NWJ 457- True Detective S1 Analysis w/Steven DeLay

old face or edging your beard. The single blades give you a Barbara grade shave for a fraction of the price the standard issue gives you is seventy five bucks, and it comes with the one hundred sealless steel razor blades that's supposed to last a year.

cultural milieu. Is your thing is analyzing that? So I guess kind of let people know who you are, what you're about, so my audience could get a feel for you before we get into today's episode.

I'm also a fiction writer. And then at the same time, I'm also interested in film study studies and film phenomenology, but more particular I'm interested in cultural engineering studies and how cinema and television can be used as well in effect weapons of psychological warfare. And at the moment, I have an interest particularly in the genre of film noir.

So I've been working on a noir book, and I've recently written on Chinatown for a publication called Cultural Engineering Studies, which is founded by the guys that do Sye Up Cinema. And so I've had noir on my mind for a while, and we recently did an episode on True Detective last year, and so I really just jumped at the chance to be here with you tonight to talk more about True Detective.

that there's there's a great message to this movie. I mean, then you have the the inverse of that, which is Marty, who kind of his whole shtick is he doesn't want to look like he's kind of the average well meaning person that just doesn't just wants to pretend there isn't.

then I come to find out that it's actually been out for a decent amount of time, and I believe it happened before really. I mean, I know people will say, like, you know, things like Epstein were talked about to be full like on Alex Jones, you know, prior to this around this time, but it was like, culturally speaking, it was a non existent thing, like people didn't know about him.

So at the time when this came out, like, yes, I guess sure if you were super duper into the know, maybe you would know these sort of things, but for the most part, it was nowhere near what it is today the level of like a cultural understanding of these sorts of things. And this is when it came out, and I already I was astounded the level of like, holy shit, this is so many parallels to the things I study, Like I was already as sounded by that

watching it in twenty twenty four. So it's been out for a believe over somewhere in the realm of like a decade. So I just I guess I've kind of like to hear about your initial experience with the show. Where were you in your journey parapolitically or conspiracy wise

or whatever. Were you was this something that you picked up on that, because I guess a lot of people don't pick up on that, and so I think maybe they're missing, maybe maybe doesn't speak to them as deeply as it does other people who are kind of interested in that stuff. But I mean, even then, I watched my wife, who is kind of a little bit more, and she still thought liked it.

that in cinema and in television and other art. The occult and the people who really run the world will expose the public to secrets about the criminal underworld and the world of blackmail and extortion, and in the case of what's shown Intro Detective, the ritualistic abuse and torture

and murder of children. And of course there's a question about why it is that they would reveal these things, and that's a question that I think we can turn to at the very end of the discussion, once we sort of work through what's in the show and the parallels between what's shown in the season and a number of real life cases. You mentioned some of them already, the Finders, the Franklin cover up, the Presidio, McMartin preschool, and then of course more recently Pizzagate and Epstein, and

then also Jerry Sandusky situation in Penn State. For me personally, the show immediately gripped me because when it was released in twenty fourteen, I was already really down the rabbit hole with conspiracies. So like back in college in the odds, like in two thousand and five, I figured out about nine to eleven being an inside job and I was watching INFO Wars, so I learned about Bohemian Grove and Moloch, and so I was aware of vip pedalphile rings and

that kind of activity. What I didn't understand until later was that it's actually much more pervasive. And of course it's not something that's relegated only to these really truly powerfully leaked circles. It's really something that has saturated really all dimensions of society, all social classes. And that's something I think comes out in season one is that you see that this network or this ring really goes all the way down to like what we call like trailer trash,

all the way up to the governor of Louisiana. And then, of course, as we know from doing research in other cases, it's not even just something that occurs in a place like Louisiana. But it happens in Washington, DC, it happens in Los Angeles, that happens in New York, it happens in the United Kingdom in London, and it happens in Europe.

It happens everywhere. So when I saw the show initially in twenty fourteen, I was blown away, and I wondered, well, how is the show even made, because one thing to note is that, of course, as people have seen the show will know the the events that are take place.

It spans a seventeen year chronology, So in a way, the story begins in ninety five with the door Lang murder, when Marty and Russ are called to the scene of the body that they find, and then the show concludes in twenty twelve, and there's a sort of like turning point in two thousand and two, and so the way that the show is structured is in kind of like classic noir styles through voiceovers and recollections of Marty and Russ thinking back in twenty twelve while they're being interviewed

by these other investigators about the events from ninety five onward into two thousand and two, and then the show culminates in what happens in real life at the time in twenty twelve, and in some of the early episodes that are focused primarily on what was going on with the initial investigation into the first murder in ninety five, there's allusions to what people will know is the Satanic

panic from the nineteen eighties. And so the interesting thing about this show as a cultural artifact coming out in twenty four is that it's referencing the real life. People called it hysterio, though it really wasn't It wasn't a panic.

It was well founded about ritualistic abuse and child abuse that occurred in the eighties, and then there was a kind of awareness of this with missing children and you think about, like, you know, the Walsh disappearance and all this stuff into the nineties, and then by the time we get into the Odds, a lot of that kind

of awareness and consciousness. I think it sort of receded from the public domain, and it was the people who were still engaged in parapolitical analysis and ritualistic occult activity who never lost sight of the fact that some of the things that it bubbled into the surface of the public awareness in the eighties and nineties had been legitimate

and that they had continued on. And it wasn't until actually after the release of this show, with Pizzagate and then with Epstein, that the public kind of caught up and realized, hey, wait a second, we've sort of had this thirty four year hangover where we've all sort of collectively forgotten that a lot of these cases that drew national attention back in the eighties and nineties were real and they were genuine, and so what the show had

shown in twenty fourteen, it was kind of like interestingly, like poet poised between what had happened in the eighties and nineties and then what it had been forgotten and then what was shortly revealed right a few years afterwards

with Pisagate and then Epstein. And so it's open to interpretation about why exactly the show was released, but one of the consequences, whether it was intentional or not on the part of HBO and those who were behind it, is that the show actually lent a lot of credence to researchers who for years have been saying that these

kinds of things really happened. Because of course, right after when the show was released and Pizzagate came out and then Epstein, people could point and say, this is what we're talking about, And so True Detective really is revelation of the method. This isn't just fantasy, this isn't just art, this isn't just imagination. This is really grounded in how

the world really works. So I think for that reason, the show in a way kind of backfired against people who may have put the show out with the intention of sort of refber refurbishing the idea that these kinds of things were just imaginary, that they were just uh, creative illusions, that there really was only a satanic panic. People who watched the show were kind of inducted into

this occult world. And then just a few years after seeing the show, there were these mainstream international headlines with pizza Gate and Epstein showing that no, actually this stuff really does occur.

