True Detective Follow Up BONUS ENTRY

Having written my own review yesterday, I started looking at the reviews and analyses other people have written about True Detective. This negative review on io9 of the final episode complains the villain is revealed to be a white trash stereotype, adding, "Then he traipses over to his mansion, speaking in a variety of accents for no discernible reason," forgetting apparently that this is something white trash stereotypes don't do. But more importantly, the author of the article didn't realise the character was putting on just one accent, specifically James Mason's accent--we had seen him watching Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest in which Mason plays the villain. And that movie--and especially the scene the character's watching--is about a man who finds himself in a lot of trouble because the villains presume he is not Roger Thornhill, advertising man, but George Kaplan, secret government agent. It's an identity Thornhill is forced into against his will. Then consider the villain of True Detective's line to Cohle when he's trying to kill him, about Cohle "taking his mask off". But of course, Cohle can't do that because he's a True Detective. It's the villains of True Detective who are hypocrites and phoneys.

Also, in criticising the very end of the episode, the author of the article says the end of David Lynch's Blue Velvet is played for irony. While there is an irony in the pretty, peaceful Lumberton neighbourhood having a lot of disgusting insects underneath, the point of the mechanical bird at the end holding a big insect in its mouth is not to suggest there's a phoniness in Jeffrey and Sandy's happiness at the end. The point is that those two have learned to accept darkness as part of reality and an integral part of the beauty of reality that they love.