this is vaguely related to the string theory related post from a day or two ago, it's all bazinga science folks TL;DW string theory is a big thing because people that read pop science really liked it and it took a long time for physicists to come out in force and say "this is untestable garbage"
Roiland is a piece of shit, but the show is very explicit about how letting everyone you care about die, and then jumping into an alternate universe where you didn't do this is traumatizing.
The show doesn't go more than an episode without reminding the viewer that everybody including Rick hates Rick for behaving like a detached asshole.
I've heard this before. Does the same "totally don't admire this nihilistic murderous asshole, pinkie promise you won't" message that missed so much of its loud fandom for years also apply to Roiland's "what if Back to the Future, but Doc Brown is a pedophile lololololol" pilot for the show, or for that matter this "just kidding, just want to see how people react, this is only ironic fantasies about brutally hurting children on multiple levels" cartoon short here?
(CW: "ironic" physical and sexual abuse of children, torture, snuff)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZQbX7_Eeg4
It still gives the perpetrator most of the screen time, lines, plot armor, and basic invincibility. It's hard to really punish someone who by necessity must keep returning because the show runners say so to do more wacky edgelord hijinks next time around.
Also, the premise of the show requires that that murderous nihilism be technically justified by the plot. That's bullshit. There's no reason for a multiverse's existence to necessiate the conclusion of "no one matters, exploiting and murdering people is cool and good now" outside of Roiland's own beliefs.
Yeah, it is an exploration of the ultimate liberal paradox. What would it mean if a smart rich person was mean? To the liberal mind, it means they must be correct. Which given that he show it entertaining it is hard for liberals to understand they are wrong.
That "exploration," like so many others in similar and related material, seems an awful lot like "the chuds making this get off to it, and so do the hogs in the audience," with any message of "but this is bad, don't enjoy the spectacles of cruelty. Pinkie swear you don't enjoy the way the entertainment made for entertainment purposes emphasizes that in cinematically gratuitous ways" used for ass covering and plausible deniability. :kombucha-disgust:
Satire requires a clarity of purpose. Just because it fails the test doesn't make the liberals correct. They are fundamentally unable to see a smart rich white man as deserving anything other than praise. Which is on them for being shitlibs
One episode a season is dedicated explicitly to how bad a person is and how he is the cause of his own problems. They even wrote a in show therapist to tell him this to his face and they multiple times show that she is correct. If that is not enough for the libs, then I am afraid they are simply libs.
We have to deal with the fact that being evil and doing rad evil shit is fun. That is our lot as fun hating comunists.
I don't know, I have a hard time even doing an evil playthrough of a video game, by which I mean I've never been able to do an evil playthrough of a video game. Being cruel feels bad, even if nobody is actually harmed.
Agreed. I've sometimes did something like it if it was campy enough in the setting, but the "evil is objectively desirable actually" take is false and says more about the speaker than about everyone else.
Being the direct executor of murder is typically not fun
It is for some specific types :scared-fash:
We like the hanging of Mussolini because it represents the triumph of the Italian public over Mussolini. If the picture was more zoomed it, it would still be more nauseating than anything because it is still fundamentally a mutilated corpse. We may support killing Mussolinis, and we may be flippant or jovial in our talking about supporting killing Mussolinis, but that does not make the actual act of killing a Mussolini fun. Even if the killer is happy in the act, which would be a bit odd, we would expect it to be mainly due to the public good the killing represents rather than the visceral reality of the immediate situation.
I was actually talking about how fascists tend to self-select for enjoyment of murder, especially for murder positions.
Murder should never be fun even if it's the morally correct choice
I dunno, you ever see an 80s action movie? It's pretty fun.
Did you know that watching a highly fictionalized, stylized version of something is not like doing or even watching the real thing? Have you ever watched snuff footage?
I don't know that the first part is necessarily true. I think we might be stupider as a species than you give us credit for
This is not a matter of intelligence, it is a matter of the human tendency toward involuntary empathy for people right in front of them and a general revulsion towards human mutilation.
"People are universally stupid and evil and it is implied that by saying this that I am slightly above the rabble" ideology is a symptom of too much Rick and Morty absorption. :kombucha-disgust:
Why do you keep assuming that your own personal assumptions, about craving evil and craving fantasies of inflicting suffering and domination, are universal? People in this thread alone disagreeing with you already demonstrate that is a false assumption.
Again, not universal, but at least common enough that large sections of the US consumer good and political economy are dedicated to it.
If you're accepting it's not unversal why do you keep framing your arguments as if they are universal?
