(Before we get started, I will like to say that this is not a spoiler free post. It should also be noted that it can be triggering for some readers as well, due to discussions of rape.)
Dan Harmon, the creator of the genius sitcom “Community”, has just recently along with Justin Roiland created a brand new animation that blends science fiction with black comedy. It follows the chaotic adventures of Rick, an alcoholic rough-personated scientist and his grandson Morty, a timid boy who semi-willingly goes along the madcap dimensional adventures instigated by his grandfather. The storylines are filled with gore, death and tragedy. The humor is quite dark, and the stories don´t always have happy endings. It is in the same mode storytelling as a slew of cartoons meant for adult audiences such as “Drawn Together” and “South Park”. However, when one looks beyond the gore filled scenes, one can see that “Rick and Morty” is a show that explores deeper themes as well. For instance, “Rick and Morty” is one of the few television shows that depict rape culture properly, without buying into myths of victim-blaming or simplifying ideas about who is a rape victim or who can be a predator.
Morty (right) and Rick (left)
The pilot of “Rick and Morty” show cast the series as filled with dark humor that joked about death, violence and trauma. The plots consisted of Rick dragging his fourteen year old grandson to all sorts of terrible dimensions, much to the rest families dismay. Mortys family consists of the dimwitted, insecure but goodhearted Jerry (his father) who Rick loves to belittle. Beth, Morty´s veterinarian mum and Ricks daughter. And Summer, Morty´s sister who wants to join in on her brothers and grandfathers misbegotten adventures. Rick and Morty’s travels are often dangerous, violent places that are filled with all sorts of peculiar creatures. The main selling point was its bleak sense of humor; however as the first season progressed it increased it´s serious world building and in the process was able to actually say some important things about violence.
In the first seasons fifth episode, “Meeseks and Destroy”, Morty asks Rick to allow him to decide what kind of adventure to have, since up until then, Rick had been the one who called all the shots. They make a deal that if Morty is able to handle the adventure he picks he will be allowed to choose every fifth adventure. They travel to a world that resembles the generic fantasy scenario, where Morty decides to help a poverty stricken village. In a reference to “Jack and the bean stock”, Morty and Rick climb up a bean stock and accidentally get the first giant they encounter killed. After being released from murder charges for the accidental Giant-slaughter, Rick and Morty end up at a tavern in the groundside village where things take a dark turn. Frustrated Rick goes off to gamble and Morty goes to use the restroom. There he meets a soft-spoken jellybean-shaped man who offers advice to Morty, which Morty initially appreciates. Suddenly, the benignly, supportive Jellybeanman begins getting uncomfortable close to Morty. The encounter proceeds into an uncomfortable scene where the Jellybeanman attempts to rape Morty, accusing Morty, all the while, of being a “tease”. Morty fights the Jellybeanman off, and, after the encounter, walks back out to meet Rick.
The scene is played straight; it is not used for black comedy in the slightest. This is not only remarkable because the show itself tends to poke fun at dark subjects, but also because rape jokes in today’s television shows while full of such references to sexual assault rarely show the trauma which “Rick and Morty” conveys in this brief scene. Shows such as “Two broke girls” and “Robot Chicken” tend to use rape as a throw away punch line and shock value. Casual jokes are made at both female and male survivors dispense. The problem, particularly with rape jokes, is that they tend to minimalize the violence of rape, and tend to more often fall into common victim-blaming, misogynistic language (or homophobic, if the joke is about male rape). The problem with such jokes are that they take a huge global issue (one in three women and one in six men have experienced sexual violence world wide) and treat it without any caution or seriousness. But in “Rick and Morty” the attempted rape of Morty is treated seriously; the writers cleverly decide to let the scene be gritty.
“Rick and Morty”, having the Jellybeanman accuse Morty of being a tease, underline the continued instance in media of making victim-blaming jokes and the writers highlight how rapists themselves use victim-blaming to further their abuse.
After escaping the restroom assault of the Jellybeanman Morty silently tells Rick he wants to go home. Rick sees the Jellybean man leave the restroom and figures out what happens. Then an incredible piece of writing takes place; Rick doesn´t pressure Morty into telling him what happened. He doesn´t blame Morty in any way. He does what many survivors have claimed is the best thing to do; he doesn´t say anything, but let´s Morty know that he´s there for him. Rick shows Morty the cash he´s won gambling and tells Morty they can end thier adventure and giving Rick praise for the choice of adventure. Having Rick not pressure or blame Morty is incredible and a good moral to send: give abuse survivors space but also make sure they know you´re there for them. The episode however does give into some fantasies; in the end of the episode, when Rick and Morty are leaving the world, Rick quickly shoots (and kills) the jellybeanman, unbeknown to the already departed Morty.
