(smooth music)
- What's up, everyone?
Michael here to talk about the most recent episode
of "Rick and Morty," "Rick: A Mort Well Lived."
This one has it all.
Rick starts a new religion that's absolutely not a religion,
Morty's consciousness gets shattered into pieces
inside a video game, and Summer does a "Die Hard."
But something else stood out to us,
and please just go with me on this one.
The episode aired on 9/11,
and we don't think this is a coincidence.
It seems like the episode explores the way
in which religious narratives
and mythologies both shape human culture
and seem to fuel some pretty serious violence.
Now, I know this probably sounds a little heavy
for an episode that features Peter Dinklage
playing an alien obsessed with "Die Hard."
- It's not every day one meets
a fellow "Die Hard" enthusiast.
- [Michael] But we'll explain in this Wisecrack Quick Take
on "'Rick and Morty' Season 6, Episode 2:
Did 'Rick and Morty' Do a 9/11 Episode?"
First, a quick summary.
Rick, Morty, and Summer are at a space arcade
that's been taken over by alien terrorists.
Morty and Rick are both inside the video game "Roy,"
which they previously played in season 2-
- Holy (beep)! This guy's taking Roy off the grid!
- [Michael] and in which Morty's consciousness is stuck,
spread amongst all the non-Roy characters in the game.
Rick, as Roy, has to convince all these characters
that they are in fact his grandson
in order to help Morty escape.
All the while, Summer is holding off the terrorists
after Rick told her to- - Just do a "Die Hard."
- Eventually, Rick and Morty make it out.
They help Summer to beat the terrorists.
It's all happily ever after,
except for the fact that part of, um,
Morty's consciousness is now stuck
in the video game "Roy" that's being wheeled
into a warehouse, "Indiana Jones"-style,
potentially lost forever, but...
Oh, boy.
But back to "Roy,"
the game in which Rick has to convince all the Mortys
to accept the reality that they are grandsons.
It quickly turns into a sort of religious movement.
- He's one of those cult people.
They worship some psycho named Roy
that says he's everybody's grandpa.
- [Michael] And despite Rick's best efforts-
- You guys keep thinking I'm a religious leader.
This isn't a religion.
This is actual truth.
I'm a scientist in real life.
- [Michael] This all seems to be the show's way
of pointing out the often arbitrary roots
of various religious movements-
- I feel like every time I explain this, I lose followers,
but this isn't a religion.
- [Michael] and the eagerness with which people join them
and build a culture around them.
But this non-religion religion, grandsonism,
quickly establishes a type of in-group, out-group logic
in which those acknowledging that they are 14-year-old boys
who love masturbation are in and those who remain attached
to their video game selves are out.
This is of course a thing that's happened
throughout human history,
often with less-than-kosher consequences.
- Get down!
You're all under arrest for being religious the wrong way!
- [Michael] What starts as a little
old-fashioned social division based on religion
quickly escalates to a full-on holy war, which is set off
when Rick struggles to tell Morty that he loves him.
- Rick, I'll get every single part of me
to get on every ship and go with you.
- Good.
- But you have to tell us you love us.
- I mean, at this point, even if he said it,
what-what-what-what's with the pause?
- Screw you! Wait for it.
- Holy war! - Holier war!
- Holiest war ever!
- I guess the message is tell people you love them
or you might cause a war.
The use of the term holy war doesn't seem to be accidental,
as the show is clearly pointing out
how quickly religious beliefs can become excuses
for large-scale violence.
And again, um, this episode aired on 9/11.
And the show isn't original in making the argument
that religion has an exceptional ability
to incite violence and war, and fittingly,
some of the most potent religious narratives
that justify violence are, like grandsonism,
not explicitly religious per se.
While some would frame the war on terror
as liberal democracy versus Islamic fundamentalism,
others might see the opposite,
i.e., a pseudo-theological American nationalism
versus a region of the world devastated by years
of foreign intervention and military occupation.
And that's not even to mention oil production
or Dick Cheney's business friends.
However, the conventional way
that the war on terror is framed
serves an important purpose.
According to theologian William T. Cavanaugh,
"the myth of religious violence promotes a dichotomy
between us in the secular West,
who are rational and peacemaking, and them, the hordes
of violent religious fanatics in the Muslim world.
Their violence is religious
and therefore irrational and divisive.
Our violence, on the other hand,
is rational, peacemaking, and necessary.
Regrettably, we find ourselves forced
to bomb them into the higher rationality."
