Futurama and Philosophy

by Young, Shaun P. , Lewis, Courtland

  But, of course, Socrates didn’t eradicate Athens, quite the opposite actually. In Futurama, Fry makes good use of his limited intellect to twice defeat the Brain Spawn, just like Athens made good use of its limited intellect to defeat Socrates. But just as Fry has not seen the last of the Brain Spawn at the end of “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” so, too, Socrates noted that his execution would not prevent the emergence of others like him.

  After being sentenced to death, Socrates mocks his fellow citizens for killing an old man and, consequently, giving others a reason to hate Athens. He tells them, in true super-villain style, that their victory will be short lived:

  I tell you, my executioners, that as soon as I am dead, vengeance shall fall upon you with a punishment far more painful than your killing of me. You have brought about my death in the belief that through it you will be delivered from submitting your conduct to criticism, but I say the result will be just the opposite. (Apology, 39c)

  In other words, more intellectuals are going to come and criticize Athens, and they’ll be even more annoying than Socrates—enter Plato.

  Likewise, in “The Why of Fry,” the Brains return, this time intent on destroying the universe as the final step in a thousand-year mission to accumulate all knowledge. The thoughts of others are no doubt still harmful, but more importantly, the Brain Spawn want to destroy the universe in order to keep new information from being created. They want to be able to say they know everything there is to know, and that their quest for knowledge is complete.

  So, what should we do with the return of the Brain Spawn? In “The Why of Fry,” rather than destroy the Infosphere or any of the individual Brains attending to it, the Nibblonians arm Fry with a transdimensional bomb that transfers the Brains and all of their information into another dimension, one far removed from the universe we care about, where they’ll have little ability to interact with other creatures. Our culture has found a similar way to protect itself from intellectuals: it gives them jobs in universities.

  So Many Professors

  While Fry may be a dimwitted hero enacting symbolic revenge on all of those Brains, which are both annoying and dangerous, it’s important to point out that several intellectuals inhabit the Futurama universe without being singled out for destruction. Most notably, of course, is Professor Farnsworth, Fry’s own Nth great-nephew who, despite his senility, appears to be a rather formidable scientist—except that he’s responsible for as many near-catastrophes as he solves.

  What drives Farnsworth, both in his penchant for doomsday devices and his desire to be helpful, is his unending need for recognition by his peers. In “The Duh-Vinci Code” Farnsworth is immediately smitten with the intellect of the Da Vinci homeworld, but as soon as it becomes apparent that he’ll never garner the respect of the other inhabitants, he joins Leonardo Da Vinci’s murderous quest for revenge. Give Farnsworth an avenue whereby his genius is recognized and rewarded, and he would sink quietly into the obscurity of his own lab.

  More importantly, Farnsworth’s principal tie to academia involves his overseeing the dissertation project of Amy Wong. Amy’s project involved using the Earth’s rotation as an unending source of energy for the planet; a project that is deemed unworthy of a doctorate at the beginning of the episode “That Darn Katz!” (Season Six). What unfolds, however, is the deployment of Amy’s project by an alien race of cats who use humans as slaves in order to sap the Earth of its energy and transfer it back to their home world. Amy, with the aid of Nibbler, foils the plan and at the end of the episode, she earns her much deserved doctorate.

  But why? What exactly did Amy demonstrate through the course of the episode? It may make sense to suspect that Amy earns her doctoral degree for her plan to save the world. Like Professor Farnsworth many times before her, Amy’s plan to save the world is only necessary because her initial experiment causes the world to be in danger. No one on her committee at the beginning of the episode thought her plan would work, but once it did (and proved catastrophic) there was only one thing to do, consign the dangerous mind of Amy Wong to academic obscurity where she can’t hurt anyone else.