The show also dwells into deconstructing rape culture myths. In episode six, “Ricks Potion #9”, Morty is shown pining after his crush, Jessica. He´s gloomy for not having a date to the schools dance, and is obsessed with the idea of Jessica. Utterly love struck the boy turns to Rick for help. His grandfather tries to ignore Morty, but after Morty has a protracted outburst about how he always helps Rick and never gets anything back, Rick gives in and hands his nephew a potion made from animals DNAs that will make Jessica fall forever in love with Morty, wanting to mate with Morty for life. While the potion is a success, it turns out its success spreads through bodily fluids and therefore becomes an epidemic due to flu season.
Jessica after the drug kicks in
Everyone at Morty´s school dance becomes infected and aggressively falls into a deep love/lust with Morty. Students and teachers alike start to fight over Morty, creating a fairly funny scenario. Rick turns up to help Morty via one of Ricks favorite mode of transport, his spaceships. While the whole world becomes more and more infected, Rick desperately tries out different potions to find a cure. Unfortunately this just leads to everybody on earth turning into horrible looking monsters.
When Morty starts to complain that Rick is being irresponsible, Rick then says to Morty: “All I wanted was for you to hand me a screwdriver! But instead you had me buckle down and…make you a…roofie…juice serum, so you can roofie that poor girl at your school. Are you kidding me, Morty?! You’re really gonna try to take the high road on this one? Y’know your-you’re a little creep, Morty! Your-you’re just a little creepy creep person!”. This speech brilliantly points out the ethical problems with love potions, and points out the predatory nature of Morty’s request. (Though our western society has come to give some acknowledgement to the horrid problem of drugging and raping; as the Finnish-Swede journalist Johanna Koljonen has said: “The problem then lies in that we then believe that only nasty, horrible men could do such things. The reality is that even so-called sweet, nice boys and men could be rapists”.)
Having instigated a drugging for assaultive, forced physicality Morty shows us the everyman and sympathetic protagonist, the nice guy, attempting sexual violence while denying, with the common thoughts of our society, what it is. This critique of the offensive action, and its insidious ideological justification, is a brave, important move for a television show. When asked why they rape, a lot of men express the opinion that they felt entitled. Morty, in his weakness, felt entitled as well. He may be a “nice boy”, but he has bought into societies misogynistic views and therefore did something horrible. Morty of course admits to Rick that he was wrong, which happens less in real life, but the fact that a show actually depicted a common mental state that any man (the “Privileged Person”) could have and then points out how this mentality devastates the women and girls (and actually the entire society, which this action comes to destroy) is straight out fantastic to see. This sense of entitlement of a “Privileged Person” for the “lesser person” of the “Oppressed Body” is a problem, and it should be more often addressed in these ways.
The show is also a great example of understanding that anyone could be a victim to sexual violence. Mortys dad, Jerry, gets held at gun point by a woman in the season finale. She tries to force him to have sex, but is rescued by Beth at the last minute. Beth even calls the woman “a rapist”. When Beth says she couldn´t have guessed from the woman’s looks that she was a rapist, Jerry angrily points out that it´s nonsense to assume you can tell such things from ones looks. It is true; looks are deceiving, and the sad truth is that rape culture is deeply ingrained within our society. This means that while men are taught that they may be entitled to a woman´s body, women are taught that men are always eager for sex. Therefore anyone, regardless of gender or race or age, can be a rapist. Both Jerry, Morty and Jessica were nearly raped in the show; and the perpetrators were both male and female. “Rick and Morty” is clear in its message that rape is rape.
Rape is often an shoddily used tool for drama or a lazy source of comedy on television, but “Rick and Morty” is able to avoid most of the insensitive tropes foisted upon us by the pop media.
Jerry held at gunpoint
“Rick and Morty” is careful with this subject, showing a full understanding that when discussing sexual violence it is important to respect the sufferer of the assault and consider the personhood of the survivor in our interactions with them.
Lastly, while bringing the subject up, it is about time that we as a culture actually talk about the culture that creates predators and gives them a set of rationalizations for their brutality , instead of minimizing them and stripping them of their justifications of violence .
Awareness Ribbon for sexual violence
Ruby Soup with Pearl Juice 
Wow! What a great post!
I really agree with you. Rick and Morty is a very brave and clever show that really handels their serious themes with a lot of feeling and understanding.
