos and and also the the figure of the falling angel in Icarus that is obviously a fallen angel but also Lucifer not by way that much of the of the scripture by by way of the of the Romantic and you know symbolist uh vision of it that is much more compassionate uh of because obviously the there are aesthetic Traditions that really are in love with rebellion and Beauty a Kenneth anger Lucifer yeah exactly that kind of thing yeah well with the bike you know the biker gang there's so many things yeah when you go go go and it's like yes of course and the biker gang is super he's super homoerotic yes there's no women in the show that's true yeah yeah and I don't think that's to me that's not a problem you know just to add a little something perhaps to this link between um rust and um fallen angel I mean he's the one who keeps seeing birds in the sky making SP he's the one who sees the vortex at the end I mean he's all always looking up and seeing things Beyond in the sky in a very trim pics way I have to say as in 11 with the vortex as well yeah absolutely but that in the end is the is the thing that distracts him because that in the vortex that he sees in the end is the way out of this life many times he says I shouldn't be here meaning I should kill myself and in many times he says I don't have the Constitution for suicide which I don't think is true and I think Marty at at some point says to him you sound really panicked and it's true um he still thinks that there's something for him here and he doesn't know what it is but I mean it's very unlikely that he doesn't have the Constitution for suicide because suicide doesn't mean that he has to commit it himself but couldn't be killed easily that night in the projects easily it's just you know turn around and you get shot you know you lose a bit of concentration and you get shock so it's not suicide is not just a conscious act but be also letting yourself die when you're in that kind of situation so I don't really believe him he is really eager for being alive and uh and at the end is the is is the moment that when he sees that and he says okay this is he's distracted that because that's the very first time that he has the possibility of just going there and that's how he gets the guard down and he gets um attacked by child child rest I don't really know how how to how to say but Arrow let's say and um that verce is very lynchin of course and it's also very uh mahen it's like it's the portal it's it's the portal to the other reality that I think he has seen or um more or less seen that's why the flocks of uh of uh of birds and um the cesia he's been near I don't know how near but he's been near enough to be very curious about it and to go there again which in a way he does in the end I was wondering if we could come back to the theme of children because you mentioned the grief it's very important for the character of rust um but I've also thought of a few other instances where we talk about children you know Marty's family is falling apart he has a very complicated relationship with one of his daugh um there's also the moment where he feels very fatherly in a prostitution ring towards a young woman who he thinks is young to be there and so he tries to assist her and then later enters into a sexual relationship with her and I'm just thinking about this idea of childhood it's where trauma begins um but we also think about it as a special magical time that children are in touch with with senses in a different way that adults who have been formatted to behave and think in a certain way um I'm a big fan of your writing and I'm currently finishing our share of night and so I'm also thinking about the relationship to Children I'm just wondering in your own writing and in the series how do you address or how do you think about conceptualize the role of of children something that really um made me fall in love with the series was the very unromantic view of childhood that has the children that we see are children that are um even the the The Killers I think Errol and Reggie and the wall are were all um if not abused they were um you know were victims of course but um they were uh Witnesses of abuse we see almost what happened to Marie font the girl that disappeared but um we know that she was rally raped and murdered [Music] and the it's borderline grotesque and too much but it's a quite borderline to doing it good it's something that I really when I write I really struggle with because to me it's very important as as we talk about the know this reality and the thin veil I think there's a thin veil put on childhood because childhood could be both a child as a child you know has this relationship to the Magical World world it's very you know fascinated by imagination and imaginative tales and this same child could live in the street this same child could be abused this same child could be unloved this same child could be there's no there's a very strange idea I think of uh you know pretending that childhood is the best part of life and then it goes all goes down from there that has nothing to do with reality it's a fiction that we live with because we know that most of the abuse of the children happens in the house it's not the children go in the street you know in the park and someone picks them that's extremely rare it happens in the house and it happens with the family and uh children get sick children this children in in my countes children live in the the street in the cold children beg in the streets children I mean children are born from um from um