|
very concerned that a cartoon mad scientist doesn't get his comeuppance, not noticing that literally mandating that crime never pay simply resulted in power fantasies in which the cool criminal always dies at the end and that people used to go to literal hangings and would cheer the last words of the defiantly unrepentant who they believed were literally choosing to go to hell to say gently caress you to anyone who told them they were bad and wrong also: unable to follow a story arc in progress or remember previous seasons i have no long term memory and demand a just world Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Dec 6, 2019 |
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 04:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 10:11 |
|
|
Yeah, that seems about right.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 04:47
|
|
|
Yeah I mean if you don’t consider suicidal depression a consequence then please go gently caress yourself off a cliff. It’s way shittier in real life without the musical sting
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 05:17
|
|
|
Bust Rodd posted:I honestly don’t think entertainers are under any sort of social responsibility to explain their moral compass to their fans. Almost like they think words and ideas actually matter.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 07:22
|
|
|
WSAENOTSOCK posted:And yet whenever I point put the problems with showing toxic people being badasses, people feel compelled to argue with me about it instead of letting my opinion be harmless. The problem is that your critique is not based on substance, but appearances- fundamentally, this is the reactionary ideology of the middle class at work. This is probably against your intentions, but liberal (in the capitalist sense not the right-wing slur against the left sense) ideology thrives on co-opting whatever morality it finds and reframing in terms of appearances, with the ultimate goal of protection and legitimizing itself in the eyes of what CineD superstar SMG would call "the big Other," which boils down to God, the "right side of history," or ultimately, the imagined final authority which is really just raw brutal power directed against any and all threats to itself. That said, there's nothing wrong with being suspicious of something that rubs you the wrong way. The difference is between uncritically accepting your gut reaction and examining both the evidence and your own reaction to it. And, of course, in this case the "evidence" is incomplete, so I can only really claim that you are wrong based on what we know at the moment. e: In the Illiad, Achilles is the greatest warrior of the Greeks, a literally invincible warrior. He spends most of the poem sulking in his tent, getting close friends killed in the process, because he didn't get the slave girl he wanted because Agamemnon was a more important king and had first dibs. Then he drags the body of Hector, an honourable foe, around behind his chariot. Macbeth was an utter badass who is introduced by means of a breathless report of how much rear end he had just kicked all around a battlefield. Hamlet is more the intellectual type and owns everyone he comes across with his wit (including himself). Badasses are often, even generally, terrible people. This is what most decent literature and film tries to tell you. Wanting to pretend badasses are shining heroes is very much at the core of fascism. Victorian conservative intellectual Thomas Carlyle, for example, is well known for advocating hero worship, and for popularizing the n word in Britain. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Dec 6, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 08:12
|
|
|
WSAENOTSOCK posted:And yet whenever I point put the problems with showing toxic people being badasses, people feel compelled to argue with me about it instead of letting my opinion be harmless.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 08:43
|
|
|
The episode descriptions for this show on streaming services are insufferable. Mortynight Run Morty don tries to save a life in this one broh! Get strapped in broh! Get Schwifty Rick and Morty don gotta step up and save things in this one broh. A new religion starts up too broh. Interdimensional Cable 2 Things going ham in this one broh. Jerry gots all sick and Rick sparks up the TV broh. The Wedding Squanchers Things go ham in this one broh. They all don mussed up this time. The whole family mussed up broh. It goes on and on. Ugh.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 09:28
|
|
|
