- This video is brought to you by Athletic Greens.
(upbeat music)
What's up, guys?
Michael here, and today,
we're talking about everyone's favorite
sex-fluid, shape-shifting Norse god.
That's right: Loki.
The trickster god's solo series opened up
a whole new level of the MCU's cosmology,
introducing us to the multiverse
and the management agency that oversees it,
the Time Variance Authority.
This bureaucracy, which exists outside of time and space,
gives zero Fs about Loki or his glorious purpose
and proceeds to make his life miserable.
And while it's plenty entertaining
to watch Loki get caught in a tangled web of bureaucracy,
we think there's actually a lot more going on here.
In particular, the show explores the way
in which bureaucratic institutions can constrain
and even annihilate our ability to be free,
and if the show is right,
then what does this say about the real-life bureaucracies
that play such a huge role in our own lives?
To help us understand,
we need to revisit the work of a very dead author
who had more than a few things to say about bureaucracy:
Franz Kafka.
We'll explain in this Wisecrack Edition
on "Loki: The Illusion of Freedom."
Major spoilers ahead for the Disney+ series
and some hundred-year-old Czech literature.
But before we get into it,
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And now, back to the show.
Now, before we can unpack
what's happening to this Norse god,
we first need to talk about this Czech author.
One of the most influential modern writers,
Franz Kafka worked a day job
as a clerk in an insurance agency,
so he was no stranger to unmitigated bureaucracy.
Unsurprisingly, then,
his writing frequently features protagonists
caught in a labyrinth of bureaucratic systems,
often to the point that any attempt
to escape or even understand these systems
is rendered comically futile.
This unique brand of absurd humor
in the face of soul-crushing oppression
has been appropriately dubbed Kafkaesque.
You've probably heard the term used earnestly
by tweed-clad critics or, ironically,
by over-educated comedy writers.
- Yeah, it's very Kafkaesque.
- 'Cause it's written by Franz Kafka.
- Now, Kafka's novels and short stories have been pored over
by critics and philosophers for decades,
leading to wildly different
and often contradictory interpretations.
As a result, the word Kafkaesque gets overused
to describe anything that's even vaguely bureaucratic
or just mildly inconvenient.
- I gotta pay taxes now? What the hell is up with that?
That's messed up, yo.
It's Kafkaesque.
- Church.
- [Michael] So what actually makes something Kafkaesque,
and what does it have to do with Loki waxing philosophical
about jet skis with a seemingly all-knowing Owen Wilson?
- Yeah. - Is that my jet ski magazine?
Put it down. Come on.
- Well, when the series starts,
Loki is fresh out of his campaign
to take over the Earth, Asgard, and the whole universe.
So when he's detained by unnamed agents
from a mysterious authority for an unknown crime,
he's understandably miffed.
He's then subjected to a series of bizarre intake procedures
and eventually put on trial for a crime
that he still doesn't fully comprehend.
This evokes Kafka's famous novel "The Trial,"
in which a man named Josef K. is also arrested
by unnamed agents of an unspecified authority
for an unknown crime.
Over the course of the novel,
K. is subjected to an utterly corrupt
and unknowable justice system
which operates with little logic
and under no central authority.
Eventually, he's executed without ever knowing
what crime he supposedly committed.
Unlike K., Loki pretty quickly learns why he's been arrested
and who is doing the arresting.
But he is rightly suspicious of the true purpose of the TVA
and the nature of the so-called Timekeepers.
He eventually figures out they are merely synthetic androids
and that the entire TVA was created
by some other, even more unknowable figure
who exists even more outside of time and space.
He also learns that all of the agents of the TVA
were pulled from other timelines.
They just don't know it.
In this way, the TVA shares a lot in common
with the legal system in "The Trial."
In the novel, when K. approaches a priest
about the falsity of his accusations, he's told,
"It is not necessary to accept everything as true.
One must accept it as necessary."
Writing 20 years later,
philosopher Hannah Arendt points to this moment
as the novel's summation of the tyranny of bureaucracies,
saying, "Lying for the sake of necessity
appears as something sublime,
and a man who does not submit to the machinery,
though submission may mean his death,
is regarded as a sinner against some kind of divine order."
That is to say, in this world,
submitting to bureaucracy is more important than,
you know, protecting your own life.
And even after the Timekeepers
are revealed to be Disney animatronics,
some agents still swear loyalty to the TVA,
not out of an acceptance of truth,
but out of an acceptance of its necessity.
- I think people are ready to hear a little truth now.
You know, like the TVA is a lie.
- But what if it's a necessary one?
- Arendt describes the tendency of bureaucracies
to sustain themselves, even without a real leader.
In her book "On Violence," she writes,
"Bureaucracy is the form of government
in which everybody is deprived of political freedom,
of the power to act, for the rule by nobody is not no-rule,
and where all are equally powerless,
we have a tyranny without a tyrant,"
which is to say you don't need a dictator in a funny hat
to have a super oppressive government.
