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In last week's episode we talk about Deadpool
and asked whether or not his fourth wall breaking could be
explained phenomenologically.
Let's see what you had to say.
OK, so first thing's first.
To everyone who is new to "Idea Channel" because you found us
from Scott and "Nerd Sync," welcome.
It's great to have you.
Great to see your shining faces.
I look forward to all of the comments
that you will write in response to the questions we will ask.
It's going to be some good conversations.
And to everyone who asked where my Deadpool cardigan came from,
it is a WeLoveFine cardigan.
I don't know-- this, OK, this is a pattern that's developing.
I don't know exactly where it came from,
because my girlfriend got it for me.
She is the best.
Hi, Molly.
Everybody thinks you have good taste.
OK.
Comments for real this time.
15 inches on the subreddit and a bunch of people on YouTube
all mentioned "Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe,"
which is a sort of super interesting case
study in how Deadpool's inner monologue functions.
But before we talk about it, spoiler alert
because we're going to talk about the things that
happen in Deadpool kills the Marvel Universe
so we'll put an annotation somewhere or a link
in the doobly-doo so that you can skip this comment
response if you don't want to know what happens.
So spoiler alert.
This is your official spoiler alert.
So in "Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe,"
Deadpool has his yellow and white boxes
essentially cured, and they are replaced
with a red box that tells him to go around killing everybody
else in the Marvel Universe, all of the heroes, specifically.
Most notably, you know, like, Professor X
dies after trying to control Deadpool's brain
to get him to stop.
And then Professor X realizes what is inside Deadpool's head,
says something like, I didn't realize,
or, like, I never understood, and then has an aneurysm
and dies.
And then Deadpool gets access via a man-thing
to the multiverse where his first stop is something
that looks remarkably like our universe
where there are comic book writers.
And I think you can spy a Jordan White
in there where he then turns to the "camera," to the reader
and puts his finger over his mouth as if to indicate,
be quiet.
I'm going to kill the writers who
are the puppet masters of all of the people in the Marvel
Universe.
And then everyone's going to be free, et cetera, et cetera.
What I love about this story is exactly what
15 inches says, that it gives you insight
into how the other characters think about Deadpool.
The inciting incident of the "Deadpool
Kills the Marvel Universe" is everybody putting him
into, like, sort of agreeing that he
should be in an institution.
He gets put into an institution because everybody's like, yes.
Deadpool is nuts.
But the other thing I love about it
is that it hinges on the multiverse, which, you know,
so many things do.
It's the comics writings' deus ex machina par excellence.
So where Deadpool gets access to the multiverse,
he ends up in a universe that looks remarkably like ours
with comics writers who look remarkably like ours writing
Deadpool or, you know, comics, Marvel comics,
who he then kills.
Just awesome.
So given that Deadpool has killed his writers,
we can assume one of three things
is the case sort of textually, that Deadpool
has been instantiated in the real world,
has been made actual through his travel in the multiverse.
And so this book is more of a documentary, I guess.
The second option is that there is
a writer who has a death wish, and so is writing Deadpool
to come to the writers' room to kill him and, I guess,
his pals.
Or third, the third thing that could be the case
is that there is another writer in another universe as part
of the multiverse that is sending Deadpool around
to kill comics writers in other parts of the multiverse.
And that is who is skippering Deadpool via the red box.
I'm going to guess that it's Stan Lee sort of taking out
decades of office politics just on other comics
writers in the multiverse.
I think it makes perfect sense to me.
But, you know, that's fan theory territory.
Anyway, I think this story arch still fits really perfectly
within the idea that Deadpool's abilities are in some way
phenomenological because everything that
happens from, you know, Deadpool's being "cured"
of his two original boxes via the operation that Psycho
Man puts on him to, you know, Professor Xavier's death
after trying to gain access to his brain
to his being instantiated in the "real world" in some sense.
They're all embodied.
It's all about being embodied and Deadpool's corpus,
in some sense.
Which is to say nothing about 15 inches
additional comment about our relationship to Deadpool.
Like, if Deadpool is looking out to us,
are we in some way a deity to him?
