Street artist turns 'Rick and Morty' into commentary on the Isreali-Palestinian conflict
Season 3 of Rick and Morty came and went, but some of its memes just refuse to die.
Pickle Rick swept the globe before the season even really started, catapulting into its own category of Reddit post tags on r/RickandMorty. Reportedly, one Australian street artist named Lushsux took the new pop culture icon into the real world by applying the conceit of Pickle Rick to an Israeli-Palestinian border wall.
Lushsux painted the mad scientist Rick Sanchez from Adult Swim's hugely popular show onto the controversial border wall between Israel and Palestine.
While the astuteness of this social commentary is up for debate, the series features three different murals that use the Rick and Morty characters to critique what some consider an illegal border wall segregating Israel from the West Bank.
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Like fellow "anonymous" street artist Bansky, the identity of Lushsux is uncertain. But his latest attempts to tackle the Isreali-Palestinian conflict go in conjunction with a running joke from the Rick and Morty Season 3 finale.
In it, the titular characters broker peace between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a Star Wars-like cantina -- just to taunt the President of the United States for his ineffectual peace talks.
Of course, global humanitarian crises only start mattering to Grandpa Rick after his ego is on the line. But once his pride is tied to solving one of the most difficult social conflicts of modern history, it's only a matter of time. With the help of "perspective-enhancing alien pheromones ingested through a laser hookah," the two do manage to broker the Kind of Obvious When You Think About It accord.
The joke, of course, is just how ridiculous such a blanket solution would be in the real world. This art, while striking, may not have totally picked up on that undertone, however.
One thing at least is clear: The once-niche cartoon of Rick and Morty has now reached a level of cultural phenomenon that has rendered it ripe for the picking for pop artists with a message.
Jess is an LA-based culture critic who covers intimacy in the digital age, from sex and relationship to weed and all media (tv, games, film, the web). Previously associate editor at Kill Screen, you can also find her words on Vice, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Vox, and others. She is a Brazilian-Swiss American immigrant with a love for all things weird and magical.