Earlier you claimed that my disagreement with your "not universal universals" was just a fluke and did not matter. I find that to be an arrogant position.
This is a leftist site for leftists. If your position is "fucked up things happen because capitalism" and your conclusion is "therefore do nothing and stop caring, it can't be changed and maybe is universal and maybe people are stupid, lol" what are you even doing here? :what-the-hell:
I am not using precise game theory arguments because this isn't reddit. You keep pushing the scope of this beyond the level of precision I am using about a silly cartoon. I feel no specific need to use this moment of silly cartoon man discourse to make this of any particular significance.
Separately my assertion is that we all evolved from fish and have good and bad instincts we handle in different ways. People are around 80% good from the psychological readings I have done. Who knows if it is accurate but I go with that. However we still like seeing fucked up violent shit sometimes. Which given the squib discourse here I feel ought to be uncontroversial.
Your "silly cartoon" is absolutely loaded with the :brainworms: and propaganda bestowed to it by Roiland and Harmon, and complaining that I'm "pushing the scope" sounds like you just don't like that I'm not willing to nod along to based sad atrocity plot armor man that gets to reset to a default state every episode for as long as the toxic fanbase will keep gobbling it up.
because this isn’t reddit.
So much for no :reddit-logo: when you're whipping out reductionist biotruths bullshit to try to justify your own obviously not-universal beliefs about human nature that multiple people here alone don't agree with.
Even more :reddit-logo: "make personal subjective beliefs sound sciencey and objective with window dressing" tactics there.
You made it up and you did it from your own subjective biased perspective, so I think it's very unjust to "go with that" and keep assuming almost everyone craves a chance to inflict suffering and whatever biotruths you want to project upon them.
There's that "not universal" universalist arguing again. I have seen real fucked up violent shit in my actual offline life. I have had people die right in front of me and I've seen the light face from their eyes. I smelled them shit themselves post-mortem while waiting for help to take away the corpse.
I don't like seeing "fucked up violent shit" like that and it's both arrogance and privilege on your part that you think the entertainment you derive from such fantasies is "not universal" universal.
Stop deluding yourself into saying what you feel about things is universal or derived from first principles about biotruths :stop-posting-amogus:
I get you don't like my assertions that people probably behave in the ways we observe them behaving. What is your point? That we need to police everyone's treat consumption patterns? That all of this is fake and we haven't enjoyed problematic treats for all recorded history? That my media criticism skills are lacking and my analysis that sad man appears to be sad is fascile?
What an incredibly arrogant way to put it, with a "we" to imply that surely you're not only speaking for yourself when it comes to your sermons on the biotruths of the human race and how evil and stupid it must be as a whole.
Your attempts to transmute your misanthropy into not-universally-but-universally accepted facts is pure :reddit-logo: brain with, yes, Rick and Morty characteristics.
What is your point? You keep claiming that your deeply absorbed propaganda ideology is some scientific fact or near-universal constant and you keep ignoring people saying that they don't share your beliefs and don't apply to your not-universal-but-mostly-universal claims.
Yeah, I am, because you're not criticizing it. You're making excuses for the entertainment product that came from the :libertarian-approaching: edgelord ideology of a pedophilic worker abusing monster and his worker abusing diet-monster buddy.
Letting people enjoy a silly cartoon occasionally is misanthropic? I think you are losing perspective here
You've moving the goalposts sooooooo far here. At no point did I say you weren't allowed to enjoy the misanthropic nihilistic propaganda of a pedophile worker abuser and his worker abusing buddy. But clearly that entertainment's message has been absorbed by you to the point of driving you to continually claim how not-universal-universal its message is when applied not only to you but to humanity in general.
You can indulge in your edgy propaganda show. Don't expect it to not get criticized sometimes.
I'd that were simply it we wouldn't have a conversation. I think you are criticizing it incorrectly. You are mad at what it is, not what it does I feel. Which ignores the context of the moment in important ways.
I think you're arrogant and presumptive about the character of humanity itself when you absorb a bunch of misanthropic nihilistic propaganda from a rich white pedophile with domestic violence tendencies and continually make claims about how universal and near-constant the message is and how it totally applies to almost everyone.
If you're going to do "u mad" games, you're definitely enraged that the show got criticized, period, and that I'm not nodding along to your arrogant biotruth assumptions about how everyone is evil and stupid and tempted to be Rick Sanchez if given the chance.
