OLLY: What up, my glip-glops? "Rick and Morty" is an animated TV show on Adult Swim
created by Dan Harmon, producer of "Community,"
and Justin Roiland, who you may already recognise as the voice of this crazy guy:
LEMONGRAB: Unacceptable!
OLLY: It follows the madcap adventures of 14-year-old Morty and his grandfather Rick
through space, time, and alternate dimensions.
Imagine "Back to the Future" meets "Doctor Who" with just a sprinkling of "Adventure Time."
But as well as being hilarious, powerfully moving, and a great deconstruction of traditional storytelling tropes
-- Thank you, Film Crit Hulk --
it might also have some interesting things to say about Western attitudes towards science.
In the nations of the USA, the UK, and especially in the nation of the internet,
we love science and we love scientists.
Neil deGrasse Tyson has over 2 million Twitter followers. Bill Nye is like a rockstar, too.
Professor Brian Cox is a Mancunian counterpart.
"Cosmos" was raging smash. I F---ing Love Science has over 16 million followers and will soon be a TV show,
and think about the number of science and technology YouTube channels you can name
versus the number of arts and humanities channels you can name.
We love other stuff, too, like "Game of Thrones," videos of cats, and "My Little Pony," but science is cool
Science communication is sexy, the conflict between science and superstition is stimulating,
and even some of our superheroes are scientists.
To borrow the word from Georg Hegel that he never actually said but is often attributed him,
love of science is part of our "Zeitgeist," the spirit of the age.
And it is a strong theme in "Rick and Morty." Rick is a scientist, and that is pretty much his defining feature.
He always wears a lab coat, he has a garage full of crazy alien technology,
and he routinely pulls Morty out of school or encourages him to disregard other human activity to
(AS RICK) "focus on science, Morty."
Anthony Nowice of PopMythology.com noted this and said that "Rick and Morty" is like a love letter to science,
but I disagree. I think it could actually be interpreted as a critique of scientism.
"Scientism" is a word that is mainly used by cranks whose unsupported beliefs are being SMASHED
by the scientific method and they want to dismiss it, and that is not the way I want to use it.
I love science. I think it should be part of the Zeitgeist. I have studied biology, chemistry, and astrophysics.
I loved them all.
When I say "scientism," what I mean is this idea that worthwhile human activity or study
constitutes only science. I mean the kind of attitude that leads people to say things like,
"Philosophy is dead," and that the only important questions are scientific ones.
There is this awful science vs. philosophy dichotomy, and, as I've said on Twitter before,
I love science AND philosophy, and I hate being made to feel like I'm cheating on one
when I make sweet, sweet love with the other.
No one asks whether science has made history or English obsolete,
but philosophers are continually being asked to explain and justify their discipline,
more so than a lot of other academics, and nobody insists that the latest discovery
from the Large Hadron Collider be explained 100% clearly to everybody individually
and it be conclusively shown how it's practically useful otherwise we'll just dismiss all of physics as nonsense,
and watered-down versions of physics will be taught in schools and people who aren't physicists
and who don't understand it will make wisecracks about it.
I'm not trying to say that people who make nonsense claims shouldn't be shot down,
but this idea that science is the only thing worth doing, studying, teaching, or thinking about
is challenged in "Rick and Morty."
Rick is a rockstar scientist. He's a rogue, a madcap adventurer, a swashbuckler, a maverick,
an alcoholic, and a sociopath.
See, "Rick and Morty" is, at times, pitch-black. On the scale of darkness of animated TV shows
with "Friendship is Magic" at one end and "Monkey Dust" on the other,
"Rick and Morty" is way down there at the "Monkey Dust" end.
Like, in one episode, Morty requests a love potion from Rick to use on the girl he has a crush on,
and, through a series of horrifying mistakes, they pretty much end the world,
and then it is rightly pointed out that the whole idea of a love potion is basically date rape.
And in another, the family explores alternate realities and Morty's parents find a reality
in which all their dreams and ambitions came true, but it's a reality in which they aborted their eldest daughter
and are no longer together. Wow.
Rick's relentless pursuit of science is frequently traumatic for Morty and everyone around him.
It's even implied at the end of Season 1 that Rick himself is miserable,
and the truly heartwarming moments of the show come when the characters put aside the crazy sci-fi stuff
and actually engage with the moral and emotional dilemmas.
Rick is a genius and his science is incredibly powerful, amazing stuff,
but the fact that he pursues it at the cost and exclusion of everything else
is shown to be irresponsible and destructive.
Do I think that "Rick and Morty" is a cautionary tale about practicing science
and an argument for nonsensical spirituality and a clear statement that "science has gone too far?"
No. That would be dumb.
As I said at the start of the video, I love science. I want it to be in my life.
I want to take science out and then kiss it on its big science face.
And, in fact, some of the time, the show lampshades the idea of having any deeper artistic themes at all,
and it's only had one season, so maybe it hasn't had time to flex its narrative muscles just yet.
I should stress that this is very much a personal reading rather than a deliberate theme.
But what makes the show stand out to me is that its clear love of science
is tempered by the inclusion of other things. It doesn't accept this philosophy vs. science dichotomy.
It's an interesting piece of the Zeitgeist because it challenges us to think about the other elements
that we might include in it.
What do you guys think? What does "Rick and Morty" tell us about Western attitudes towards science?
Send me your questions, comments, queries, and comebacks underneath the video,
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