Hodgepodge posted:In the Illiad, Achilles is the greatest warrior of the Greeks, a literally invincible warrior. He spends most of the poem sulking in his tent, getting close friends killed in the process, because he didn't get the slave girl he wanted because Agamemnon was a more important king and had first dibs. Then he drags the body of Hector, an honourable foe, around behind his chariot. Macbeth was an utter badass who is introduced by means of a breathless report of how much rear end he had just kicked all around a battlefield. Hamlet is more the intellectual type and owns everyone he comes across with his wit (including himself). Every single one of those works had those characters become utterly humiliated. Achilles is later finished off by Paris of all people, dies like a bitch, and when Odysseus goes to meet with him in the underworld, Achilles is all, "Dying for glory ain't worth it mang." Macbeth is easily tempted to power and as soon as he gets it, becomes extremely paranoid and covetous and lets himself be dragged around by the witches and his equally paranoid nagging wife, only to get cut down at the end. Been awhile since I've read Hamlet, but his mental stability is in a state of extreme question the whole play, is manipulated by a ghost that is probably a demon, kills an innocent man who had nothing to do with his rage, drives his kinda sorta girlfriend to suicide, and gets shanked for his revenge at the end of it. Characters like Rick and Walter White might be scumbags, but hey, they also do enough good things that you can identify with them. Walter White might be an rear end in a top hat drug dealer but he also single handedly wiped out a good portion of criminal underworld of New Mexico, was willing to stick up for his son even as early as episode one, and dies a hero saving Jesse from being a meth slave to Neo-Nazis and made sure his family is secure. Rick is brazenly hostile yet is also a cool sci-fi genius who knows the ins and outs of any situation his family gets involved no matter how absurd, took it upon himself to kill a child rapist, and has saved the earth several times. This is still a drat good show (well that last episode was probably the first one that managed to go from simply being one of the weaker ones to actually being outright bad), but I can see where the criticisms are coming from. HairyManling posted:The episode descriptions for this show on streaming services are insufferable. Yeah, on some AS schedule websites or just TV schedule sites, I always see that "broh," thing and can't figure it out for the life of me.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 10:15
|
|
|
You guys sound like real herbs, broh!
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 10:24
|
|
|
*scoffs* how foolish that you think media in which evil individuals are celebrated as hyper-competent pragmatists has a moral dimension of any sort. Macbeth in the good history play Macbeth was a hyper-competent pragmatist, and Shakespeare certainly did not feel the need to "lay him low". note: i have only read the first ten pages of Macbeth but I assume it ends with him marrying the witches and uniting Scotland
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 10:29
|
|
|
shitenshi, your post kind of deserves a reply with some effort to it but for the momentAndroid Blues posted:*scoffs* how foolish that you think media in which evil individuals are celebrated as hyper-competent pragmatists has a moral dimension of any sort. Macbeth in the good history play Macbeth was a hyper-competent pragmatist, and Shakespeare certainly did not feel the need to "lay him low". note: i have only read the first ten pages of Macbeth but I assume it ends with him marrying the witches and uniting Scotland the episode where we delve into rick's ultra-top-secret pooping place just might be taking the piss out of the idea of rick as a pragmatist he also manages to lose his chance at making a friend now that, you know, all of his friends are dead, directly due to his being an rear end in a top hat and gets completely owned by a gigantic manifestation of his own bullshit. he literally ends up mocking himself as "king poo poo on his throne of loneliness" and 'the saddest piece of garbage in the universe." Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Dec 6, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 10:49
|
|
|
Yeah, it feels like a weird time to bring up these arguments because this season seems to be trying to do better. They were definitely relevant in the past though. Rick spends an entire episode getting killed by fascists until he escapes through the random luck of finding a nice Rick and the power of infinite retries. He even admits to Morty that he was wrong, which used to be something that he would erase from Morty's memory. The toilet episode literally mocks and calls out Rick at the end for how pathetic he is and how his loneliness and unhappiness is his own fault. He ruins his only sanctuary because he's so controlling. While he won the heist episode, it's supposed to burn audience goodwill and remind everyone of how lovely he is. It reminds me of how Hannibal was decent about occasionally having Hannibal be really lovely to Will to make the shippers at least think twice before idolizing their relationship. Maybe they'll gently caress it up with the last two, but they seem to be doing more to take Rick down a peg or two, as promised by the last season finale. Although I'm not loving the power creep either. Just giving him infinite lives and mind control seems bad.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 12:25
|
|
|
The funny thing is Rick only gets to respawn because of the short-sightedness of other Ricks who didn't shut down the cloning program like he did precisely because it's not fully in their control.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 12:36
|
|
|
