The third season of Rick and Morty has just been launched.
 
Right in the first episode, I was surpreended with one of
the moments that was the most the impressive among the script that i had seen lately
For those who don't know, Rick and Morty is a show from Adult Swim
With totally nonsense scripts and the
philosofical discussions present in every episode,
they have elevated the series to a modern classic; and one of the main motives of this
is in the character Rick Sanchez.
"I see all like Rick Sanchez
Went and left, but now I'm greater than before
You know, we're all parasites of the celestial being
As the cure or the plague, at the end, we're all just test subjects"
But, to better understand this character,
We need to talk about the universe where the show is presented.
Rick and Morty runs in a sort of multiverse,
meaning that there are infinite universes, realities
and parallel dimensions.
 
 
 
And the existence of many universes with different laws of physics
would permit the existence of any creature and reality that
We can barely conceive
The serie borrows many elements from a genre known as Cosmic Terror:
Among them, the fact that the human being is completely insignifficant
before the universe and that in it exist entities and dimensions way beyond our comprehension.
One of the most famous works of this genre, The Cthulhu, of H.P. Lovecraft,
even shows up during the opening of the show
and it is in that cold and indifferent universe that
the characters live in many personal dramas,
dealing with subjects way more deep than We expect to see in a humorous cartoon.
One of the most recurrent thoughts in the show is the existencialist perspective
that questions the existence of a purpose inherent to the human condition;
and it is very common to see the characters
with a vision completely pessimistic about any meaning or a creator
 
 
 
 
In the case of Rick, this is even more relevant.
He is the most remarkably nihilistic in the show
with a total indifference to moral and purpose
that would usually guide someone.
 
 
Rick is considered one of the most intelligent people in the universe
and is probably the furthest the human being can ever become
of what the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called The Übermensch.
An Übermensch, or Super-Man
would be the one that would pass from nihilism to a superior state
where all the humanism, culture and moral that constrains the modern man would be left.
 
 
The Super-Man would be the extreme opposite to a conservative position
It would be the abandon of all the models to the man that creates its own meanings and moral values;
or, in the words of Nietzsche, "man is something that shall be overcome".
What sepparates Rick from that version of the Super-Man is the fact that
he is incapable of creating a purpose to life
He ends up better fitting in the absurdist theory of the philosopher Albert Camus,
that goes against Nietzsche's ideia and
affirms that any tentative to create a purpose to the absurdity of existence is an error,
and the best answer would be to embrace the indifference.
 
And, analyzing the finale of the second season and the start of the third,
it gets really clear how it is this vision of the character.
He surrenders himself to the Intergalactic Federation to try to save his family
and that gives a stagnation to the show;
until then, the character was totally against living with an ideal.
 
In the prison, he is questioned
and We are presented to what apparently would be
the story of why Rick is so frustrated and pessimistic.
 
But, shortly after, We discover that it was a lie
And that, in reality, he never planned to surrender himself
and would only have saved Morty and Summer so that their mom wouldn't be mad.
 
The show simply plays with all our need to attribute purpose
and meanings to the character
and subverts to a direction more absurd than before.
But I think that, in the same time that the show presents how the perspective of a rational world of his makes sense,
it also critiques that position;
picking Jerry as an example,
He is basically the opposite of Rick in everything:
He wants to be a man of his home, dominant,
be recognized for his work
and is always presented as being ignorant
 
 
 
But, in the end of one of the episodes,
Rick, that tries to kill himself, and just couldn't because he was too drunk to get the shot,
while Jerry is trying to fix the lawnmower,
and is clearly happy doing that.
Even Rick's most famous motto is,
in reality, like a cry for help.
 
 
 
As the own creator of the show says,
it is like the nihilistic view that nothing matters
would be very useful to deal with every sad and absurd aspect of life,
but, in the scale of the human life,
all the illusions like the feeling of belonging to something
or being interested in someone
were the most important things in the world.
And, suddenly, any moment is important and everything has, again, a purpose.
Maybe, even Rick is capable of feeling something like this;
the new season is out there and, well,
talking about Rick and Morty, I think anything is possible.
"This is unbeleavable to a mere mortal's perception
it is a The Sims between the lines being, thus, more radical
It is the answer that is sought at all costs,
but knowing that the truth is only found at our end"
My name is Otavio and this was another video of the project Quadro em Branco.
The interview that We made with Makalister is out
and its' link, of this awesome song of Eloy Polemico,
will be below in the description of the video
Indeed, people, We just hit 50.000 subscribers!
And I wanted to thank everyone that is supporting the project with any way
and specially to Felipe, that deals with us every week to record the videos.
Thank you very much for your attention, and see you in the next video!
