"True Detective": Childress, Pan and the Wildermann

In view of the release, scheduled for January 14, of the third season of "True Detective", we propose to our readers the cycle of articles we curated for YAWP on the esoteric elements of the successful television series.


di Marco Maculotti
article originally published on YAWP: Journal of Literatures and Philosophies

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The first season of the television serial T, created and directed by the Italian-American Nic Pizzolatto, goes to insert itself as the last link of a particular "chain" that ideally unites different television series characterized by paranormal and esoteric topics and suggestions. We can mention as examples The Twilight Zone (known in Italy with the title On the edge of reality, released at the end of the XNUMXs), a myriad of mostly Anglophone mini-series from the XNUMXs and XNUMXs that can be framed in the folk-horror film (an excellent example is Children of the Stones), up to the nineties with the famous Twin Peaks by David Lynch and with the creations of Chris Carter (The X-Files eΒ Millennium) - just to name a few. We Italians have also contributed in some way to this special chain: think of television fiction Voices of the night by Pupi Avati, broadcast by Rai in an evidently golden period (mid-nineties) for this type of subject. In the panorama of recent years, few TV series can boast a narrative structure full of references, suggestions and esoteric quotations like the first season of T. In this cycle of articles we will try to analyze some of them.


Errol Childress: the Wildermann panic

We want to concentrate on the first appointment of this series of articles on the figure, central to the first season of T, of Errol Childress.

The first aspect of interest to mention about this character is the remarkable similarity that can be found between his portrait of identikit and the traditional symbolism of the green man, legendary figure of the European tradition personifying the strength of the plant sprouting power and of wild nature and panic [1] - a figure that is often confused with that of the "Wild Man" or "Man of the Wood" (known in Germany as Wildermann), which turns out to be a further anthropomorphication [2].

Childress's identikit portrays him exactly as a functional copy of these figures of myth and folklore: green ears and leaves decorate his face ("My idea is that maybe he had leaves caught in his ears", says Rust Cohle in the eighth episode). Her whole face appears as if transfigured by a sort of vegetable waterfall; flowers or fruits seem to adorn her head. Even Childress's physical appearance relates him toΒ morphological stereotype of the Wild Man, the appearance of which includes "Sturdiness, thick hair, unkempt beard, tall stature, almost always hypertrichosis " [3]. It also matches the fact that the Wild Man Β«Despite choosing the escape [...] he would be endowed with a supernatural physical strength, capable of granting him the opportunity to perform actions impossible for normal men ". In an episode of the series, a witness calls Childress a "giant," and it is curious that the term has been used in many cultures as a synonym for Wild Man.

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Carcosa

The "panic communion" on the way to Carcosa

Analyzed in the perspective of depth psychology of the Jungian-Hillmanian school, the archetypal figure of green man/ Wild Man conveys a feeling of nostalgia for an ancestral primordial age in which humanity lived its needs with extreme naturalness, however wild or "amoral" [4] they could be, in some sort of "Panic communion" with the cosmos understood as an organic whole ("Bread"). It follows that the archetype of the Wild Man can also symbolize - and especially in the modern world [5] - the flourishing of the primitive, lower, dark part of the human being: the unconscious in its regressive and dangerous aspect that Jung defined "Shadow". Precisely the emergence of this terrifying Shadow, which Errol Childress has been carrying around for decades of abuse, plunges him into a world not yet civilized, savage, panic, in which he can give free rein to his antisocial impulses.

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Some authors [6] they noticed how the Wild Man somehow "He walked [a] a more painful and difficult road to salvation: the path of matter blocked in its most primitive dimension, without the worry and persistence of the illusion of reason and progress" [7]. This would also seem to be the path followed by Childress, a "initiatory path" extremely winding and dangerous, which Hillman in his Essay on PanΒ defines [8] la "Therapeutic path of fear", which "Leads outside the city walls, in the open countryside, the countryside of Pan".