mothers that are addicted children are abandoned by parents that you know go away all kinds of things happen it doesn't being a child doesn't protect you from the evils of the world rest at one Point says when he's at the he's most pessimistic and in the depths of grief I guess says at one point it's beautiful in a way this I'm I'm I'm not quoting directly but says it's beautiful in a way the way my my daughter died because uh she is not uh she died before you know being someone in this grinder of meat that is life and um that's of course his philosophy but there's something about the way that we deny the humanity of children and we think that there are this you know creatures uh that are you know like floating around in happiness that I think contributes a lot to this silencing of children and we as a society not being able of seeing their suffering because we deny it because we can't stand it and that's a flaw that's a floww of of adulthood it's like a flaw of you know we are failing children because we are ridiculous ridiculously fragile and unable to acknowledge the damage that is been done to them so I try to work with that a lot in my in in my in my work I think in my in in in my writing I think it has to do a lot with I was born during the dictatorship in Argentina the last dictatorship in the 70s um so my childhood was very um not entirely unhappy but I wouldn't say happy at all and very you know very it had a lot to do with the fear of the adults of growing up in in in a reality that was very difficult to comprehend when you were a kid with a lot of even lexicon that was absolutely insane like my father coming home and saying from he was working in a in a factory as you know as a he had a very good position in a factory and uh but still he couldn't prevent any of his workers let's say to save them so he would come home and say something like Miguel has been taken and was it taken by what it really sounded like something outer space of something and basically who disappeared that was equally scary so um and that all the children that we went through that are in a way traumatized to several to different degrees my degree is a very let's say mild degree because no one of my family was directly uh you know disappeared or or dead that is like that the maximum but my parents were very unstable psychologically having go you know through that and having to raise a child in that world so and I have many many friends that do you know have uh much more violent uh relationship with that and they're very traumatized because of that and many are even kidnapped and and and then they got their identity back so that's you know that's that's to say that my view of childhood is that childhood is not this Paradise by something much more complex because in that terrible childood I was all the time reading and having my fun and you know doing my things my CH my children things but you know the reality was that and I was very scared and I was very anxious and it was kind of awful so um all the children that we see in through detective are like that even the children are very protective protected like the Marty's children are very very protected but the girl that in the end we see that she is um on psych psychiatric medication by just a l that the mother says she is a very rebellious teenager like very you know Pang goic and having sex in cars which is absolutely normal but she's the child of a policeman and this policeman happens to be Marty that is kind of a womanizer and also very you know Puritan at the same time and Ultra protective of the girls because she he's Ultra scared of the girls but at the same time as you said he's having sex with one of the young prostitutes that he like Mar is a mess may he recognizes that he's a but that girl when she's very little she does this um she's playing with dolls and she he she kind of repres is one of the crime scenes the crime scene of Marie font and it that's never explained so you kind of Wonder did she look at his father's papers like Marty many times is drunk and passed out so you know maybe she looked at it did that happen to her are people in the community talking about it in any way I think that sign is that even this child loved protected um popular you can see that she's like a very you know kind of vivid and you know liked girl uh smart conventionally pretty even this girl knows about darkness and that is something that to me is very interesting of course when you deal with these things especially in this kind of Med the line and this is so Gothic in a in a nutshell the line between exploitation and and uh grotesque grotesque is legitimate and there's a lot of grotesque element is thin but sometimes you have to walk in it when you do gender G gender is like that when you do any gender the the line the lines between the things are much more gener is not something delicate it's a you know it's gener is kind of of a warning it's it's it's popular fiction so unpopular fiction is not supposed to be very careful with these kind of things which amazes me is that I don't think this can be done today 20 years later it's become a lot worse it seems to me that all the elements that you're mentioning uh about the relationship to Children about the violence done in the family and all of that um can be somehow connected to Twin pigs to me it's very similar um and even actually the first uh girl who is found um is very reminiscent of Laura Palmer that she is portray and everything that goes behind it um could you could you comment perhaps on the links that you see on see