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What's up guys, Michael here
to tackle the fabulous chaos of Rick and Morty
season five premiere Mort Dinner Rick Andre.
A lot happens, particularly for an episode
that largely takes place inside the family home.
We meet Rick's best nemesis yet, a hyper-sexual sea lord,
- I'm going to make the land wet!
- [Michael] Who happens to control the police.
- Police, take this piece of (beep) to jail.
- (grumbling in pain) I told...I told you,
he's an ice cold dick killer.
- [Michael] Also, Jerry says the most chilling words
any child could ever hear.
- We've been watching pornography, together.
- [Morty] Gross!
- [Summer] I might never come back.
- [Michael] And Morty once again,
tries to shoot his 14-year-old shot.
- I just wanna say that you're really great.
I know the timing never really worked out with us,
but you're really great.
And I wish I got to know you better.
- [Michael] But the most interesting part for us
was the development of the Hoovy-verse,
a world behind a magical Narnia door
where time moves fast.
What starts innocently enough with Rick recruiting Morty
to use the portal to age some wine,
- So time moves faster in there, i-it's like a Narnia thing?
- I'm not a beaver who believes in Jesus Christ Morty.
(splashing sound)
But yeah, it's pretty much a Narnia thing.
- [Michael] Butterfly effects into a high-tech civilization
founded on a collective hatred
for your favorite high school neurotic.
More than just a fun subplot,
this storyline can teach us a lot
about how civilizations develop
with the help of a couple of dead philosophers.
So join us as we explore whether aggression and war
are at the heart of all human societies
and don't worry, it should be totally fun.
Well, let's get into this wisecrack quick take
on Rick and Morty season five episode one,
how violence builds society.
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And as always, spoilers ahead.
But before we get into it,
I want to give a shout out to this video's sponsor Wren.
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And now, back to the show.
Now, when we first meet the gentle jovial Hoovy,
he and his very pregnant wife are living
on a simple idyllic farmstead,
surrounded by fields of flowers.
There's no signs of technology and definitely no weapons.
The vibes as the kids would say are mellow,
and Hoovy graciously helps Morty carry some aged wine
back through the portal.
Of course, when time doesn't so much tick by
as gallop, things are bound to change fast.
Hoovy returns to a much darker world to find his wife,
now a significantly less charming skeleton,
and his creepy now-born son who stabs him in vengeance
for being a deadbeat dad. In his dying words,
Hoovy establishes Morty as the foundational cause
for his family's woes.
- Wasn't my fault.
- Whose then? Whose?
- The boy, from the magic door.
- [Michael] He then bleeds out beneath a sky
of thunder and lightening. End scene.
Now if philosopher Thomas Hobbes had Adult Swim
and a decent bong, he might've gotten a real kick
out of this moment.
See, he thought the heart of why human societies form
is to defend themselves against a common enemy.
Small side note here, Hobbes idea of a state of nature
was violent, then chaotic.
Unlike the peaceful Hoovy-verse Morty first encountered.
Which more resembled the state of nature
imagined by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
that is a fundamentally innocent one.
Anyway, philosophical caveats aside,
Hobbes believed that a common and foundational enemy,
whether real or imagined, is the main rallying force
that gets us all to work together and form societies.
And in rallying against an enemy, we as members of a society
necessarily sacrifice some of our rights
to a sovereign in order to be better protected
from these external boogeymen,
or in this case, boogey-boys.
We see the beginning of a civilized society
on Morty's third visit to the Hoovy-verse.
The Hoovys have started cultivating land,
and even domesticated a bird.
The move to an organized agrarian lifestyle was of course,
a very real stage in the development of human society.
After Morty offs, the new Hoovy patriarch,
his sons mobilize an opposition
against their now sworn enemy,
constructing what eventually amounts
to a full blown medieval kingdom,
complete with um...creative weapons towers,
and very devoted watch guards.
- Papa, why do we guard the gate?
- Because one day, the dark child shall return,
and we will be ready.
- [Michael] On Morty's next visit,
he's seemingly pummeled to death,
but this doesn't end this society's orientation
towards violence against this mythic adolescent enemy.
- They finally beat him, but let's always remain vigilant.
- [Michael] Eventually, the King's son speaks out.
He's fed up with the Morty obsession.
- You have wasted our lives, our very futures,
on a fantasy.
- Clearly, people have been subjugated to build this kingdom
in the hopes protecting themselves against,
and we can't stress this enough,
a 14-year-old whose only friend is his grandpa.
Eventually, the Hoovys progressed so far
that they become cyborgs. One of whom ponders,
- Who would we be without you, Morty?
Are we anything beyond our hatred?
- [Michael] Hobbes might say, nah.
But why do we stay stuck in this pattern?
Especially when war is painful.
It involves some very non-delicious snacks.
For answers to that, it's worth looking
to notable French disciple of power,
LSD enthusiast, and one of my personal bald icons,
Michel Foucault. In his lectures, Society Must Be Defended,
Foucault analyzes 17th century historian,
Henri de Boulainvilliers,
who argued that war isn't really about individual battles
that interrupt civilized society,
but rather is the fundamental schema
for organizing civilized society, as such.
As Foucault explains,
it is a war that begins before the battle
and continues after it is over.
It is war insofar as it a way of waging war,
a way of preparing for and organizing war.
In this way, war became a sort of permanent state
that permeates the entire social body.
We see this as the Hoovys continue to industrialize
in their perpetual war against Morty,
with the core of their social order
resting on their relentless need to be prepared
to fight their foe.
Even when some of the Hoovys eventually do rebel
against the prevailing social order,
they do so through the only mechanism they know.
More war and violence.
According to Foucault, the constant state of war
informs everything from religion, to economy, to education.
In it's permeation across society,
war becomes an excellent mechanism
for controlling a populace,
the sort of subtext of sovereignty.
It doesn't benefit those in power to simply give up
the ancestral Hoovy hatred for Morty,
and build a peaceful society.
Doing so would mean giving up control of its populous,
who in becoming robotic emissaries
of the war obsessed state,
have sacrificed their rights and autonomy
to those in power. None more so than Adam,
whose entire life has been dedicated
to the project of destroying Morty.
He's the natural culmination of the Hoovy-verses progression
from peaceful farmers, to angry peasants,
to mobilized warriors. Of course, things go even further
when the Hoovys acquire cybernetic capabilities
and literally become Morty murder cyborgs.
The project of killing Morty then
has literally destroyed organic life,
leaving behind only robotic agents of war and aggression.
Here, Foucault's ideas are exaggerated and literalized.
Hoovy's society is literally nothing more
than its preparedness to battle Morty.
Pretty bleak.
As befits any rigorous Harmon effort of storytelling,
This even connects to the episode's main plot line,
in which Nimbus and Rick each define themselves
by their antagonistic relationship.
Their attempts to find peace
between earth and ocean flounders-
You get it, flounders, like-like, the fish?
in part because their antagonism is foundational
to their identities. Much as the Hoovy-verse
was defined by hatred of Morty.
- Do you think he will show you mercy?
- [Michael] And if you think this all sounds a little bit
like a certain post-9/11 warmongering
American national identity,
we're certainly not gonna say you're wrong.
But what do you guys think? Are the Hoovys
an excellent example of the violent fate
that inevitably befalls any society
more obsessed with vilifying its enemies
than, you know, neighborly good deeds,
or did we wander through a portal of overthinking yet again?
Let us know in the comments.
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And as always, thanks for watching. Later.
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