and there was. It was some ridiculous amount that iron the irony is and they put they take one or two little examples of something that would be easily you know, misremembered, and and they use those as reasons why she was not credible later. But I digress. The point being is

it starts off in that case. In the Christine van Hee's case, there was it literally was the house, the this mushroom farm was on fire, and that they set it on fire after doing essentially you know, I think it's heavily implied it might be ritual, but some sort of sadistic, sadistic you know, rape of a child and they kill her and leave her there and set the farm on fire. And there's an anonymous call. So that's

kind of the initial jump. Also, I was thinking, you know, there's also the there's a parallel there because the idea of the Christine van Hee's case, the way that played into the dutrou case is it was kind of a jumping back in time. So it reminds me of the second case that they when they're running into. I forget the name of the second girl, and I believe that's the one ends up being the girl in the video.

But the idea that initially they're on they start this one one case and then they dig into this one that seems unrelated and they come to find out it's obviously a huge revelation later. And so obviously there's these parallels here. I mean, the more I dig into it, the more I'm like convinced that this guy was super inspired by Dutroux. Fair I just I struggled to believe

he did it hadn't dug into it. I see too many parallels, But I just want to point that one out because that was the first one from the jump.

now probably seven or eight times. I rewatched it over the weekend in preparation for tonight, so I have it fresh in my mind, and I was trying to think, how in the world am I going to organize my thoughts to try to get into this, And so what I thought we might do is just quickly work through episode by episode. The plot exposition, so that listeners who either perhaps have never seen the show or at least haven't seen in some time, can really just kind of

imbibe the atmosphere of the show. And the thing about noir, right is that typically the way that it works is that the viewer in a way is supposed to identify with the protagonists. One's supposed to become the detective because of course one is piecing together the case along with

the detectives oneself. So part of what's going on as viewers is that we're trying to figure out what's really going on, but we can also notice things that the detectives themselves overlook, and so there are certain things that Marty and Rust, as great of detectives as they are, and even though they do in a way get to the bottom of much of the case, I think if you pay careful attention to the events across the show, you find out that there's actually really important things that

they do overlook. So what I was thinking was just run through the episodes, highlights some of the key events, the characters, certain details that are worth mentioning, I think with an eye to the second part of the discussion, which is how is what's being shown in the show pertained or parallel a lot of these real life cases. And then the question that follows from there, the third and final question is then what was the intention behind this show? Like, why would it put so much real

information into the show. What's the intention behind releasing this kind of this kind of art. So let's see episode one. It's called The Long Bright Dark, and as you say, begins with the discovery of a dead woman, twenty eight year old prostitute Dora Lang, who's discovered naked, blindfolded or wrists abound, and she's posed in a prayerful position on a tree, beneath a tree, and she has stab booms on her and she also has what we now know

is the FBI confirmed pedo swirl. And again, of course this isn't news to anybody, but it's important, I think to mention anyhow, when the show was released, those swirls, so far as I know, were not public record. So the pedo swirls and the FBI documentation about these symbols that came out after this show, So whoever was involved in the show somehow had access to that information, and that's a question. To my knowledge, it's never been answered how it exactly.

started connecting these symbols. But you probably sounds like you were deeper down the rabbit hole earlier than I was. So I mean, so you're saying you don't think it really was at all, Like so this would be super deep cut knowledge type deal.

It's already circulating, but this symbol really wasn't circulating that so commonly. And it's very important to the show because there's many characters who say specifically, including I think Charlie Lang in one of the episodes when Marty and Russ Goo to interview him that it's Ldue Reggie Ledoux, who says that that symbol is a sign of the cult that they brand people with, which of course will sound

reminiscent of something like from Nexium. So anyway, Dora Lang has this symbol on her body, and one of the sheriffs who's even there, says all these symbols are satanic, and he says they had a twenty twenty on it a few years back, and I don't know what the police code is for twenty twenty. I looked it up. Maybe he just meant like they had come across these symbols before, and they had noticed them in previous cases.

But I thought that was kind of interesting that one of the police at the original scene of the crime mentions having come across these symbols before, and then we get a little bit of character.

so oh yeah, oh yeah. And then the Voodoo Donuts. That's another rabbit hole some people go down. I don't know, I've.

of classic archetypes, and Rust and Marty. So Rust is like the obsessive, right, So this idea of noir that the good guy, whether he's the private detective or whether he's the police detective, he has problems with authority. Marty even says that in his interview in episode one, will guys have to learn how to manage authority. So the idea is that the hero, the archetype, the obsessive, is the one who bucks the cys, defies authority, runs an end runned around the corruption, but he always does so

at some kind of great personal cost to himself. Usually that what ends up happening is he becomes some kind of antisocial and so that's why, like Russ he lives in a very spartan baron apartment. All he has or like you know some books, a mattress at the beginning, he doesn't even have a chair, right, So he's unmarried, and of course we learn why what have happened with the death of his daughter and so on and so on. So that's one sort of classical noir archetype of the hero.

And then you have Marty, his partner, who in a ways another classic noir archetype, and he's kind of like the well intentioned, generally good hearted, but sort of fallible one. And so in his case it's it's alcohol and in

it's women. And this is kind of blended together in a very nice way because there's this sort of tension in what's running throughout this show, which is this question of everyone's complicity in these most heinous of crimes in terms of the exploitation and abuse of women and children. And so, you know, Marty, he dislikes obviously what's being done to these children, and he wants to protect his

own children. But then at the same time he recognizes that he's far from a saint himself because of his philandering, womanizing, and his alcoholism. So the show, I think is one of the major themes in the show philosophically, is this question about original sin or sex. And you know, Rust is a nihilist, and he tends to think that in a sense, existence is a crime. It's almost a crime

to exist at all. And this is why he even says explicitly at one point that when his daughter died young, in a way, she unburdened him of what he says is the sin of being a father. So they get onto this first case, and shortly after being given the case, there's a task force that is formed by Billy Lee Tuttle, who's a prominent pastor or reverend, the kind of magachurch sort of Billy Graham, Jerry Fowell sort of sort of type, and Rust and Marty want to get him the case

stay on the case. Rust quickly suspects that there's something suspicious going on with the Task Force. He doesn't trust it, but they are they don't have a suspect, so eventually they ended up going to a church revival and they meet a pastor there, talk to him, and they interview a couple of women who give them a description of what they think maybe the first description of the potential suspect, which is that he's a tall man with scars and

that he had been hanging around with Dora Lang. They go and they interview Charlie Lang, who is Dora's ex husband who's in prison, and Charlie Lang eventually ends up telling them about a guy he knew, Reggie Ldeu, who is his ellmate, and it turns out that Reggie Ldeux had a connection to a second dead body. They find this is the Olivier girl who had gone missing years previously. I think it was like in nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety two. Her body had been discovered in a flood.

