Suck It, Atlantic Reviewers!

By Guy

I kid the Atlantic reviewing team, really!  Well, kinda.  In their multi-reviewer conversation of ep. 6 (True Detective’s First Disappointing Episode), one of the reviewers pans a particular shot as being to obvious and heavy handed in symbolism.

In a way, Chris, you’ve been too kind on this episode. Because you missed the most laughable part of it: the devil figurine on Beth’s dresser, which the camera cuts to multiple times during that interminable screw scene. Get it? Marty’s sinning!

The image they are talking about is this one:

Sure, on first glance you could say that is rather obvious.  Devil, Angel!  Devil in focus!  How cute and obvious!  But, I think they miss something big.  It’s all about the Crystal figurine for me.  Girl pointed out it looks a bit like one of the weird ‘monster cherubs’ from the school:

It is very creepy.  Also, to me it is a great and potent symbolic synthesis of many of the themes of the show.  Here we have two very stereotypical morality figures:  The Devil and the Angel.  Not only are they stereotypical, they are damned cute…too precious by half.  Have we found the creative team of True Detective to be that cute so far?  No.  No we haven’t.  The Atlantic reviewers (and pretty much anyone else I’ve seen mention this shot) all ignore the crystal figurine entirely.  But to me, it is the key of the shot.  It is faceless, alien looking, and actually IN FRONT of the other two, and at the left hand side (typically the place of darkness or evil).  So, here is True Detective saying (I think):  Our concepts of Good and Evil are trite and juvenile…the real menace is much more alien and hiding in plain sight.  Plus, as girl pointed out, check out how it looks if you cut it off at the head and focus on the reflections:

If you look a the folded hands, you can see eyes on either side, and if you just work a tiiiiny bit, it looks a lot like an alien god.  {Cthulhu:  Great Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, that’s ME!   Am I going to get royalty checks for this?}  Now, you could chalk that up to Pareidolia (seeing figures and faces that aren’t there) but I think it’s pretty compelling.  I’m very confident that the angel figuring is highly significant.

This ties into another suspicion of mine, that Beth (the T-mobile girl whom Marty and Ruste first met as a teenage prostitute) was sent to frame Marty.  Why would I think that?  Who would do such a thing?  The bar Marty steps into is called The Fox and the Hound.  This is an aristocratic game, played by the very wealthy and connected, all about hunting, cornering and killing it’s prey.  Right there you have a good tie in.  If you look to The Invisibles by Grant Morrison (which has without doubt cast a few shadows in this show) there is a subplot involving a group of very wealthy powerful men who kidnap women and hunt them for sport.   Oh, and they also sacrifice them to bring about the RETURN OF THE OLD GODS!  Does that sound familiar? {Cthulhu:  Sure it does, that sounds like my weekend.}  You may find that teneous, but I don’t.  I think the name of the bar is very significant.  Now, who and why?  Well, I’ve long suspected that Marty’s father-in-law is connected to the cult of the Yellow King.  I’ll lay that out later.  I also suspect that he has involved the Hart girls in the cult somehow (hence many of the Yellow King/Cult references around the Hart household).  Now, remember when Marty screwed up the first time?  Where did Maggie take the kids?  To the father-in-laws house. If the father-in-law wanted those kids back for his nefarious purpose, what would he have to do?  He’d have to get Marty out of the picture.   So, tempt him again, and let it play out.   This is just what happens.  I mean, did you listen to Beth’s speech to him, to lure him into bed?  Pure cult talk, in my view.

Thus, when we see the figurines, the real menace in the scene isn’t Marty succumbing to temptation (the Devil figurine), it isn’t the loss of his attempt at virtue (the in-shadow Angel figuring) it is the Crystalline alien strange-almost-angel figurine, hiding in plain sight, hiding so well, no one even wants to see it.

Except Girl and I of course.