News, Television, Women Writers

Dan Harmon Calls Out Misogynist “Rick and Morty” Fans

Dan Harmon: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

“Rick and Morty” co-creator Dan Harmon has been known to speak his mind — he has a history of DGAF tirades in person and on Twitter. Harmon recently delivered another impressive rant to Entertainment Weekly, and this time he was venting his frustrations about the sexist online backlash to the newly gender-balanced writing staff on “Rick and Morty.”

Harmon spoke with EW about the online harassment writers Jane Becker and Jessica Gao were forced to deal with after writing the episodes “Rickmancing the Stone” and “Pickle Rick.” “These knobs, that want to protect the content they think they own — and somehow combine that with their need to be proud of something they have, which is often only their race or gender,” Harmon said of the sexist fans. “It’s offensive to me as someone who was born male and white, and still works way harder than them, that there’s some white male [fan out there] trying to further some creepy agenda by ‘protecting’ my work.”

The “Community” creator mentioned that, while he was expecting some sort of negative reaction after welcoming women into the writers’ room, he hates the misogyny that the hiring changes have inspired. “I was familiar going into the third season, having talked to Felicia Day, that any high-profile women get doxxed, they get harassed, they get threatened, they get slandered. And part of it is a testosterone-based subculture patting themselves on the back for trolling these women,” he said. “I think it’s all disgusting.”

While it’s a relief to know that Harmon has his writers’ backs, he seemed to underestimate the prevalence of racism and sexism outside of particularly hateful online enclaves. “I’ve made no bones about the fact that I loathe these people. It fucking sucks,” he prefaced. “And the only thing I can say is if you’re lucky enough to make a show that is really good that people like, that means some bad people are going to like it too. You can’t just insist that everybody who watches your show get their head on straight … And I’m speaking for myself — I don’t want the show to have a political stance. But at the same time, individually, these [harassers] aren’t politicians and don’t represent politics. They represent some shit that I probably believed when I was 15.”

Unfortunately for all of us, many of these “knobs” do represent politics. You only have to look to the Oval Office and the events of Charlottesville to see that plenty of people push their creepy, white male agenda in the real world. They don’t just exist on “Rick and Morty” Reddit threads.

Harmon served as showrunner on the NBC comedy “Community” for the series’ first three seasons before being fired. He returned as co-showrunner for the fifth and sixth seasons. After the show’s much-maligned, Harmon-less fourth season, Harmon took to his podcast in 2013 to draw an unpleasant, pretty sexist comparison between his former series and rape. “It’s exciting. There’s something awesome about being held down and watching your family get raped on a beach,” he said. “It’s liberating. It makes you focus on what’s important.” He also likened watching the fourth season to “flipping through Instagram and watching your girlfriend just blow everyone.” After making the comments, Harmon penned an apology on Tumblr.

He’s not the first person to make a rape joke and definitely won’t be the last, but at least Harmon seems to have grown throughout the past four years. Flawed as they are, his recent remarks to EW and willingness to go to bat for “Rick and Morty’s” women writers are proof of that.

“Rick and Morty” airs Sundays on Adult Swim. It is currently in its third season.


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