the show does sometimes criticise rick, but at the same time i don't think it's off base to interrogate how explosively popular "villainous protagonists who succeed through callous, amoral pragmatism" are in our modern media, and how this show is part of that. it's sort of the underlying gag of the show that rick constantly benefits from the terrible things he does, which is a running subversion of our expectations about fiction, and therefore stays funny so long as we maintain those expectations. it isn't wrong to tell that joke, and it's a funny joke. it is interesting though how enamoured our culture currently is with this character archetype, and that mass fascination is more what merits criticism imo. as shitenshi points out, this type of character isn't really totally analogous to your classic "protagonist of a tragedy" archetype. the protagonists of tragedies usually ARE powerful and highly competent, but their power and competence is always directly connected with their downfall, and is usually its cause. the whole vibe is that they're consumed by hubris, and that their belief in their own power is their undoing. the modern villain protagonist sometimes maps to this pattern - walter white is a good example, he's very tragic - but often doesn't. the most basic version of this character is just the tragic hero with the heroism and the tragedy stripped out, i.e. a competent and powerful individual who constantly crosses moral boundaries in the exercise of their power. don draper is a good example - just a dude who constantly transgresses, and we sit at home and watch him transgress and that's the show. rick is this, plus an occasional dash of tragedy, but never one that concludes anything or leads to a change in his essential drives or circumstances. it's possible that this reflects an increasingly cynical (and possibly accurate) view of the world's genuine power relations, i.e. that people who act like this in real life really aren't punished, and often are very successful. what's worrying then is when people idolise or admire these characters, rather than realising that they represent the nihilistic upper class that abuses their wealth and power to benefit from the callous exercise of amoral pragmatism. but when these characters are the protagonists of their stories, isn't it at least somewhat inevitable that you're going to empathise with and relate to them? or that the people writing them will begin to do so such that their intense amorality is presented by the text as being moderately acceptable? i don't have the answers to this stuff, but they're good questions to ask. Android Blues fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Dec 6, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 12:42
|
|
|
Hodgepodge posted:very concerned that a cartoon mad scientist doesn't get his comeuppance, not noticing that literally mandating that crime never pay simply resulted in power fantasies in which the cool criminal always dies at the end and that people used to go to literal hangings and would cheer the last words of the defiantly unrepentant who they believed were literally choosing to go to hell to say gently caress you to anyone who told them they were bad and wrong This is how cartoons used to work in the 1980s. The bad guys always got what was coming to them and story progression was nonexistent. Everything returned to status quo ante at the end of each episode.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 12:54
|
|
|
Zaphod42 posted:Definitely feels like Evil Morty is going somewhere. We've had too many callbacks to it across seasons. Season 3 spent a lot of time creating powerful enemies for rick. I'm hoping there's an upcoming episode featuring a No Ricks Club comprised of Evil Morty, Phoenix Person, Tammy, Supernova, and the President of the United States of America.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 16:14
|
|
|
They get renewed for 70 episodes and some people want Rick to get his ultimate comeuppance in episode 4 of 70. You can't win with these people.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 16:21
|
|
|
If you think Walter White “dies a hero” you were watching Malcolm in the Middle, not Breaking Bad. Everything he did turned to ash and his family curses his name and hates/fears him and also he killed MANY innocent people and poisoned a child. Killing a bunch of methed out Nazis to save Jesse from the trap he put him in isn’t heroic either. Rick is literally a suicidally depressed person who cannot die. If that doesn’t sound like He’ll to you than I don’t know what to say
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 16:25
|
|
|
Felina was wall-to-wall carthasis for Walt after falling to his lowest point. You're right that it didn't make up for all the poo poo he had done to that point, but it definitely read like a redemption arc capped by a heroic sacrifice. Also there should definitely be a clip on YouTube from the Bojack Horseman episode where he says that prestige TV taught him that it's ok to be a lovely person.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 17:22
|
|
|
HairyManling posted:The episode descriptions for this show on streaming services are insufferable. Did Goro from Shenmue write this?
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 17:34
|
|
|
Bust Rodd posted:If you think Walter White “dies a hero” you were watching Malcolm in the Middle Hal died in MitM???
