Film Theory: You'll Never Be Happy (Rick and Morty)

hello internet welcome to glory so the glory so that overthinks the glory out of all your favorite glories alors Oh we're back on the Rick and Morty quick Theory bandwagon this week to talk about an episode that I initially dismissed as just a wacky space adventure during my first watch season 4 episode 7 s primordius I mean can you really blame me it ends with Rick and Morty pooping their pants in the living room for a show that requires a very high IQ to understand this one seemed like a pretty straightforward sci-fi riff on alien with a little bit of Star Wars thrown in for good measure the truth though is that this is an episode all about philosophy now I keep your glory so on I promise this episode will be better than your college philosophy class and won't have a guy who sits in the corner with dreadlocks and brings his acoustic guitar to class he'll just be you know down in the comments with his acoustic guitar to quickly recap the episode opens on Rick and Morty controlled by parasites they escaped the facehuggers and kill them as they explore this alien parasite society on their way to escape they discover that it seems to be worshipful of something called Glory's aliens plan to glory so earth meaning take over all its inhabitants Rick and Morty make a daring escape and decimate the alien society on their way out of town feels kind of good later they realized they left summer behind how summer did she have fun too after returning to the planet and finding summer Rick Morty and us as the viewer learned that the pace huggers have a 30-minute life cycle of attaching themselves to the faces of host bodies pooping out an egg and then promptly dying wait so all you do is live half an hour eggs and die yes we love it right now summer introduces the revolutionary idea of you know not doing that okay you guys don't have to listen to me but I vote you don't do that and thus a new glory so society is born we find out that in this new society Steve the parasite that had latched on Morty and Bruce the parasite that had latched on to Rick each had two different philosophical points of view and just like that the philosophy is back in my sci-fi animated series about farts and poop jokes Steve loves the plan of this new glory so society where the lifespan is longer than 30 minutes a sort of self-chosen evolution Bruce the parasite controlling reg thinks that the old ways of living for 30 minutes and pooping out an egg were better and takes to glory to spread his message to the masses the two of them fight about it oh you care about his progress in society and skyscrapers you don't care about biology how come you haven't laid an egg inside this old man yeah cuz I do what I want and then they have themselves the world's most Awkward makeout session in a show that I thought had capped itself out at awkwardness with the dragon episode the season has just been very uncomfortable with Rick and Morty's relationship I'm just saying these two not only give us one of the most uncomfortable 15 seconds of TV kissing that I've ever seen but they also give us two opposing philosophical arguments that appeal to nature versus evolutionary ethics the appeal to nature is embodied by Bruce this is the idea that whatever is natural is always gonna be for the best we were born to plant eggs and a host and died 30 minutes later if this is what nature gave us then it's what we should stick to if it's not natural and it didn't come from nature then it's inherently bad so choosing to not die 30 minutes after you're born is gonna be a big no-no Bruce's natural is best mentality seems a little fatalistic coming from the perspective of us humans that live 90 plus years but this is far from an out of the ballpark philosophy and you may even be living at yourself ever choose between two things at the grocery store and pick up the one that says natural or organic on the label because it must be the better one this is the appeal to nature unfortunately the appeal to nature is largely deemed a fallacy research in the real world doesn't support the idea that just because something is natural it's better and when you play out an appeal to argument nature a lot of times you can't even define whether or not something is natural in the first place for instance you might buy a nice organic banana from the grocery store thinking that it's natural but it turns out the bananas we now look nothing like their ancestor natural bananas humans have cultivated bananas to look the way that they do over thousands of years still natural to eat a banana after all that human tampering it's unclear is farming food even natural or should we be only eating things that we forage from nature even in the show Bruce himself preaches a natural life if he refuses to poop his egg and die he's sitting around making videos for glory so tubes shilling for the likes like an intergalactic Wolfie raps even halfway across the universe it still feels really awkward so Bruce is clearly wrong here writes an appeal to nature is a fallacy it's been proven many times in every area to be a fallacy Steve is the one who's right then onward and upward through progress he's right right right well it's certainly tempting to agree with him after all the movement that summer starts seems to be moving in the direction of less death and more flourishing it's an opportunity for the people of glory so to live out their lives they can go to school they can invent things they create a thriving metropolis everything seems cool up until summer decides that she wants to leave the planet and suddenly they go from worshipping her as Empress to executing her she's trying to escape with her family my time to shine execute Wow just like that guys no trial no starting with a simple downgrade of you know what you don't get to be Empress anymore but maybe we don't go to immediately killing you know it's played for the laughs it illustrates the harsh truth progress always comes with a cost and the cost is paid by pretty much anyone who isn't glory so this is an example of evolutionary ethics humans being in the bizarre position that we're in of not only being able to affect our own evolution but being aware that we're doing it are faced with moral decisions about whether the good of us