between twin pigs and um and True Detective well there's many twin pigs is too Danse I think it's a it's a like a macro kind of reference but a few things that are to me are very obvious are in that first scene for example um uh Dora it's on her back but basically it's the same kind of image like it's and also the fire the fire is never mentioned again the fact that it was at first what you see first is the fire because the Killer is kind of um cleaning the area so you can see her because she's in so she's not in the middle of the woods that fire walk with me kind of reference and the woods reference and that she's in the woods and stuff that's never mentioned again to me is clearly uh you know a nod to and because he the first almost the first scene also in the two series The Woman and the incest of course and uh the incestuous relationship the main difference I think and all the children and the main difference in a way that it's also important um is that of course the detectives are very different because um the detectives in in twin pics have they have a lot of irony this only Marty asire Bas different they are not realistic let's say they belong to another kind of narrative it's a narrative that is more much more surreal this is this tries to be um the most realistic and greedy that can be this um they're not greedy in the at all and they're and they're kind of funny but there's something that also very uh similar that is the sexualization of women which I don't I insist I don't have a problem with when it's done the way it's done because um uh but um the to me the the the lover of Marty I can't remember the name now but this the the the lover that he she he goes to the house and destroys his house and you know bre breaks into her this Alexandra Daario the the actress she's very Audrey in in a way even she looks a bit like that and uh and of course it you know it's kind of very obvious the Black Lodge the idea of the sect in the and the idea of another reality that uh is basically what it never happens in through detective but it does happen in the in the third season of of it explored in the third season of twin PS and in fact he comes back from it uh he's been trapped there but but twin paks goes much more further because it's his own General in a way uh but this tries to it's like a twin pcks HIDs behind the procedural crime thing and it's nothing like that but through detectiv is it quotes let's say sides twin pics in in many ways but it doesn't pretend to to move to to to another General and uh and also the the way that Lynch uh treats that other side it's much more fraan it's much more psychological it's a clearly a dark state of the mind you can say that carosa is a dark state of the mind because you don't really know what kosa is like for some it's the state of the mind it could be also the den of the killer but doesn't it's really it's really where the crimes are done in in the end but in Lynch is absolutely different but also I mean even the bar that's called Longhorns there's something you know there's little references there like um like he's saying yes I know I know that something exists that is this but I I I'm I want to keep in the procedur procedural you know cop drama actually the bar in the second season is more reminiscent of the one in Twin picks isn't it like this that is a bit outside of time that is um abstract and where you can meet people from the future or the past yes in this case it's very um relevant all the references to Twin Peaks but for Fran Twin Peaks is such a foundational uh text that he has to say it every podcast sorry so um I see that we've already been talking for 1 hour and 10 minutes um we would like to hear if that's okay with you what you are currently working on uh and what are your next projects yeah I am um working on a novel that is um I don't know really what it is but it's it has a lot of ghosts and if in our share of night I was working a lot with the with the notion of family is very Gothic in a way the notion of family heritage landscape Etc in this one I want want to go more urban kind of thing and uh but but all but still weird and and still uh its own kind of Mythology but different one more rock and roll let's say and um what else I'm I want to write a comic book so I'm trying something like that and I'm doing a nonfiction thing on um the history of my readings and that is going going to come in a in a collection of uh you know right writers talking about their their how they educated themselves with with their readings that mine apparently is like very weird and uh um what else well that's about it but yeah it's a lot of things yeah weird is good and for our listeners I just wanted to mention I believe it's just this year that the English edition of a sunny place for shady people has been really so the latest short Story collection right yeah I think it comes in September of October or or something like that fantastic in uh yeah but it's it's done I mean it's it's just uh yeah I'm it's very different you know I think I mean I don't think people will find it that different but to me it's much more melancholic and um yeah L's um is the like the I think more to the old definition of the ghost story that is kind of the the sad ghost not that much of the scary ghost you know is still horror and Fantastic Fiction but the the vibe I think is kind of different and what about the translation of your biography of svina OKO ah yeah that comes in August comes out in August in in in France okay ah it's very interesting because that that's a