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 18:23
|
|
|
Bust Rodd posted:If you think Walter White “dies a hero” you were watching Malcolm in the Middle, not Breaking Bad. Everything he did turned to ash and his family curses his name and hates/fears him and also he killed MANY innocent people and poisoned a child. Killing a bunch of methed out Nazis to save Jesse from the trap he put him in isn’t heroic either. You are overestimating the critical thinking capacity of the average television viewer. Probably everybody in this thread agrees and doesn't think Walter is a hero. But you're missing the point. Nobody in this thread is saying they are. But if you think there aren't any people on this planet who think Walter is a role model, you're kidding yourself. Absolutely there are people who un-ironically cheered for him up to the end, with zero consideration of "maybe that was not good". Android Blues posted:the show does sometimes criticise rick, but at the same time i don't think it's off base to interrogate how explosively popular "villainous protagonists who succeed through callous, amoral pragmatism" are in our modern media, and how this show is part of that. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 18:41
|
|
|
Bust Rodd posted:If you think Walter White “dies a hero” you were watching Malcolm in the Middle, not Breaking Bad. Did... did Hal die at the end of Malcolm in the Middle??
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 18:44
|
|
|
Wow, you really don't remember when Hal died saving his wife and children during the bridge collapse in the series finale?
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 18:47
|
|
|
Zaphod42 posted:You are overestimating the critical thinking capacity of the average television viewer. Probably everybody in this thread agrees and doesn't think Walter is a hero. But you're missing the point. Nobody in this thread is saying they are. But if you think there aren't any people on this planet who think Walter is a role model, you're kidding yourself. Absolutely there are people who un-ironically cheered for him up to the end, with zero consideration of "maybe that was not good". I am also of the opinion that artists shouldn’t be expected to cater to the lowest common denominator of people with poor comprehension skills and dubious morality. Just because many people are ignorant shithead racists doesn’t mean that well-meaning artists should have to stop and have their characters look directly into the camera and explain whether or not they are good or evil or meant to be praised or punished.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 18:49
|
|
|
Phenotype posted:Did... did Hal die at the end of Malcolm in the Middle?? Dewey finally snaps in the last episode.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 18:51
|
|
|
Parakeet vs. Phone posted:Yeah, it feels like a weird time to bring up these arguments because this season seems to be trying to do better. They were definitely relevant in the past though. Yeah, I feel like a big thing this season is Rick's hypocrisy. Like in the first episode with the Death Crystals, Rick is super angry at those poachers, and Morty rightly points out that they aren't behaving any differently than the poachers. Also, Rick mocks the concept of the Death Crystals, yet spends the whole episode wrapped up in a scheme specifically designed to avoid death. Then you got the shy pooping episode, with Rick outwardly pushing people away, yet he's clearly desperate for relationships. Then in the latest episode, Rick trash talks heist movies the whole time, while gleefully engaging in all the heist movie tropes, and it's all a complicated ruse to heist Morty's desire for a Netflix special, to basically reverse-Inception an idea out of Morty's head, adding some call-back hypocrisy as well. Yeah, Rick seems more like an unstoppable deathless techno god more than ever, but they also seem to be focusing more on Rick's shortcomings, depression, and hypocrisy.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 18:54
|
|
|
Bust Rodd posted:I am also of the opinion that artists shouldn’t be expected to cater to the lowest common denominator of people with poor comprehension skills and dubious morality. Just because many people are ignorant shithead racists doesn’t mean that well-meaning artists should have to stop and have their characters look directly into the camera and explain whether or not they are good or evil or meant to be praised or punished. Nobody has yet suggested they should, you're jumping the gun and doth protest too much. We're just discussing that fact. Nobody has said R&M should be cancelled. Settle down.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 19:00
|
|
|
Zaphod telling anyone to settle down in a science-fiction TVIV thread is funnier than any season of Rick & Morty
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 19:40
|
|
|
Bust Rodd posted:Zaphod telling anyone to settle down in a science-fiction TVIV thread is funnier than any season of Rick & Morty Bust Rodd telling anybody that something is funnier than any season of rick and morty is funnier than any season of rick and morty  dude just stop"okay that thing I said was dumb but... you're Zaphod so there!" 
