On True Detective and Smarm

The cultural fetish object that has filled Breaking Bad's enormous void so far in 2014 is without a doubt HBO's True Detective. The Internet is overrun with theories, speculation, and gushing praise from critics and general audiences alike. It has, after only five episodes, reached Lost and Breaking Bad levels of fan obsession, critical attention, and overwrought analysis of any minor detail that could be considered a precious, mystery-revealing Easter Egg. 

True Detective is an entertaining, often riveting show, anchored by compelling star performances. What it is not, however, is even half as deep or wrought with meaning as the Internet wants it to be. Take the national fervor over the identity of the Yellow King, the main villain of the show, whose existence we've known about for two episodes, and who was announced by an interrogated character we'd never met before as if there were supposed to be some meaning behind it. 

Part of the fascination with the Yellow King was in how McConaughey sold his reaction to it, by freaking out as only he can at the mere mention of the Yellow King's name. This, again, was the first time we had any idea that someone named the Yellow King existed. Since then, there have been maybe a handful of hints at the crimes of this Yellow King, and fervent speculation as to his/her identity. The Yellow King, remember, replaced Reggie LeDoux as the main villain of the show, another character who had maybe three minutes of screen time, and who also captured the national mind, although somewhat less inexplicably, given how creepy he was. We know less about the Yellow King than we did about Ledoux, and we knew almost nothing about Ledoux. 

The problem is that there is nothing to go on, but we want there to be. If you bring this up, people will insult your intelligence or taste, and say you just don't get it or haven't been paying close enough attention. You will be ridiculed for not mistaking a void for content. And not just content, but top shelf content. 

This, it seems to me, is an interesting example of smarm at work in our culture in a major way. What is smarm? Tom Scocca's recent but already kind of seminal essay spells it out pretty devastatingly: "Smarm is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. Smarm is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. Smarm disapproves." Smarm is a "content-free piety" wherein "Debate begins where the important parts of the debate have ended." The debate, in this case, being whether the plot of True Detective is as meaty as we would seem to like it to be. That debate is unallowable. (Of course, that this essay about detached disapproval appeared on Gawker is about as rich as it gets).

The way that the Yellow King has become a mythical figure out of all proportion to any established development or story-based content is a fascinating performance of smarm. It reveals how desperate we are for some kind of actual meaning, purpose, solidity, or you know, real content, that a cultural product with all of the trappings of those qualities is seized upon as its paragon. We have found a perfect totem for the lack of content to be celebrated as the best possible piece of content, and we will defend this endlessly. The basic self-deception involved in this maneuvering is perhaps why the Internet is tying itself in knots analyzing every coffee mug for meaning--it requires a lot of effort to make something that isn't there appear to be there. We are endlessly industrious in grafting content and substance onto a frame that we have identified as being suitable for holding it. 

"Smarm disapproves." What does smarm disapprove of? In this case, it disapproves of the disapproval of its false imputation of content. Smarm, as speaking through the True Detective fetishism, says, "How dare you not approve of viewers grafting meaning onto places where it isn't?"