In an interview with return, Glenn Flesher - the actor who plays Childress on the TV series - says:

"[Nic Pizzolatto] told me something really useful [to get into character] [...]: my [Errol Childress's] mind is like a frightening house of mirrors, a maze of horrors the result of decades of abuse. "

Same Childress dwelling fully supports this important observation: over the years he has given life, intertwining branches, leaves and skeletons, to a real labyrinthine tangle which, on the one hand, archetypically suggests the idea of ​​a tangled and disordered mind [9], thus representing theexternalization of his mindset, on the other hand it also conveys a yearning for a return to a pre-civilized, pre-human world (Carcosa), in which it is possible to stage sacrifices of women and children without incurring punishment from the authorities. There Carcosa by Childress is very reminiscent of Arcadia, the original place of the god Pan, who - to use Hillman's words [10] -Β "is a place both physical and psychic. The "dark caves" where he could be encountered [...] they were dilated by the Neo-Platonists to indicate the material recesses in which the impulse resides, the dark holes of the psyche from which desire and panic arise ". An equivalent symbol - we come to think - of the terrifying one Minotaur (who shares nature with the Wild Man only partially human) in the center of the Knossos labyrinth.

In this meticulously recreated setting, Childress makes one modern transformationΒ werewolfΒ [11] to give free rein to his atavistic impulses: like the Wild Man, he is the one who "It has reached an evolutionary level similar to the others, but decides to return to its origin, lose the" waste "of civilization and find its ecosystem in the wild space of nature" [12]. The words of Massimo Centini they are illuminating about it, as they could perfectly frame Childress's perverse mind in T [13]:

Β«The eternal evil finds in the wild figure a suitable refuge, because through the body no longer human it obtains an extension of its possibilities of action which at that point become objectively fearful for man. "

He moved away from the human consortium - in a similar, and even more clear-cut way, than his fellow atrocities Reggie and Dewall Ledoux - to lead a pre-civilized existence e pre-human, Childress is therefore a "double functional" of the Wild Man, one "A kind of primordial being, [...] with traits that in certain narratives lead back to the animal; almost always lives at the limits of society and its attitudes, with respect to the "civil" man aggregated to the community " [14] they are radically different from it: an outcast who lives on the periphery of civilized society. He still writes james hillman in his illuminating essay [15]:

"The lonely goat [Pan] is in fact both Uniqueness and isolation, a cursed nomadic existence in deserted places, which his appetite makes more and more deserted [16], and his song, "tragedy". "

Although in the light of day - during the shifts of work for the parish - Errol Childress is part of the civil consortium, when in the evening he returns to his hut, away from prying eyes he falls back into a ontological condition pre-human: that is, it returns to world panic preceding civilization human, a world that absolutely ignored any conception of morality or sin.

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The King in Yellow

THEhillbillies in contact with different myths

There is another evident aspect in the plot of T that archetypically links Errol Childress to these only partially anthropomorphic figures of myth and folklore: he is a hillbillies ("Man of the hills"), a denomination - now almost disused - that in rural America of the twentieth century was used to indicate the most backward segment of the Anglophone population, descended from those pioneers who between the seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century arrived in the "New World" and that as the generations passed they had less and less contact with the increasingly civilized population of the large urban centers.

However, as the ethnologist was able to document Vance Randolph [17],hillbillies he is not simply an ignorant savage: in his opinion, in fact, the man of the hills is Β«Secret, sensitive, through something that the inhabitant of the city can only imagine, but it is not a simple one. His mind moves in a tremendous backward system of signs and omens, and esoteric wishesΒ». His twisted mind - we could say referring to what has been said above - is comparable to a labyrinth, in which Childress moves almost moved by aΒ atavistic and suprapersonal consciousness. This is because, as Hillman points out [18],Β "Pan's experience escapes the control of the volitional subject and his egoic psychology".

Randolph's studies of rural Appalachian folklore also inspired the science fiction writer HP Lovecraft, which, in his stories, he often makes appear characters β€œDegraded, full of immorality, vices and customs at consanguineous marriagesΒ» [19] - just like Childress, who in T lives with a relative in an amoral situation that closely resembles that typical ofΒ hillbillies degenerates of the "deepest" America.

In the interview already mentioned a Vulture, Flesher comments [20]:

β€œTogether with Ann Dowd we have found a particular understanding between these two brothers who live together in a different era from all over the world, in a house immersed in rot. Two grown brothers, left alone to watch old movies and lead a perverse life. It wasn't Errol who created all this and you understand when, at the end of the seventh episode, he says: "My family has been here for a long, long time", indicating an endless cycle of violence. I do not mean that she is purely a victim of events, but she is certainly the product of that infinite cycle. From the scars on her face we understand that she did not have an easy life, which does not justify her actions, but makes them understandable as well as, for example, her sudden changes from one character to another or hiding. of her in full view. Her mind is capable of reasoning, but in a completely atypical way. "

Also, on demand "Is Errol more of a refined psychopath or a heinous and ruthless big boy?" Flesher replies:

β€œI think it's a mix of both. It is a clearly mentally unstable element, damaged, but capable of coming into contact with different myths. At the same time he is a grown man, marked by sexual and ritualistic abuse. At the cost of sounding like McConaughey, his mind is a complex and complicated labyrinth. His life, the Yellow King and so on. He is crazy. "

Similarly, speaking of the mythical function of the god Pan, James Hillman [21] argues that "Lasciviousness [...] it is secondary, and fertility too; they are born from the desiccated desire of the solitary nature, of one who is always an abandoned child and who in countless couplings never forms a couple ". Also in this case, the portrait of the panic archetype appears superimposable to the character of Errol Childress in T.