Thanks 🙂
“Rick and Morty” is really brave (I´m going to write another post furthering just how many brave things the show has done in terms of storytelling). The show is surpirsingly aware (compared to other shows). And I think it´s great that even when they are not making serious remarks, Morty is always allowed to feel (hence the show has a lot of feeling).
Thanks for commenting!
Hey! I’ve never been on your blog before but I found you when looking for somebody talking about the Rick and Morty sexual assault Jellybean scene and I think your post is great!
The quiet trauma that Morty shows when he comes out of the bathroom is heartbreaking and it feels very real… At first I was like, “WTF?? That’s such a terrible thing to happen to a cartoon character – why would they put poor Morty through that??” but I’d be lying if I didn’t also say that it showed an incredible depth to the show which I hadn’t previously suspected. I’ve watched it again since then and I think they handle the subject matter incredibly well – about as well as I’ve seen in any show, in fact. Probably better.
I also found it really interesting how it played into the overall theme of the episode – Morty didn’t want anything crazy, just a fun simple adventure. But darkness can be found in places you’d never initially suspect. I think this fits nicely into dispelling the myth that sexual assaults are always random scary-looking dudes with guns in alleys or some such scenario – the sort of thing that people use as a gauge to decide whether to believe a victim or not.
A lot of the time rapists just look like regular jellybeans.
Hello, Thank you for your wonderful comment. I have wanted to reply but some fairly personal stuff has kept be from the blog. The episode “Meseeks and Destroy” was better when I rewtched it, I had a similar experience that you had. And I agree, a lot of time rapist actually don´t look “scary”. Unfortunaely abusers are often ordinary people who fool others with their friendly ways. Darkness indeed lurks everywhere!
Thank you again for the comment.
The existential slant of Rick and Morty, season 1 that is, has been often commented about, but what about experiences which are outside of out control yet perpetuated systemically as sexual abuse. Does this cause a problem for the “existence precedes essence” question, or that your “choices” in the world determine the creation of your humanity. What choice do these sexually abused characters have….especially if the abuse is systemically perpetuated and made invisible within the social?
Rick and Morty seems to have this in mind by confronting this issue over and over again (which you very well show us in this post). Thanks this….
Hapstance
Hm… That´s a good question. I always assumed that at least in “Rick´s love potion #9” they showed how abusers make their decisions throught sense of entietlement and misinformation (and perhaps also through enablers, as Rick was a little). Morty himself, when he was the victim, seemed powerless and the incident seemed like a part of the universes cruelty (a theme stated in season 2). I always read that the abuser creates the violence with his decisions (like Morty in “love potion”) but what consequences that hollow are flukes (like it being flu season etc.)
Also the Jelly Bean king is able to do his horrib acts due to being in a state of high power. That´s a theme that “Rick and Morty” slightly tocuhed upon in season 2 as well.
Season 1 was interesting since to my knowledge it is one of the few shows that actually show rape and sexual violence being a horrible thing (you would think other shows would talk about this too, but no, it´s just for laugh or drama). It was a refreshing change of story telling for TV.
Morty never gave a rationalization for his actions so the show definitely wasn’t conveying any cultural critique of rapists there. Morty was acting childish and impulsive but never intended to “roofie” her as in make her unconscious and take advantage of her. He didn’t ask rick for a potion to get her to have sex but to get her to like him. Which is reasonable for any desperately in love person to desire.
Morty clearly has shown having a fairly sexual crush on Jessica. And even if he just wanted a date, it´s still problematic to feel entitled to a person, regardless of how “innocent” one will be with them. And the potion clearly removed consent. I can totally understand that one would desire a easy solution like this, but it was a bit far to go through with it. When Rick and Morty have their argument, it was a deconstruction of two views there: Morty´s sense of entitelemnt to a woman (which yes, is linked to rape culture) and of Rick´s reckless science (that´s another issue I didn´t write about).
Great article, I do remember being struck by how well the theme was handled, especially in Meeseeks & Destroy, not trivializing or making a lewd joke out of it but actually making/letting the audience feel genuine discomfort at a situation that we should only ever feel uncomfortable about. I did have a couple of problems with the episode though, the first being that this only happened to Morty on the one adventure he was making the decisions in (it could have happened in any other episode??), which to me seemed me to reinforce the idea that the victim puts themselves at risk, and they are only safe when the ‘male figure’ is making the decisions (even when he is as drunk & reckless as Rick). Sure enough Morty is quick to say he was wrong to take charge & wants to go home. The other issue I had was that at the end, even when the officials at the village find out what Jellybeanman has been up to all these years they decide it doesn’t matter & to cover it up, leaving a statue to him rather than exposing & addressing what he did publicly, sending a clear message that it’s wrong, and vindicating his victims & giving them a chance to deal with it rather than have to see his ‘heroic’ statue every day.
