What’s up guys, Jared again. As I’m sure many of you are aware, there’s
been a lot of talk about a certain kind of fan who worships characters that well, shouldn’t
be worshipped. The most obvious of these is perhaps Rick
Sanchez. Now before you murder me, I’m not saying
Rick isn’t an amazing character, because he is. But even Dan Harmon has said, in the face
of people screaming at minimum wage workers at McDonalds, that the people who see Rick
as a role model are missing the point. So, like all things, I asked “Why?” Why do people worship Rick Sanchez? Love him or hate him, Rick is objectively
an asshole, and the show goes out of its way to tell us: we don’t want to be him. And it’s not just him. There are tons of amazing characters who for
lack of a better word, are assholes, and scores of people who look at them and say, “That’s
who I want to be.” Tony Montana, Walter White, Frank Castle,
and of course, Señor Sanchez. So, what’s going on here? Are we so wrapped up in the bad-assery of
Heisenberg and The Punisher that we’re ignoring the messages the shows are giving us? Well, to answer that, we’re going to have
to go back in time to study the assholes that started it all. Welcome to this Wisecrack Edition on Assholes,
The Fictional Kind. And yeah, spoilers for Rick and Morty, Breaking
Bad, and the Punisher ahead. To understand the likes of Tony Montana or
Rick Sanchez, we need to go back to the literary archetype that created them: the tragic hero. Tragic heroes, in Greek Drama, are protagonists
with a critical flaw that leads to their inevitable downfall. In other words, they were usually assholes. Those characters, along with other forms of
drama, served a specific purpose: education. Imagine: It’s Athens, fourth century BCE,
and you’re letting it all hang in a toga and generally having a pretty good time. That is, unless you’re a woman, slave, foreigner,
or Socrates, in which case, you’re kind of screwed. Except there’s only one problem in your
fancy Greek life: there aren’t any schools as we know them today. See, before the rise of the Sophists, the
Greek model of education revolved primarily around rich kids being independently educated
by a host of random teachers and older male role models. Essentially, take your average trust fund
kid of today, and but instead of all the lawyers, therapists, and personal trainers, they’ve
got their writing instructors and their mythology teachers. As a consequence of all this, education wasn’t
the prerogative of any one institution, but rather of society as a whole. In ancient Greece, and in particularly ancient
Athens, the village raises the child. Or as the poet Simonides said, “The polis
teaches the man." So, if education is handled by the city, but
there are no schools, how do you tackle educating the male populus en masse? Through storytelling. Enter the Dionysia, essentially, Athens' version
of SXSW. During the week-long Dionysia, Athenians would
spend all day watching multiple tragedies and comedies, before voting on which one they
liked best. But these plays were more than just the ancient
equivalents of films in the park – they were like mini moral sermons. Characters in Greek theater weren’t meant
to be realistic representations of everyday people. The actors wore stylized masks, and the characters
themselves had larger than life aspirations and flaws – often lifted straight from mythology. This was done to imbue the characters with
a greater, almost symbolic purpose. As best stated by the OG of literary theory,
Aristotle, “Character in a play is that which reveals the moral purpose of the agent." In other words, character was the vehicle
for the moral of the story. And true to form, both ancient tragedies and
comedies focused on the consequences of its characters’ moral choices. And that’s where our asshole characters
originate from. It pretty much breaks down like this: in tragedies,
our assholes are heroes who couldn’t overcome their central moral flaw, and as a result,
met a pretty horrible fate, usually a coffin. Obsessed with gaining knowledge? Well, your quest might just lead to you banging
your mom and plucking your eyes out, like in Oedipus Rex. Meanwhile, in comedy, our assholes actually
learn from their flaws and get a pretty sweet deal – usually a wedding. Obsessed with going to war? Well, your womenfolk might decide to barricade
themselves in the Acropolis and stop putting out until you change your ways, like in Lysistrata. In essence, tragedy and comedy were two sides
of the same coin; if you’re an asshole, either succumb to your flaws and be punished,
or overcome them and be rewarded. While there are always exceptions, this has
pretty much been the go to rubric for entertainment for the last 2,000 years: assholes are punished
for being assholes or rewarded for changing. In the process, we’re handed a fairly obvious
moral lesson: don’t be like these guys. And this basic formula persists, even in shows
like Rick and Morty. But our reception of these moral messages
may have changed. For example, let’s look at Rick’s season
3 arc. By the end of Episode 1, Rick seems to have
gotten everything he wanted. After the conclusion of the first episode,
there’s no Intergalactic Federation, no Citadel of Ricks, no Jerry, no problem. "No problem." But Rick’s fatal flaw is the very intelligence