Let us therefore emphasize, in conclusion, this last observation: while not denying nature "unstable" of the psyche and of the modus operandi of Childress, the actor who plays him also highlights two other more difficult sides to see. He would be, first and foremost, a kind of victim-puppet, product of a "Endless cycle of violence". Secondly, you will see his deviated psychic state (the "Winding mind"), a consequence of this cycle of abuse, allowed him to connect with a world other: process of de-humanization to which it has been subjected over the years it has made it "able to to come in in contact with different myths ". From this last perspective, his deviation and depravity can be related to the lasciviousness of Pan and his retinue of Sileni and Fauns, or even - if we wanted to go further - to the primordial nakedness of Adam and Eve before the expulsion from Eden.

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Errol Childress

Note:

  1. From the Hellenic god Pan.
  2. See M. Maculotti, From Pan to the Devil: the 'demonization' and the removal of ancient European cults, AXIS mundi, 12 December 2016.
  3. M. Centini, The beasts of the Devil (Rusconi, Milan, 1998), p. 70.
  4. In the eyes of us contemporaries, of course.
  5. According to James Hillman, "The repressed gods return as the archetypal nucleus of symptomatic complexes [...] But we can go further, and conclude that Pan is still alive, even if we only experience it through psychopathological disorders, since his other ways of manifesting himself have been lost in our culture ". J. Hillman, Essay on Pan (Adelphi, Milan, 2008), p. 47.
  6. A. Mordini, The mystery of the Yeti (Cantagalli, Siena, 2011).
  7. C. Lapucci, preface to A. Mordini, The mystery of the Yeti (Cantagalli, Siena, 2011), pp. 42-43.
  8. J. Hillman, Essay on Pan (Adelphi, Milan, 2008), p. 74.
  9. La "Winding mind" that in Hellenic literature (see, for example, the Hymns Or fi ci) belongs to Kronos, Prometheus and other titanic figures of Greek mythology.
  10. J. Hillman, op. cit., p. 50.
  11. See M. Maculotti, Metamorphosis and ritual battles in the myth and folklore of the Eurasian populations, AXIS mundi, May 18, 2016.
  12. M. Centini, The wild man (Hobbies, 1989), p. 17.
  13. Β Ibidem, p. 35.
  14. Β Ibidem, p. 16.
  15. Β J. Hillman, op. cit., p. 54.
  16. Similar to the Wendigo of the folkloric tradition of the natives of the northernmost belt of North America. See M. Maculotti, Psychosis in the shamanic vision of the Algonquians: The Windigo, AXIS mundi, 14 December 2015.
  17. V. Randolph, The Ozark Superstitions, cit. in A. Circles, HP Lovecraft. The cultΒ secret (Aradia, Puegnago sul Garda, BS, 2015), p. 39.
  18. J. Hillman, op. cit., p. 52.
  19. A. Circles, op. cit., p. 45.
  20. Here too we return to the discourse previously introduced on "Winding mind" of Childress, similar to a labyrinthine tangle.
  21. J. Hillman, op. cit., pp. 54-55.

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9 comments on β€œ"True Detective": Childress, Pan and the Wildermann"

  1. Crazy, I have recently subscribed to your newsletter and I just finished reviewing the first season of True Detective just a couple of days ago, and it crossed my mind to write to you just to ask you for an article about it. Now I receive your email, it seems that you have read my mind! Thanks and congratulations for your work. Good evening, Giacomo Taggi>

    1. Hi James, and thanks for the comment! Remaining in the context of the Jungian, we could rightly speak of "synchronicity" πŸ™‚ The articles in any case are from 2017-2018, we are also republishing them here in view of the new season. Great for you who have just reviewed the first one, so that you can fully appreciate them! The remaining three articles will be published in the next few days, respectively on the 6th, 9th and 12th. Happy reading and good continuation!

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