  Farnsworth’s rival, Professor Wernstrom, sums up this point nicely in the Season One episode “A Big Piece of Garbage.” When New New York is threatened by a giant meteor made of garbage, and Professor Farnsworth’s plan to blow up the meteor fails, the mayor of New New York calls on Wernstrom for help. Wernstrom immediately demands tenure, a large research grant, and five graduate students (at least three of whom must be Chinese). After the mayor grants Wernstrom’s demands, he asks what Wernstrom’s plan is. Wernstrom replies, “What plan? I’m set for life! Au revoir, suckers!” and leaves.

  It’s All Academic

  The idea of putting intellectuals on society’s payroll as a way of keeping them happy (and safely secluded) is nothing new. The idea for a government-funded intellectual is perhaps first put forward by Socrates himself during his trial. In Athenian court cases, the procedure was for both prosecution and defense to state their cases and then for the jury to vote innocent or guilty. If there was a guilty verdict, both prosecution and defense offered alternative sentencing options that the jury would choose between. In the case of Socrates, the prosecution asks for the death penalty. Then it’s Socrates’s turn to offer a suitable alternative to death.

  Socrates becomes indignant, basically ridiculing the Athenians for finding him guilty. Instead of offering a suitable alternative to death, Socrates takes the question literally, contemplating what he “deserves” for the crimes he has committed. His answer? Free meals. Because of the invaluable service he offers the city—essentially, he reveals how dumb everyone else is—the city should feed him. That’s what he deserves, free meals. He explains that he has neglected his own affairs to care for the city, becoming poor in the process. Socrates is the truly aggrieved party in need of reparations. Still, the ungrateful Athenian jury votes for execution.

  Socrates’s sense of desert is not unique to Socrates, however. Feelings of being unappreciated and poorly compensated serve as the justification for all manner of super-villainy. Perhaps Socrates had it wrong; perhaps he should’ve threatened Athens with his genius rather than offering to help. Ultimately, as Wernstrom makes abundantly clear, a tenured position is no guarantee of productivity. Instead, it more likely leads the intellectual to become divorced from broader social concerns. We acknowledge this by saying professors are in an “ivory tower” or that what they do is “merely academic.”

  Socrates fails to convince the jury that he deserves tenure, and instead he’s forced to drink poison. Perhaps unlike Amy Wong or the Big Brain, he hadn’t demonstrated how truly dangerous he was. Socrates inadvertently proposes the solution to the danger posed by big brains: paying them to be out of trouble and out of the way: universities. Transdimensional bombs work too, I guess.

  19

  Queer Eye for the Robot Kind

  BRIAN ONISHI

  It’s a familiar scene. Someone checks the room to see who’s within earshot, then proceeds to tell a racist joke.

  Often the joker starts the joke by claiming, “I’m not racist, but . . .” There are many categories that can be substituted for race. The joke could be about sexual orientation, gender, how many eyes you have, or even which galaxy you’re from. In every case, the joke is, at least partly, based on a measure or standard of normalcy. We can laugh because we can identify a gap between how a certain group of people acts and how we, as the “normal” community act.

  It’s often difficult to describe what’s normal in its own terms. For example, we usually think of being healthy as a normal bodily state, but try describing what it feels like to be healthy while you’re healthy. Perhaps you can say you feel “good,” but what does that mean? Really, it means that you don’t feel sick.

  Likewise, trying to describe what counts as normal in a cultural context is extremely difficult. Like the racist joke, if we pay close attention, humor reveals cultural normalcy by identify
ing what’s abnormal. It turns out that normalcy plays a fundamental part in the way we make everyday decisions. It influences what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, whom we date, and how we vote (among a great many other things). There’s a sense in which normalcy is necessary, since standards of normalcy allow us to function on a daily level. As a result, they can’t simply be eliminated.

  The problem with normalcy is that it’s hard to point out. When something has been the same for a long time, we tend to assume it’s how it should be, so the notion of normalcy endures indefinitely. We often talk as if we are hardwired to see things a certain way or to act a certain way. If we were hardwired like, say, Lucy Liu-bot, then it’d be a lot easier to change certain assumptions that we have. We could just have our circuitry re-arranged and find ourselves re-wired to see and act differently. The problem, however, is that if we were hardwired we would have no way of noticing that anything was wrong with our concepts of normalcy in the first place, and therefore no way of explaining changes in our standards of normalcy.