Or are we part of his imagining of what
the world is and it just so happens that in our universe
that tends to be right?
And this gets to the point that the Tweet of the week this week
made, which is questioning whether or not
we are in some sense Deadpool.
We are a part of his psyche.
And, I mean, I, you know, I'm going
to let you guys battle that one out in the comments below.
Because I've said enough about this comment already.
NinjaBoy333 also on the subreddit
writes a really great comment about Deadpool's
physical characteristics also unlocking some kind of toon
force power, which is an idea that I love.
I love this idea.
And sort of indicates or suggests
a comparison that NinjaBoy talks about that I never considered,
which is, you know, comparing Deadpool as trickster
to other toon tricksters like Bugs Bunny, which I just, I
think that the archetype definitely connects
across those two characters and universes.
It's great.
Never thought about this.
NinjaBoy also brings up Deadpool's literal relationship
with the physical manifestation of death in the Marvel
Universe, which is a thing that I did not
think at all about while writing the episode
and is something that I'm going to mull over
for the rest of tonight, because that's a really good point.
Dashery writes a really amazing comment
about Deadpool's fourth wall breaking
being a result not of his physical state,
but of his mental state, and specifically his loneliness,
which is just-- it-- this is great and super interesting.
A link to this comment and all of the others
in the doobly-doo.
Definitely read this.
Yeah.
You should read it.
Dale McKinnon on YouTube along with a bunch of other people
made the really good point that Deadpool, of course,
is not the only person, not the only comic book character,
to break the fourth wall.
And, you know, there was at one point a section in the video,
we even shot it, talking about other characters that
break the fourth wall.
Specifically we had mentions of, you know,
Spider Man and Animal Man.
And then also other characters that
are in pain that experience, as far as we understand
as audience members, great, great pain and still
don't break the fourth wall.
So sort of taking those characteristics
as they exist in other comic book characters
and showing how Deadpool is different in some way.
And just to make the point really quickly,
I think it's not to say that every character that
breaks the fourth wall has to have
the same phenomenological experience that Deadpool does,
that they have to be in pain.
It's just that I think Deadpool's set
of characteristics can be looked at phenomenologically
and can just show us new and possibly interesting
things about the character.
Does that mean that Wolverine Psylocke or Jean Gray, like,
characters who experience pain, does
that mean that they then should be breaking the fourth wall?
No, not necessarily.
But if they were to do that, we might use the same set of ideas
to explain how and why that might be.
So, not forcing anyone's hand.
You have to think about She Hulk in the same way you
think about Deadpool.
I mean, unless you want to.
You're More than welcome.
Ian [INAUDIBLE], whose name I'm sure I'm butchering,
so I'm very sorry, writes a really amazing comment
about psychology as it relates to Merleau-Ponty's
phenomenological ideas and Deadpool and talks
specifically about Cotard syndrome, which
is a syndrome where one believes they are dead
or that they do not even exist.
And they make the sort of theory,
put together this theory, that that is perhaps what
Deadpool is suffering from.
And this is another, I think, required reading comment.
It's just super interesting.
Really great stuff that I knew nothing about.
So, yeah.
Links to this and the others.
Doobly-doo.
Read it.
So there is this attitude that science and philosophy
are at odds, that, you know, scientists
need to wrangle philosophers in some way who get all caught up
in their ideas, that science is very practical
and philosophy is this, like, useless art, almost, that
doesn't really defend its own existence.
And, I mean, I clearly don't think those things are true,
and I have lots of ideas about why
I feel the way I do about the importance of philosophy.
Not the importance of philosophy over science,
because-- I know this is shocking-- two things
can be really important.
But what I will say, Aditya, and to anyone else,
actually, who feels this way, that, you know,
we need some scientists in here to wrangle and argue
with the philosophers.
I would love to know what about science is
important and influential?
And then I will respond to your response
to that question in next week's comment response video.
And we'll talk about, maybe back and forth over a couple videos,
how that distinction comes about and how we think about it
and how we can navigate it.
So if you would humor me, I would
love to have this conversation.
If you would not humor me, that's also fine.
I would love to just, you know, continue having it with myself.
That sounds sad.
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