The first season of Nic Pizzolatto’s True Detective (2014) sets a precedent for the future of the American Gothic, an aesthetic that must evolve along with the American landscape. True Detective yields to the American Gothic (where the origins of the Gothic in ruined castles must recreate itself in a landscape ruined by other secrets), and continues to reframe and expand this genre when cultural consumers demand monsters among us and true crime. True Detective navigates the American Gothic, which “patrols the line between waking and dreams” (Crow 2), as Rustin Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) finds himself on this line through the 17 year story arch. As the Gothic aims to expose “the repressed, what is hidden, unspoken, deliberately forgotten” (Crow 2), Rust and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) struggle with exposing the repressed, hidden, unspoken, and forgotten secrets of the Louisiana bayou. Furthermore, these central characters, Rust and Marty, struggle with their own secrets that are repressed, hidden, unspoken, and forgotten—serving as Gothic microcosms of the larger story.
By taking traditional ideals of the Gothic in British literary tradition, American artists and writers transformed the genre for a new landscape when it began to appear in American literature, art, film, and television. True Detective continues to transform this genre and pave the way for the future of American Gothic to continue to be a literature (or rather, artwork) of “darkness and the grotesque in the land of light and affirmation” (Fiedler 29) by redefining the boundaries of the genre as the cultural and literal landscape of America changes, and as preferences for entertainment create new demands, as well.
About the presenterWesley Scott McMasters
Wesley Scott McMasters is Assistant Professor of American Literature to 1850 and Creative Writing at Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City, Tennessee.