(upbeat music)
- What's up guys,
Michael here with yet another Rick and Morty
season five quick take.
The latest episode,
"A Rickconvenient Mort"
finds Morty getting into a passionate
probably illegal relationship with Planetina.
- Hey, there's a little boy on her.
- (indistinct) to drop the curtain.
- An environmental super person slash corporatized advocate
for recycling.
Over the course of the episode,
Planetina's devotion to Mother Earth
quickly turns her into an arsonist and murderer
and Morty can't stomach the whole killing 300 people
side of his new boo's personality.
But does Planetina kind of have a point?
Now before you freak out,
let us explain this Wisecrack quick take on Rick and Morty
was planet Tina right?
And before we continue spoilers ahead.
But before we get into it,
I wanted to tell you guys about something else
we do here at Wisecrack.
Podcasts.
They're like audio versions of YouTube videos
except much longer with multiple very awesome hosts
and on a variety of topics
that we don't have time to cover in our videos.
If you wanna hear us dive deeper into our favorite movies
from classics to recent releases
and everything else in between,
check out, Show Me the Meaning.
We're hosts, Austin, Ryan and Raymond
plus the occasional special guest
uncover all of the deeper meaning
hidden beneath the surface of their cinematic favorites.
For a breakdown of everything going on
in the cultural zeitgeist.
We have Culture Binge hosted by Surbhi and myself,
where we use current events as an occasion to analyze
what's going on in our culture.
Also, we occasionally give weird personal advice
on things like dating and dealing with your family.
Finally, if you are a fan of Rick and Morty,
we have The Squanch where Ryan Haley and I
explore all of the madness and meaning
in each new episode of season five
alongside a special guest.
We do everything from analyze episode structure
to uncover the secrets theological and philosophical themes
hidden behind the clones decoys and ocean lords.
So check them out wherever you listen to podcasts
and subscribe to our Wisecast channel on YouTube
to watch video versions of all of our podcasts.
And now back to the show.
From the start, the episode is skeptical of how effective
Planetina really is.
At the outset, she's a rhyme happy recycling enthusiast
who can also stop acid rain.
- Your acid rain is an acid pain in the butt.
- But we quickly learn that she's functionally
an environmentalist celebrity
working at the behest of this money hungry crew.
- Hey buddy, you want an autograph?
That's 20 bucks a pop.
- Planetina's early environmental efforts
are mostly defined by fun slogans.
- There's only one solution for earth's pollution, you.
(winks)
- She's an obvious satire of Captain Planet
and the environmental messaging of the time.
While the '70s and '80s
saw plenty of government regulation
to stop environmental degradation
despite Reagan's best efforts,
political will to expand these efforts
began to fade in the late '80s and early '90s.
As federal leadership waned
corporations increasingly undertook voluntary
arguably rather cynical steps
to limit their environmental damage.
This so-called corporate environmentalism
was actually pretty toothless.
You'll need initiatives sounded good but didn't do much
in what one activist dubbed, Greenwashing.
But it was enough to stay off government regulation,
deliver good publicity and pass much of the responsibility
for fixing the environment on to consumers.
For example, when the plastics industry
poured money into a marketing effort
to popularize recycling supposedly fixing
the whole landfill problem.
Without the government taking charge,
saving the planet became about personal responsibility.
Despite the fact that 70% of the world's pollution
is caused by just 100 companies.
And personal responsibility is Planetina's whole vibe
encouraging you to recycle batteries.
- Everyone should discard used batteries
have proper disposal centers,
instead of tossing them into a regular waste bin.
- [Michael] Or save a bunny from a forest fire.
- He traveled 200 miles
just to save a rabbit from the fire.
- She's probably not really making significant change.
Earth's solutions to pollution like recycling,
make people feel good
but don't functionally stop our planet from dying.
A fact she doesn't initially seem to realize.
- You are not an idiot, you recycled.
- But when her activism proves ineffective
at stopping some work happy minors,
she hits a breaking point.
So what's a fed up environmental superhero to do?
That's when Planetina goes rogue
setting fire to a mine full of workers
and burning down a congressman's house.
Is her violent rage justifiable?
The murder part, definitely not,
but burning down a mine?
That's a little more complicated
at least according to Swedish academic and activist,
Andreas Malm.
He argues that change of the magnitude needed
to keep earth inhabitable can only be achieved
if the environmental movement changes dramatically.
Specifically, he wants activists to employ
strategic acts of violence against the private property
of polluting corporations as he explains in his book,
fittingly entitled, "How to Blow Up a Pipeline."
Now to be crystal clear,
Malm would not have endorsed Planetina's actions.
