New Hollywood: A Ligottian Nightmare
In the wake of the new Trump presidency there have been several attempts by “alternative” political forces to create new institutions and a new political arrangement that seemingly challenges the entrenched liberal status quo. It feels as though all at once people in power, celebrities, foreign politicians, etc. have decided to put their foot down in opposition to the “woke”. Many have pointed out that this is largely a tech-libertarian movement that hijacked nationalist populism from earlier years.
One expression of this is the “True to Texas” initiative that was launched just 9 days after Trump took office. Actors Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton, and Renée Zellweger along with True Detective creator Nick Pizzolato released an ad calling for the Texas government to invest in a film and TV production renaissance in Texas as a way of competing with Hollywood and other states. “The New Hollywood.” McConaughey and Harrelson reprised features of their characters from True Detective in the skit. “Hollywood is flat circle, Wood.”
“This industry is like somebody’s memory of an industry and the memory is fading.”
Actors like McConaughey and Harrelson perfectly fit the new “alternative movement.” At the height of his popularity around 2020, McConaughey was seen as a potential centrist populist figure that could run for office at some point. Harrelson has always been more politically libertarian. As was discussed in The Eric July Grift celebrities will often turn to “conservative” alternative media not because of ideological reasons, but because they’re washed up and can’t get a job in the mainstream. This could also be the case here with some of the actors involved.
It’s remarkable that a show like True Detective has become the centerpiece of this project. There are plenty of good reasons why so many people related to True Detective, including the depth and charisma of the two main characters, Marty and Rust. It’s also a monumental exploration of some of the massive themes that have dominated political and philosophical discourse for decades- the horrors of nihilism, industry, the destruction of middle America, the eternal destruction and decline of all things. The run-down factories, the abandoned houses, the dark corners of the swamp world.
“There’s all kinds of ghettos in the world.”
“It’s all one ghetto, man. Giant gutter in outer space.”
“I think human consciousness was a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law… We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self. A secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programed with total assurance that we are each SOMEBODY, when in fact everybody is nobody… I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming. Stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction. One last midnight. Brothers and sisters. Opting out of a raw deal.”
In 2014, sometime after the release of True Detective, fans of the contemporary horror writer Thomas Ligotti accused the show of plagiarism.
Did the writer of “True Detective” plagiarize Thomas Ligotti and others?
It’s clear that many of the concepts and phrasing of Rust’s rants in the show come directly from Ligotti’s work- especially his prose writing in Conspiracy Against The Human Race.
“We know that nature has veered into the supernatural by fabricating a creature that cannot and should not exist by natural law, and yet does.”
“…the illusion of being a somebody among somebodies as well as for the substance we see, or think we see, in the world…”
“…human existence is a tragedy that need not have been were it not for the intervention in our lives of a single, calamitous event: the evolution of consciousness—parent of all horrors”
“…in the black-foaming gutters and back alleys of paradise, in the dank windowless gloom of some galactic cellar, in the hollow pearly whorls found in sewerlike seas, in starless cities of insanity, and in their slums . . .”
Ligotti is a fascinating modern writer that explores the horror of the abyss of nihilism and materialism, expressing a dark genius on par with Edgar Allen Poe or HP Lovecraft. His experiences living in rundown parts of Detroit directly inspire the images of industrial despair. Conspiracy Against the Human Race was published in 2010. In this work he advocates that the only response to the absurdity and misery of both consciousness and existence itself is to remove the human race from existence by ending reproduction. These concepts are brought to life through dozens of short stories published by Ligotti over the years.
In “The Town Manager,” a town of people discovers that the town manager has gone missing. This has happened to many town managers in the past. Every time they’re required to go through the motions of trying to find him, but they never can, and a new town manager always shows up. The town managers always manage the town in seemingly personal and arbitrary ways. One town manager creates a new rail system, and the next one dismantles it. The newest manager set up an office in a shack on the outskirts of town with the word “manager” scratched on the door. Nobody sees the manager, but they get orders from him on scraps of paper that he leaves outside. Those that don’t obey end up dead. The manager begins to demand that the entire town be transformed into a giant carnival attraction. Neighborhoods are sloppily converted into silly neighborhoods with ridiculous alleyways and roads that lead to nowhere. A few people from other towns come by to see the lousy attractions but eventually the manager also disappears.
