*Disclaimer: I would like to point out that all of the following TV shows (unless noted) are shows that I generally like. I’m merely posing the opinion that, if you think these characters are models for yourself, then perhaps you’re missing the creator’s point.
I grew up in the late ’90s, with Dawson and South Park. I preferred the latter, when I was allowed to watch it, or rather when my mom gave up and just let me and my brother watch it because it wasn’t turning us into curse-obsessed monsters. It was funny and it pushed boundaries and it was irreverent and its angry young kids fit the confused young kid I was then.
Everybody is familiar at this point with Eric Cartman, the show’s modern-day equivalent to Archie Bunker, who said terrible, often racist, often misogynistic, often antiquated garbage that made people laugh because it was transgressive.
I didn’t think of it then but beyond the cursing, perhaps the biggest negative effect of that show for some people was the feeling that Cartman was, despite his racism, misogyny and all-around terribleness, the idea that Cartman was right.
As a kid, you’d laugh at Cartman’s jokes because you didn’t know any better. As an adult, I recognize that Cartman is a parody of terrible, terrible things in society.
Show creator, Trey Parker, once said in a Huffington Post article that Cartman was the “shitty part” of himself and fellow creator, Matt Stone.
“There’s a big part of me that’s Eric Cartman. He’s both of our dark sides, [he says] the things we’d never say,” said Parker.
It was clear to me, as an adult, that Cartman, albeit transgressive and funny, was ultimately a terrible, monstrous person, and not somebody to model your life after.
Somehow, despite the creators confirming it, and all logic saying the opposite, many people related to Cartman and thought that he was ultimately right, despite all evidence to the contrary.
That brings me to today’s modern-day equivalent to Eric Cartman.
None fill that role of a nihilistic, irreverent slob without a filter better than “Rick and Morty’s” Rick Sanchez.
I’ll admit openly that Rick is hilarious. When I first watched the first two seasons of the show, with its absurdist take on characters from Back to the Future, I fell in love with Rick’s gruff, flippant attitude towards all of the people around, especially considering that the vast majority of them seem to be, well, rather dumb and vapid.
On top of that, the show is genuinely funny and insightful.
“Nobody exists on purpose,” says Morty to his sister. “Nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die. Come watch TV.”
This comes shortly after his sister, upset that her birth was an accident and the reason her parents were forced to marry, despite their hesitance, changed the way I looked at life in general. It pointed out the absurdity in feeling sad about the pointlessness of existence when there was so much stuff about life that was worth living for.
That being said, somewhere between the third and fourth seasons the show took on a different meaning in the public consciousness. It was about that time that the incel-populous, painfully awkward, entitled, alienated-white-male, Jordan B. Peterson-loving crowd started attaching themselves to the show, mocking and doxxing (the act of sharing personal info online) the female writers who were hired for the third season in the process.
At the time, the show’s co-creator, Dan Harmon, expressed discontent for this crowd in the show’s fandom.
“I loathe these people,” said Harmon. “It [expletive] sucks.” Harmon also told Entertainment Weekly that “these knobs […] want to protect the content they think they own – and somehow combine that with their need to be proud of something they have, which is often only their race or gender.”
Though, the seemingly absurd thing about these fans and their complaints, beyond the ridiculous misogyny of it, is that for all of Rick’s nihilism and depression, he’s at his happiest when he’s spending time with the people he so often mocks: his family.
As pointed out by YouTuber, Will Schoder, in a video entitled “Rick and Morty – Finding Meaning in Life”
“He’s the most genius scientist in the multiverse, yet he’s an alcoholic,” said Schoder. “If he can’t find a capital T truth about his own existence, what hope does anyone else have. It’s clear however that science is one of Rick’s best avenues for finding a sense of meaning in his daily life… Indeed science doesn’t help find an existential purpose because it doesn’t provide agreeable absolute meanings to life. And Rick knows that. He’s better off using it to experience the wonders of space around him with the people he cares about.”
Schoder goes on to add that Rick often pretends to not care about his family, which he supposes is a point that Harmon and Roiland are intending to make; that his familial relationships are terrible, which in turn leads to his depression, and that, “he’s only happy when he fosters good relationships with them.”
It’s important to note that this isn’t the only show wherein this is a problem. Shows didn’t start mining the nihilistic, “truth-teller” with Eric Cartman. Quite the contrary. As pointed out, Archie Bunker, of Norman Lear created “All in the Family” was arguably one of the first of this kind, creating in Bunker a working-class schlub who refuted the idea of political correctness.
That being said, that was not Lear’s intent with the show, as pointed out in a Smithsonian Magazine article:
“The dilapidated aesthetic mirrored Archie’s character traits; he was retrograde, incapable of dealing with the modern world, a simpleton left behind by the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, a pathetically displaced ‘historical loser.’ Lear used him as a device to make racism and sexism look foolish and unhip, but liberals protested that as a ‘loveable bigot,’ Archie actually made intolerance acceptable. Lear had intended to create a satirical and exaggerated figure, what one TV critic called ‘hardhat hyperbole,’ but not everyone got the joke.”
