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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4345 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 4, 2022

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The problem for me is that the best media that tackles these themes actually drive their point home and makes you feel it in your gut on a deep level. R&M on the other hand exists on so many levels of silly absurdist irony that any of the themes it wants to convey often get completely defanged in the process

Completely agree.

Shows like Breaking Bad, films like Joker and books like Blood Meridian are prime examples of this.

In addition to the moral grayness, these works treat seriously the terrible emptiness and horror of deep cynicism and nihilism. R&M (the show) comes across as a college freshman level take, the work of someone who has lived a comfortable life and who wears nihilism as a fashion accessory rather than of someone who has peered deep into the human soul and seen despair, loneliness, and the twisted curvature into one's own self, consumption by one's own vices. Which is probably okay because R&M is at root supposed to be a silly cartoon. But it still sometimes pretends to be more than it is.

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