Proving the Negative: TRUE DETECTIVE and Remembering When “This is Not My Thing”

While I was writing a post yesterday called “Why True Detective is A Load of Shit,” Emily Nussbaum’s piece, saying the same thing but in a vastly smarter way, went up at The New Yorker. You should go read it here. I’m so glad Nussbaum wrote that piece, not only because it expresses all the things that were bothering me about the show, but also because it forced me to ask a question of myself, which was: Do I really want to just trash something here? Nussbaum doesn’t trash the show at all — instead, her piece reads more like a lament, as in: What a blown opportunity. Mine was going to be merely a bitch-fest about True Detective. Not so constructive or interesting!

Here, in the interest of disclosure, or at least catharsis, are my issues with True Detective:

• I think it’s full of shit.
• This is because, as Nussbaum points out, it treats the Rust Cohle character as a truth-teller about the world being a dark, awful place full of brutality and hate. As Richard Bausch once said, if your character’s going to give a bunch of impassioned speeches, make sure you (the writer) don’t believe a damn word of it.
• Its wall-to-wall grim-grim-grim-murder-death-debasement aesthetic is fucking juvenile. It’s the visual equivalent of Nine Inch Nails.
• If there was ever any doubt about its ideas about women, look at the scene from episode six where former teen prostitute Beth is on the phone, talking Marty into coming over for anal sex, while admiring her half-naked body in a full-length mirror.
• The show seems to believe it’s the first to really get into the DARK NATURE OF MEN thing. Really cracking that one wide open, you guys.

So let me offer two alternatives — and clear predecessors — to True Detective before I get to the real meat of this post, which is supposed to be about taking me to task for taking True Detective to task. One is the work of James Ellroy. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? All the talk lately about how “True Detective isn’t about the case, it’s about the men working the case!” sure makes me think of Ellroy’s detective books, back when he was still writing those. For instance, The Black Dahlia. Don’t watch the movie, please God, don’t watch the movie. But do read the book, if this is the kind of thing you like. And then read White Jazz. Because while it’s the same (admittedly ponderous) DARK NATURE OF MEN stuff wrapped in the exact same NOT REALLY ABOUT THE CASE stuff, it’s stylish and fun to read and it shouldn’t take you eight weeks to get through it.

A better alternative might be the novels of Tana French. Want to see a super-smart detective unravel as he gets closer and closer to a case no one really wants him to solve? Read In the Woods, French’s debut novel. And then read its first sequel (of sorts), The Likeness. Because, I’m sorry, the DARK NATURE OF MEN thing, at this point, really should be woman’s work. They’ve been living with it lo these many years, we’ve merely been profiting from it in every way imaginable. I don’t need another dude telling me about the inescapability of brutality blah blah blah, because that dude, somewhere deep inside, believes that garbage. Whereas a woman — and I’m sorry to generalize, even in a positive sense — but a woman will question it. Big difference.

Okay. All done with True Detective. But it’s made me a little crazy lately, trying to balance a visceral reaction to a piece of fiction with the knowledge that it really doesn’t have to affect me so much. I can, in other words, learn to say, This is not my thing.

That’s a really useful phrase that wish I remembered more often. It’s tricky, because I also need to maintain a critical eye — for this blog, for my teaching, for my writing about television, for my own fiction. But I’m not a full-time critic, and sometimes I need to just let go.

GIRLS is another example. I will watch GIRLS every week until it goes off the air. Yet I do not often enjoy GIRLS. It doesn’t make me laugh more than once an episode, I don’t really enjoy any of the characters*, I think it’s insanely lazy about storytelling. But I watch because there’s something about it, something I can’t quite put my finger on. Further, I don’t think it’s a bad show, any more than I think True Detective is a bad show. They’re each doing a thing that is not really for me. And that’s okay.

(*NOTE: I’m not saying characters need to be “likable.” I’ve covered that already here. I do think it’s problematic when nearly all your major characters are narcissists.)

There’s a slow boil that starts in every critically-minded person when a lot of people respond to something you know in your brilliant little heart is really just shit. But I think it’s worth remembering: maybe it’s just not for you. And hey, they’re responding. In a world where we’re all supposedly deadened and hardened, these people like something.

