Last season had the 'Climate Change is inevitable and resistance is pointless and unethical' (captain planet analogue goes to tragically kill coal-miners, nobody mentions that having superpowers could easily dismantle fossil fuel infrastructure or at the very least off execs). This most recent episode has omnipotent dinosaurs return to earth and create a post-scarcity Earth, leading to newspaper articles and characters exclaim how bored their life is now that banks, jobs and climate change have been eradicated. The dinosaurs are purposely boring and speak in vague lib 'empathy' language, leading to characters genuinely use the words "Virtue signalling" despite my understanding of virtue signalling being just saying nice words, not backing them up with material conditions.
This show has fun sci-fi concepts and I enjoy the slow de-edgification of Rick, but damn clearly Elon's cameo (in an otherwise perfect episode) was a harbinger of grotesque things to come.
I watched the ep and I agree with you, but also think that the average Rick and Morty fan is going to interpret the ep the way OP does just not negatively.
There's no way for this not to happen in a show like this though. You can't really force your audience to do enough introspection and analytical thinking to figure out they're not supposed to agree with the main character.
It's the same as with American Psycho or Fight Club.
Sure, which leads us to the moral responsibilities of the creators.🤷♂️ If you're not a good enough storyteller that the story you're trying to tell is going to lead to an opposite interpretation, by the majority of your audience, is it a story you should be telling?
Then a lot of stories would just never be told. There simply isn't a sufficiently good or sufficiently clear narrative not to get misinterpreted. Starship Troopers could not more obviously be an anti-fascist movie, and professional critics thought the opposite for close to two decades.
Maybe not all stories need to be told. Sad truth is, it's not the artist's intent that makes the impact on the world, it's their art's interpretation by the viewer. Satire that doesn't work is just propaganda for the thing its supposed to be satirizing.
I dunno, maybe, maybe not. I feel like most people I know that watch Rick & Morty have the maturity to understand that Rick is not a good guy, it's just weird online nerds that worship him, and I don't sure those weird online nerds would even watch a show that's more on the nose about its morals.
I mean, I'm on board with those nerds not feeling like there's content out there that supports them. I know I'm sure dealing with not feeling like there's enough content out there calling for the fall of the bourgeoise.
Ugh, no. Everything doesn't have to be spoon fed to a fussy baby-brained audience because otherwise fascists will use it as an excuse to do what they were going to do anyway.
What are you going to do? Burn every copy of Apocalypse Now because some chud in a uniform can't stop saying "I love the smell of napalm in the morning"?
Sorry, negative capability is inescapable. All good art has it - there's the potential for interpretations and effects beyond the author's own.
Edit: to give a bit more context, art will always change in historical and material contexts it is viewed in. Great art will always have that negative capability of being more than just a mouthpiece for the author. However, this "excess" beyond the author's intent is never going to be manageable in the way that would allow only politically good art to succeed. Should Roger Waters have not created "The Wall" because fashy fucks think that "actually, shaving my head and becoming a nazi performer is good actually"? Man with a Movie Camera is great Soviet art, but one could also read it as intensely voyeuristic - should we not have made it because sickos might view it in that way?
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I love your Jesus, but I hate your Christians