(Upbeat music)
- (Michael) Hey Wisecrack, Michael here. Today, we’re looking at a cartoon after our own
hearts--a show that combines sober discussions of philosophy with zombie hordes, parasitic
clown-spiders, and magic-wielding fish-men--Netflix’s The Midnight Gospel.
A co-production of comedian Duncan Trussell and Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward,
The Midnight Gospel combines audio clips from Trussell’s long-running podcast The Duncan
Trussell Family Hour with Ward’s signature visual storytelling to create a one-of-a-kind
animated series that is equal parts trippy, hilarious, and terrifying.
But is the show just a compendium of shower thoughts to help your furlough go down easier
- or is it a legitimate dive into quote unquote real philosophy? To find out, we’re going
to focus on one specific aspect of the show. If you’ve seen it already, you might have
noticed one of Trussell’s favorite subjects popping up repeatedly:
- (Clancy) In Buddhism the idea is all of those, uh, mental forms of analysis-
- (Michael) That’s right: Buddhism. The Midnight Gospel asks us to consider: what
are the implications of Buddhist philosophy for people going about their everyday lives?
Should you become a societal dropout like the protagonist Clancy--or is there more to
life than just microdosing and doing ritual magic? Well, we’re about to find out. So
select your avatars, merge with your simulators, and follow us as we rocket into this Wisecrack
Edition on The Midnight Gospel: Deep or Dumb?
As always, spoilers ahead.
And now, a quick recap.
The plot of The Midnight Gospel--insofar as a show about yonic multiverse simulators can
be said to have a plot centers on Clancy, a music-loving burnout living in a trailer
on the “Chromatic Ribbon.”
On the Ribbon, Clancy and other “simulation farmers” spend their days shoving their
heads into the aforementioned vulva-Matrices, hoping to collect profitable artifacts or
marketable experiences from the multiverses within. Clancy, for instance, uses his trips
to gather content for his pet project, a “spacecast” with a single subscriber.
- (Clancy) And to my one subscriber, Hernog Jensen, I live for you. You’re the reason
I wake up in the morning with a smile on my face.
- (Michael) Clancy’s spacecast takes the form of interviews with subjects from wacky,
dying worlds, usually centered around topics such as Eastern philosophy, the occult, or
anything else worthy of a Keanu-Reeves
- (Keanu) Whoa!
- (Michael) Said conversations use repurposed audio from Trussell’s actual interviews
with people like Dr. Drew Pinsky and Anne Lamott.
From the beginning, Clancy prioritizes thinking about and discussing these Big Ideas over
more practical concerns, such as problems in his personal life or the day-to-day operations
of his simulator. On an (admittedly simulated) planet overrun by zombies, for instance, he
is so unconcerned with what’s going on around him that he continues to talk about the positive
benefits of mindfulness meditation while a man is eaten alive in front of his pregnant
wife.
- (Clancy) They say look at it as though you’re sitting in a forest and you’re getting to
watch a rare animal walking out into a clearing.
- (Michael) Clancy avoids mundane tasks--like reading the instruction manual for his simulator--dismissing
them as distractions from his contemplation of the deeper truths of existence.
- (Simulator) Good morning master. Did you get a chance to read the universe simulator
FAQ I left in your inbox? - (Clancy) Nope.
- (Michael) Specifically, Clancy, through his passing familiarity with Eastern religious
traditions, has come to believe that the material world is unimportant--or even illusory.
- (Clancy) And then you become pure awareness- - (President) Yeah, yeah.
- (Clancey) And the concept is that that is what we really are,
- (President) Yeah - (Clancy) And that this entire material universe
including our body is a kind of… (stutters) I can’t say it.
- (Woman) Phenomenological - (Clancy phenomenological field of phenomena!
A field of phenomena being encapsulated within-
- (Michael) Put simply, Clancy is saying: the tangible universe that we can see, hear,
touch, etc. is just an imperfect manifestation of a more fundamental reality, accessible
through consciousness-altering practices like meditation, ritual, plant medicine, and so
on. Therefore, the material world can and ought to be ignored, avoided, or ideally transcended.
Everyday life, with its bills, sh*tty neighbors, and absurd laws, isn’t the full experience
of divinity, enlightenment, or whatever you want to call it--therefore, it’s crap.
So here’s the question: are Clancy’s thoughts on Eastern religious philosophy deep, or more
like the inane ramblings of someone who just escaped their first Alan Watts YouTube rabbit
hole? To answer that question, we need to ask: does Clancy’s line of reasoning fit
within a Buddhist context? That is, do his beliefs hold water among Buddhist philosophers
with a smidge more experience?
Well...yes and no. Let’s start with the idea that the world is unimportant and illusory.
According to the Dalai Lama, this is somewhat correct, but only half the picture when it
comes to living by the tenets of Buddhism.