But when Russ was going back through the cases, he noticed that there were certain forensic details that matched the description of what had happened to Dora Lang with these stab wounds and then also the same swirl on her body. So in the fact, what happens is they discover that there have been children going missing for some years at one point, and it's like episode three or four when

Rust and Marty really start to unravel the case. Rust is going through old cases and he starts finding a pattern where there's what are called airs missing persons made in air reports, and there's these missing children going back to is late as I think as early as nineteen seventy nine that he finds out had been reported missing and then later the I was corrected to claim that

the missing person report had been made in error. And of course the key, the key example of this is the Marie Fontineau girl who had gone missing and I think it's nineteen ninety and Rust and Marty learn about her disappearance when they're out canvassing and looking for information

about who may have known Dora Lang's killer. They find out that this girl, Marie Fonteau, went missing in nineteen ninety and the sheriff, Ted Childress had claimed that he had interviewed the family, and that the family had said that Marie Fonta had gone off with her father, but it didn't check out, And so as the story unfolds, what basically ends up being the case is that Marty and Russ discover that whoever killed Dora Lang was also involved in the Marie Fontna disappearance, was also the one

who murdered Olivier and then also this woman in twenty ten at Lake Charles and so, and then of course going back into the eighties and episode one, Marty and Russ are driving down a road and there's a billboard for a missing person, a girl named Stacy Gearhardt who had gone missing in nineteen eighty seven. So there's dozens of these missing children, many of whom disappear without any trace.

And turns out that, of course that they're being abducted and murdered, sometimes ritualistically, and they hear this from Charlie laying himself in a later episode, I think it's episode five, when Charlie confesses that his cellmate Reguladue had said that there was a human sacrifice ring that was abducting children, where rich people would go out into the woods.

for a time that maybe the case is solved. They'd found their man because they thought it was regular Du in ninety five, But in light of the fact that these other children had got missing and had never been accounted for, and that the subsequent murder that happened at Lake Charles later on, they realized no, whoever killed Dori

Lang must still be out there. So when we fast forward to twenty twelve, of course Rust has stayed on the case, and basically what he figures out is that he was right to suspect in ninety five that Billy Lee Tuttle had really been up to no good, because it turns out that Billy Lee Tuttle had a snuff film of the Marie Fontnau murder, and that Marie Fontneau had actually gone to a school which I think is called the Light of the Way Academy in the show, and she had been one of the children who was

actually evidently molested at that school, and it turns out that one of the reasons that she was abducted and maybe murdered is because when Rust interviews one of the other children, one of the men who had gone to the school, who's now a male prostitute in the time in twenty twelve, this man has a recollection of having been molested and photographed back at the school with Marie Fontina, which corresponds to what the preacher at the Traveling Tent Revival,

Reverend Terry, had said he had come across as well. Back in the nineties when he was working for Tuttle. He had discovered a folder full of images of children that was in possession of one of the Tuttle ministers, and that had been covered up. And of course that guy, I think his name is Austin Farrar, he later got busted for embezzlement and then died, presumably by suicide, but it's clear that actually Billy Lee Tuttle had him bumped off.

So Russ Brake breaks into I think it's the Shreveport residence of Billy Lee Tuttles in twenty ten, discovers this snuff film of Marie Fontino, so we know that Marie Fontina in fact didn't run off with her father. She was abducted and she was murdered. And then one of this kind of important details about this as far as police corruption is concerned, is that one of the detectives that were introduced to ninety five Steve Jerrasi, who never

likes Marty and never likes Russ from the very beginning. Well, we figure out why that was the case, because it turns out that back in the nineties, when Mariefonteau had gone missing, he had been the deputy who took the missing person report on Reefontna. And then what had happened is that Ted Childress, who was the sheriff, had hidden the report, claimed that Mariefontnau was actually fine, and then given him a promotion to transfer to State c ID

in Louisiana. So in ninety five, when Marty and rust were looking into the Mariefontina disappearance, Jerrasey doesn't come forward and tell them anything because he knows he's complicit in the fact that that had been covered up. So they tracked down Jerrasy, who's now the sheriff I think of Iberia.

He's been promoted right, and they basically course him into admitting what he had known when they show him Refontnau snuff film, and that's when we find out that actually the real killer is a childress who is one of the sons that's from Sam Tuttle, who's the father of

Edwin Tuttle, the governor, and then Billy Lee Tuttle. So what happened is that there's actually this secret family that the Tuttle patriarch had and the serial killer there's no date of birth for him, there's no social Security records and the only reason they track him down is that.