Trump's the good of everything else and whether progress makes it ok to change or destroy everything around us through science and technology humans have drastically altered our own lifespans fewer early deaths less disease less threat of starvation all of these are great things that the cost is that we modify every habitat that we touch we take resources away from everything else in the world we can literally bring water to a desert but in the process we disrupt all the places that the water used to be rigorous testing means that our pharmaceutical products are safer to use but this testing process often involves using animals as our test sub to the glory so is taking over a new planet and glorifying them is a great thing to the humans that are about to be gloried maybe they beg to differ and so again we arrive at another Rick and Morty episode where both sides of the philosophical argument seem to be wrong appealed nature sucks but glorious tile progress at all costs sucks - am I personally happy about progress you betcha 150 years ago over 40% of people born didn't survive until adulthood but do I always want to live with the guilt of well living well it turns out the argument doesn't end here listen to Bruce's argument again the biological institutions now all you care about is progress in society and skyscrapers there's something more subtle than progress versus nature implied here Bruce always talking about wanting to go back to the old days implies that Steve's way of life is just progress for progress as sake if all Steve cares about is skyscrapers then yeah that is kind of lame he's saying that there's no greater purpose to what Steve is building versus at least if you're living thirty minutes and pooping out an egg you know what your purpose in life is in the end it may well be that Bruce isn't opposed to progress in and of itself so much as he's opposed to living in a society that only cares about the totems of progress only cares about the externalities after all the glorious peace movement hasn't made life better for Bruce in fact the reason he resents it is because it separated him from the one person that he loved a life even a life that is long and full of flashy technology and infinite infrastructure isn't necessarily a life that's worthwhile if it doesn't have meaning and that is something that might resonate with a lot of people especially those living in first world countries that are on the cutting edge of what might be called human progress paradoxically rates of depression are higher in wealthier countries than they are in poorer countries and within those countries richer neighbourhoods actually have higher suicide rates than lower-income neighborhoods there are a lot of people who may be like Bruce feel that even if society has improved they've been left behind or has more tea points out being stuck in a society that's obsessed with advancing itself and squeezing every last bit of productivity out of every single one of its working citizens can leave people feeling like they're just cogs in the Wow just cogs in the machine I'm sure you'll make this into a beautiful short film that your parents will pay for Morty even Bruce's admission that all he wants to do is have a family with Steve is a hallmark of the meaningless progress machine that plays out here in the real world I want a family we have a family today countries that have modernized have fewer families and smaller family sizes in 2017 the US Census reported that only about 55 percent of adults were married which is a huge huge drop compared to 1960 when 70% of adults were married part of this might be changing lifestyles but birth rates have gone down too the birth rate is now less than half of what it was in 1957 not even all the inevitable kovat babies are gonna make up for that one dowel Myers a demographer at the University of Southern California has a fascinating if controversial explanation for this saying quote the birth rate is a barometer of despair according to Myers young people won't make plans to have babies unless they're optimistic about the future the world and their own and today's young adults aren't optimistic about either of those we can point to quote-unquote objective signs that society is advancing like the growth in GDP but in the mind of someone like Bruce just someone living in the society progress isn't something that can be measured in the number of skyscrapers being built at the start of the episode we mentioned that Bruce's guilting of making a logical fallacy with his appeal to nature not everything that's natural is naturally good however Steve himself might be guilty of making a logical fallacy in the opposite direction argumentum ad novita Tom for all of you who don't speak Latin out there that's appeal to novelty which claims that something is better just because it's newer or more modern but that's false not all change is necessarily progress in the right direction in the end the two characters set aside their differences and settle on a different path forward let's just get out of here and be whatever we want that's evolution that's progress much like Steven Bruce we also need to find the middle path as we figure out what our personal definition of progress is it's not good to cling to the old ways just because they're more natural but we also don't want to fetishize some abstract idea of modernity and become obsessed with building society in a way that actually leaves people worse off much like lures Oh human society has advanced in a way that's allowing us to live a longer lifespan rather than dying prematurely at a young age but if we achieve all of that progress and failed to take the opportunity to actually live that life in a fulfilling way then what was it all for that seems to be the real story and then they poop their pants on the living room floor what hey that's just a theory film theory and make sure you subscribe because the season of Rick and Morty is coming to a close and you can bet that we're gonna have at least one if not two more Rick and Morty analysis videos coming your way

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 3,742,725

Rating: 4.9019146 out of 5

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Id: O8G46NxgCp8

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 04 2020