Metallica and the Freedom to Roam William Irwin *This essay is excerpted and adapted from The Meaning of Metallica: Ride the Lyrics. Metallica means freedom, and “Wherever I May Roam” is a declaration of individual independence, a freedom manifesto. The song starts with sitar, evoking visions of the far East, but this is an American…
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…
Monty Python and The Meaning of Albert Camus By Luc Pelletier Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life is a disjointed, confusing piece of cinema. The sketches presented hang together by a thin thread, namely the quest for the meaning of life. Sometimes, without warning or apparent reason, the movie interrupts itself to take us in…
Finding One’s Own Way (or Doctrine and the Individual) Hermann Hesse and Iron Fist By Matthew William Brake A Word Before… For this blog, I sought the help of friends in determining the perfect existentialist thinker for Danny Rand. Iron Fist’s character and background is rooted in Eastern thought (or at least, Western stereotypes of…
Review of Westworld and Philosophy Scott McLemee Philosophers and screenwriters follow the conundrum in different directions, of course, but Westworld displays a surprising awareness of where the philosophical discussion has already gone. The viewer may feel compelled to humanize the hosts — to imagine the androids as somehow, at some level of complexity, generating an interiority, a…
Live Forward Luke Cage and Frantz Fanon By Muoki Musau and Matthew William Brake While viewers familiar with the Jessica Jones Netflix series met Luke Cage in that show, Cage’s own series begins with him working in a barber shop in Harlem, owned by a respected man in the community everyone refers to as Pop.…
Freedom and Imprisonment Jessica Jones and Simone de Beauvior By Jennifer Anvari and Matthew William Brake Marvel’s Netflix series Jessica Jones is a story about what binds us and what makes us free. As a low-key superhero, Jessica works as a private investigator in a sketchy neighborhood, using her powers primarily to access fire escapes…
Free Market Fight Club by William Irwin I am Jack’s being-for-itself. I consider myself a free market existentialist. As an existentialist, I believe in individual freedom and responsibility. I believe that we get to define ourselves, if we’re willing to make the effort. As Tyler Durden says in Fight Club, “We are defined by the choices we…
Choosing Smurfette Edwardo Pérez What’s a Smurfette? That’s the question that frames the narrative of the Smurfs: The Lost Village movie. In the film’s backstory (rooted in the Smurf mythology from the comic books and the 80’s television show), Smurfette – the only girl Smurf we’ve ever known (and in Lost Village, she’s voiced by…
Charlie Brown and Existentialism Check out this article about Peanuts and existentialism published by Vanity Fair. It’s pretty good, but the focus on Kierkegaard misses the more important existentialist connections. I would have liked to read a discussion of the Great Pumpkin and Waiting for Godot. And what about The Myth of Sisyphus and Charlie…
The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series 