And I think it's episode two in ninety five when Rust and Marty are scouring and canvassing the neighborhoods, there's this shot where you can see Russ taking up photograph of this little green house, and it turns out that later on they figure out that the green spaghetti monster that one of these children had claimed had been chasing her through the woods is actually the killer who was a painter and he had painted the greenhouse, and Marty

remembers this greenhouse, so they pull out the photograph and they realize, oh, if you can figure out who painted this house will track down the killer. So they go through and they get the task records, and they track down the woman who remembers hiring the company childrens and son to paint the house, and that's what leads them to Earl Childress, who is the killer who had been, yeah,

the secret son of one of the Tutteles. And of course that's another fantastic illustration of revelation of the method, because we know that these intergenerational Satanic covens very often will breed children with no record of their birth so that they can be used for these purposes, whether it's for sacrifices or whatever else it maybe, and so that that happens to be the what's the case with with the killer Childress in this show?

but then too, they find some way too. It's it's almost as if he's found a way within his own lens to find something I don't know, beneficial, you know, as so far as like a philosophy, a way to look at the world, you know, way way to look at morality, you know, good bad stuff that like, while still somewhat maintaining his secular worldview. And I'll be honest,

and I believe you. You've said, I've listened to your show, and you said you're a little bit Really I'm I'm admittedly an agnostic atheist, whatever you wanna call it, So I very much identify with Rust and a lot in that way. Although I'm someone who's thought a lot about philosophy in the past, I mean I don't as much now, so I have kind of worked through those things for myself.

is that to fucking live? Even if you are a nihilists, like I don't know, might as well have to be the sort of like nihilist that's a yeah, maybe there's no cosmic meaning, but I can make meaning for myself, which I think he kind of gets there by the end. I think also, you see, I love the progression of Marty and the idea I think the the one line from Rust, but like I won't I won't look away again. I think that I think that really has a that means a lot, I think for Marty's progression more so

than it does russ progression. I think, you know, the the idea that he's starting to open his eyes he's not content with and there is something too where you're like. I know, some people might think it may detract from your family life or this or that, and you might even say that this thing that he got sucked up in. But if anything, the theme is to open your eyes. And if you had paid attention, if he hadn't looked away, I think he would have been more in touch with

his family. Obviously, that not looking away has multiple meanings. It means like looking away from the dark, fucked up things. But sometimes I can just be the monotonous day to day things that you may not pay attention to because you're too busy looking at the.

but my true sin was the sin of inattention. And then he had talked about in an earlier episode when he's been again interviewed by these two detectives in twenty twelve about the detective's curse, and he says that the Detective's curses, you know, you're looking at everything except for the right clues, which are right in front of you.

And so just remind me to come to the question of his daughter, Audrey, because I think there's a lot that's going on there with her specific situation that actually shows just how truly expansive this network really is. And then I also want to talk a little bit more about police corruption and some of these other more minor characters and how they kind of try to steer the

investigation off the rails. So philosophically, you know, a lot of people have already noticed and commented fairly extensively on the fact that two really important philosophical figures that are

looming largely in the show are Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. But before I come to Schopenhower and Nietzsche, because in some ways Russ is quoting Schopenhower almost verbatim, particularly in episode one, and then his entire theory of time being a flat circle is really very much a Nietzschian doctrine, the idea of the eternal recurrence. So I can talk about that, But then the question is like, well, what is nihilism?

And so in every day parlance, you know, it usually means that like, nothing really matters, is what we usually mean with that by that that there's really no meaning or ultimate meaning to anything. So you get into this idea of illusion that somehow the idea that things really matter is an illusion, and you see that kind of

bothering Russ. So part of us metaphysics the schopenhowerre in part about is that he thinks that we're all sort of biologically and inherently subject to these kind of delusions or illusions that are necessary for us to get by in everyday life. But the term nihilism is actually coined originally in the eighteenth century by this now obscure German counter Enlightenment Christian philosopher named Friedrich Yakobi, and by nihilism, what he meant was he was responding to the philosopher

Emmanuel Kant. And basically what Kant had tried to do was develop this metaphysical system that he thought would preserve the basis to believe justifiably that human beings have freedom, that there is immortality, and that God does exist. Those were the three big ticket items that Kant was interested

in preserving. But what Kant thought he had to do was in order to, as he says, make room for faith, he had he said, deny that we can know these things come what in quantum philosophy are called reguative ideas or postulates of practical reason. The idea is that in order for there to be a moral order we can't thinks that we have to posit a God who will ultimately be our judge, and that he thinks that in order to hold one another responsible for our actions, we

have to posit that human beings are free. And what Yakobe did, in effect was to say that, well, actually, despite CONT's good intentions, this actually fails, and that this kind of philosophical attempt to justify the idea of immortality, the idea of the existence of God, and the idea of human freedom, it actually backfires and you end up coming to see that all this would be an illusion.

And so Yakobe basically thinks that once you get the philosophical ball rolling in that direction, you're going to be led to nihilism, which for Yakobe means no immortality, no freedom, no God, which is in a way basically where Rust is at the beginning of the show. But so what Russ does is he kind of takes that nihilistic conclusion that Yakobe had identified that he thought philosophy led to, and he kind of dressed it up in Schopenhauer's particular

metaphysical system. So he says things like in the Car with Marty in episode one consciousness is a tragic misstep of evolution, that the world is just a gut or and outer space, that we labor under the illusion of having a self, that we think that in fact, you know, everybody thinks he's somebody when really he's nobody. That really which we should all do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, and opt out of an existence, which is a raw deal.

And then Marty sort of asks him existentially, right, well then why do you get up out of bed every morning? And then Russ kind of like in this moment of kind of like ironic self awareness, says, well, you know, I tell myself that, like you know, I have a reason, but really it's because I can't deny my programming. And he says I lack the constitution for suicide, which is of deeply shopen how Ay insight, because Schopenhower basically thought that the entire point of life was to wean yourself

from it. And you see this actually in a later episode when in the montage sequence, Rust is going through all these old case files and he's looking at photographs of dead people, and he tells the detectives in twenty twelve, well, when you look at these photographs of these people, you can notice that the very last nanosecond of their existence, they realized that their entire life had been this drama, that they had been locked up in their own minds,

and that everything that they thought matter was an illusion, including their own self. And so they can let go and they return to this kind of monistic sense or state of oneness. So Rust is basically a kind of Chopin Howery and nihilist or monus. So he doesn't believe that individuals are individuals. He thinks that in some sense that is an illusion. He thinks that people don't really have free will and so, and then for that reason,

he also thinks that love is an illusion. Right At one point when Marty says, do you think it's possible for a man to love two women at once? Because he's thinking of his wife and then this woman that he's having an affair is mistress Lisa, and Russ comes back and says, well, I don't think actually man can

even love in the way that he means it. So that's kind of one aspect of Russ's philosophical view worldview, as he's a kind of Schopenhowry and nihilist and then the other component is the nietzsche and so that's where you get into the more metaphysical thesis of the eternal recurrence recurrence. So Russ at one point talks about the children that are discovered at the the Dew compound. He says, well, they're going to be in there over and over and

over again forever. And he asks the detectives like, well, how many times do you think we've had this conversation before. So there's almost this kind of like reincarnational metaphysics, the idea that your life as you're living it is something that you've lived many time times before and something that

