Why I Have to Defend Being a 'Rick & Morty' Fan: An Essay in Three Parts

Originally written 9/21/2018.

PART 1: The Problem With Idiots

The modern pop culture landscape is dominated by nerd culture. That’s not a judgement call or a boast on my part, merely an objective observation of fact. Movies based on comic books are the industry standard of the 21st century blockbuster film, the most lucrative entertainment medium in the world right now is video games, and the most popular shows on television are either animated or made by people who understand that appealing to a wider audience means gearing towards the geek aesthetic. But when the mainstream culture became nerdstream culture, a rarely-remarked upon event which took place sometime around the premier of 2012’s ‘The Avengers,’ a depressing side-effect of what should have been a positive societal transition began to emerge: a phenomenon I’ve decided to call stupid privilege.

Stupid privilege (I’m working on a trademark) refers to the feeling of bloated self-confidence that fans, typically straight white male fans who are already used to having privilege, experience when they believe that being part of their particular fandom makes them somehow superior to people who are uninterested in or unfamiliar with said fandom. This sensation is ‘stupid’ for a multitude of reasons, among them because, with a few exceptions, people who feel this way tend to either misunderstand or intentionally misinterpret the thing they claim elevates them to a higher status.

For example, fans of ‘Rick and Morty’ may feel like they can make a scene in a McDonalds over a poorly managed tie-in campaign because they think an alcoholic, socially volatile super scientist who preaches that nothing has any significance and is an active danger to his family is someone worth idolizing.

These same fans tend to hold up the show as a gospel of atheistic theory and geek culture, declaring it the smartest show on television and beyond the grasp of ‘normal’ people. This gives them a self-inflated sense of pride that they understand all the scientific and cultural references the show throws out.

This is wrong on multiple fronts. For one thing, in a world where the internet spreads ideas and concepts faster than ever before, streaming services like Netflix make all media easier to consume, and a show like 'The Big Bang Theory' can run for 12 seasons, pretty much everyone is familiar with the concepts that ‘Rick and Morty’ plays around with. Again, nerd culture is mainstream culture at this point, so you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t know what Schrodinger’s cat, the multiverse theory, subatomic worlds, or any number of the show’s film references are.

Secondly, as much as the show features nerd ephemera, it is not about the rise and triumph of geek culture. It’s not about:

It’s not about:

It’s definitely not about:

It’s not even about this:

To be blunt, ‘Rick and Morty’ is about Rick and Morty. In more explicit terms, it’s about how Rick is a toxic person who may not even be capable or deserving of redemption and how Morty is becoming worse by associating with him but better by fighting back.

For those unfamiliar with the show, it centers around the Sanchez family, which includes the multiverse-traveling super-scientist alcoholic grandfather Rick, his bitter daughter Beth, her pathetic and struggling husband Jerry, their sardonic and shallow daughter Summer, and their impressionable teen son Morty. After abandoning Beth and her mother when she was a child, presumably to go on inter-dimensional adventures, Rick has returned to the family and latched himself to Morty, who he sees as a gullible traveling companion/potential protégé. Morty is anxious about going on adventures with Rick at first, but over time learns that not only are his grandfather’s existential rants not the valid truth, but Rick is poisoning himself and his family by adhering to them.

The audience is meant to learn these themes alongside Morty. While it is initially fun to run around with an unfeeling space god who can travel between worlds, seeing bizarre and creative imagery highlighted with loud colors and psychedelic landscapes, it’s only a matter of time before the trip turns sour. A turning point in the show is the season one episode “Rick Potion №9,” wherein Rick, on accident, turns every living human into a horrifying abomination of jumbled DNA that he names after goresploitation filmmaker David Cronenberg. While all seems lost to Morty, Rick solves the problem by making a portal to a parallel dimension where an alternate version of himself already worked everything out and then just so happened to die alongside his version Morty immediately after. Rick is very casual about burying his own dead body and taking the place of a different version of himself. Meanwhile, Morty wanders through the house in shocked silence, traumatized by what he’s done and the idea that Rick may have done the exact same thing any number of times.

The show could not beat its audience over the head any harder about what a horrible person Rick is, but the wider audience of the show still quotes his nihilistic theories in everyday conversations. A part of the problem is that the show is just as good as it is. And don’t get me wrong, ‘Rick and Morty’ is a damn good show. Take one of the clips up above. Rick’s catchphrase in the first season is “Wubba lubba dub dub.” In the season one finale, it’s revealed that this is an alien expression meaning “I am in great pain, please help.” At the very end of the same episode, Rick swears not to use the phrase again because he has spent meaningful, consequence-free, frozen time with his grandkids and has gained a newfound appreciation for them, albeit in a small capacity. The show is funny, insightful, layered, and downright nuanced at times, just not because it parodies ‘Zardoz.’