In “I Have A Special Plan For This World” a dark, bustling corporate office building in a city filled with a mysterious yellow fog begins to undergo changes in management when their supervisors are discovered to be murdered. A faceless upper manager begins to fire all the employees one by one and replace them with homeless people. The homeless people start living inside the building and turn it into a dump. The narrator declares that this is his mission for every building across the world.
In “The Small People”, the narrator is accused of being a bigot after expressing hatred for “the small people”- a mysterious race of disturbing puppet people that are seen living parallel to humans. He follows one of the small people home to discover them building a “small town” where all the puppets pretend to do construction, direct traffic, sell wars, etc. They go from place to place polluting the land with their pretend towns.
In “The Clown Puppet”, the narrator finds himself in a world of nonsense. He stares outside the window of his job at the butcher shop across the street, advertising “BEEF. PORK. GOAT.” A disturbing clown puppet begins appearing to him every night. In one direction he sees the “meat nonsense” and in the other, the “Puppet nonsense.”
“Over and over I read the words BEEF-PORK-GOAT, BEEF-PORK-GOAT, filling my head with meat nonsense, which was infinitely less outrageous than the puppet nonsense with which I was now confronted.”
These stories describe our world of nihilism. In our current political, economic, and cultural landscape, it’s probable that many people feel that they are nothing more than dummy people building dummy nonsense towns to nowhere. The ongoing scandal surrounding “USAID” exemplifies this. Millions of dollars spent on programs like producing musicals to spread diversity in Serbia, promoting tourism in Egypt, or teaching Moroccans how to sell pottery. Underneath the most sophisticated and powerful government in the world sits a great pile of nonsense. A great network of nonsense puppet towns leading to nothing and going nowhere.
With the new Trump administration and DOGE we have Elon Musk as our new town manager. As I wrote about in The Naturalist Paradox, Musk is motivated by an equally absurd form of nihilism. A desire to turn the Earth into an engine- a nonsense machine that will someday figure out the right question to ask. A desperate, intergalactic, world historical attempt to deny material reality from the world’s richest man.
The Israel situation also illustrates this organized political plan to nowhere. Writing for The Times, Hadley Freeman wrote on January 19th that Israel’s recent war was a military victory but a reputational defeat.
“while Israel has unquestionably won the war militarily, it has lost it reputationally. And for the Jewish diaspora, that makes things — can you guess? — complicated in a way we’ve never experienced before… even though Hamas was transparent in its murderous intentions and acts on October 7, it won global hearts and minds. Western politicians may still side with Israel, but they are the older generation; the younger generation that has grown up in the era of Netanyahu and anti-Zionism and identity politics sees things very differently. How does the future look for Jews? Complicated.”
Despite declaring this reputational defeat, the Gaza dumpster fire continues as Trump announces contradictory and implausible plans for US involvement in Israel. Israel plays the role of a political actor while being completely dependent on the US. They make Jews in the west uncomfortable and paralyzed with their moral contradiction. The eternal Israel nonsense.
Without a healthy, coherent race, there is no healthy coherent culture and likewise no healthy, coherent political system. American film and the rise of Hollywood are largely the products of either Anglo or Jewish racial identity. Men like Orson Welles or Steven Spielberg come from a very distinct, exclusive context. They had a sense of themselves among their people, and a sense of their people among the world. This informs and inspires their art. The films that they make depict a particular character and texture that can’t be replicated today.
True Detective came out ten years ago. It’s fascinating that this piece of media is one of the few that maintained popularity over time. Now it’s being used as a beacon for a new, alternative, right wing? TEXAS Hollywood. At the end of the show (SPOILER ALERT) the existential angst of Rust is resolved through a moral cop-out (no pun intended). The duo resolves that despite the universe being an eternal recurrence of nightmare, men like themselves make it brighter. “Light versus Dark.” In Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Ligotti condemns pessimistic writers for always trying to find a resolution or happy ending for their ideas. Ligotti is consistent- the absurdity of existence still remains, despite any effort to make it “better.”
There are potential racialist or subjectivist solutions to Ligotti’s nightmare reality. However, as time goes on and the slave revolution in morality continues its triumph, the world does seem to look more and more like the beautiful hell on earth depiction in the opening credits of True Detective. Men like McConaughey and Harrelson, like their characters Rust and Marty, have good intentions and it’s possible that something good could come out of this project. The commercial for “True to Texas” pokes fun at Rust’s dark existential monologue from the show but perhaps the show, and this commercial, don’t take Ligotti seriously enough and fail to appreciate the darkness they are toying with- the darkness that attracted so many to the show in the first place. The puppet nonsense remains- staring from the corner.