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 20:18
|
|
|
It wasn't dumb.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 20:25
|
|
|
Zaphod42 posted:You are overestimating the critical thinking capacity of the average television viewer. Probably everybody in this thread agrees and doesn't think Walter is a hero. But you're missing the point. Nobody in this thread is saying they are. But if you think there aren't any people on this planet who think Walter is a role model, you're kidding yourself. Absolutely there are people who un-ironically cheered for him up to the end, with zero consideration of "maybe that was not good". Maybe they're quite capable of thinking for themselves, and no amount of depicting consequences or otherwise signposting that a person is bad will force someone to interpret a character as bad and wrong. That's what I was getting at with my examples of tragic heroes who, yes,face huge consequences for their actions. It's still up to the reader to interpret the character, and what you're interested in isn't people's critical thinking capacity, it's that people might use them to come to conclusions you don't like. Maybe some people see Walter White being a nonstop rear end in a top hat and think he's a model for emulation not because they're dumb or the show didn't make it clear enough, but because they're assholes. Just like the last few episodes have shown Rick hoisted on his own petard and doing things that are clearly setting up potential consequences, and you somehow think the show is approving and rewarding his actions. Like, the problem isn't the show or the other people who the show went out of it's way to insult for just wanting consequence-free adventure. It's that you're pissed off and want... more of the direction the show is very clearly going I guess?
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 00:12
|
|
|
Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:This doesn't really follow - people respond to your opinion because you wrote about it on a discussion board. One can simultaneously believe that Dan Harmon has no obligation to explain himself and still be interested in discussing how you feel about it. But if this were true, ideas seen on social media wouldn't be exempt, and they wouldn't feel the need to argue. But it's obvious that they don't actually believe it even before extending it to social media, because the people who use the argument to defend things like racism in media go absolutely apoplectic when a main character in a Star War is black or a woman. So, y'know, they clearly think representation matters and have concluded that only they should have representation. In the case of Rick and Morty, decades (or centuries, really) of geniuses in media being portrayed as cruel has convinced every cruel person that they're a genius. And we should stop doing that so goddamned always.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 00:41
|
|
|
Hodgepodge posted:Maybe they're quite capable of thinking for themselves, and no amount of depicting consequences or otherwise signposting that a person is bad will force someone to interpret a character as bad and wrong. That's what I was getting at with my examples of tragic heroes who, yes,face huge consequences for their actions. It's still up to the reader to interpret the character, and what you're interested in isn't people's critical thinking capacity, it's that people might use them to come to conclusions you don't like. Maybe some people see Walter White being a nonstop rear end in a top hat and think he's a model for emulation not because they're dumb or the show didn't make it clear enough, but because they're assholes. That's definitely a fair point, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. I mean, I agree I don't think you should be held accountable for every possible crazy interpretation of your book. I don't think J. D. Salinger is responsible for killing John Lennon. But I do think that if I wrote a book series or a comic or a tv show and found out it was super popular with nazis, I'd at least rethink some things and make sure I wasn't overlooking anything, and also maybe make some clear attempt to distance myself from them and show definitively that that wasn't the intention at all, because gently caress that poo poo. I never said that means you can't depict bad characters. That's not the implication here. I don't think they were trying to make Walter White an idol; I assume they were not. We all agree he's not, that was definitely already a given. So I'm not saying they're responsible for people idolizing Walter per se. I'm just saying that it definitely happens. Beyond that, I do think it may be irresponsible not to think about that as you work on art. But again, that doesn't then make you responsible later on. I think that's fair and consistent but I'm gonna have to think about this some more too. WSAENOTSOCK posted:My point is that a stunningly large portion of the population will argue that ideas seen in media have no effect on how people make up their minds about things. Like, seeing racism doesn't make one racist. Yeaaaah I gotta agree with all of this
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 01:24
|
|
|
Do you think the writers of rick and morty havent thought about or tried to distance themselves from the nazi fans? Because an entire half of the first episode of the season was devoted to hating nazis
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 01:53
|
|
|
Rick and Summer beat up a neo nazi before this poo poo really even got as bad as it is now, too.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 01:55
|
|
|
The same people who have told us to not always believe what we've seen on TV, that movies/rock music/comics/video games make people violent, etc. are now believing in a stupid rear end conspiracy because they cannot deal with Trump being a fraud. They're also usually Nazis these days.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 01:55
|
|
|
it's good they did that, because neonazis will certainly listen to reason ...wait
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 02:27
|
|
|
You see, if only we forced people to consume the correct consumer products, they wouldn't be Nazis anymore
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 03:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 10:11 |
|
|
Every episode should end with an after-school special-style message. "Ah geez Rick, we sure did have a lot of fun today. But you know what's not fun? Being a Nazi"
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 16:22
|
|