One of the layers that adds to the confusion around Rick is the fact that most of the rest of the family eventually starts to become just as despicable as he is. This is most apparent in the recent third season, which took the show to darker places than it's ever been. In the season premier, leaked three months in advance of the rest of the episodes, Morty and Summer both offer gleeful suggestions to Rick on how could destabilize the galactic government. A few episodes later, Rick confronts Jerry outright and accuses the divorced dad of being a predator who uses his pathetic nature to gain people’s sympathy, forcing them into supporting him. The last story arc of the season involved Beth learning that her childhood fantasy land was actually a world that Rick made for her to vent in where she committed horrible acts as a child.

By surrounding Rick with a family that is just as destructive as he is, the show has effectively given Rick’s terrible mentality an excuse. Fans who uphold Rick as an aspirational figure can point to the other members of the Sanchez family and claim that their revealed negative traits only further prove his amoral worldview, even if it was his direct influence that made them that way. These same fans would have to ignore the fact that anytime anyone in the family experiences a moral victory or shows any measure of redeeming qualities, it’s when they are going against Rick and his ideologies. But because theses instances are so few and far between, it can be easy for fans who are just here for some laughs and to enforce their own nihilism to ignore those moments in favor of the multitude of scenes where Rick acts like a smug jackass.

So apart from their stupidity, privilege, and misinterpretation of the show’s main theme, why are the more emphatic (read: obsessive and domineering) fans still trying to worship Rick as a fictional, secular deity of nerd culture? Well, it probably doesn’t help that his like has been seen before.

PART 2: There Is Precedent. So. Much. Precedent.

Two of my jobs involve me knowing a lot about comics. Which is fine, I like comics and I like knowing about them. But knowing as much as I do about comics books can be a huge burden when most people are more prepared to dismiss the entire medium as kid’s stuff than they are ready to take it as a serious art form. And those who are willing to have a meaningful discussion about comics are usually pretty uninformed about what makes them worth discussing in the first place. Case in point, way too many people who want to talk to me about comics claim that their favorite character is this guy:

This, for those of you who had friends growing up, is Rorschach, the protagonist of ‘Watchmen,’ famed comic writer Alan Moore’s magnum opus and one of the most popular graphic novels of all time. Rorschach is a sadistic and psychotic vigilante in a world where superheroes have been outlawed. He lives on the fringes of society, obsesses over conspiracy theories, and suffers from severe mental illness due to the traumas he’s had to face both in his personal life and as a hero. His journal entries serve as a narration for his chapters of the story and expose his deep-seeded racism, sexism, homophobia, loathing of democrats, and the sick pleasure he derives from torturing and killing criminals, an act which he sees as simply maintaining the moral fabric of a dystopian America. He’s a disgusting, filthy, perverted vagrant and yet, he’s still many people’s favorite character because he says iconic lines, has a distinctive look, and wholeheartedly believes his own ravings, not dissimilar to Rick.

Also like Rick, Rorschach is surrounded by horrible people who's flaws are almost always directly related to him or something he reviles. ‘Watchmen’ is a deconstruction of the superhero genre where Moore took a handful of heroes DC had purchased from Charlton Comics in 1983, imagined them living in the real world, and then changed their names and characteristics so that DC could still use the original versions in their main comic continuity. Most of the characters were created by legendary comics artist Steve Ditko, who used them, particularly a character called the Question, who Rorschach was based on, as political icons for his personal faith in Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Moore, a vocal leftist, put all Ditko’s creations into his realism formula and came out with the rapist Comedian, the apathetic demigod Doctor Manhattan, the cowering and submissive Nite-Owl, the self-righteous nag Silk Specter, and the mass-murdering terrorist Ozymandias.

By design, none of them were meant to be likable, but that only made Rorschach, the one that Moore wanted readers to hate the most, easier to swallow as a hero rather than just the protagonist. Being unable to tell the difference between the two has been a major problem not just among comic fans, but fans of any medium or genre. Need proof? Imagine how many characters there are in pop culture who, despite being despicable and toxic, people don’t just like but try to emulate. Just off the top of my head, there’s this guy:

Here’s another one:

Try this one on for size:

Since cartoons are the best medium to portray outsized personalities, here’s another one for good measure:

Then there’s this one where, even though he’s literally the villain of the film, he’s still most people’s favorite part and the most quoted character in the movie:

I have, at various points in my adult life and from various sources, heard that all of these guys are aspirational figures who, along with their respective shows or films, have helped shape people into who they are. Not as cautionary warnings of how depraved or selfish mankind can be, but as role models of their own personal potential. I don’t understand how anyone can be inspired by Tyler Durden and if you were inspired by him and his pseudo-men’s rights activism terrorist group, then frankly I don’t want to understand you.

