Beau Mullen
The second season of True Detective has its feet planted firmly in the tradition of noir. Moral and administrative corruptions abound, allegiances are always shaky and uncertain, and the powerful are free to indulge in perversion and vice. The protagonists of the second season, particularly at its start, all appear to be acting to some degree in self-interest—rather than to correct an injustice—in trying to solve the homicide at the center of the story. The grim setting and violent, reprehensible actions on the part of protagonists and antagonists alike could lead one to the conclusion that, at least in the bleak worldview of the series, justice is not only indefinable but also ultimately unrealizable.
It is not surprising, then, that the narrative of the second season portrays the relationship between law (and codes of conduct generally) and justice cynically; law and its enforcement seem to be divorced from any conception of justice. Furthermore, the law seems to be primarily used as a tool for maintaining the status quo of exploitation. Given this cynical view of law and justice, it is equally unsurprising that we should find in the characters of Frank Semyon (a career criminal and ruthless killer) and Ray Velcoro (a substance-abusing corrupt police officer) an unusual exposition of virtue ethics and retributive justice. It is the conflict between these spheres of justice that leads to the ultimate tragedy of the second season.
The conception of the law as divorced from any kind of moral grounding is similar, but not identical, to the theory of law held by Austrian legal theorist Hans Kelsen (1881–1973). Not only did Kelsen see law as divorced from morality but he also saw justice itself as an irrational ideal.1 Furthermore, he argued, due to this irrationality, justice is not something that can truly be known.
In contrast to the ideal of justice, law, according to Kelsen, is a specific form of social motivation and does not necessarily spring from morality or justice. Law is validated by being handed down by recognizable authority. Throughout the second season of True Detective, the viewer sees the law—be it the enforcement of actual codified law, the informal and corrupt order of Vinci, or the order imposed by organized crime—enforced to ensure that the individuals subject to it act in the manner prescribed by whomever holds authority. This is law at its most basic—social regulation to ensure domestic peace. The characters of True Detective largely obey whatever order is imposed upon them to avoid punishment, which Kelsen referred to as “sanction.” Kelsen referred to this type of rationale for obeying the law as “indirect motivation,” which he saw as the most effective method of social motivation.2 Its inversion is “direct motivation,” which relies on the individual to obey the law because its principles have been internalized.3 The only coercion that is applied is psychological. Kelsen was highly skeptical of the effectiveness of direct motivation.
Central to Kelsen's theory of law are the concepts of delict and sanction. A delict is an unlawful act, the violation of a legal norm, and it is the antecedent of the sanction. In Kelsen's view, the delict is a wrongful act solely because the established legal order attaches a sanction to such behavior. Moral, ethical, and political concerns are irrelevant in this line of reasoning. Furthermore, in Kelsen's highly relativistic philosophy, roughly all legal orders are legitimate since they are all simply coercive orders that seek to regulate human behavior through the threat of sanction. The goal of such legal orders is social peace and limited violence.
Kelsen's jurisprudence explicitly refers to official norms, such as legal order imposed by the state. True Detective, though, deals largely with unofficial legal norms, such as those of a corrupt city and of criminal organizations. Still, the logic of an amoral order consisting of regulation through sanction of delicts is useful in coming to understand the culture of relativism in which our protagonists find themselves trapped. Ultimately, the protagonists of True Detective find the normative orders untenable. For example, Bezzerides, because of her romantic involvement with a co-worker (a delict, since it is against established departmental rules) is sanctioned with a demotion. This sanction is given despite her moral innocence. A more striking example is the murder of the informant prostitute Irina at the hands of the Mexican cartel members. When he discovers the woman's body, Semyon, who is himself no stranger to violence, questions why this was done. The reply from the smirking cartel member is brutally simple: she was killed for having spoken to a police officer—an obvious delict in the order of a criminal regime. Despite her transgression being minimal and causing the cartel no obvious complications, they saw fit to impose the most extreme of sanctions to maintain their imposition of order and to show Semyon, the target of their extortion, just how serious they are about maintaining their order.
The problem each of the systems presents to the protagonists, and hopefully the viewer, is that they are ultimately arbitrary and serve only those at the top of the power pyramid. The arbitrary nature of the orders, coupled with a lack of traceability to any formal norm, such as a written code or constitution (the existence of a chain of validity is also central to Kelsen's theory of law), results in diminished efficacy and violence. It is these relativistic and arbitrary orders that our protagonists rebel against, seeking instead to bring about solutions to the problems presented to them that are rooted in moral judgment and, ultimately, a sense of justice instead of blind adherence to an established order. Woodrugh, Bezzerides, and Velcoro disobey their higher-ups and effectively flee their power, and Semyon chooses to challenge those who hold power over him. All four, albeit to varying degrees, choose to make these potentially suicidal transgressions, acting in accordance with some moral code of conduct. In particular, a common motive among the protagonists is punishing those who have committed heinous crimes on the basis of the wrongness of the acts, not simply because they were a violation of a norm.