In fact, Lear himself was a longtime Democratic Party and created the People for the American Way (PFAW), a non-profit organization dedicated to putting a stop to the Christian right agenda of the Moral Majority (a Jerry Falwell led organization with the Christian Right and the Republican Party.
Evangelists Pat Robertson, Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart accused Lear of being an atheist and holding anti-Christian bias. Lear has also written articles for the Huffington Post.
Despite Lear’s attempts to mock the racist schleps of middle-America who subscribed to racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and misogynistic views, the character of Archie Bunker became a symbol for those people to hang their hat on.
The same things can be said for, for instance, other modern shows that deal with race, sex, and other issues by mocking the people who subscribe to antiquated beliefs.
As Rob McElhenney, creator and co-star of the hugely popular “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” which just ended its fourteenth season this past November, points out in an interview:
“The quest of the show was always to be satirical,” said McElhenney. “Not trying to be profane for the sake of being profane or offensive for the sake of being offensive. We’re just exploring American culture and the human condition and using all of the tools in our toolbox. Our intention has never been to be offensive or mean-spirited. We oftentimes try to make the characters mean-spirited, homophobic and racist, but the joke is always on them”
In all of these cases, from Eric Cartman to Homer Simpson, from Archie Bunker to Frank Reynolds, the point is to mock and satirize the types of people they are portraying; typically the racist, misogynistic, and otherwise hateful or exploitative parts of the American population, but for some reason, in most of these cases, the mocked end up relating to the character designed to mock them. Failed satire perhaps?
Johnathan Swift, famed writer of “Gulliver’s Travels” mocked Protestant England’s economic policy in Catholic Ireland and the disastrous poverty it created with 1729’s “A Modest Proposal,” in which he argues that the British solve the problem by eating the children of the poor, as the poor could lift themselves from poverty by selling their children.
It was obvious to readers at the time that the idea was lunacy, in fact, British politician, Lord Bathurst, responded to Swift with a satirical letter in which he proposed that the poor all across the United Kingdom take part in the proposal and cheekily suggested they eat the Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, as well.
So then, why is satire lost on modern audiences? Was Archie Bunker adopted by the very people he mocked simply because the target missed the message? Perhaps. But, I think the answer is more complex than that.
To a degree, it could be argued that the target of said satire misses the point. Sure, that’s a completely viable option but more than likely, they recognize themselves in the character, flaws and all.
For the target of this particular article, Dan Harmon and Just Roiland’s creation, Rick Sanchez, reverberates with the intended audience of the show: alienated, cerebral, and often anti-social young men and women, though, admittedly, the show’s aim leans more often towards men.
So then, to those alienated young youth who see in themselves Rick Sanchez, even the misogynistic, racist, and altogether awful parts of him and characters like him, I would just like to say, you’re missing the point, obviously.
As pointed out earlier, Cartman was the manifestation of its creators’ worst thoughts, things they would “never ever say.” The same can be said for Rick Sanchez and whatever might follow him in the long line of nihilistic, severely-flawed characters.
As pointed out by YouTuber Ryan Hollinger in the video “It’s Always Sunny: The Nightman Cometh,” a video that points to the possibly dark intent of some of the re-occurring jokes of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” regarding the character Charlie.
In the video, he draws a line to Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” a play about a group of depressives who sit around in a bar and muse over the heartbreak and pain of their everyday lives; something that could very much describe the plot of the show itself, and the play within the show “The Iceman Cometh,” about Charlie becoming a man, in a very sinister, and bizarrely hilarious way.
Likewise, I would point to Dan Harmon’s previous show, “Community” which ran on NBC during the early twenty-teens. The show, much like its title, was about embracing, well, community, despite the show’s intended protagonist’s initial (and ongoing) best efforts to do the opposite.
It wasn’t season three writers on “Rick & Morty” that calmed Rick Sanchez, it was the show’s creators.
Depression is, tough. I’ll admit that openly, as I’ve been there myself. Perhaps that why I am writing nearly 2,000 words on TV shows that I love in between chapters in books, in between issues of comics, in between trips to the movie theater.
Likewise, that alienation, that urge to pull yourself away, to embrace the nihilistic, harsh, and undeniably true realities of existence is, after a while of dealing with said depression, kind of comforting.
That being said, it’s not living. And that’s what those characters, like Rick, like Joel McHale’s Jeff Winger, like Eric Cartman (kinda) are doing when they fight the selfishness that comes with giving up, that comes with depression, that comes with nihilism.
It’s a long, dark road and it doesn’t help anybody, least of all yourself. Embrace trying. Like Jeff Winger of Harmon’s “Community” embrace the painful, awkward, often harder road of the company and acceptance of people’s differences, whether it be in the people around you or your…umm grandkids.
Richard Foltz
Executive Editor