book I wrote almost 10 years ago and um it's um of course Zina was the best friend of bores and wife of adio bearis is you know one of the most important uh non-realist writers of U Argentina not that very known abroad but very important to our tradition and and the fact that we are not in the Spanish speaking world where probably the country is less realistic of in in their in their uh literary tradition and uh even I mean Bor has translated the the Wild Palms for example of fogner I've read fogner first time translated by bores that doesn't mean that it's a was a good translation because he made it very Boran and there not I I can think of two writers are more different than fman Bor so he really doesn't read like fman at all but the plot was interesting and anyway um and she was a writer that was very well known was very well reviewed but nobody read her because she was very strange she was super cruel the way that she treated children her children are evil they children they are little demons the way that she treat desire was very feminine in the very you know very good definition of what feminine desire is that sometimes is mixed up I was thinking about that when we're talking about through detective and then I will do a little you know if you excuse me um a detour to talk about that and [Music] um so they asked me to do a biography I couldn't do a biography because he has uh uh she has um a meas I can't say the name in in in English but someone that has all her stuff there's not that much I the only thing I wanted to know is she kept a diary because that is kind of fundamental but she didn't so I could um with the things that were there do a biography and she it's amazing because she you can see the way that her sensibility didn't connect with the times because was totally unexpected of a woman to write about in that style those kind of things but now she could be a writer of today short story writer of today now she kind of I think she found her audience and also the mental possibility of uh being read because there was no way that they were like what she's writing a short story about being you know trapped to a bed and raped and this is kind of surrealistic because it's not like a it's it's it's in in a very onic kind of the way memory works and traumatized memory works and that was a it's a short story in his first in her first book sorry and I think that was in the 40s it was like what like women don't I mean that doesn't happen to women first and then they don't talk about it like this and then this doesn't happen to a woman that is like uber ritual more than a millionaire so um yeah so it's a biography of her and she was very extravagant so there's a lot of weird [ __ ] there and I think that um knowing her life she's dead forever now but knowing her life and and her people of class I think helped me a lot to write our share of night because to that point I've never met rich people that kind of rich people I you know Novo Rich of course but aristocratic old money old properties properties in the middle of the Jungle you know kind of thing and that are abandoned but nobody sells it because they're so rich that they kind of forgotten about the mansion that they have there I mean it's crazy and I've never never never never ever met someone like that and in you know in six months I met 20 so I started like you know taking notes of that like this is this is the rich family that I need and that I had only read in books at that point uh I and still in the novel I think most of it I took from books anyway but I had the experience and the you know the information no the only thing I wanted to say and this is in the relation to svina and and and and the female gays let's say she was a woman that was 12 years older than her husband Ado casares was an amazingly good-look man and there was a lot of talk about this because she was not I think she was gorgeous but she was unconventionally beautiful especially in the way that beauty was you know codified in the 40s that kind of you know and in in her class of course she was like wearing uh uh men clothes and not uh not painting her hair and you know it was very she didn't wear dresses or jewels and you know it was very different and uh and she wrote a lot about that about jealousy about um you know the fascination with with Beauty And The Possession and all all that kind of things and I think it's very relevant of her writing and her position on that on how desire of women is portrayed and I think something that happens in through detective that it's kind of um I don't think pisol to think about that thought about that and many of the male reviewers at the time uh and women too didn't think about that because they're kind of very comfortable with some with a you know very uh specific way of speaking about things so um nak women are objectified men uh if they are not presented in a very sexy way or not and so this is blah blah blah this is exp always exploitative of women and these are all files and crazies and it's so there's a part where rust really I had a lot of fun watching it again that says to Marty you how can you not spot crazy [ __ ] I I mean that phrase do in this climate today of super you know walk kind of it it would be like I I they barely got away with it in 2014 but now it's absolutely impossible but something that has to do with female desire is that something that is very um difficult even for women to recognize especially with the obligation let's say of being a feminist and you know this not being with romantic love and choosing