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viva la rick sanchez revolución

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As to the assertion by Daniel Chandler that «The phatic function excludes as well as includes certain readers. Those who share the code are members of the same 'interpretive community'», I'm not so sure.  Isn't there also a case to be made for a phatic side to activities like de-coding, de-territorializing, rationalization (and the corresponding re-coding etc.)?  In short I think this is another case of a scholar seeing only one side to phatics.

This relates to the tension between "tribal" and "intellectual".

To paraphrase Eugene Holland, this would have to do with the idea that value does not inhere in objects but is subjectively bestowed.  But it goes further than that. 
«By locating aesthetic value solely in the *activity* of poetic appropriation and distancing  himself from the objects of that appropriation, Baudelaire comes to occupy the position of what Jacques Attali calls the "designer" or "programmer," whose basic function within  capitalism is to endow more or less worthless objects (such as "designer-jeans") with semiotic surplus-value in order to enable the realization of economic surplus-value by promoting their purchase by consumers; the most familiar form of programming, in other words, is advertising.» - A schizoanalytic reading of Baudelaire: The modernist as postmodernist
So, in the first movement, value is taken away from "classically good" objects, and in the second one it is bestowed on something else.  In Dan Harmon's essay about story structure and "Why TV is Different" he points out that the role of television is to keep people watching commercials -- but also that he hopes to do something more than that.   So, the rhetorical question above is similar to the question we considered earlier, about Rick Sanchez's ability to engage in phatic communication.

From the Rick and Morty comic book, number 4
I would say that the following is phatic speech but in addition to the phatic communion of teasing, we would have to recognize "negative phatics" to do with the termination of contact... at the meta level.  Wow.

 «You know this whole time I haven't once heard you say that wubalubadubdub thing that you usually say.»

«Don't need to!  I have a new catch phrase.»

«Oh yeah, what's that?»

«"I love my grandkids!"»

«Aww!»

«Psych!  Just kidding!  My new catch phrase is "I don't give a fuck!"  Just shake that ass bitch, and let me see what you got! Just shake that ass bitch, and let me see what you got -- I don't give a fuck is my new catchphrase!  Roll credits!  Roll the credits, go!  Just shake that ass...  That's the end of season 1! That's the end motherfucker!  I don't give a fuck is my new catch phrase!  Fuck you!  That's season 1, boom, season 1 up in your face motherfucker!»

["Hey broh..." "I don't understand, are you enjoying this?  Do you like this?"  "Yeah you know it dawg...!"]

Comments

  1. aridedOctober 7, 2015 at 10:26 AM

    Relative to the idea of "bringing to light" it seems worth name-checking Derrida and his essay "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted In Philosophy". I encountered this essay through "Musical Apocalypse: Tom Waits’ Bone Machine" by Angela Jones in the Edinburgh Forum journal.


    > "Apocalypse derives from the Greek apocalypsis, meaning the act of uncovering, unveiling, or revelation." (http://www.forumjournal.org/article/download/586/871)

    I would argue that Rick's "awareness" that he is in a TV show plays this sort of role. More specifically, what this accomplishes is reminding the viewer aware that *s/he* is watching a TV show. In itself this is hardly a revelation, but the fact that it is openly discussed makes it interesting. What is revealed seems to be a sort of communion between the show's creators and the viewers.

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