I found that bit really honest as well, because that’s what happens. We celebrate the constructed image of many cultural heroes (e.g. Woody Allen, etc.) and gloss over their monstrous crimes. It also touches upon a genuine conundrum in publicly, exposing perpetrators and the victims – are we truly allowing victims to “deal” with what happened, or assuaging our unspoken complicit guilt in allowing such a horrible thing go unchecked? Too often the victims of public figures are subjected to further humiliation, vilification, and even threats of violence.
Hi to you both and thank you for the discussions/further thoughts! So sorry for late reply, I sometimes get stressed out.
I agree that it is a bit of a pity that the episode somewhat (maybe even by accident) implied that Morty put himself at risk, and that could have been a bit better done. When Jessica and Jerry are almost assaulted, it didn´t feel at all like they were to blame, which is a much better message. However, it was still great that depsite Morty choosing the adventure Rick did not victim-blame Morty, even if the narration perhaps did.
It could be that the people who want to cover up the crimes of the Jellybean man were not suppose to be in the right, but it however does feel realistic unfortunately. Many times men of power have their more horrific sides covered up, and especially in societies that are embedded in rape culture the victims of such crimes are often dismissed. I personally think that the show was stating that the villagers were in the wrong for covering up the kings crimes, but I do agree that it´s so rushed that in a way it´s too vague of a statement.
And I agree, victims too often are subjected to horrific treatment.
Thank you again!
Outstanding post. I was really taken aback by the honesty about the subject in this show – there are no easy tropes that define a predator or a victim. It’s a terrifying and traumatic event that’s not passed off for easy humor. I have to admit getting pretty choked up when Summer’s emotionally arrested boyfriend admits that he was assaulted as a child,
Yes, that´s true, summers boyfriend is also a surviver!
That scene is great in that Summer and the family believe him and offer support. And I agree, I often feel quite choked up myself after watching this show.
Hello, I just stumbled upon this post and wanted to say that I agree with you whole-heartedly. Each of the three situations you described were different but poignant. I was glad that in Ricksy Business no one joked about Jerry being assaulted or questioned his masculinity/sexuality (as is often the case when the predator is female and the victim male).
I also really found the scene in Meeseeks and Destroy disturbing but really well executed. It’s hard for me to even articulate why, but somehow, Rick’s display of quiet compassion and humanity in response to Morty’s distress didn’t feel out of character, even though Rick is usually so blunt and abrasive. He helped redirect Morty’s thoughts to something positive, calm him down, and finish their adventure. (Come to think of it, Rick saying that the adventure was “tied up neat and clean because we did it Morty-style” is one of the only times in the series where Rick actually makes a point of saying something kind about Morty.) It also was one of the first moments in the show where I realized that the characters weren’t just interesting and fun, but complex as well.
Anyway, that last paragraph got off-track– I find Rick and Morty’s relationship very interesting and dynamic, so scenes like that really get me– but thank you for writing this article. A hundred years Rick and Morty and their adventures!
Hi! Thank you, and yes, I also really love Rick and Morty´s dynamic. Part of what makes this show so different from other shock-value shows is that it does infact have dynamic characters and it also doesn´t fall into common tropes – like you mentioned with Jerry´s assault not being dismissed or played for laugh, which is very common in comedy these days.
Thank you again, and a hundred times rick and morty adventures!
Great article.
Thank you so much!
The problem is rhat Rick has something of the M.O. of a molester, putting Morty into much more danger than Morty can comprehend via evety sort of emotional manipulation available, inclyding simple lying, and frequently belittling him. In the latest episode, enormously significant events are claimed by him to be set-up largely to ensure that Jerry will leave the family, and make everyone else love Rick so that noöne will believe Morty if he complained. In the very first episide he tricks Morty into inserting large, rough, seeds into his rectum.
In fact, the original short titled “Doc and Marty”, names changed later at the insistence of lawyers for the rights-holders for “Back to the Future”, consisted mostly of trying to convince Marty to luck his scrotum. Honestly.
…which is not to say you’re wrong about the series, but that it’s somewhat problematic.
The “Doc and Marty” stuff is not necessarily canon, due to it being more “work in progress” version of the show we got. Rick is a highly anti-hero type of person, and he does horrible things, but the article highlights that the show, not just Rick, on a whole discusses rape and sexual assault in a more nuanced, empathetic manner.