Under Construction @ Keele 2016 Volume 2 Issue 1 | Page 20

12

which we use to give our lives direction, yet something which is fundamentally
impossible to obtain because we live in a world where the things we need to be
happy are just not there to be had.
Indeed, Rick and Morty shows that the very want for happiness is selfdefeating. Throughout our lives we are constantly focussed on the requirement to be
happy, living in a world which, according to Eric Wilson, has an ‘overemphasis on
happiness.’11 Aristotle, for example, argued that ‘happiness is “that for the sake of
which everything else is done,” [making it] the ultimate source of all justification’.12
Sonja Lyunomirsky, in the blurb for her book The How of Happiness, describes it as
‘what makes life worth living’.13 We are even told that our bank accounts rely on it:
‘Numerous studies show that happy individuals are successful across multiple life
domains, including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health’.14
Tal Ben-Shahar concludes the zeitgeist: ‘Happy people have better relationships, are
more likely to thrive at work, and also live better and longer’.15 The message is
simple, then: be happy.
Yet the pursuit of happiness in Rick and Morty always ends in disaster. Auto
Erotic Assimilation shows Rick pursuing his happiness through a series of intensely
hedonistic acts,16 up until the point where he goes too far and finds that he has
pushed everyone away from him. Meanwhile, the plot of Meeseeks and Destroy is
initiated purely because Morty wants an enjoyable, simple adventure to serve as a
happier break from the more distressing things he has had to put up with.17 This
desire for innocence and fun makes the rape scene even more horrific as it
constitutes the final defilement of Morty’s desire for a simple, happy life.
The episode Rixty Minutes similarly deconstructs the desire for happiness.18
In it, Jerry, Beth and Summer use Inter-Dimensional Goggles to look at their
alternative selves in other dimensions. They find that the dimensions in which Jerry

11

Eric Wilson, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy (USA: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 6
Richard Warner, Freedom, Enjoyment and Happiness: An Essay on Moral Psychology (UK: Cornell
University Press, 1987), 176; quotes from Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics trans. Martin Oswald
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962).
13
Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness (UK: Sphere, 2007), back cover blurb.
14
Sonja Lyubomisky, Laura King and Ed Diener, “The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does
Happiness Lead to Success?” Psychological Bulletin 131.6 (2005): 803.
15
Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfilment, 33.
16
At one point skydiving into a football stadium filled with naked redheads while every man on the
planet who looks like his father chants “Go son, go!”
17
In particular, the adventure that is shown at the start of the episode where he was forced to kill
aliens who looked like his family, something which terrified him.
18
Rick and Morty: Rixty Minutes, Bluray, directed by Bryan Newton (USA: Adult Swim, 2014).
12