  If we were to travel a thousand years into the future, the fact that things would be drastically different indicates that while normalcy itself endures, what is actually considered normal changes. That’s exactly what happens to Philip J. Fry in the pilot episode of Futurama (“Space Pilot 3000”).

  What the Future Holds

  Futurama might not be a very accurate portrayal of the future, but the futuristic setting gives the show the ability to depict our current culture as strange, comical, and even absurd. While many things have changed (flying cars, celebrity heads, public transportation tubes, suicide booths), in the future the pressures of normalcy remain. Two immediate examples of this can be gleaned from Fry’s initial encounter with Leela, and his new-found friendship with Bender.

  Despite the fact that Fry has found himself a thousand years in the future, the only question he has for Leela is about her eye. What’s revealed in Leela’s response is that not only is it weird from Fry’s twenty-first-century perspective, but it’s also weird from the thirty-first-century perspective. Although this weirdness will be explained in the Season Three episode “The Cyber House Rules,” the pilot episode begins to illustrate the hurtful and even oppressive treatment that Leela receives because of her eye.

  The second example from the pilot episode of how normalcy continues to affect behavior in the thirty-first-century is Bender’s attitude toward robosexuality. When Fry suggests that he and Bender have a drink together, Bender’s main concern is that they will be mistaken for a couple. The fact that they’re both represented as male (how exactly is robot gender decided?) isn’t the basis for Bender’s concern. Rather, it’s the fact that Bender is a robot and Fry is a human. At least in New New York, the anxiety about same-sex couples has been replaced by anxiety about human-robot couples.

  Although the reasons why robosexual relationships are considered taboo aren’t made explicit in this episode, we see that same-sex relationships are “normal.” For the inhabitants of the thirty-first century, same-sex relationships are simply an accepted part of society. Like the treatment Leela receives because of her single eye, the attitude toward robosexuality is both hurtful and oppressive.

  The depiction of robosexuality in Futurama comically mirrors some current attitudes toward homosexuality in the twenty-first century. It’s this comical representation that allows Futurama to be obvious about its references, yet subtle in the way that it questions our current attitudes and assumptions. Futurama’s satirical take on physical “handicap” (Leela’s eye) and taboo relationships (robosexuality) uses humor to reveal widespread attitudes and assumptions. By making certain assumptions seem silly and laughable, the assumptions become more difficult to maintain. Thus, Futurama not only reflects how we think, but also works (intentionally or not) to shape how we think.

  There’s Nothing Wrong with Being a Little Weird

  In the episode “Cyber House Rules,” Leela is invited to a reunion at the orphanarium where she grew up. Remembering how she was tormented as a child for having one eye, Leela sets out to prove her accomplishments to her former orphan mates. However, at the reunion she finds out that nothing has changed, and she’s still an outsider due to her “abnormality.”

  The basis of this ridicule isn’t that Leela is thought to be “handicapped.” Rather, it’s based solely on the fact that Leela has only one eye. This is demonstrated by the fact that she’s made fun of by Kirk, a fellow orphan who is both blind and deaf. During a flashback Leela even asks Kirk how he can make fun of her given what seems like a mutual struggle with vision. Kirk responds by telling Leela, “my eyes may not work, but at least I have two of them!”

  Even amongst aliens, mutants, robots, and preserved heads, Leela’s mono-ocularist status marks her as strange and abnormal. The effect of her abnormality is so strong that almost everything she does is interpreted in relation to her eye. As soon as Dr. Atkins’s phaser eye surgery makes her appear to have two eyes, people start treating her differently. Dr. Atkins asks her on a date and eventually wants to have children with her. Kirk, though blind and deaf, still manages to notice Leela’s new biclopian condition, and is disappointed that he can no longer make fun of her.

