Tove Jansson’s Moomins: Just Stories? Peter West In this short discussion of the Moomins and philosophy, I want to do two things. First, I want to point out some obvious instances of philosophy at work in the Moomins. Second, I want to suggest that the way Tove Jansson treats the relation between fiction and reality…
Time Travel and Causal Loops in Dark Taylor W. Cyr ***This post contains spoilers for the first season of Dark.*** If you have heard anything about the German Netflix series Dark, you probably know that time travel plays an important role in the story. Over the course of the show’s three seasons, Dark tells…
The Ethics of Survivor “It’s Just a Game” By Justin Kitchen This spring premiered yet another season (the 40th) of the CBS show Survivor. If you’re unfamiliar with it, here’s how an average game plays out: A number of people (usually 20) from different backgrounds are ‘stranded’ in a remote location—often on an island chain…
World-Breaker Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, and the Divine in FX’s Legion Darian Shump First introduced in March 1985, David Haller, son of the X-Men’s Charles Xavier, has always been depicted as a troubled soul. As a child, his telepathic powers were triggered by a terrorist attack upon his home, obliterating the minds of the attackers and…
Questioning Innovation and Shark Tank By Roger Hunt A Rosy Picture: The Sharks are good TV. They are super cool, wicked smart, friendly, honest. They treat everyone who comes on the show like the friend that person needs. In fact, it would be awesome if every entrepreneur had a friend like one of the…
Rick and Morty: Meaning in a Meaningless Multiverse by Danny Krämer The American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars diagnosed a conflict between what he called “the scientific and the manifest image of man-in-the-world.” The scientific image contains things like quarks, bosons, and black holes. By contrast, the “manifest image” is our everyday way of viewing the world…
“I Simply Must Get Rid of Him” Peep Show and the Philosophy of Friendship By Tiddy Smith Peep Show follows the lives of flatmates, Mark and Jeremy, the hopeless and socially bumbling “El Dude Brothers”. Each man is exceptionally dysfunctional in his own way: Mark is a hopeless pessimist, plagued by self-doubt and incapable…
Wayne: An Exploration of Justice Porn By Caleb McGee Husmann “I know it when I see it.” When tasked with providing a definition for pornography during the Jacobellis v. Ohio case, this is what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart came up with. Some applauded him for being frank and realistic, others chastised him for being…
Way Past Cool Sonic and Robotnik’s Symbiosis of Absurdity Ashley L. Whitaker Celebrating 30 years of Sonic the Hedgehog in 2021, Paramount Pictures unleashed a live-action film where the blue hedgehog’s supersonic speed and electrifying energy in the film become his arch-nemesis Dr. Robotnik’s bounty. In the games, comic books, and cartoons in the Sonic…
When the Golden Rule Fails Larry David’s Ethics in Curb Your Enthusiasm By Justin Kitchen Curb your Enthusiasm is a TV series broadcast on HBO, created, produced, starring and co-written by Larry David and returning for a tenth season this year. Larry plays a fictionalized version of himself and the show revolves around his…