What messages did you get from 80s action movies? :what-the-hell:
What I generally saw was over the top good guys (Optimus Prime) beating the shit out of over the top bad guys (Megatron) and yeah some edgy kids always wanted the bad guys to win but it was not a universal desire no matter how many times you say it was.
The bad guys were usually right. They were usually marginalized people or even communists Appart from like Rambo I mean. I am all in with whatever plot to destroy America some vaguely foreign assholes have.
Judging by your professed claims of craving "not universal, but sort of universal" fantasies of inflicting cruelty and death to people if only you had the privilege to do so without consequences, I don't think you're in any position I'd respect to tell me what you think is "right" about fictional bad guys either.
I feel this treat policing is got to be some king of liberalism. I like watching kung fu movies sometimes. Am I a bad person for enjoying the spectical? There are enough people who do that they make those movies. Is that all propaganda?
Your favorite edgy show got criticized.
I am not threatening its production.
I am not taking it away from you.
I will call out the sheer arrogant bullshit of claims that its propaganda is some universal scientific constant that speaks deep near-universal truths about the human race. Fuck that.
It's sad how you see criticism of a stupid show as some kind of "policing" when I can't take it away from you.
I am saying by virtue of addressing the fact that it is wrong sometimes it is less propaganda that most shows where they never have that conversation. I am saying that you, and a subsection of people, are mad at the show for failing when most shows don't try. This not even my favorite edgy show. We have had this same conversation before. Art that ties and fails is more interesting than art that doesn't try.
I will say it one more time for charitable purposes: I am not taking away your edgy show.
It is my opinion that you've so thoroughly absorbed its message and its :libertarian-approaching: propaganda that you're drawing pseudoscientific conclusions about humanity and about life itself based upon the "silly cartoon" that you want to not be taken seriously until it suits you to state its ideology as universal truths.
Bojack Horseman did a lot of what Rick and Morty did and did it without the pedophilic and mass murder fantasy aspects of Roiland which were also included in the subtext of the pilot episode ("what if Doc Brown was a pedo lololololol") and the "bonus" shorts Roiland put out that doubled down on child cruelty because that's what gets Roiland off. Stop making excuses for toxic trash when art, by definition, should be eligible for criticism.
Do you even understand the purpose of art at all or is this :freeze-gamer: gater "my entertainment is art but you're not allowed to criticize art" have-cake-and-eat-it-too belief on your part?
I feel like we are being justva little post modern here though. Human nature is fundamentally knowable and mundane. That is why being nice to each other is important. That is the implication of historical materialism.
Christ. Now you're using the "postmodern" boogeyman word like :up-yours-woke-moralists: . I'm not even going to humor that accusation with further commentary.
Again, because you still don't have anything else new to say: Art, by definition, is eligible for and should be criticized. If it can’t be criticized, it isn’t art.
Do you think I understand what you mean by repeating the mantra? Is repeating it helping? I don't think the criticism you are making is justified yourblogic you are using
Clearly you're not understanding because you keep moving the goalposts and spinning in circles about how it's just a silly cartoon but also art but also art criticism must be friendly or else it's policing and somehow a threat to your consumption of the product.
You haven't offered anything of substance so far that deserves any more because you refuse to internalize the very basis of art criticism which is, again, that art, by definition, is eligible for and should be criticized. If it can’t be criticized, it isn’t art.
Bojack has just as many monsters working and funding it. We just don't know about it. Every show is made by monsters. Arthur or sesame street as well.
If you think I am mad that are canceling Rick and Marty you are protecting.
Bojack doesn't have to exterminate world populations to carry the same supposedly sacred point. That's actually working against you there: it means that the edgy shit in Rick and Morty doesn't have to be that way to get a similar message across if such a message is so very important.
For that matter, Bojack experiences more lasting consequences than Rick Sanchez, which is incredible in itself because of how much Rick Sanchez gets away with by way of plot armor.
That's a mind-blowing false equivalence made on your part. If you refuse to see the difference between "character has flaws" and "character has godlike powers and is immune to lasting consequences and does atrocities for comedy-intended purposes" I don't know what to say except that's some amazing unexamined ideology on your part. :zizek:
I'm assuming you meant to say "projecting," and again, I'm not interested in playing "u mad" games with you.
I'll just state the following over and over again if you have nothing else to say but that you like the edgy show and you think it's "policing" when the edgy show is criticized:
Art, by definition, is eligible for and should be criticized. If it can't be criticized, it isn't art. If you want your edgy nihilism cartoon to be considered art, stop getting defensive about it getting criticized.
