Visual Plenitude: Notes on Visual Culture in “Rick & Morty”’s ‘Save-Point’ Device
Abstract
Drawing on a critical overview of Jay David Bolter's volume Digital Plenitude (2019), the essay aims to provide a contribution to the theoretical debate on user experience design in the system of digital image displacement that is definable as "visual plenitude." The starting hypothesis is that today's visual plenitude – characterized by the hybridization of high and popular culture, old and new media, conservative and radical political instances – promotes self-reflective user experiences and forms of trainings to its very visual procedures. In particular, by navigating along the epistemological dichotomies identified by Bolter (catharsis/flow, originality/remix, spontaneity/procedurality, history/simulation), and by using the tools of software and visual studies, we will examine an "imaginary media" presented in the episode of the animated series Rick & Morty (Adult Swim, 2015-) titled The Vat of Acid Episode (2020), where Rick builds his nephew Morty a remote control that allows him to save and reload moments of his real life. The story of this device is considered as an example of "visual training" which guides the character and the spectators through the power relations among forms of audiovisual narration and strategies of capitalization of the imaginary, transparent uses and fantasies linked to digital display devices and invisible and material consequences linked to their global usage.
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