that let him do all of this in the first place, and he’s punished for it. "You are the master of your universe, and
yet, you are dripping with rat blood and feces." The rest of Dr. Wong’s monologue reads like
a literary analysis of his tragic flaw. “Rick, the only connection between your
unquestionable intelligence and the sickness destroying your family is that everyone in
your family, you included, use intelligence to justify sickness. You seem to alternate between viewing your
own mind as an unstoppable force and as an inescapable curse.” This is all in stark contrast to Jerry, whose
stupidity lets him find joy in everything, even a low-grade simulation. And by the end of Season 3, we see Beth, Summer,
and Morty choose Jerry over Rick for this exact reason. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You win, Jerry. You win. No amount of genius can stop your dumb, mediocre
vacuous roots from digging into everything and everyone around you and draining them
of any ability to fend you off.” In the end, Rick’s intelligence made him,
in his words, the lowest rung of his idiot family, but that hasn’t stopped some fans
from being so unapologetically pro-Rick, and by extension pro-asshole, that Dan Harmon
pondered to GQ magazine, “Do I worry about them ruining everything? Yeah, I do." Likewise, in Breaking Bad, we see our main
hero suffer from his inability to overcome his central flaw: pride. In the show, chemistry teacher Walter White
turns to making meth with his former student, so he can pay his hospital bills and take
care of his family. After building up a multi-million dollar empire
over five seasons, though, Walter has to square with the fact that the very pride that drove
him achieve all of this is also his biggest problem. “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it." In the end, Walter is punished for this pride,
and he loses the two things he started the series trying to protect: his life and his
family. As Walter Jr. powerfully tells him on the
phone in the penultimate episode: “You asshole. Why are you still alive? Why won’t you just – just die already? Just – just die." And yeah, Walter does die in the end, but
not before a torrent of fans took to social media and called out every character who betrayed
him, including Aaron Paul, the actor who played Jesse. Fans were so in Walter’s corner that they
started calling Aaron a “f**king rat” in person, which is pretty messed up when
you consider that Walter poisoned his girlfriend’s 10-year-old son. Likewise, the Punisher, decidedly an antihero,
becomes the same monster he’s been fighting against. After he finds out his whole family had been
killed in an orchestrated hit, Frank Castle becomes a one-man death squad. But this single-minded approach also comes
at a severe cost. Aside from dealing with a heaping dose of
PTSD, Frank’s insistence on literally taking heads almost perverts the very justice he’s
striving for. As his ally in Season 1, Micro, tells him:
“Your family’s dead. Anyone that’s ever looked at you sideways,
they’re dead. And you just keep on going, huh? You just keep on going. You’re a psychopath.” Worse, Frank’s violent vigilante behavior
has become the inspiration for a domestic terrorist. "I guess they needed you gone. Too many people on your side. People like me. People who know that we have to take matters
into our own hands.” In the process, Frank becomes wrapped up in
the same senseless violence that cost his family their lives. But again, some fans don’t see how Frank
isn’t one you want to emulate. Even though the Punisher is a symbol of violence
gone too far and an inadequate justice system, his logo has repeatedly popped up on police
cars. As a result, Punisher creator Gerry Conway,
made this statement: “The vigilante anti-hero is fundamentally a critique of the justice
system, an example of social failure… Whether you think the Punisher is justified
or not, whether you admire his code of ethics, he is an outlaw. He is a criminal. Police should not be embracing a criminal
as their symbol.” So, here’s the question, Wisecrack: if all
these asshole characters in media are getting their just desserts, then why are so many
fans worshipping them anyway? Well, we put our crack team of media experts
to work, and we decided it comes down to two things: society and psychological realism. Back in the ancient times, the unseen force
that moved people was Fate with a capital F. In ancient Greece, the Fates, or Moirai,
were the white-robed manifestations of destiny and they spent their time spinning the literal
thread of life. Everything that happened to these men and
gods was dictated by these beings. And this is one of the main forces that tragic
heroes often find themselves arrayed against. Oedipus, for example, was cast out as a baby
because the Oracle told King Laius that he would be murdered by his own son. Well, twenty years and one dead father later,
Oedipus discovers that the prophecy has indeed come true. And, hint, it’s because of his tragic flaw:
his undying quest for knowledge. Oedipus becomes the King of Thebes after solving
the Sphinx's riddle, only to use that same intelligence to later discover that his unholy
union with his mother that ends in her suicide and him stabbing his eyes out. And this tradition of fate moving our heroes
carried on well beyond the rise and fall of ancient Athens. In MacBeth, our hero becomes a usurper due