A central conflict in True Detective's second season is the tension between the impulse for revenge and the impulse for the more noble retributive justice. Revenge is typically based on an emotional response to a perceived wrong, and it aims for some cathartic relief or even the pleasure of the revenge seeker. Retribution, on the other hand, is based on the moral desert of those being proportionately punished and the idea that such punishment itself is a moral good. As legal scholar Michael Moore describes it, retributivism is “the view that we ought to punish offenders because and only because they deserve to be punished.”4
Velcoro begins the season as a proponent of revenge—he kills the man whom he believes to be his wife's rapist. Yet, by the finale, the now changed Velcoro dissuades (initially) Lenny Osterman from taking his vengeance out on Holloway at the train station, convincing him instead that it would be better to see Holloway and his perpetrators exposed and presumably brought to justice through official means. Velcoro is in effect proposing to Lenny that, instead of the impassioned, violent (and ultimately self-destructive) revenge that Lenny has planned, the more appropriate course of action is one that exposes the culpability of the wrongful actors and makes them susceptible to the rebuke of society and the state.
A less perfect retribution is seen in Semyon's killing of Blake. It is imperfect first and foremost because Semyon himself is far from a legitimate actor: he is a criminal doling out punishment for an act—killing—that he himself has committed in the past. In fact, there is no empirical difference between his retributive act of punishment and the act he is punishing. He is punishing Blake's act of killing Stan by killing Blake. Second, Semyon has more than one motive for taking the life of Blake. In addition to punishing him for killing Semyon's subordinate Stan, Semyon has realized that Blake has betrayed him to Osip and his co-conspirators. Killing Blake serves the pragmatic purposes of removing Blake from the conspiracy and demonstrating to Semyon's remaining allies that he is still capable of decisive, ruthless action, not to mention deterring future betrayal. The line between revenge and retribution is also very blurry, given Semyon's apparent rage while interrogating Blake. Despite these considerations, Semyon's act could be characterized as retributive justice for two reasons: first, because the moral culpability of Blake is emphasized as the reason for the act of punishment and, second, because Semyon deliberately articulates his rebuke and wants to make sure that it is received by Blake. The fact that Blake receives and comprehends the rebuke is apparently just as important as his being punished.
Semyon could have easily sneaked up behind the unsuspecting Blake and shot him, had Nails dispatch him, or, more strategically, used him to deceive Osip. Instead, Semyon confronts Blake with the evidence of his misdeeds and interrogates him to find the last bits of information regarding his betrayals. Finally, as Blake lies bleeding to death at Semyon's feet, Semyon relates to him that he once believed that the young man had potential and that that was why he took the former fake-pill-pusher under his wing. This articulation finalizes Semyon's rebuke of Blake and communicates his ultimate disappointment.
Semyon's actions in this instance are in accordance with the model of retributivism put forth by German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Blake, as a member of Semyon's organization, which is itself a pseudo-polity with Semyon as its figurehead, is owed, as a member of this polity, the responsibility to be confronted and punished in a communicative manner. In Hegel's version of retributivism, the transgressor, as a rational being, has a right to be punished.5 It is therefore wrong to deny him this right by not punishing his misdeeds. It should also be noted that Semyon takes no steps to hide the killing from his own wife, Jordan, which further indicates that he saw the killing as a justified act rather than a gangland slaying.
Some retributivists see the communicative and confrontational elements of punishment as its justification. Dan Markel addresses this in “What Might Retributive Justice Be? An Argument for the Confrontational Conception of Retributivism.” It should be noted, however, that Markel's theory pertains to governmental actions in response to legal wrongdoings and would in no way condone or legitimate Semyon's action in practice or consequence. Markel writes:
The action is undertaken in a way the sender of the message thinks will make sense to the recipient and is performed in a way that the thought conveyed can be made sense of, or effectuated, through the free will of the recipient. This communicative goal is realized even when the offender rejects the message, that is, he refuses to coordinate his actions or values in accordance with the message sent to him.6
Given the brutal and essentially lawless sphere that Semyon, Blake, and the other players in the action inhabit, it can be expected that such communication will take a violent, and final, form.
Finally, for all his amoral characteristics, Semyon also adheres to the retributivist principle that the guilty deserve and ought to be punished, but also that the innocent should not. For the most part, Semyon occupies the role of a sort of righteous bad guy—primarily harming other criminals and, further, only those who could be seen to “have it coming,” so to speak. This is shown by his disdain when he realizes that the cartel has murdered Irina and regarding Blake's involvement in prostitution and human trafficking.
Semyon, however, is not above revenge. There is much to indicate that he himself cannot differentiate between justice and revenge. Take, for instance, the robbery of Osip and the slaughter of him and his men in the “Omega Station” finale. While convincing Velcoro to assist him, Semyon even states, “Call it justice, revenge … a retirement package.” But the robbery is motivated primarily, if not entirely, by self-interest. Semyon and Velcoro need the money to escape and make new lives elsewhere, and they decide to take it from Osip and McCandless. Similarly, Semyon's killing of Osip is more certainly revenge than the killing of Blake. Semyon apparently derives personal satisfaction from the killing of Osip, and this is the primary motivation for taking his life.