you will live precisely as you've literal for forever. And the Nietzschean gloss on this is the idea of amor fati that you're supposed to somehow will the fact that you're going to be living the same life over and over again. That's the kind of Nietzschean component. And then the little ambiguity. The final side note is that and this comes out I think when Marty and Russ go

to the Tent Revival. They're the disagreement between Marty and rustover Christianity is partly a question about, well, is Christianity true or is it a fantasy or an illusion? And then the kind of subsidiary question to that is like, well, does it actually matter if it's true or not? In other words, could it be a good thing even if

it is false? Right? So there, what's going on is this kind of Nietzschean and Freudian thing, because you know, the classic Freudian conception of an illusion isn't something that's necessarily false per se. It's something that you believe for reasons other than truth. And so that's when you get into the idea of like metaphysical consolation or the idea of believing a lie because life requires lies. So the early Nietzsche actually thought that what matters in life isn't

whether something is true or not. He thinks it what matters in life is whether it's life affirming. And so there's a way in which actually Rust is kind of cutting against Nietzsche, because Nietzsche might see Rust as somebody who's still too obsessed with truth. Because Nietzsche thinks that in a way, what you ultimately have to do is even get over the desire for the will to truth. Because Nietzsche thinks what matters isn't finding out what's true

or believing what's true, but affirming life. And it could be that actually illusions are useful to that purpose, to making life bearable and tolerable. And so there's a lot of, like I say, different things going on here, the Schopenhauerenism and the Nietzscheanism, and it's all sort of blended together in a very interesting way. And of course there's also Buddhism going on. But then yeah, to come to a

kind of conclusion with regard to that issue. By the end of the season, there is some kind of apparent transformation in Rust where he's not so bleak and cynical and dark as before. He seems to be some kind of optimist. So that's an interesting, interesting character arc certainly in that regard.

I've thought these things through, but it's almost like it's almost like a distribratory like thought process like thing when you think about something like free will, because it's like, even if it doesn't exist, you have to.

the same. So I mean, and I know some of the deeper thoughts that he went into, I did find him foolish. But it is like I guess, you know, as as we were talking about I was thinking about it if he did have this similar type mindset before having his child, Like let's say he was, you know, agnostic atheist or somebody somebody who had to and he was like that type of nihilist.

Something that removes your reason whatever you would have set up as your reason. Uh, Because I mean, I'm I'm very much like the It's it's in some ways, I'm very much the Marty character because I have the family I have, I have a wife, I have kids. Like but you know, I'm also in some ways the cold character in like that way, but like they are my family's kind of like is that meaning?

as it was. As far as revelation of the method is concerned with the character of Rust, there's clear indications that he is a trauma survivor potentially interfered with psychiatrically through potentially mkltree even and one of the tensions that's going on throughout the shows people will know who have seen it is once deliberately the viewers deliberately led to consider the possibility that Rust himself actually is the murder murder, or that he's somehow involved in the ring, and the

detectives who are interviewing Marty and Rust in twenty twelve and then also Maggie, Marty's ex wife, They eventually, I think it's like in season five, they just come out and say that they think that actually Rust is the killer and that he's been producing Patsy's Now. There's another of things to say about this. One thing is that it's interesting that on a few occasions Russ mentions the fact that his dad was a Vietnam War veteran and

the sort of survivalist who lived up in Alaska. So he checks the box on that he comes from a military home. Then there's the fact, and this is mentioned right at the outset I think in episode one, maybe episode two as well, that Russ comes to Homicide State CID in Louisiana after having previously worked undercover NARCO for four years in Texas. And the reason why he worked undercover for four years is that and this is like familiar territory to anybody who's read the Dave McGowan program

to Kill Stuff. We know all about this. The Rust shoots somebody and then so he pleads out to turn to avoid the sentence for the shooting. He ends up working undercover for four years and then he kills some cartel members is the Port of Houston and he has a psychiatric breakdown, and then he's sent to a psychiatric

facility in Lubbock, Texas. And then he talks about how because of his rug addiction that he had when he was working undercover, along with the trauma from the murder and then the baggage she was carrying already from the fact that his daughter had died when she was very young, he had PTSD and flashbacks and hallucinations. So you have to wonder though whether or not actually he's been interfered

with by either military or the psychiatric community. And anybody who's read the Tom O'Neal book Chaos about the Manson murders, we know that there were intelligence students that were embedded in the police forces, even in the La Sheriff and LAPD police forces. So Russ talks about, well, my files are sealed and they're all readacted, and so people think

I'm a fad. So it looks like even though in the show, by the end of it we're supposed to think that Rust actually wasn't really a mind control MK ultra killer, that he actually is a good guy and he really wasn't the one out committee the murders finding Patsy's. It's still consistent with what we're shown that actually he has amnesia and these other personalities that he may laughs into he has no record of, and we're just not

shown that. So in the cinematic grammar of the show, it's still actually possible that really there is something else going on with him. And I'll just adduce one sort of example. I'm not saying that I think this is really the case. I'm just saying that it's clearly consistent

as possible. So as a matter of revelation of the method, Pizzolato is showing us that people who are embedded in these police forces have intelligence connections, they work under cover, they tend to come from military backgrounds, they have psychiatric records, and so on and so forth. Russ kind of fits all of that profile to a t. But there's this scene where he's speaking to one of the prostitutes. Her name's Lucy the Blonde. He meets her at a trucker

bar and he buys pills from her. When he's asking her and the other prostitute about whether they know any John who may have been the one responsible for killing Lang later on, when he visits her. I think it's like an episode three. He goes to her apartment to get more pills and she tries to seduce him, and he rejects her. She gets angry, and then he stands up and there's this shot looking up at him and he says, well, I'm police, so I can do horrible

things with impunity, and then it cuts. And this is an early episode where by the time you get midway through the season, you might think back to that scene and say, well, wait, what exactly happened in the apartment with the prostitute, Because unless you think that actually Russ is a good guy and that the detectives who are interviewing him and Marty in twenty twelve are totally off on the wrong track and that Rust actually isn't in on all this stuff, you would think, well, maybe what

did he exactly do to there? Did he actually kill her? So I'm not saying that in that scene that's actually what happened, But what I'm saying is that I think it's interesting that that scene is put there because it is perfectly consistent with the hypothesis that Rust has amnesia and altered personalities and may not actually himself be aware that the events that were being shown in the show

are only following one of his personalities. Perhaps he's off doing other things and we're just never shown it, and it could be that actually there's other stuff going.