to the prophecy of three witches, in The Master Builder, Solness falls to his death after
being wrapped up in Hilde’s questionable narrative, and in Game of Thrones, Jon Snow
is definitely the fulfillment of the prophecy of Azor Ahai. But something has happened in the last hundred
or so years: we’ve moved away from the idea of the gods controlling us like a bunch of
Sims. Instead of our tragic heroes railing against
fate, they’re mostly railing against society. And that’s the situation we see with a lot
of our favorite asshole characters in today. In Breaking Bad, Walter White isn’t punished
by the gods, but rather by a broken medical system that isn’t giving him an out. “Sometimes, I feel like I never actually
make any of my own. Choices." In the Punisher, Frank isn’t up against
the big man in the sky, but rather a corrupt U.S. military industrial complex and an impotent
criminal justice system. Hell, even Rick isn’t a victim of fate,
but rather the idiots and bureaucrats that surround him. "They're not robots, Rick! It's a figure of speech, Morty. They're bureaucrats. I don't respect them." In some way, we the audience can see “society”
as fate itself. Walter, with no options, has no choice but
to become Heisenberg. Frank, with no recourse to justice, and no
place in society for people who know only how to be a soldier, can only become the Punisher. But at the same time, our characters “transcend”
their “predestination.” Walter cures his cancer with drug money, in
a way that no other science teacher could, Frank Castle delivers “justice” to criminals
when society fails to do so, and Rick Sanchez solves all of his ills with portal guns and
his supergenius. The shift from fate as public enemy number
one to society goes a long way in explaining why we’re so okay with our asshole characters
today- even after they’ve been punished.While it’s easy to swallow the pill that you can’t
fight fate, because it is, by its very nature outside of your control, society isn’t. Society can be changed. And if this terrible character is chafing
against a system you hate, they become a symbol of the change you desire. There’s no incentive to worship someone
who tried to buck fate and failed, because there’s no beating fate. Period. But to worship somebody who fought an unjust
system, even though their flaws undid them?? That makes a little more sense. Sure, Frank Castle’s appetite for violence
and revenge definitely goes too far, but it’s also what allows him to stand up against an
unjust system. After all, you don’t need to go full conspiracy
theory to wonder if the military puts its own interests over that of its soldiers and
its country, or to think that veterans get a raw deal when they come home. “All I know is that we risked our lives,
and we did terrible things and it meant nothing when we got home.” Similarly, you can understand why people are
going to be in Walter’s corner, despite the bodies piling up around him. Yes, the show goes out of its way to tell
us how Walter’s pride brings his downfall, but that same pride also allowed Walter to
fight back against some serious BS. Unlike the drama of ancient times, the tragic
flaws for these characters are the engine that allows them to overcome a broken system. They’re relatable because they serve as
a perverse wish fulfillment - Hey, are you also being drowned in a sea of drudgery and
stupidity? Well, do I have a mad scientist for you. Overqualified for your job and deep in medical
debt? There’s a drug dealer that you might like
to hear about. Besides embedding a social critique in these
characters, psychological realism can help us understand our attraction to them. The greater effect of replacing fate with
society is that it helps close what writer John Gardner calls the psychic distance – essentially
the space between the reader’s thoughts and that of the characters. In ancient times, actors wore stylized masks,
spoke in high-flying verse, and were up against the gods themselves. A good method for teaching, but not exactly
the best way to have your audience relate. But in modern times, film and TV focus on
naturalism, a 1:1 replication of reality in order to optimize relatability. Our characters on the screen speak and act
like us, and the problems they face are often relatable. Even Rick, once you strip away the science
fiction, comes off like your drunk, narcissistic uncle. And to an extent, that means that we end up
rooting for the asshole and sometimes missing the larger message. Who cares that Rick is a dangerously dysfunctional
alcoholic who wakes up in a pile of his own feces, when audiences can relate to how soul
crushing it is to have all the answers and still be miserable. "Fun's fun, but who needs it?" So what do you think, Wisecrack? Has media’s razor-sharp social commentary
ruined the tragic hero? Or are we the assholes after all? Drop us a line in the comments, and don't
forget to check out Wix to create your own professional website for free. Click the link in the description to get started,
and as always, thanks for watching guys, peace.
i am loosing any interest in wisecrack, they often loose the forest for the trees.
people like characters who buck the system because people see the system as having failed and become corrupt.
Speak for yourself. I find rebels overdone