Honestly? Because he’s a good character. No one takes his morality to heart that wasn’t already deeply damaged, but a character who builds their psyche and motivations around trauma and idiosyncrasies creates a fascinating piece of a story, nonetheless. Similarly, Breaking Bad is never viewed as a tutorial on losing your morality by a thousand cuts, people view it as the chronicle of an intelligent character intentionally blinding themselves to the damage they cause and reacting in a relatable way. The fall from grace and subsequent dwelling in hell is a beautiful story arc and there’s a reason it’s employed so frequently.
Except /pol/. They’re into him for other reasons.
I remember coming across a post of tumblr where someone said that if a guy says his favorite movie/tv show is Breaking Bad, Rick and Morty or Fight Club, you should run immediately.
The reason was that while these are good works exploring complex, broken and often violent men, a certain subset (the kind of people who would claim that one of those was their favorite of all time) doesn’t have the reasoning ability to understand that they’re the villains of their universe and should not be idolized.
Rorschach easily fits within the same mold as Tyler Durden, Rick Sanchez and Walter White, a complex and entertaining protagonist who’s also a terrible person who no one should want to be.
What does it say about me that my favorite movie is, and I apologize in advance because I’m speaking genuinely, The Game?
That is a garbage reason to run immediately.
Tumblrtards are kind of infamous for magical thinking, often bordering on or just outright being delusional, being unimaginably pretentious, incredibly emotionally unstable, and absolutely loving to glom onto bandwagons of virtue signalling one-upsmanship as well as hate brigading ideas they dont understand and people that they dont like.
They often jump to conclusions ludicrously.
Here is what I mean. If a person’s favorite movie /is/ Fight Club, all you have to do is then ask them ‘why?’.
If you tell me your favorite movie is American Psycho, and the reason why is that you think its a gripping, iconic film criticizing the superficiality and violence of the chauvanistic capitalism of the late 80s…
…that is a lot different than if your reason is that Bateman is just so cool and crazy!
See the context of this ‘advice’ is ostensibly whether or not you should be a friend or partner of someone.
If you are deciding who to have in your circle by whether or not they like one of three objectively popular and excellent films, which are misunderstood by some, but not others…
…then you are actually being very shallow, and impersonal.
Superficial, even.
Right like with Rick and Morty I can tell you I loved the show for the first few seasons…
…but then its quality went down, culminating in the show eventually entirely abandoning one of its main foundational truisms:
Life is brutal, unpredictable and unfair.
The latest seasons of the show abandoned the total /randomness/ factor that defined the earliest episodes, and replaced it with much more standard… and structured plots.
The fanbase clamored over fan theories and details, anything to make there be a grand overarching plot, continuity, and eventually they got it.
But to me that is the show betraying itself. There isnt supposed to be continuity. It is supposed to be unpredictable. Most fans of the show entirely missed the point, and thus cringe ensued.
Now say what you will about my interpretation of the show here…
… but its a little more nuanced than uh, Rick is zany Pickle man.
And I dont think my interpretation indicates I am some kind of maladjusted chauvanist fascist.
But what if I answer that I liked American Psycho, not because it’s incredibly deep view masculinity of the 80’s and all that philosophical stuff, but because it’s funny.
Look, I love Fight Club. Fight Club is a big step in my process towards becoming less of an asshole. Worked as intended, 10/10, would reconsider my perception of the world again.
But even I can see how, particularly for a time in the 00s and sometimes beyond the examination of toxic masculinity became the iconification of toxic masculinity. It’s not “if they say it’s their favorite film, run”, it’s “man, on the aggegate all of those did the opposite of what they were ostensibly trying to do”.
Never, ever, ever underestimate the ability of the public to miss the point. Any interpretation of media, no matter how obvious and intented, will trigger “you’re just reading too much into it” or “leave your politics out of my movie” comments.
Also, I have terrible news about what your interpretation indicates, because yikes. It’s not that what you’re describing is inaccurate, it’s that “it was cool when it was hardcore, uncut nihilism justifying why the main character is right to be an asshole, and then it sold out” is not looking great for that armchair psychoanalysis you’re inviting.
And yet you ran into the point directly.
This isn’t magical thinking, as you said it yourself, either you like American psycho because of 0 media literacy (in which case we all agree you’re undesirable to date for a Tumblr user)
Or you like American psycho because of the reasons you cited, which mind you aren’t bad reasons to like it, but it makes you a film bro. To consider it amond your top movies means all you care about in media is how it made you think about society, and honestly if the most you’ve though about society was when watching American psycho then I can see why someone wouldn’t want to date you.
The Tumblr rule of thumb isn’t entirely about not dating bigots (though bigots do tend to be weeded out by this check which was kind of the point), it’s also about avoiding dating asshats in general. What does it say about you that you like Rick and Morty because you agree that life is brutal, unpredictable and unfair? What does it say in the context of someone debating whether they should date you?