he's not a reliable narrator or whatever the situation. So you can kind of take leeway of if you have some case, if it's packed up by some instance of when we only see his POV, you may want to

hold end doubt. So yeah, and I just thought, as you said, I was thinking that that's that would actually kind of add to that, because I think the only things that would push away push back against that would be instances of his story where you're seeing things from his perspective and you're like, well, he's not a useful narrator exactly.

own memory? Right? And in fact this is also something that the character's name is Toby Bulair. He's the male prostitute in New Orleans that Russ tracks down towards the end. I think it's episode seven. He's the one who.

also before I forget to the issue of Audrey. So there was a time where, having watched this this this season, I was convinced that actually Maggie may be part of the cults. And I'm still open to the idea that she knows more about what's really going on than what most people who think watched the show think.

and it's everywhere? That's even what Russ says right toward the episode seven when he's talking to Leroy Salter, the really corrupt major who I think actually is part of the cult. And I have a reason for thinking that I could mention that as well, but he Russ as well. It's like alligators in a swamp and they're everywhere. And one of the things that we come to figure out right is that Dora Lang was abused as a child, Marie Fonteau was abused as a child. This all occurred

in the school environment. So this is McMartin. This is like the charitable organizations with Santusky. So if it's being done by people who have access to children in his school environment, that's the whole point behind the Tuttle schools, is that they were creating these schools as places to get access to the children. Then who's to say that people who are part of that cult didn't have access to Audrey.

outside of those those charter schools as well. And the reason I say this is that everybody talks about the scene. I think it's even an episode one or two where Audrey and Macy are playing in the room and Marty goes to call them to dinner and they have the female doll who's lying naked on her back, encircled by a group of men, which of it's very much akin to the kind of ritualistic stuff that we see later with the font note tape. So where did Audrey get

the idea? Now? The point is is that Marty doesn't initially ask her about that. It's Maggie who later prompts him to do this when she then goes and draws some inner opriate tryan's at school of like couples having sex. And when Marty asks Audrey, well, where did you get that idea from? It's very interesting, but if you pay attention, Audrey avoids answering that question. What she answers is the question, well,

why she drew it? Was that she says, well, the girls in the class like thought it would be funny, but she never tells Marty or Maggie where the idea came from. So, and then when Audrey when she's sixteen, when we fast forward to two thousand and two and she's caught having sex with the two boys, the twenty year old and nineteen year old boy in the car.

then what's Maggie's role in it? And so I've softened a little bit on her because at first I thought, well, she was more like a Nicole Kidman character from Eyes White Shot and knew everything. And so I had thought, well, in two thousand and two, when she slept with Russ, this was done deliberately to sabotage the investigation, because, if you think about it, at that point, was going on is that Russ was onto the fact that they had

never caught the real killer. And so I have been thinking, well, if Maggie knew that, and she didn't want Russ to go digging back into the case, then she knew the best way to stop the investigation would be to break apart the friendship between Marty and Rust. I now don't think that's necessarily why she did it, But what I do think is that she knows more than she lets on, because in twenty twelve, when Marty goes to see her, everybody who watches the show, notice is that she's kind

of leveled up socially, as it were. So she marries this guy whose last name is Sawyer. We never see him or meet him or know much about who he exactly is, but it's clear from our house that he's very wealthy, so we know that he's part of now the Louisiana wealth and elite that would be part of this, may you that goes up to the tunnels, and that goes up to the kind of people that Marty and Russ were investigating back in.

fall in line. There used to be better days where people knew they were in the place blah, blah blah blah.

to be put there? I think for a reason, she's sitting in a chair. Into her right is a photograph, presumably of her new husband, and they're standing at some sort of tourist attraction. I don't know whether it's like Egypt or whatever, in front of a pyramid, So get the pyramid symbolism right there in the frame with the husband standing in front of this like classic occultic scenario.

So I think what happens to Maggie in effect is what you were saying was true about Marty at the beginning, which is that she turns a blind eye to this kind of stuff. And I think that's also why by the time she's interviewed in twenty twelve by the other detectives, she's kind of aloof and she's cold, and she's bitter and she's cynical. But I don't think that's just because

of what had happened with Marty. I think it's because she figured out that whatever it was that Marty and Russ were digging into in ninety five is everywhere, and it potentially implicates even her new husband, and so she's just kind of decided that in order to cope with the scope of all this, she's just gonna not look into it. And the final thing I'll say about when it comes to police corruption and some of these more

minor characters that tend to get overlooked to her. I think really essential to figuring out the dynamics of how this whole cover up works is that there's a series of majors throughout the progression from ninety five to twenty twelve. The first major's Casata. He's just kind of like, you know, a company man. He's not pernicious, he just wants to

keep his bosses happy. But then when we come to two thousand and two, before when Rust resigns or quits, the new major is this guy named Leroy Salter, and he's clearly corrupt. I think he knows all exactly what's going on because he starts gaslighting Rust. So he says, well, I'm going to have you for a mental exhaustion. He writes up a report where he says that Rust is manic. So he's deliberately trying to attack Rust's reliability by claiming

that he's mentally ill. And he slips up because in one of the scenes when Salter is grilling Rust and Marty telling them that they're not going to be allowed to look into any of these missing persons, Well, one of the guys, there's Commander Space, who's the one who wears the blue uniform. He was there all the way in ninety five. Spiece is the guy who accompanies Tuttle when they introduce the Task Force, and Speace to me is part of the colt also because he has the

evil eye on Marty and Cole the entire time. And it's Space who tells Cole after Cole had gone to confront Tuttle. He says, well, you know, Cole says, I didn't brace him or something, and he says, well, it's not for you to decide what kind of conversation it is.

So it's clear that Space is taking orders from the COLT from the beginning, because he's the one who basically wants to take the case off the hands of Marty and Rust all the way back in ninety five with the Task Force, and then in two thousand and two, he's the one there who's basically enjoying the fact that Salter is stonewalling and driving Rust to a point of frustration where he's just going to leave the department altogether.