So for Cavanaugh,
the idea that religion is uniquely violent
is often more of an ideological function
dependent on specific definitions
of what's religion and what's not
used to justify more rational forms
of non-religious violence
often carried out in the name of the state.
It seems that the episode might be leaning into the idea
that the seemingly decades-long holy war
between grandson factions is a reflection of the absurdity
of lots of actually existing human conflict
in which people are willing to kill or be killed
over disagreements on religious and mythical narratives.
- It's parenting like this
that pushed me into religious radicalism.
- So is "Rick and Morty" using the holy wars
of grandsonism to argue that religion is both,
A, often a totally made-up thing that, B,
is unique in its ability to create irrational violence?
Maybe, but according to Cavanaugh,
it's a mistake to attempt to draw a distinction
between secular and religious violence.
"We must conclude that there is no coherent way
to isolate religious ideologies with a peculiar tendency
towards violence from their tamer secular counterparts.
So-called secular ideologies and institutions
like nationalism and liberalism can be just as absolutist,
divisive, and irrational as so-called religion.
People kill for all sorts of things.
The point is not simply that secular violence
should be given equal attention to religious violence.
The point is that the distinction between secular
and religious violence is unhelpful, misleading,
and mystifying and should be avoided together."
So basically, it's not that religion is uniquely violent
in history, especially given that, according to Cavanaugh,
the secular-religious dichotomy is a modern invention.
Rather, it's that absolutism and irrationality
are at the heart of all political violence.
So unlike the Sam Harrises and Bill Mahers
of the world who argue that Western violence
towards the Islamic world is justifiable
due to the superior rationality of liberal democracy,
for Cavanaugh, there isn't really a distinction
between so-called religious and secular violence.
Okay, so if that's the case,
then why do we still often associate religion
with irrational violence?
Well, for Cavanaugh, "the myth of religious violence
establishes a reassuring dichotomy between their violence,
which is absolutist, divisive, and irrational,
and our violence, which is modest, unitive, and rational."
Making the violence of the other uniquely religious
allows those on the other side to feel confident
that they're violent but, like, in a good way.
- There isn't even a God in the real world,
you fragmented putz.
- This also involves the type of absolutism
that both religious and secular violence have,
because both sides believe they have absolute access
to some type of goodness or truth.
And then they have a mission to expand the reach
of that goodness or truth.
And speaking of goodness and truth,
have you checked out "Wisecrack Live" yet?
It's our new stream.
It takes place every Thursday at 11:00 am Pacific
right here on our YouTube page.
It's fun.
We watch videos, talk about what's going on in the world.
We have a really fun chat, and I, I really mean that.
It's, like, the best chat on YouTube.
So come check it out sometime.
We would love to have you there.
Okay, so these themes are also present
in Summer's storyline, as "Die Hard"
has become a foundational myth across the galaxy.
- Every sentient civilization across the galaxy
eventually develops the same myth.
In Centauri, it's known as "Tower Man."
The Orionese have their "Thornberg Cycle."
And in Andromeda, it's called "foolish to have imagined
you'd be able to kill."
- [Michael] And the potency of this myth has clearly led
to lots of very stupid violence.
- Instead of handing me an unloaded gun,
she'll hand me a- - "Die Hard"!
"Die Hard"! "Die Hard"!
- [Michael] Summer only reads this religious text
when it helps her achieve her goal of killing aliens.
- You left your book in the bathroom.
I read it while I took a (beep).
I mean, mostly the ending.
- [Michael] The quasi-religious mythology of "Die Hard"
is reduced into a mere conduit for more violence.
- Walkie-talkie "Die Hard," (beep).
- So what is the show saying here?
On the one hand, they might be pointing out
the seeming absurdity of religion in general
and more specifically its tendency
to engender violence amongst its adherents.
On the other, maybe they're taking a more broad approach
and showing how, in the wake
of events like the 9/11 attacks,
politics and religion can be just two sides
of the same irrationally violent coin.
- Better to die in "Roy" than to serve in hell!
- [Michael] As Kavanaugh concludes, "this opposition
of irrational and irrational, secular and religious,
Western and Muslim is not simply descriptive but helps
to create the opposition that it purports to describe."
Well said, William. Well said.
But what do you guys think?
Did Justin Roiland and co.
make a cynical holiday episode for 9/11,
or has growing up during the war
on terror just broken my brain?
Please let us know in the comments.
Thanks as always to our patrons for your support,
and be sure to be a good grandson
and please like this video,
subscribe to the channel, all that stuff.
It means a lot.
As always, thanks so much for watching,
and walkie-talkie "Die Hard," (beep).
(upbeat music)