healthy relationship and self-care and self love and stuff is that a man like rust broken insane that kind of ignores you that has a very kind of strange um sexual attitude because Marty is the one that in a way has a more healthy sexual he has desire what rust is like nothing that is a fantasy of women like absolutely prevalent I mean absolutely prevalent in the way that if you get the new Taylor Swift uh record one of the songs is called I can fix him no really I can she's 34 she's like the [ __ ] Superstar of the world she's the role model of the girls and she's saying I want this broken man to fix him because this eroti is me it's not just about moral and being a mother but I think this is hot and that is a problem and that and that and sexuality and eroticism sometimes is a problem desire is not something that you can put morals to and it's not something that you can put uh a lot of rational thinking in it and that the desire to fix something beautiful that is broken Empower and that that that will empower you is totally wrong in in many ways but it's a total fantasy so I think in that series the one that is more objectified is rust not the women and the women are objectified in the very kind of common way but he's objectified in the in the way of the female gaze and female desire which is something that we sometimes I think has to be more in the conversation as to to I don't think that's a bad thing I mean it's uh and and it's amazing the way that I don't think anybody noticed that but if you do a bit of a Google search you will see how much of a sex symol The man is yeah and it happens to me a lot also in our share of night for example in the novel like Juan it's um H is a is a beast he's awful and they're all in love with him I mean I put Gaspar there he's so decent and nice and I put Luis his brother that is equally pretty and he's super good and and they like Juan and I do like him too I mean and this is heatcliff and this is all this kind of thing and I don't think that uh heatcliff was written by a woman exactly I've never heard a woman say that she loves Marty everybody loves C exactly exactly and it's not about the the fact that mat mccon he is it's better looking that Wy Haron because that's absolutely subjective I mean it is it's the charact um the it's obviously is not put there Woody Haron for you to fall for him but [Music] um I think none of them are put there to you for for him but it's it's not just that that um that mat Mak he is object is more attractive because that's subjective is that he is objectified to be that is everything is put there to so you like him and and not Marty because Marty is your husband okay but it's interesting and Russ will never be your husband and that was hot and that is a problem yes but that's a I ISM and that's fiction and that's how we put that in in fiction but it's also interesting with what you said earlier when you called him a psychopath I mean he's a psychopath yes but also is's a psychopath with empathy yeah and this is what people can feel about him that he cares uh that there is an a depth to him that you can't find in Marty perhaps yeah it's true I think he wants to be a psychopath more than he is and but in the end and you know he's a yeah because Psychopaths but yeah are not supposed to have empathy but he has he tries not to hard but in the end is Marty Marty even recognizes it at one point he says it was my sin was to be indifferent or you know not not not realizing things not seeing things but he realized that his thing was not being empathic not being a womanized that wouldn't be that bad if he had pay attention which he didn't and uh and I think that's one of the reasons why uh that is very interesting the character of of Maggie even at the end when she's questioned for R he defends him and he's he's he's a very loyal man and uh she has a crash on him of course well thank you so much for this wonderful thank you of True Detective season one just one last question that we ask to all our guests before we close we always if you think of a question which we haven't asked and that we should have asked that you wish we had asked you wish we had asked well I think we we pretty much covered it um no I I mean what I'm looking at my notes around around here uh well maybe the music but because I'm I'm a big music fan and the music is very important in the show and uh yeah that that that that would be the same as you know me trim pics the music is is very very important and in this one twoo I think not that obviously that obvious let's say but um the fact that they the the I I think the other piece is the director the writer but also the um uh the the soundtrack by Tbone bournet like it's not just a guy is is Ste B and uh I think all the songs are there for a reason um and of course I investigated that because I'm an obsessive m music F but that that would be something for next time to dwell into music I feel like he was such a talented musician but also a musicologist in gathering songs from so many different important genres and it's so emblematic in the series y so Mariana Enriquez thank you so much for this hour and a half of discussion about True Detective it was wonderful to have you for this episode of after images no no thank you very much and I hope I made myself clear because you know it's it's early and sometimes English doesn't come like in the morning wonderful thank you so much thank you for listening to after images please subscribe on your favorite podcast app and follow after images podcast on social media after Imes