But Salter says to Rust during one of these confrontations, he says, oh, what do you want us to do? You know, put out like an app or something like on all missing persons within a ten mile radius of Walmart,

and like, look, we're gonna go after Sam Walmart. Well, in the episode that comes later, when Russ takes Marty to the storage shed to show him all of his evidence, including the font No Snuff tape, it turns out that Rust had shown that all these disappearances occur within a ten mile radius of the charter schools, the Tuttle schools, and I don't think it's coincidental that it's ten miles.

So I think what happened, in effect, is that Salter knew that these disappearances were localized within a ten mile radius, but he just changed the location to mock it. So rather than saying, well, let's look at a ten mile radius within all these Tuttle schools, he tried to kind of gaslight Rust and make a joke of it by saying, oh, well, why don't we look within a ten mile radius of all the Walmarts. So he clearly, I think, knew what was.

got made, why it got made. But I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that. It's kind of to support that before we get to that last act, you know what I mean.

chain of command, right, I was falling. Chain of command. That's how it works. So there's the police corruption and the idea that the cult infiltrates the police and law enforcement and the judicial system and basically weaponizes the command structure to shut down all these investigations through the chain

of command. That's one thing. The other related thing, which I didn't really come to is this issue about blackmail and extortion and compromise, because of course that comes to the surface with regard to the tunnel being in possession of the font no snuff film. Rust himself is the one who says, well, he was probably bumped off by other people in the colt because he became a liability when they figured out that the snuff film that he

had been in possession of was lost. So the show already openly talks about the idea of there being blackmail and extortion. Ye. But one thing that a friend of mine, Brett Corolla from Syap Cinema, drew to my attention is he was telling me that apparently in the Redout Chili Pepper's biography, Anthony Kittis's biography, it's called Scar Tissue. Apparently there's some kind of incident that's recounted in there of a woman who's a sex operative, who is the daughter

of a Louisiana chief of police. So what I wanted to say here is that when it comes to the world of extortion and blackmail and compromise, look at Marty. He has a pension for philandering, right. So the woman, the mistress that he has in ninety five, Lisa, the court stenographer. The way it's depicted is that she's when he scorns her, she out of revenge, tells Maggie about the affair. But what I'm saying is that when we know how the world really works, it turns out that

some of these women are sex operatives. So another aspect of what's going on with the corruption and the command structure is that through also sex operatives like a woman like Lisa, or like Beth who he reas with later at the T Mobile shop after he had first met her as a young girl at the Bunny Ranch. This is what we saw with Epstein, with like Glenn Maxwell and these other people. So a lot of the extortion in the blackmail is done through intelligence services, through honeypots,

through sex operatives. And this is also how they maintain

the corruption in the law enforcement. Is that if you're a genuinely good guy and they don't have leverage over you because you don't have a drug addiction, you don't have an alcohol addiction, you don't have gambling debts, you're not a closeted homosexual, you're not cheating on your spouse or whatever, they can't control you, right, So then what happens is they do in effect what they did to russ, which is they drive you out or they don't promote you.

And so all they're going to do is promote the people who are either corrupt like Jerrasi, or people who happen to actually be from the cult itself. So the other example here is the guard from the prison who is a childress, who basically tells the guy Francis, who was going to divulge all this information about the Yellow King,

to kill himself. So the other aspect is that another aspect of the revelation of the method I mean to say is that in addition to the world of blackmail and extortion and mk ultra stuff, you also have the sex operative angle. I think that's in there. And then the final bit is that the ritualistic component of all this, the Santa Ria, the Satanism, it's also controlled through the occult.

The command structure is incest intergenerational incest. So that's the case obviously with Childress himself, who is the sun from one of the Tuttles, But it's also true it appears to be of Dora Lang herself, because actually, if you recall one of the early episodes when Marty and Russ go to interview Dora Lang's I think it's grandmother, there's a photograph that they look at of a young girl who's standing in front of these men who are on

horseback with masks on. And when you look at the photograph, initially at the episode, you think maybe they're KKK people, but then you realize no, actually there in the same Marty Cross stuff that later on comes to be affiliated with all the Santa Ria voodoo stuff that they hear was going on at the Tuttle property from Dolores to Mate. So it appears what I'm saying is that actually Lang herself probably came from one of these intergenerational, abusive, incestuous families as well.

have happened to Marty. I mean, I'd like to think that maybe Marty probably a slightly better character and it probably.

You just kind of you forget about it, and you just kind of you just assume everything's good and move on with life and just make that assumption and don't check even though you know there's that little voice in the back of your head that saying, I don't know, maybe I should dot my I cross my tee.

than just something inattentiveness. Although I guess even something is as crazy as like you know, looking as wanting to look deeper into things like I know, you know, SRA like satanic ritual abuse and stuff like that. I guess that kind of is like a shedding off in attentiveness, so because it is kind of like, I know, this stuff happens, and I think we need to be aware of it. So all right, let's get into the last

portion here. It seems like you have some thoughts on why why this was made, how this was made, just kind of thoughts within that realm. I'm kind of interested to see what you have hooked cooked up because I haven't really looked too much into like the people made this.

seems way too, way too close. But I mean, obviously there's a lot of other things that was inspired by. Uh just kind of I know, I just what what are your thoughts about?

head around the angle. It almost just seems like this one just slipped through. I don't know, you know, thoughts.

person's intentions or making, including including Pisolado. So the analysis that I'm going to offer is deliberately just going to bracket any sort of speculation about any one part the person's motivations for making this, because I think you can still come to a considered view about how it was made and why with a degree of intention or a gentfuleness behind it, without having to say, well, this person was doing it for this reason, this person was doing

it for that reason, we just don't know that. So with that out of the way, my view is that this is a classic case of revelation of the method. And in my view, that's a it's a form of psychological warfare, particularly what I call a form of demoralization. And this is a topic that I've explored, particularly with

reference to film noir. And you think here of a film like nineteen seventy four is Chinatown by Roman Polanski, and Chinatown in some ways is very much a sort of guidepost for this film as well, because if you think about it, the sort of infamous conclusion to Chinatown is that Jake gittis Jack Nicholson character is essentially finds himself in a situation where he is forced to see the futility of knowing that everything he's done has been

pointless because the evil in Los Angeles is so pervasive and so powerful that there's nothing he can do to stop it. And so in that regard, I call Chinatown a piece of demoralization because I think what Palanti was doing in the seventies was trying to accustom the audience to become apathetic to this kind of real world corruption by basically coming to see that if the events that are shown in a movie like Chinatown are truly representative of how the world really works, then what am I

ever going to do about it? And so the idea is that these kinds of films and TV shows acclimate the audience to a level of corruption and immorality and evil that we just eventually take to be be beyond our control. And this comes out at the very end of True Detective because when Marty and Russ are talking to one another in the hospital room after Rust has woken up from his coma, one of the first things he says to Marty as well, we didn't get them all.