While Velcoro and Semyon may have a sense of justice, it is certainly confused, convoluted, and even self-serving. The justice that they attempt to mete out is far from perfect. In True Detective, the blurring of the lines between revenge and retributive justice points to yet another philosophical point about the nature of justice—that its definition is maddeningly elusive and that it is often hard to tell when it has been done.
This paradox is hinted at throughout True Detective's second season, especially in the finale. The protagonists make some attempts at immediate justice but seem to fall just short. Some of the corrupt apparatus is dismantled, some of the guilty are punished, and Woodrough is recognized publicly as a hero. The victories made by the righteous, however, are far from absolute and come at a very high price. The protagonists all experience great loss and most of them perish. There is, however, a hint that perhaps things will be made right eventually.
Finally, the series' presentation of law and justice and the conflict between a retrograde system of justice that is the norm and a newer (for the denizens of Vinci) virtue ethic driven by moral reasoning is what brings about the inevitable tragedies of the finale—the violent deaths of Velcoro and Semyon, and the exile of Bezzerides. True Detective is, particularly in its finale, a good illustration of Hegel's vision of tragedy. In his Aesthetics, Hegel wrote of the nature of tragedy:
The original essence of tragedy consists then in the fact that within such a conflict each of the opposed sides, if taken by itself, has justification, while on the other hand each can establish true and positive content of its own aim and character only by negating and damaging the equally justified power of the other.7
Velcoro and Semyon's respective demises illustrate this tragic sensibility; they are brought about by the collision of opposing spheres of justice. According to Hegel's aesthetic theory, tragedy is at its height when the spheres are “equally justified.”8 This is, admittedly, hard to say to the viewer about the opposing spheres presented in True Detective. However, that is most certainly not the case for the characters engaging in the tragic action—both were working against the orders that they had lived and worked under for presumably most of their lives. Both Velcoro and Semyon appeared to accept a barbaric ethic and conception of justice as a valid norm. Given the corrupt characters and culture presented by the series, it is only fitting that the characters bringing about the collision of the spheres of justice be as imperfect as the spheres themselves.
As Hegel scholar Mark W. Roche wrote in his brief explication of Hegelian tragedy, “Not only does the tragic hero refuse to acknowledge the validity of the other position, but the other position—or at least the sphere it represents—is also an aspect within the hero even as she denies it.”9 Both characters had lived and acted in spheres of justice (albeit skewed and ultimately illegitimate) that had well-understood expectations for the behavior of those operating in them. Velcoro was heavily immersed in Vinci's society of corrupt police officers and administrators and Semyon was an actor in organized crime. While certainly most readers would agree that the value systems at play in either culture certainly do not rise to the level of justice that each man dies aspiring to reach, these systems are not without their own value. They exist in their respective spheres to maintain order and to ensure that the dangerous actors operating in them do not turn on one another. Our protagonists violate these orders because they come to put other goods ahead of the maintenance of order and in so doing bring about much violence and their ultimate destruction.
This tragic vision is best seen in the fall of Ray Velcoro. Velcoro is of course doomed because he ultimately transgresses against the norm of his contemporaries on the Vinci police force. The supposed good of adherence to the norm is the preservation of order and the maintenance of the status quo. The maintenance of the status quo is ultimately self-serving for the local elites and the rule of law is merely a façade. Velcoro replaces his adherence to this norm with an ethic rooted in his devotion to his allies and his son. Velcoro goes from enforcing a normative order to actively trying to bring about its negation and destruction.
The death of Frank Semyon is equally tragic, although his ethics may be the murkier of those of the two characters. Semyon transgresses the order of the culture of organized crime out of devotion to his wife, to avenge the death of his subordinate, and to doggedly pursue what he considers to be his equitable stake in the empire he helped to create.
Holding absolute, unwavering positions and the willingness to fight, kill, and be killed in defense of the said moral position leads to death, if not of a tragic hero, certainly of somebody. For, Hegel, it is this conflict that ultimately brings about historical change. This can also be seen in the grim world of True Detective. It is no coincidence that the tragedies of the finale of True Detective season two are immediately followed by the implication that change may well be coming to Vinci. The last scenes involve Bezzerides talking to a reporter, giving him the information that could ultimately expose the culture of corruption and decadence that has ruled the city. What we witnessed in the bloodshed of the season finale was the violence of a paradigm shift, the old retrograde order attempting to quash the subversive ethic that is its polar opposite. While it appears that the status quo of Vinci has been maintained by the elites, the viewer is allowed to know that the subversive element is still very much alive as Jordan (Frank's widow) and Bezzerides actively work toward its overthrow and the establishment of a new, different order.
Despite being relentlessly grim, True Detective offers a valuable comment on the nature of justice and its relationship to the law. While the law may not be related to a code of justice, this does not mean that justice cannot be achieved. Despite the apparent victory of the antagonists at the end of season two, a hope for a just reckoning sometime in the future remains. Similarly, while justice is certainly difficult to define, particularly in situations where few are blameless, individuals can, through the use of reason, come to a working definition of the term and resolve to act accordingly.