I had a good Twitter discussion yesterday with Linda Holmes of NPR’s fantastic Monkey See blog and Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. I’d pointed to a piece on the AV Club wherein the singer from Cheatahs (that’s the spelling) expressed his dislike for the Jeff Buckley version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

— Hold up. This is starting to resemble page one of The Silmarillion. Let’s take some space to let all the proper nouns sink in. Breathe in, breathe out, and —

Okay, we’re back. Anyway, the Cheatahs guy’s issue was that he felt like the Buckley version is kind of inappropriate for the song. It’s mournful and emotional and bombastic, whereas (says the Cheatahs guy) the song itself has a “wariness” to it. And I do think that’s a great word to use for that song, and I happen to also not be a fan of either the Buckley version or the Rufus Wainright version, which makes the Buckley version seem like a church whisper. (My preferred version is the John Cale version.) So I posted the thing, and Linda — we’ve had Twitter contact before — said this:

She further pointed out that while I’d gravitated toward the guy’s dislike of the Buckley version of “Hallelujah” (which has become the standard template for performances of the song), the Cheetahs guy’s real problem seemed to be with so many people liking that version. And his own feelings of — what? inadequacy? — when confronted with other people’s enjoyment. As Linda put it, “part of this is just my EXTREME allergy to the way people talk about other people liking music the wrong way.”

I thought about this a lot yesterday. Yes, we should all have opinions on things, and yes, we’re all free to broadcast those opinions. But there’s another facet, which is the question of WHY. Why is it so important that people know this about you? Why is there even a feature on The AV Club — which for years I’ve held up as a standard for thoughtful, empathetic, deeply human criticism — called “HateSong”? And why would someone want to read that?

And why did I think it worth tweeting to three thousand people?

I’ve told you my issues with True Detective. I’ve told you my issues with GIRLS. This is certainly my right. But also: Who cares? In the case of True Detective, I wanted to vent because it makes me mad that no one else sees the ugliness of the show — or so I imagine. If you like True Detective, I think that’s great, too, and I don’t think you’re an idiot, or juvenile, or sexist. I mean, you may be all these things, but I won’t merely assume so based on your preference for one TV show. And in the case of talking about GIRLS, I think it’s my way of saying the show baffles me — not its popularity, but its choices — and I think that’s okay. It confounds me, and I want to understand how it works. But at the end of the day, both these shows may be just NOT MY THING.

I’m trying to be more mindful lately. I’m walking every day, and I’m meditating. I do want to remember about that slow boil, and I want to recognize it before it overtakes the pot and gets on other stuff. Because I do think that’s far more harmful than a show or book or movie or album you think is dumb or unworthy. The need to be constantly critical — not in a professional sense, but in a knee-jerk, THIS NEEDS TO BE SAID ON THE INTERNET NOW sense — is like a cancer. Its only real functions are to spread and to kill. In this case, it spreads between people, and in this case, what it kills is joy.

If you’re a creative person, this is extra-bad. Because joy is what you need, and I don’t care who you are or what you’re making. Remember Monsters Inc., where they discover children’s laughter is way better for powering things than children’s terrified screams? This is absolutely true of art.

It’s not hard to see why so many of us have a reflex toward the negative. In college, I knew one person who used to say, “This is THE BEST” about everything. And it became a joke among many of us. Now, on the Internet, that person seems to be writing every “Content From Our Partners” headline and every third tweet and Facebook post. We’ve stretched language and sentiment to the point where we’re afraid the most bombastic hyperbole will still be too subtle. It’s ALL the best, and it’s ALL the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen, and it’s ALL going to fix whatever is secretly broken in us, please God please. (And here you can just go listen to the last third of Louis CK’s “Hilarious” album, as he covers this far better than I can.)

But having a “why is THIS so popular?!” attitude is no way to combat the hyperbole. In fact, like the mirror turned on Medusa, it’s ultimately paralyzing to the self. Because when you set out to make a thing, it’s a lot easier to try and make something like what you’d want to see, or like what you already enjoy, versus trying to make something that’s merely NOT what you hate. That exercise is like trying to make a suit of clothing out of a black hole. It’s trying to prove a negative, which is the position you never want in debate class.

In the case of my feelings about True Detective, here’s what I’d like me to remember: it’s a thing a large number of people helped make, many of them believing in it as a thing worth making, and it’s now a thing an even larger number of people are enjoying and talking about and analyzing. Even if I don’t care for it — even if it’s NOT MY THING — that’s a force for good in the world. At the very least, it’s not hurting me when people like it. It won’t stop me from doing what I do, nor should it.

If anything, it should inspire me. Human beings have had what scientists call “full behavioral modernity” — meaning symbolic thought, language, and culture — for about 50,000 years. That we can still get excited about things, even if it’s some singer’s version of that thing, is amazing and wonderful, and an excellent reason to keep making new things. Halle-fuckin’-lujah.