And then Marty says, well, we didn't get them all, but that he says, that's just how it is in this kind of world. So it's a matter of interpretation. Do you spin it positively and say, well, Okay, he's being a realist but still in a way optimistic because we did get some of them and we should be happy about that. Or is this really actually a way of trying to condition people to accept the fact that we live in a world where these kind of people

do get away. And so, I mean, if you think about Dutroux, no one other than Dutrow was ever arrested and prosecuted, and there was a string of murders. I think it's like twenty people related to the case who died in mysterious circumstances. It was a complete, complete.

still really happening? Why would HBO allow for the show to be released? So I think we have to, you know, think critically suspiciously about what is really the function of this show showing us all this stuff about how the world really works, Because of course, the point is is that a lot of times those of us do this kind of research, we think we're winning by exposing them. And it could be that we expose certain things that they don't want exposed at a certain time, or that

we expose maybe more than they would like. But they're in a way the masters of exposure. That's the whole idea behind Revelation of the Method, is that they're showing us things that we as researchers might naively think we're

winning by exposing, They willingly, willfully expose it. My final thought about it, what's really going on is that spiritually Russ talks about, oh, the psychosphere and the atmosphere, and everyone marvels about how the season is very atmospheric and very moody, and that's true, and Rust and some of the other characters talk about how they can feel the pervasiveness of the cult that like, as Russ said, that they're like alligators swimming in a swamp, and they could

be anywhere. So there's a what you could call an omnipotence fantasy. I think that's going on in the minds of these people who are involved in this kind of a cult satanic corruption, where they deliberately like to project that degree of power. This is exactly what Michael Hoffman says in his famous book that kind of really popularized the term revelation of the Method. Is that there's a kind of power that they gain by deliberately allowing the

public to know that this cult does exist. But then people are left in the situation where we feel like there's nothing we can do about it. And so I think that True Detective being released in twenty fourteen was this sort of exercise and sort of a cult revelation of the Method, where these people who are in the know, who are really engaged in this kind of stuff, decided to project that power by deliberately putting out a very kind of rich, detailed account of how this all works

and this moment. Where as they had said at the very outset of today's tonight's discussion, people like us who are aware of the parapolitical world, and the world of a cult, trauma and sexual satan and ritual abuse, and intelligence operations. We know about all these cases from the

eighties and nineties. But the app viewer who's looking at this as just a piece of innocent HBO and entertainment, they've associated all the stuff that they're going to be seen in the show with the quote so called satanic panic.

And so then what happens is the blurring between reality and entertainment is such that when someone like that views the episodes, they go, oh, well, the show is making reference to how things felt in the nineties coming out of the so called satanic panic, and in the world of the show, we're being shown that this kind of stuff really does happen, but of course this is just

a show, right. So there's this like bifurcation where the average person watching the show says, well, the show is referencing the fact that there was this apparent awareness in the eighties in real life that these things happened, but in the world of the show we're shown that, yes, they do really happen, but this is just a show,

so ergo, they don't actually really happen. But of course, as we know they do, so I think there's this kind of feedback loop where the interaction action between real life stories and their depiction in cinema and television starts confusing people about what really is actual and what really isn't.

But the overall kind of spiritual motivation behind in my view, why they do this is that it's ultimately, I think, designed to just get people to settle for less the idea that, as Marty says, well, we can't get them all. This is just the kind of world that it is. So it's ultimately, I think about getting us to resign ourselves to the fact that we shouldn't care. We shouldn't look into it, we should look away, because what's the point in looking into it? You're just gonna end up

like get us at the end of Chinatown. There's no point.

They're trying to dig their heels in there. But you know, hey, whatever, it's a slippage on their part. And so that's one way to look at it. And I think even on the in the new particular of the show, maybe maybe you're right, maybe there is the idea was from certain powers that this was resign us to complacency of like, oh, there's nothing we can do. But I would argue that the the theme and the the major themes of this

story kind of buck against that. Obviously we you know, obviously we just mentioned at the very end they go, oh, we can't get them all and then we just But I think most people even agree when that happens you feel bizarre. That feels bizarre. This feels not right. It doesn't feel like it fits. It doesn't seem to fit the characters. I mean, if it's Mard, I mean, although that kind of doesn't fit his character arc, like because I think by the end of his arc that should

the ideas that this would no longer be something. He's no longer supposed to be complacent, He's no longer supposed to be this person.

So it's almost like they they snuck in a secret meaning into the art that I think. I don't know, I think it matters, and I think people pay attention to analyze the show, they can get that from it and we can kind of get something positive out of it instead of something negative, regardless of how it was designed to be put out or what the the intent of it was. So but with that, Stephen, I think this has been a this has been a great episode.

up on the Decoding Culture Foundation website. That's the foundation that runs the magazine. It's all run by the guys at SI UP Cinema Bretton Thomas, So, I highly encourage everybody to go check out Cultural Engineering Studies. It's really fantastic magazine with a ton of really great researchers who did good work for it, Jason Horsley, Jay Dyer, Jamie Hanshaw, the Collins Brothers. So I've been working on film noir stuff, and yeah, I have a monograph that'll be out hopefully

this year, a philosophy monograph. But all my books you can find them at my publishers. You can also find them on my websitesevendelay dot com. And then I maintain a Twitter account, sort of minor small account, but I could always be reached there as well.

free RSS feed there. Also you can be a talking head on me and Austin's Already Dead show that we do on Tuesdays at nine thirty pm Eastern, The Collins Show the highest level also as my sponsors to read them off every episode as a thanks to you guys, My coast and Targging at Targing Toad also have at Approgate D's at c O V R A s A k at Underscoring Fit Zeal, Tim Tuttle At John and Cleebold, Will Bell's Delicious Blueberry RABBITI Wine the Big Family Show Tourmente then at I n W A R DAL l

O V E r uh.