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Feb. 25th, 2014 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionSpoilers kept vague, but again probably not vague enough:
Because episode 6 didn't alter the several forecasts. It did make some feel so obvious that I now hope they're wrong; if not, the show's inviting severe backlash. It'll probably get some anyway. Big Mystery shows return us to the sunglasses problem: a large number of the most beautiful faces you will ever see, at least in unphotoshoppable and unfilterable person, will be those of strangers wearing sunglasses. Once they remove the sunglasses they're usually still attractive but much less so, humanly so, and the disparity repels. This isn't always the case, just so often that you become more and more annoyed with yourself for continuing to not stop looking.
As for the Goodbye Columbus stuff it's doing - I kind of hope against hope at this point that this too will come together differently than expected. Mostly for variety's sake, as the (mostly sensible) PC digestif that's come to cap the misogyny horrorshow genre - and distinguish its products from misogynist horrorshows - is getting a bit overfamiliar. Getting PC some street cred by putting it in visible relation to what it most seeks to prevent - the stuff at the bottom of the slippery slope - was a neat attempt at cooption, but is in increasing danger of being permanently coopted itself, less by patriarchy per se than by the various ancient, largely amoral gods of narrative.
Cohle's anti-life, contra- (rather than anti) evolution perspective might offer a way out, but isn't in principle opposed to the PC alliance, and the way the show's events have been bearing it out so far any potential opposition has been evaded. Hating life itself tends to mean either a) hating death or b) hating love. Or both, sure, but at least in practice Cohle doesn't seem to mind the death part, or physical pain; at least in the context of the show, he cares most about how people betray one another. Inevitably so: their expectations don't match what will happen, yet they keep having those expectations, are hence constantly hurt, disappointed, outraged, confused. Expectations about what one will do oneself are off-base too, such that against one's own projections one will also hurt, disappoint, outrage etc. Combined with the anti-patriarchal mindset, for which the married male cheating propensity is essentially socially "constructed," this means females on the show basically only betray out of jealousy/vengeance (in all three of the instances shown so far the collateral damage to hapless male accomplices is what's emphasized, since counter-betrayal isn't betrayal but instead just deserts to most of us). The odd problem here is that if no one has a primal betrayal motive then largely accidental social arrangements are the only real problem with life. Which isn't true, among other objections one might make, though I guess the idea that social arrangements are ultimately determined by accident rather than human cooperation is scary enough, and a plausible tie-in with the anti-life argument.
One way the show might still legitimately disturb is by tying in the violence against children to Cohle's beliefs - not necessarily by making him guilty of such acts, but at least by suggesting that those who are might be taking a less humanistic approach to the recognition of the same void he does. Wishing to destroy children as a reaction to realizing they're what really, in several senses, destroy us. Historically, child sacrifice was presumably about giving the gods your most precious possession to prevent their destroying everything else. This would be very different - conceivably the sort of curdled religion someone who administers one of the various daylight religions, theistic or civic, might secretly turn to when they'd seen too much of their own to see it as other than hollow. Detective 2B's assumptions about Cohle may be preparing us to understand the motives of the real guilty party or parties.
Because episode 6 didn't alter the several forecasts. It did make some feel so obvious that I now hope they're wrong; if not, the show's inviting severe backlash. It'll probably get some anyway. Big Mystery shows return us to the sunglasses problem: a large number of the most beautiful faces you will ever see, at least in unphotoshoppable and unfilterable person, will be those of strangers wearing sunglasses. Once they remove the sunglasses they're usually still attractive but much less so, humanly so, and the disparity repels. This isn't always the case, just so often that you become more and more annoyed with yourself for continuing to not stop looking.
As for the Goodbye Columbus stuff it's doing - I kind of hope against hope at this point that this too will come together differently than expected. Mostly for variety's sake, as the (mostly sensible) PC digestif that's come to cap the misogyny horrorshow genre - and distinguish its products from misogynist horrorshows - is getting a bit overfamiliar. Getting PC some street cred by putting it in visible relation to what it most seeks to prevent - the stuff at the bottom of the slippery slope - was a neat attempt at cooption, but is in increasing danger of being permanently coopted itself, less by patriarchy per se than by the various ancient, largely amoral gods of narrative.
Cohle's anti-life, contra- (rather than anti) evolution perspective might offer a way out, but isn't in principle opposed to the PC alliance, and the way the show's events have been bearing it out so far any potential opposition has been evaded. Hating life itself tends to mean either a) hating death or b) hating love. Or both, sure, but at least in practice Cohle doesn't seem to mind the death part, or physical pain; at least in the context of the show, he cares most about how people betray one another. Inevitably so: their expectations don't match what will happen, yet they keep having those expectations, are hence constantly hurt, disappointed, outraged, confused. Expectations about what one will do oneself are off-base too, such that against one's own projections one will also hurt, disappoint, outrage etc. Combined with the anti-patriarchal mindset, for which the married male cheating propensity is essentially socially "constructed," this means females on the show basically only betray out of jealousy/vengeance (in all three of the instances shown so far the collateral damage to hapless male accomplices is what's emphasized, since counter-betrayal isn't betrayal but instead just deserts to most of us). The odd problem here is that if no one has a primal betrayal motive then largely accidental social arrangements are the only real problem with life. Which isn't true, among other objections one might make, though I guess the idea that social arrangements are ultimately determined by accident rather than human cooperation is scary enough, and a plausible tie-in with the anti-life argument.
One way the show might still legitimately disturb is by tying in the violence against children to Cohle's beliefs - not necessarily by making him guilty of such acts, but at least by suggesting that those who are might be taking a less humanistic approach to the recognition of the same void he does. Wishing to destroy children as a reaction to realizing they're what really, in several senses, destroy us. Historically, child sacrifice was presumably about giving the gods your most precious possession to prevent their destroying everything else. This would be very different - conceivably the sort of curdled religion someone who administers one of the various daylight religions, theistic or civic, might secretly turn to when they'd seen too much of their own to see it as other than hollow. Detective 2B's assumptions about Cohle may be preparing us to understand the motives of the real guilty party or parties.
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no subject
Date: 2014-02-26 03:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-26 03:49 am (UTC)The compassionate nihilist hero is probably the one thing about the show wholly new to tv, though I guess even he's not too many steps beyond various House-ish, Sherlock reboot-type characters. Misanthropic consequentialist atheists presumably like to see themselves on tv, but I'm not sure what others see in that - perhaps it's that people feel science-y, doctor-y types who hate institutional authority and can survive without illusions are the only trustworthy ones left to look out for them. What with government and religion and the military not looking so good this last decade or so. These heroes are sort of human embodiments of the internet, no?
They want to watch that, trust it, but not be it, perhaps? Or maybe it's what tv writers want to write, and viewers have just learned to tolerate it.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-26 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-28 06:43 pm (UTC)