How Spongebob Explored Existential Nihilism

this video is brought to you by squarespace when it comes to websites online stores etc there's no place to build a beautiful online presence like squarespace i don't know what it is about spongebob that i can't stop talking about at this point we're on what the fifth video and i don't see it being the last because the more i talk about spongebob and the closer that i watch it the more i realize how smart of a show it really is beneath each episode there's a deeper meaning and theme that explores human behavior sometimes it isn't that deep and sometimes it's exploring philosophical ideas in ways more creative than most of what is on tv when i labeled squidville as the darkest episode a few months back a lot of people immediately argued that a different episode actually deserved that spot that episode being sb129 and you know what i agree sb129 is one of the most memorable one of the most creative one of the darkest and one of the most ambitious episodes to come out of the show a quick recap sb129 is about squidward trying to get some alone time away from spongebob and patrick and accidentally locking himself in a freezer for over 2 000 years thus waking up in the future he then uses the time travel machine in the future to go back to the past breaks the lever trying to get back to the present and then voila he finds himself in well nowhere many cartoons and movies have explored time travel as a concept because of how many different conflicts you can draw out of it but none that come to mind have explored what lies outside the linear timeline we move on what happens when we aren't in the past present or future spongebob not only uses this conflict but they use it to form a rather nihilistic argument that through this lens life is meaningless and you shouldn't fight against it firstly i have to address that there's a really fun theory on reddit by user deleted that touches on why in this episode squidward dies and this land of nowhere represents purgatory i do think this is a solid theory that could make sense but also doesn't really add up from the ones i'm viewing this episode through as much as it does make sense for squidward to have died what grounds the scene and presents it as instead an existential crisis is the clarinet not to overthink or anything here but if he died wouldn't he have lost this physical item after all the clarinet serves no real purpose in this section of the episode other than to act as a physical representation of reality for squidward to use that he could have gotten rid of in the freezer the writers kept the clarinet for a reason and i think it further enhances this being an internal crisis rather than actual death also he escapes this space by crashing through the ceiling of the room proving all that squishing never really happened and was instead part of this crisis my point is this is a thought not a concrete event so what is the crisis he goes through you can define it as an existential crisis but more specifically it revolves and references the eternal recurrence an experiment that friedrich nietzsche presented as a thought in his book the gay science this entire episode really seems like a direct response or adaptation of nietzsche's views on nihilism he describes the eternal recurrence as the idea that all events in the world repeat themselves in the same sequence through an eternal series of cycles and that is an idea that is directly referenced in this scene and episode as we see squidward literally endlessly running to nowhere and as we see spongebob and patrick consistently holding on to an activity like jellyfishing for more than 2000 years this idea of cycling is something i'll definitely be expanding on a key part of the scene if not the most iconic part is the alone chant now nietzsche coincidentally claims that this eternal recurrence happens at our loneliest loneliness justin remhoff a professor at old dominion university conveniently has an entire article dedicated to expanding on this at one point he writes the experiment the eternal recurrence is introduced in our loneliest loneliness because imagining our lives eternally reoccurring from that perspective should move us to overcome our loneliness after first cursing the demon the term loneliest loneliness is very important to keep in mind here because it's much stronger and more painful than normal loneliness you feel when maybe you're alone in your studio apartment for the first time your loneliest loneliness on the other hand is something much more existential something that squidward is absolutely feeling here it makes total sense too considering he in the moment doesn't belong to any specific period of time he's moving through an abstract undefinable space and nowhere is home he has nobody of course this is him at his loneliest loneliness as soon as the idea of being alone goes from being a relief to being a fear that's when the eternal recurrence kicks in for squid this then triggers the desire for self-transformation that remhoff speaks of goodward professes that he misses spongebob and that's when he snaps out of it and is placed back in reality now if we zoom out for a second that last little tidbit is where spongebob takes this argument a step further whereas nietzsche speaks on the fear of loneliness specifically the loneliest loneliness spongebob is posing what happens when you actually crave loneliness and then feel the opposite which then poses the question why do we change like that which is really just asking what the significance of community and affection is we can all pitch our own answers but if we're following the philosophy the show is working in it's just one big cycle which makes sense considering the eternal recurrence i talked about earlier we need social relationships because we fear loneliness and we fear loneliness because we need social relationships this cycle is perfectly captured at the very end of the episode where even after all of this even after a small moment of acceptance in the nowhere space squidward still hasn't really transformed because spongebob immediately makes him crave loneliness again these two sides togetherness and being alone answer each other and cancel each other out in a way that feels utterly shallow and drives this idea home that nothing matters if there's no true solution that means we're just doing the same thing over and over again which at that point why which is an idea that has explored just a little bit more in this episode that i haven't touched on yet there's a crisis within this that squidward has in regards to his place in the present moment and i promise it has something to do with this clip for as iconic as it is has always been a bit of a mystery to fans of the show it's funny but no one knows why it's there looking at it through this lens i think it makes a lot of sense squidward despite time traveling to the past and future realizes he cannot escape his true presence while the location may be the future or past he just like all of us is always living in the present none of us can ever truly live in the future or past we can always look at photos and videos from our past and say time travel actually exists we can go to the future or past but that's never experienced nor is it living through the present i does this make any sense the moment you absorbed what i just said is already the past you've never even truly aware you're living in the present because your brain is already behind by the time you've moved forward in time which brings me to the crunches this little moment is squidward trying to come back to the present fully aware that he's technically in the future using his body to recognize his emotions crunches are just another form of pinching yourself where you're doing something to make your body immediately react to convince yourself that yes i am in reality right now but him saying future painfully as though it's forcefully coming out of him suggests his mind wants to convince him otherwise so with all that being said he can wrap his brain around presently living in the past and in the future it's why he has a better grasp on things in the past after he's used to it but here when he ends up nowhere that's of course when the existential dread kicks in because who knows where he is and when he's living as terrifying and aggressively fictional as this is considering it's a children's cartoon the fear of not knowing yourself is the most terrifying and truthful realization in the episode because nietzsche argues you don't need to experience the acidic time travel journey squid undergoes to experience these same fears he's saying that the present moment does not take into consideration one's changes or fate or transformation aspects that are essential to one's becoming and if being is becoming you can never truly understand yourself because you're always living in the present if you're living in the present which we all are it's fundamentally impossible to understand yourself nietzsche's solution is to embrace this throness and to not know thyself a solution that squidward coincidentally comes to in the end of this episode really just kind of giving up and accepting reality for as dark as it may seem for a show like spongebob to end on a note suggesting life is meaningless i don't see it as not a happy ending nietzsche does originally claim that undergoing this eternal recurrence enables self-development and as remhof elaborated psychological context is necessary to enable said development the exact kind of context that's presented in the episode which is to say that this episode isn't necessarily a tragedy but instead a turning point for squidward where instead of living in complete misery he can now live in complete acceptance so with all that being said thanks for watching check out this episode and form your own opinion and before you head out i want to give a quick thank you to this week's sponsor 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Channel: Karsten Runquist

Views: 6,474,277

Keywords: Spongebob, Spongebob Squarepants, Squidward, Squidville, Patrick, Video Essay, Analysis, Explained, Breakdown, Explain, Dark, Sad, emotional, mental health, depression, philosophy, tv, cartoon, film, filmmaking, animation, meaning, nickelodeon, karsten runquist, youtube, 2020, new, nietzsche, sb-129, future

Id: eVlnvb9jdLA

Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020