He doesn't believe in causing physical harm to people
or sent you to amalgams of natural elements,
but rather to infrastructure that is hurting
the environment.
He argues that major positive societal change
has pretty much only ever happened via violence
from the Haitian Revolution to the Suffragette Movement,
the latter of which involved a lot more breaking of windows
and lighting buildings on fire than you might remember
from history class.
Importantly, he notes that
at least in the Suffragette Movement,
"not a single life was lost.
Only empty buildings were set ablaze.
The Suffragettes took great pains to avoid injuring people."
While America loves to wax poetic about nonviolent protest,
he says this as a whitewashed historical mythos.
While every social movement has plenty
of peaceful protestors,
they also have members willing to commit radical acts
of strategic violence.
In contrast, the mainstream climate movement has,
especially in recent years,
been mostly corporate friendly and well-mannered
much like Planetina really are.
- There's only one solution for earth's pollution, you!
- Meanwhile, destructive oil pipelines continue to be built
and carbon emissions continue to rise.
And honestly, I'm sweating balls year round.
He calls this alleged lack of urgency
in the environmental movement,
"Lanchester's Paradox."
The paradox is this.
The coming climate crisis is so urgent and dire
with the capacity to literally wipe out human existence
yet protests have been relatively mild mannered.
He asks,
"at what point do we escalate?
When do we start physically attacking the things
that consume our planet and destroy them
with our own hands?"
We see Planetina experiencing Lanchester's Paradox
When she tries to politely convince the miners
not to tear up the land to no avail.
Malm argues that this will always be the case
and that the movement needs to take a different approach
writing,
"So here is what the movement of millions should do
for a start: announce and enforce the prohibition
of carbon emissions.
Damage and destroy new CO2-emitting devices.
Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them,
burn them, blow them up.
Let the capitalists who keep on investing in the fire
know that their properties will be trashed."
He argues that if people do this in mass,
eventually it'll stop being cost-effective
for corporations to invest in dirty energy.
Emissions will go down, planet saved,
no more oceans on fire, probably.
In line with Malm though again, via murdering people,
which he explicitly says not to do,
Planetina gets violent, destroying the mind
and its infrastructure so that it can't pollute anymore.
Here she goes from focusing on individual responsibility
for pollution to radically attacking the capitalist system
that has destroyed the planet.
But Morty for his part is horrified
rejecting her activism and saying,
- If that's the only way, I don't wanna be saved.
- And most people would probably agree
obviously when it comes to murder.
But probably also to the destruction of private property
in the name of environmentalism.
Malm for his part, counters
that our concept of private property will cost us the earth.
He gives examples of successful violent interventions
that involve property damage
such as the 30 attacks on a gas pipeline
that permanently shut down the pipeline
during the Egyptian revolution.
Similar tactics have found success
in Ecuador, Sweden and India to name just a few
of Malm's examples.
Of course, most of us are about to go
blow up the pipeline.
Did you hear that FBI?
And the problem of a coming climate crisis
can understandably feel too huge and too terrifying
to even contemplate.
So what are most of us effectively doing?
Interestingly enough,
that question brings us to Summer and Rick's B-plot
in which they party hop from orgiastic dying planet
to orgiastic dying planet.
This subplot shows a very real way
some people react to the climate crisis
with the sort of nihilism.
- This gay sex with my dad is terrific,
what was I thinking?
- It will all be over soon.
- A 'the earth is (beeping) anyhow
so why don't we snort Coke through a plastic straw in my SUV
while blasting the AC" kinda thing
Yeah, which on second thoughts,
that sounds like a very...
that sounds like a very dumb idea.
Don't do that there.
This could be a commentary on the first world's response
to the coming climate disaster.
Which has been largely, not to much of anything
while we keep polluting like our lives depend on it.
As summer and Rick see,
it's easier and more fun to just go with the flow
eat some alien ass and enjoy the ride while it lasts.
- Oh, is that another (beep), don't mind if I brlaaaa.
- [Michael] Especially when change feels so difficult
and so out of reach.
Such an approach would understandably
probably make Malm weak.
- Hey, she's the one that saved the world.
Now we gotta go to work tomorrow.
(crowd boos)
- At the same time, most people aren't looking
But what do you guys think?
Is violence the only way to stop our planet
from literally catching on fire?
Or is there a healthy medium ground
between Summer and Planetina?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
Big thanks to our patrons for all your support.
Be sure to check out our Rick and Morty podcast The Squanch
and blow up that subscribe button
like you're saving the planet despite your grandpa,
and don't forget to ring that bell.
As always. thanks for watching.
Later.
(upbeat music)