Given that we are living on a world that has and is facing apocalypse so powerful people can have treats they don't enjoy there is some artistic merrit there.
I am saying the scope of the conversation keeps sliding back and forth in ways that are not useful or interesting
You're not saying anything new, you're only moving the goalposts around and around from "it's just a silly cartoon" to "it has profound universal truths about how everyone would be Rick Sanchez if given the chance" to "it's art" to "stop criticizing the art, that's policing" and back to the start again and again.
Because of that, I will reply as I warned you I will reply to your ongoing sophistry: Art, by definition, is eligible for and should be criticized. If it can’t be criticized, it isn’t art.
This is not a twitch debate. Moving the goalposts isn't real in a conversation. A silly cartoon can have intresting themes and remain unimportant. You can portray a thing without endorsement. I don't see the point of consuming treats if you are going to give it a friendly read
Whatever you claim it is, post by post, goalpost movement by goalpost movement, seems to change constantly. You want the edgy show made by the domestically violent racist pedophile to be "just a silly cartoon" until it's to be considered art, until it's supposed to be some great analysis of humanity as a whole which you hold in apparently dismally low contempt, but it's also art that can't be criticized because that's "policing."
So can Mein Kampt, Birth of a Nation, the Turner Diaries, and Atlas Shrugged. But they can and will be called out for terrible ideology and as propaganda that has driven destructive movements.
I call bullshit here because that only seems to be the authors' intent when they get called out for what is portrayed, over and over again, with the atrocities and cruelties presented for entertainment purposes and as comedy for that matter to the taste of Roiland and Harmon themselves, with characters presented with immunity to lasting consequences that are more often than not admired by the loud and obnoxious side of their fandoms.
You really don't understand art criticism if you think that "criticism" has to be "friendly" to be acceptable.
Again, I'll say it again because your goalpost moving Olympics are otherwise not worth further comment:
Art, by definition, is eligible for and should be criticized. If it can’t be criticized, it isn’t art.
So we are just disagreeing over weather a show having a character being miserable countd as it showing them being miserable?
You're refusing to accept that a story can be told with just about the same themes and ideas without an emphasis on gratuitous violence, cruelty, torture, and toxic nihilistic sermonizing. I gave an example of a show that did very similar things without Roiland's creepy fetishes and preoccupations (Bojack Horseman) and you responded by burying that example in false equivalencies about how fucking Arthur from the children's cartoon is equally as bad as Rick Sanchez because... reasons.
I will keep saying it because you keep replying with nothing but sophistry and goalpost moving: Art, by definition, is eligible for and should be criticized. If it can’t be criticized, it isn’t art.
So, it's fun if you've been propagandized into thinking it's fun?
The propaganda's so deeply set that he believes that everyone must surely crave atrocity-enjoying power fantasies the way he does, and he's outright ignoring people saying "I don't" in this thread.
There's absolutely nothing in the process of writing fiction that requires the assigned protagonist to keep returning each episode without any actual lasting consequences except cynical momentum, fan expectations, and the capitalist drive for more of the same for the sake of profit.
To me, the Thermian Argument doesn't count. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxV8gAGmbtk
There really isn't any truly mandated actual higher purpose to why Rick Sanchez keeps getting tut-tutted at instead of actually having lasting consequences besides the baseline of generic self loathing while continuing to commit atrocities for edgy comedy purposes.Roiland and Harmon decided what the fiction's reality is, up to and including "because multiverse, all of these mass atrocity antics have understandable character motivations because surely the audience should be expected come to the same philosophical conclusions and have enough sympathy for Rick to continue enjoying his mass atrocity antics."
That's awfully presumptuous. I don't find that fun, even in concept, especially not as a Rick Sanchez nihilist. Maybe a cape twirling tyrant in a campy fantasy setting, but no, your claim isn't universal. Furthermore, normalization of ultraliberal notions of "everyone would surely be a nihilistic mass murderer if only they had the means" is societal poison.
The reason Rick doesn't face consequences is because he is rich and white and powerful. Same reason all the people in real life don't.
I think sales and fandoms show that most people are attracted to the notions of being perfectly liberalized from every possibility of consequence. That is laudable that you don't like it, but hardly consequencial.
Yeah, great. How many episodes in how many seasons does that very unique message need to be repeated, outside of profit motives? As art with a message, it's cynically stagnant by now and has been for some time. There's only so many times a piece of fiction can say "this is bad actually and we don't condone it" while still basing its entire purpose for continued episode production on pushing out more and more of what is supposedly bad actually and presenting it with entertainment purposes before it's just a cynical and ideologically bankrupt :brrrrrrrrrrrr:
That sounds an awful lot like "Leftism is about defeatism and the more defeatist the more leftist it is." :lenin-sure: I know capitalist realism is a helluva drug, but come on.
