Rust is a Texan, a detail that is constantly used to justify his utter strangeness, to portray him as an intruder, and to set up a Louisiana only understood from the inside. Rust and Marty, played by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in virtuoso performances, travel from Lake Charles to Avoyelles to Lafayette to lower Terrebonne to Beaumont, Texas, to suburban New Orleans to Erath, tracing intensities and textures of relationships in particular places to income, education, landscape, and health disparities.

However, the way True Detective links a critical understanding of Louisiana with a type of cartographic character development relies more on the intensities of place than a sequence of defining moments. The mystery plot is standard fare: two male detectives, on the trail of perpetrators of an apparent ' Satanic ritual abuse' killing, uncover a dusky underworld of cults and corruption. True Detective is a show about precarious life as much as it is about catching a serial killer. or about 'true crime' in rural areas, such as Cajun Justice (A&E). The intricate mapping of Louisiana below Interstate 10 in HBO's 2014 series True Detective generates more than just the obvious voyeurism of extreme poverty that marks so many shows about Louisiana, such as Swamp People ( History Channel) and Duck Dynasty ( A&E) 1 Duck Dynasty, a reality show about a family in the duck call industry, is not only a voyeuristic show about poor country living in Louisiana, but one whose subjects are actually wealthy, performing poverty and capitalizing on nostalgia for old-fashioned living.

Emma Lirette navigates the personal and critical geographies of southern Louisiana in HBO's series, True Detective, a show that depicts a Louisiana of apocalyptic industry, suburban banality, desaturated waterscapes, and luminous shadows.

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