In MindScience, a collection of essays and dialogues, the Dalai Lama contends that there
are two levels of truth in the Buddhist worldview: 1. an “ultimate” truth--subscribed to
by Clancy and your stoner roommate--which acknowledges the emptiness of and impermanence
among all things; and 2. a “relative” truth, having to do with the facts of existence
as they relate to our daily lives.
Both of these truths are equally important to living a good life. At least within the
particular version of Tibetan Buddhism the Dalai Lama represents, the relative world,
with all its disappointments, frustrations, and heartaches is not merely some illusion
to be seen through. This is contra Clancy who tries to sidestep the problems of the
material world by fleeing to some supposedly “higher” plane of existence. The Dalai
Lama “accepts the reality not only of the subjective world of the mind but also of the
external objects of the physical world.”
In other words, while the mind-blowing cosmic insights gained through meditation and/or
study in the Buddhist tradition are all well and good, they are not an excuse to fuck off
to a trailer somewhere and abandon one’s responsibilities. Which is what Clancy has
decided to do--as his computer points out to him:
- (Clancy) I don’t need you to f***ing tell me, who the f*** I am or how to live my goddamn
life!
- (Michael) If the show were merely to stop here, we’d be forced to call “dumb”
on this delightfully bizarre series. Getting half of Buddhism right at the expense of the
other half is not, in philosophical terms, “cool.”
But the show DOESN’T stop there. Instead, it explores how the pure “universal truth”
approach to life does not qualify as enlightenment. On the contrary, it creates very real harm.
Throughout much of the season, Clancy’s disdain for the material world keeps coming
back to bite him in the ass. Early on, we learn that Clancy’s dismissive attitude
towards humdrum, everyday life has begun to affect his relationships. For instance, he
is funding his spacecast ambitions with money borrowed from his sister, who explicitly told
him not to blow it on a multiverse simulator.
- (Clancy) As I stare out at this majestic scene, I can’t help but think of my sister,
Sarah, who said: ‘Clancy, I’ll loan you this money, but you have to promise not to
spend it on a used universe simulator.
- (Michael) He ignores her attempts to call him, which rightfully pisses her off.
- (Clancy’s sister) Clancy it’s your sister. You need to call me back right now! I’m
freaking peeved off man there’s no reason that your space-
- (Michael) What’s more, by repeatedly ignoring his computer’s requests for basic maintenance,
he winds up damaging most of the worlds in his simulator before he even gets the chance
to visit them.
- (Simulator) Due to operator error, there are no longer living things on this planet
- (Clancy) Agh, what about this one?
- (Michael) All this avoidance doesn’t help Clancy transcend the very real problems of
his busted computer, broken family ties, and weak-ass spacecast. In search of the “ultimate
truth,” Clancy has forgotten the “relative” truths and nuisances of everyday existence
- which, no matter how much ayahuasca you chug, have a funny way of hanging around until
you actually do something about them. When Clancy’s sister finally gets through to
him, she explains that she doesn’t even care about the money anymore--
- (Clancy’s sister) I love you. And if this is about the money, you don’t need to pay
me back.
- (Michael) She’s just worried about her brother and how his refusal to face up to
his role in the world is hurting him. This confrontation with the real world puts an
unprepared Clancy in a full-on, sweaty panic attack, which he follows with an angry outburst
against the one person who cares enough to check up on him:
- (Clancy) Voicemail full! Message not received!
- (Michael) Clearly, Clancy isn’t finding lasting peace and happiness from taking refuge
in the platitudes around “ultimate” truth favored by hermits, Burning Man attendees,
and Jedi. To achieve what we might call real “enlightenment” within a Buddhist framework,
sentient beings like Clancy--and like us--also have to come to terms with the painful, sometimes
downright nasty facts of physical existence.
And to do THAT, we need to look at zombies. No, seriously.
In his book Dharma of the Dead, scholar Christopher M. Moreman explores some of the parallels
between zombie fiction and Buddhism. Particularly important for our purposes, he demonstrates
how your typical glass-eyed zombie wandering around in a stupor can serve as a model for
one of the potential pitfalls of meditation practice: The deliberate cultivation of a
pleasantly numb, trancelike state of being, devoid of mindful attention. Fictional zombies,
in other words, can represent one of the very real dangers of sloppy or misdirected spirituality.
Zombies can be a metaphor for those practitioners of a given tradition who try their damnedest
to paper over the difficulties of “relative” existence with “ultimate” truths about
God, the universe, or whatever else is in that pamphlet they’re shoving in your face.
From the Dalai Lama’s point of view, this kind of zombie-zen existence would seem to
stand in stark contrast to the real goal of meditation: cultivating a moment-to-moment
engagement with the present, also known as ‘mindfulness’.
