The now classic movie-riffing series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), and its spinoffs such as Rifftrax, can tell us something about how to deal with existential absurdity. Although MST3K more directly targets the “aesthetic absurdity” of flawed filmmaking, the strategies used for coping with bad movies can also be applied to the absurdities of life. But what are those strategies? Is the riffing (or joke telling) in MST3K making fun of or simply having fun with the absurdities encountered? The ridiculing function of the riffs is pervasive, but if you pay close attention, many of the riffs are really only celebrating absurdity, without any flaw in the bad movie being highlighted.
The show has a knack for complex intertextuality, which associates elements of the riffed movie with other elements in media and culture. Jokes of this sort often amount to nothing more than clever, playful witticism. In MST3K’s screening of Eegah, the movie is certainly lambasted for cliché tropes and aesthetically unconvincing plot, staging, and dialogue. Yet there’s no real criticism expressed when the robot riffers Crow and Tom Servo hum the music from M*A*S*H while a helicopter flies over a barren hilly expanse reminiscent of M*A*S*H’s title sequence. Instead, the aesthetic absurdity of the riffed movie has simply inspired a spirit of frivolity that renders the absurdity much more welcome and appreciated. So why not embrace the existential absurdity of life in the same way? I’m looking at you, Camus.
The basic setup of MST3K bears uncanny resemblance to Albert Camus’ still very influential philosophy of rebellion against cosmic absurdity in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). Camus sees absurdity as emerging from a human expectation of meaning that’s met by the silence of the universe, an ultimate pointlessness of reality that triggers an experience of alienation. Camus recommends that, rather than attempting to escape the absurdity of life through faith in the afterlife or in some kind of transcendent divine order (an escapism which Camus labels “philosophical suicide”), we should rebel against the absurd. This rebellion is epitomized by the mythical Sisyphus who is punished by the Greek gods to endlessly roll a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down again. Camus declares that we can imagine Sisyphus happy. Sisyphus represents our own repetitious lives without ultimate purpose, and the point is that we should each claim our own boulder as our fate, pursuing a passion for life despite the backdrop of meaninglessness. According to Camus, such existential perseverance makes the human effort to achieve things in life even more admirable.
Like Sisyphus, the riffers in MST3K are coerced into facing absurdity, not by Greek Gods, but by mad scientists (“the Mads”) who hope to break their spirit through awful cinema. Yet the riffers are able to maintain their will to live by constantly cracking jokes. This humorous response can be understood as a form of protest not just against B and Z movies, but also against the world of media in general (Star Wars, for instance, has also been lampooned by Rifftrax). As Matt Foy and Christopher J. Olson insightfully explain in their recent book on the significance of MST3K: “The series also operates as a form of culture jamming, a type of protest used to disrupt media culture and its attendant cultural institutions…, using humor to peel back the curtain on social mores, cultural customs, and ideological standards” (2024, 46). For instance, the riffers regularly undermine the simple plot device that pits perfect good against perfect evil, panning the antics of overly aggressive heroes in bad movies such as Mitchell and Space Mutiny (57). This rebellion against aesthetic absurdity and media conventions enables the audience to embrace their own experience: “When MST3K’s riffers draw attention to problematic elements of the film’s construction… the audience focuses on the problematic elements and resists immersion in the film’s universe. Done well, riffing transforms a film into a completely new viewing experience” (54). Freeing the audience in this way sounds very much like enabling Sisyphus to claim his own personal boulder. One’s experience of life can be viewed as valid despite the absurdity.
While Camus and MST3K are targeting different categories of absurdity—cosmic absurdity in the case of Camus, versus aesthetic absurdity in the case of MST3K—both can be seen as a form of rebellion that transforms clear-eyed acknowledgement of absurdity into an experience of empowerment. At the same time, this parallel can be leveraged into a critique of Camus, because MST3K offers another strategy for facing absurdity that is not just rebelling, but also revelling. While Camus depicts cosmic absurdity as entirely negative, so that a form of opposition to it is the only positive response, a less serious and more humorous response can be used to experience our absurd condition as positive in itself. As already noted, many of the riffs in MST3K are obviously simply celebrating absurdity, a frivolity inspired by the defects encountered in the cheesy movie. Joel Hodgson, the creator of MST3K, fostered a fairly loving attitude toward the aesthetically flawed films he riffed (Foy & Olson 2024, 40). In fact, when Hodgson left the show in 1993 (eventually returning in more recent spinoff shows), he left behind a plaque with this bizarre declaration:
The whole world is a circus if you look at it the right way. Every time you pick up a handful of dust, and see not the dust, but a mystery, a marvel, there in your hand. Every time you stop and think, “I’m alive and being alive is fantastic!” (37).
Interestingly, Hodgson’s appreciation of the circus of life can be related to one of the more lighthearted religions: Daoism. This ancient Chinese spiritual tradition likewise celebrates mystery and absurdity, despite the ultimate purposelessness of the underlying cosmic principle referred to as the Dao. The Dao can never be fully comprehended by the human mind, but for Daoism, this is no cause for despair or alienation, or Camus’ rebellion. It is stated in the Zhuangzi, “He who has mastered the true nature of life does not labor over what life cannot do” (Ch 19). As a foil to Camus, Daoists such as Zhuangzi encourage humility and playfulness to enable alignment with the way of nature and acceptance of life and death. Zhuangzi also critiques humanity’s narcissistic and overly serious absorption in our limited perspective. He demonstrates how a sense of humor can generate more flow and less distress, even if what we encounter in life goes against all understanding. This similarity between Daoism and MST3K in their celebration of absurdity will be revisited after next exploring how irony and ridicule can actually cutify bad movies, making us love them more.
The post Rebelling or Revelling?: Humor as a Sisyphean Task in Mystery Science Theater 3000, Part 1 first appeared on Blog of the APA.
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