Then there are video games, where simulation and emulation are baked into the medium itself. Which means that every character you can play as who embodies these toxic qualities fits into the same category as Rick by virtue of being playable. So you can go ahead and include:

And:

And, among many, many, many others:

This phenomenon even predates visual media. Too many people think that Heathcliff from 'Wuthering Heights' is a hero of new money sensibilities when he makes an effort to gaslight Cathy (who herself isn’t exactly a symbol of integrity) and even resorts to physical violence against her. ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ musical misrepresents the Phantom as a star-crossed lover whose romantic passion should be copied rather than a controlling, childish stalker and murderer whose actions and motives should be avoided at all costs. The titular character of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' is an icon of hedonistic ideals and a poster child for Aestheticism and free-thinking artistry who also abuses his girlfriend until she drinks acid. Hamlet, a role that every actor dreams of playing, whose eponymous play is often cited as the very height of theatrical achievement, enjoys toying with a woman who has genuine feelings for him and took pleasure in her descent into madness.

Hell, even Severus Snape, who is revered as the tragic martyr of the generation-defining ‘Harry Potter’ franchise, spent six years tormenting Harry and his friends, showed open favoritism to select students, was unable to accept the death of his first crush, held a life-long grudge against a childhood bully, outed Lupin as a werewolf out of pettiness, and only betrayed the genocidal Lord Voldemort not out of any sense of morality but based on a selfish desire to keep the woman he had decades-old unrequited feelings for safe. And he couldn’t even do that right.

If you want to go back even further, the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Norse all worshiped pantheons with gods where were downright evil at times. These gods tended to hold long, petty grudges, most of them committed incest, and pretty much all the male gods in each of these faiths were rapists. The champions and heroes of these myths weren’t much better. Hercules killed his own family several times, Romulus killed his own brother over a joke, and the central Norse hero Sigurd tricked the famous and powerful Valkyrie Brunhild into marrying against her will. And yet, all of these figures were once seen as figures worth fearing, respecting, and worshiping, an attitude which has seemingly plagued us ever since.

Which begs the question: if this issue of people misreading and emulating bad characters is so old, possibly being the source of some major systemic issues within our society, what can be done to change it? Well…

PART 3: The Solution Is Clear! (sorta not really)

I wrote this article in part due to the recent release of the fifth season of ‘Bojack Horseman.’ The Netflix-streaming show is in the same vein as ‘Rick and Morty’ but instead of focusing on nerd culture, it instead offers a visceral deconstruction of the Hollywood machine, the people who inadvertently keep it running, and the mental health problems it causes on those who get caught up in its system. Bojack, a washed up, drugged out sitcom actor looking to feed his addictions and need for attention, shares remarkable similarities with Rick in how he is cognizant of his own poisonous behavior but either refuses to or is incapable of changing. He commits horrendous act after horrendous act, ruining the people around him as he struggles to keep his head above water.

Season five finds Bojack attempting yet another comeback with a detective thriller show written and created by an unstable misogynist. Bojack is eerily like his character, Philbert (to the point where the studio set is nearly identical to his actual house), but that means that the character, and by extension the thriller, is just as abusive and amoral as he is. To help balance out the show’s male gaze, Bojack’s friend Diane, who knows most of his hidden shames, is brought onto the project as a feminist advisor of sorts. At the premier party for the pilot episode, Bojack gives a half-hearted speech about how playing such a troubled character made him feel better about his own vices and how, since “everyone has a little Philbert in them,” nobody is truly bad.

This shocks Diane who later confronts him. She explains that she never wanted to be involved in something that would give people an excuse to be bad, that she only set out to improve the show and not to justify negative societal behaviors. In this moment, she is speaking for the show’s writers, who must have felt some shame at the idea they may have accidentally made the cartoon a vehicle to normalize addiction and glorify mental illness as opposed to a condemnation of celebrity culture. But something you’ll notice if you watch the scene is that while Diane recognizes the problem she helped develop, she doesn’t offer up a solution. She quits the show so as not to exacerbate the problem, but there doesn’t appear to be anything she can do to reverse the harmful effects of the show.