  It isn’t as if Leela actually changed in any substantive way. She still has the use of only one eye, so her abilities as a space captain remain the same. She didn’t acquire a more attractive personality because of her surgery. Rather, it’s because she’s now “normal” looking and is capable of living a normal and successful (or perhaps successfully normal) life. This is repeatedly made obvious by Dr. Atkins’ remarks about how normal Leela is; even asking for an “average” bouquet of flowers for Leela after the previous couple requests an “extra beautiful bouquet.”

  There’s Nothing Wrong with Anything

  “Cyber House Rules” also demonstrates how the process of normalization is fundamentally cultural. Even though Leela is thought to be an alien, she’s judged on the basis of human standards. At this point in the series Leela’s origins are unknown, so it may be the case that there is a whole community of people with one eye just like her. In a different setting or context, different standards are used to judge what’s normal and what’s abnormal. Because she lives in a dominantly human context, and because it isn’t normal for a human person to have only one eye, she’s found to be physically and socially deficient.

  It’s remarkable that Fry is the only one who tries to convince Leela that having phaser eye surgery is a mistake. Relative to the other characters, Fry is new to the culture of New New York, and compared to Zoidberg’s mating habits or the fact that Nibbler poops dark matter, Leela’s one eye probably seems pretty normal. It’s the social context that determines how to judge what’s normal, and because Fry is still relatively new to the context, he fails to see why having one eye is weird while having a Fonfon Ru is normal.

  The social influence on normalcy is made even clearer in “Leela’s Homeworld” (Season Four), in which we see how important meeting the social standard of normalcy can be for one’s self-esteem. At the beginning of the episode, Leela finds out that she has won “Orphan of the Year.” She visits her orphanarium and gives a speech describing how, even with the hardships of growing up without parents, she’s lived a successful life. We later find out that this public projection doesn’t actually match her private feelings. In fact, she feels lost and out of place, not only because she’s grown up without her parents, but because she doesn’t even know where her parents came from. Because she’s ignorant of her origins, she lacks a context by which she can judge herself as normal. So even though “Cyber House Rules” ends positively, it’s only in “Leela’s Homeworld,” when she finds out that she’s a mutant, that she’s able to fully come to terms with her status as a Cyclops. Her identity as a mutant provides a new measure of normalcy by which she can appropriately judge her appearance.

  Two important things to point out with regard to this discussion of Leela’s experience are tha
t standards of normalcy: 1. are cultural and not natural, and 2. can be used negatively to hurt and oppress people who don’t meet those standards. While we may laugh at the fact that even Kirk, the blind and deaf orphan from Leela’s childhood, makes fun of Leela for having only one eye, we should also realize how our own standards of normalcy support such attitudes.

  Any time we set up a certain type of body as normal, be it the male athletic body, the female model body, or even just having a body (as opposed to a head in a jar), we run the risk of marginalizing or oppressing the population that doesn’t fit this standard. While it might be the case that bodily standards of normalcy are difficult, or even impossible, to change (as far as we can tell, most people will continue to be born with two legs), there are other standards of normalcy that have changed or are more likely to change. One prominent example is sexual orientation.

  Bender Don’t Bend That Way

  The problem of robosexuality is first introduced in the pilot episode. Bender’s concern that he and Fry will be mistaken for a robosexual couple indicates that it’s taboo. This issue is again taken up in the episode “I Dated a Robot,” In which Fry downloads a version of the actress Lucy Liu to a robot template and proceeds to treat her like his girlfriend. Although the satirical content of this episode is geared more toward the problems associated with pornography and masturbation (evidenced by the propaganda film I Dated a Robot), it introduces the oppositional attitudes toward robosexuality.

  Bender, in particular, is offended by the relationship between Fry and Lucy Liu-bot and rebuffs some flirtatious comments by the head of Lucy Liu. More than introducing the opposition to robosexuality, this episode also illustrates the cultural and even experiential aspects of our attitudes toward sexual orientation. Perhaps most revealing is the fact that by the end of the episode, Bender has changed his mind and even seems to start a relationship with the head of Lucy Liu.