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.

  • ChestRockwell [comrade/them, any]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    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?