Sounds like a very fancy way of saying "let people enjoy things" which by that same tiresome notion could be applied to Fox News (legally defined as "entertainment" now after all, to escape liability), NewsMax, and for that matter cryptofascist influencers like :heated-gamer-moment: because it's surely inconsequential to find their influence destructive therefore do nothing lol amirite? :agony-minion:
Of course. It is the dialectic. Meat is delicious. Veganism is morally and ethically correct. So we must develop a synthesis acknowledging pleasure is not sufficent.
Power fantasies are fun. You have the antihisis. So again we have the dialectic and it does no good to deny it. It is complicated by art of this style being a hedonistic exercise.
You make the claim that everyone of significance must by necessity crave meat. Ironically, that's an idealist claim that ignores the dietary habits and preferences of people in cultures that really don't have that same urge or drive to crave le epic bacon that you're implying everyone must.
Power fantasies can exist without endlessly indulging a pedophilic sex pest (and maybe worse) and his union busting asshole buddy's redundant particular power fantasy. Power fantasies can exist without that exact blend of pop nihilism, cynicism, and glorification of such things thereof.
You're making too many presumptions of how things MUST be, all based upon what you are used to now.
I am not saying how they must be. I am saying how they are. In these contexts I have no significant power to change anything, it does seem important to me to be aware of the facts as they exist so if I ever get a chance to fix anything I will understand what is going on and would be able to make better decisions. I dunno if that is optimistic or fatalistic to be honest.
You're taking me here now. :debord-tired:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
Revolutions of the past succeeded in spite of defeatist/fatalistic opinions in their midst. We ought to aspire to a better world or what the fuck is the point of leftism?
In the context of the sad man on a TV show being sufficiently sad or not? Maybe you are right because I cannot say. I feel like Rick is sufficiently sad to inspire me to feel leftist emotions. Like, watching him suffer from alienation and hurt others gives me reason to think of my solidarity with others.
No one is immune to propaganda, and it's especially clear here when you're saying that the murderously creepy sad man simply must be that way because that's the will of the fictional character's owners, and you went further than that and said that Harmon mistreating and underpaying his workers and thwarting their unionization efforts simply is and therefore must be how things will go.
Society can be improved somewhat, and it could very well start among the working class of the capitalist realism propaganda entertainment we've been talking about.
Even in the fiction I don't think that's true. No amount of Thermian Arguments will convince me that he's really that sad compared to the countless people he's hurt and destroyed. Also, it's all conveniently conjured fictional messaging based upon what the owners decided that was funny and then continued to profit from showing more and more of that with no lasting actual consequences presented for the ongoing sad funny atrocity man.
Even if that wasn't the case, what you got out of the show is clearly not what the majority and dare I say the intended target audience got out of it, which was "nihilistic sad atroctity man is funny watch him do more funny atrocities haha that therapist was a (slur) for scolding based atrocity god wasn't she IM PICKLE RIIIIIICK" :so-true:
Pickle Rick was the writer directly insulting those people. The joke is that there's no joke, Rick turns himself into a pickle and acts like it's a major accomplishment to get out of a social engagement. Morty immediately sees through this and Rick is left screaming Pickle Rick while a disappointed Morty walks away.
There's not much you can do to tell these people that the things they value in Rick are actually really horrible traits that hurt Rick and everyone he cares about.
The show is a money printer fueled by blue curtain admiring toxic fans at this point, so because of the pressures of capitalism and the personal ideology of Roiland and Harmon, of course the invincible godlike atrocity enjoying sad man will continue escaping lasting permanent consequences for his actions.
If Rick actually died or was replaced as the main character because of lasting consequences, that would put off much of that fandom but those that remained would stop gobbling up the RICK IS BASED ACTUALLY messaging because he wouldn't be there continually feeding it with presence and screen time.
Is it implied that that's the only reason why you shouldn't do it?
No, there's a few episodes where the survivors (and his adopted family) tell the guy who did it how fucked up it was, then he does it again. I can't say they hate him for that specifically because there's so many other things everyone he cares about hate him for it's unclear.
They also go back to the old universes a couple times to see what happened after he irreversibly fucked up the planet, but also removed himself from the equation. The show is pretty clear that every he loves is better off without him.