In describing the difference between helpful practice and self-imposed zombification, Moreman
also notes a parallel between core tenets of Buddhism and philosopher Martin Heiddegger’s
concept of “Dasein.” Dasein is Heiddegger’s term for the uniquely human experience of
existence. In describing the parallels between this thinking and Buddhism, Moremon contends
that, according to Heidegger:
“the authentic self [i]s that which acknowledges its own [mortality] and incorporates it; the
inauthentic self is one that denies death and flees it. Here, Dasein sounds much like
the [Buddhist] anatta, a different perspective on selfhood that acknowledges the truth of
its impermanence.”
So what does that mean for our favorite spacecaster? Put simply: Clancy can laser-focus on the
ultimate truth, rhapsodize about phenomenological fields, and be a dick to his sister as much
as he pleases--but doing those things will not help him become an authentic self. Like
everyone else in the universe, Clancy is an “anatta,” a not-self, which is to say
a being subject to change--including discomfort and eventual non-existence. Authentic living
follows not from a narrow emphasis on the wonderful things in life--its beauty and pattern,
for instance--but from an acceptance and integration of its shittier aspects, such as pain, violence,
and death.
Which is not to say that Buddhism is all doom and gloom. Far from it! Through his interview
subjects, Clancy comes to realize that a worldview which integrates both a love of life and a
deep awareness of death is the gateway to a precious mode of being which he could never
access through his spacecast alone. In other words, he starts to care about the world outside
his simulator as a valuable part of existence in and of itself. Over the course of his journey,
he comes to accept the at-first-glance contradictory notion that struggling with life’s hardships
can bring immense pain, but can also bring a profound peace that isn’t so affected
by the ups and downs of the multiverse.
For example, during one of Trussell-slash-Clancy’s podcast interviews, Buddhist teacher Trudy
Goodman rides through a graveyard while explaining that
- (Goodman) Time of death is uncertain, but death is certain. If we really got that, we
would have fewer of the kind of moments where we regret having wasted our time or somebody
else’s. And it’s so precious. And just as horrible and brutal as the world can be,
it’s gorgeous and exquisite.
- (Michael) But the point really hits home for Clancy when the multiverse simulator brings
him in contact with his mother--voiced by Duncan Trussell’s real-life mom Deneen Fendig,
who passed away of cancer in 2013. As part of a heartbreaking scene in which Clancy and
his mom undergo a full life, death, and rebirth together, Deneen explains how she’s holding
up so well despite her diagnosis:
- (Deneen) “The reason I look better now than I ever have is because I’m more fully
living. - (Clancy) Right.
- (Deneen) Because I’m living and dying. Consciously, simultaneously. I’m holding
both.
- (Michael) In a similar way, Clancy finally arrives at a degree of authenticity by dropping
his pretensions and learning to engage in his own life, mess and all:
- (Clancy, singing) Even though your life is out of tune, you can still sing along with
it. And it’s better to be you and out of tune than acting like someone else who has
found enlightenment!
- (Michael) To put it another way--Clancy learns to embody both the ultimate truth he’s
so stoked about, and the relative truth that the Dalai Lama or Heidegger would argue is
so vital to human existence.
We see his new awareness play out in the final moments of the series, when a raid on Clancy’s
unlicensed simulation farm ends with Clancy and his dog diving all the way into the simulator
to escape the feds. Moments later, Clancy winds up on a bus, surrounded by the people
he’s interviewed throughout the series.
This is a situation that ultimate-truth Clancy could dissect for hours. Is this the afterlife?
Is he still in the simulator? What the ever-loving f*ck is going on with the driver playing the
spoons? But instead, we see Clancy experience a real moment of awareness and clarity.
After walking to the back of the bus, Clancy half-heartedly starts to interview a stranger:
- (Clancy) You mind if I interview you for my...um, am I dead?
- (Michael) Only to realize that something way more important than the spacecast is happening
right in front of him: The man in the robe turns out to be Ram Dass--a
practitioner of Eastern meditation techniques and one of Trussell’s heroes--who answers
Clancy’s question by saying:
- (Ram Dass) Just be here now.
- (Michael) In other words, Clancy rides off into eternity with the knowledge that a more
specific answer to his question doesn’t really matter. If and when the bus reaches
its final destination, whatever’s waiting at the end can take care of itself. What’s
really important right now is focusing his attention on every precious moment. And that
seems way closer to whatever real enlightenment looks like. Which is why, graveyard penis
notwithstanding, this series earns a solid ‘Deep’ from us.
What do you think, Wisecrack? Have we oversold this kooky cartoon? Or is it even more brilliant
than we’re giving it credit for? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to
subscribe and ring that bell. Big thanks to our patrons for supporting the channel and
our podcasts. Thanks for watching, guys. Later.