The obvious solution for her, and for the writers of these kinds of shows, would be to keep in mind their audience going forward and rewrite the characters accordingly. But that is unlikely to work based on the nature of television itself. For example, in the season finale, Bojack (spoiler alert) goes to rehab to get help for his addictions while Diane drives away in silence. As of this writing, ‘Bojack Horseman’ has not been renewed for a sixth season and, to be honest, I don’t know if it should be. How can the story move forward when all there is to see is if Bojack sticks to his therapy, in which case the show will stop being able to revolve around his tumultuous life, or if he relapses, in which case he loses what little sympathy he can still garner (if any after the events of season five).

Even if the show ends there, with the final image of the show being Bojack’s choice, belligerent fans can still misconstrue that as the show not wanting to depict Bojack’s ‘boring’ life i.e. after all the drugs, parties, and mental illness. When your work can be interpreted multiple ways, there’s no real method of forcing your audience to see things from the perspective you want. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean the same circumstance cannot be used to the opposite effect. Take ‘Thor: Ragnarok.’ The way the film is structured and plotted, the worst possible interpretation by an even semi-reasonable person would be that it’s just another action movie, yet another cog in the ever-expanding Marvel machine. Meanwhile, the best way to see the movie is as what it is, a fun but scathing indictment of colonialism so severe that it ends with an oppressive nation being irrevocably wiped off the cosmic map.

But using subtext purely for beneficial purposes isn’t enough. For all the flaws that their fans demonstrate, shows like ‘Rick and Morty’ and ‘Bojack Horseman’ are well-crafted works of televised art, featuring some of the best comedic writing in entertainment today (there will never be a better named character than Neal McBeal the Navy SEAL). They do the best job they can to convey their messages to their audience without coming off as preachy or heavy handed. In short, they deserve to exist and more shows like them should be available for future development.

Overall, there is no real solution to this problem. People are going to see what they want to see in their entertainment, for good or for ill, and it’s near impossible to persuade them that they might be missing the forest for the trees. If you watch ‘Rick and Morty’ so religiously that you’re willing to throw a fit in a McDonalds because the alcoholic version of Doc Brown said it doesn’t matter, then there isn’t a lot of room for discourse. Your mind is already made up.

If you love ‘Harry Potter’ so much that you got a tattoo of the deathly hallows symbol, then I would be wasting my time pointing out that the symbol is the wizard version of a swastika. If you can’t find a significant other because the most romantic figure who you want to present yourself as is Christian Grey, then it would be useless to demonstrate how he has more in common with a cult leader than he does with someone willing to put their partner on equal footing. If you are so devoted to ‘Star Wars’ that you bullied Kelly Marie Tran off of social media because she didn’t conform to what your specific narrow-minded vision of ‘The Last Jedi,' then telling you that she is a talented actress whose character added much needed recontextualization to a fictional universe won’t dilute the sick sense of pride you probably felt when you succeeded.

That being said, there are things that can be done to minimize the chances that fans will want to act like these whiney, defensive, asshole characters. For one thing, did you notice that none of the examples I used were female? This might be my male gaze or toxic masculinity speaking, but I literally couldn’t think of a negative female character in media who people were prone to emulating. There are certainly female characters like Rick and Bojack out there, like her:

Her:

A cartoon her:

And for the love of all things good and holy, there is no more evil a character in all of fiction than:

And as much as people like these characters, I’ve never heard of anyone trying to apply their various negative outlooks to real life. Maybe it’s because we as a society tend to take women less seriously, maybe it's because a part of why these characters are so evil is because we tend to assign female figures maternal or maid archetypal roles so it's more of a shock when they turn out to be malicious, or maybe there’s something I’m missing because I’m a guy. Either way, this might be another way for entertainment and society to benefit even more from having more female characters in a variety of roles.

Apart from that though, the only other way I personally can think of to get the message across to fans that these aren’t characters worth idolizing is by calling out the people who think they are. The writers of ‘Bojack Horseman’ admitted to being culpable to perpetuating negative attitudes, but there’s room for them to take it a step further and condemn those who were looking to justify their behaviors instead of a way to change them. It’s a step ‘Rick and Morty’ can take, Rick has broken the fourth wall and used meta-humor before, so it wouldn’t be a big leap for him to address viewers in a more direct fashion. And he’ll have plenty of time to do it seeing as Adult Swim has reportedly ordered 70 more episodes of the series.

Who knows, nerdstream culture might be salvageable after all. Maybe people can learn to recognize their stupid privilege and receive the lessons their fandom is trying to teach them as opposed to looking for reinforcement of their own pre-existing worldviews. Maybe our entertainment discussions can bring out the best of us instead of the worst. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll stop giving our devotion respect, and identity to assholes, fictional or otherwise.

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