But Loki's conflict with authority and search for freedom
goes way beyond the bureaucratic halls of the TVA.
See, the bulk of the show is dedicated
to answering the question, what makes a Loki a Loki?
Rather than being an introspective character study,
the question is treated more like a detailed deconstruction
of his identity and autonomy.
When he's first assessed by Mobius,
he's shown clips from his life up to that point,
along with what would've happened in his original timeline.
- You weren't born to be king, Loki.
You were born to cause pain and suffering and death,
all so that others can achieve
their best versions of themselves.
- [Michael] Confronted with the reality
that all of his choices went to (beep),
Loki admits that the free will he thought he had
was little more than a trick he pulled on himself.
- It's part of the illusion.
It's the cruel, elaborate trick
conjured by the weak to inspire fear.
- A desperate play for control.
You do know yourself.
- [Michael] It wasn't his own individual agency
that led him to do the things he did.
It was his compulsion to fulfill a societal role,
in this case, the role of god of mischief.
Similarly, Kafka wasn't only concerned
with the loss of free will
under authoritarian bureaucracies.
He also saw individual autonomy itself
as comically irrelevant in a society
where everyone is more or less assigned
a particular role to perform.
While it's easy to read Kafka's work
as a dark meditation on the loss of freedom
under bureaucratic governments,
some philosophers argue that it serves
as a humorous satire of the entire concept of free will.
Philosopher Dimitris Vardoulakis writes
that "Kafka's humor is a response
to the Western conception of freedom,
which he tirelessly presents in his narratives,
and that this response implies
an alternative conception of freedom."
In this vein, "Loki" complicates what we think freedom is,
namely the ability to simply do what we want.
In reality, even our chosen actions can be done
within the context of performing a preordained role.
And in what's arguably his most famous work,
"The Metamorphosis," he explores this idea
through a traveling salesman named Gregor Samsa
who wakes up one morning to find
he's been transformed into an insect.
Sadly, there is no alligator Gregor.
Rather than worrying about the existential implications
of this transformation,
Gregor's first thought is about how he will be able
to keep his job to provide for his family.
As time goes on and Gregor's condition doesn't improve,
his family increasingly neglects him,
reacting with utter disgust every time they see him.
He eventually passes away, and the family rejoices.
- Hooray! - Harsh.
"The Metamorphosis" derives its ironic humor
from treating the fantastical and bewildering
as mundane and tiresome.
"Loki" does much of the same.
- [Loki] Infinity Stones?
- We actually got a lot of those.
Yeah, some of the guys use 'em as paperweights.
- [Michael] Or, you know, this.
- If it were me, this is where I would hide.
- But on a deeper level, Kafka's story
is a disturbing deconstruction of individualism.
Once he is stripped from his role as family provider,
Gregor is also effectively stripped of his self-worth.
The fact that he's more concerned
about his financial and social status
than, you know, being a (beep) bug
is an ironic commentary on the burdens
placed on us by society.
We see a similar metamorphosis happen with Loki.
Once he finds himself stripped
of his role as the god of mischief,
he has a full-blown identity crisis.
When he eventually submits and starts working for the TVA,
he is tasked with literally finding himself.
Well, a variant of himself, but still.
Meeting Sylvie, he's confronted with a version of himself
who is singularly obsessed with her own glorious purpose,
namely bringing down the TVA.
He decides to help her achieve this goal,
mostly because he's fallen in love.
With himself, which is, you know, a pretty Loki thing to do.
But once they finally meet the man behind the curtain,
or He Who Remains, it's revealed that even their acts
of defiance and rebellion were all a part of their set path
and that they've been playing
right into his hands the entire time.
- No, we broke out of your little game.
That's how we got here.
- No, wrong.
Every step you took to get here,
Lamentis, The Void,
I paved the road.
You?
You just walked down it.
- [Michael] In this way,
the show presents us with a world
where in the face of all-powerful agencies
upheld by unwitting agents,
free will is nothing more than an illusion.
And you don't have to be controlled
by a shadowy management agency
operating outside of time and space
to fall victim to this plight,
because real freedom is often subsumed
under structures of power like governments.
As Vardoulakis puts it,
"We think that we have the freedom to exercise our will
only by forgetting that power is exercised
not simply by delimiting our freedom,
but by confining our will
to power's own operation and perpetuation.
The more we exercise our free will,
the more power proliferates."
In other words,
when we feel like we're freely participating in
or working for some large organization
or power like a big corporation,
what we're actually doing is sacrificing
and ultimately losing that very freedom.
Freedom, paradoxically,
ends up being the prerequisite to being controlled.
Or, as Judge Renslayer puts it...
- Free will?
Only one person gets free will: the one in charge.
- [Michael] And while not an interdimensional time cop,
Kafka agrees.
He even argues that our own individual ambitions
can be as oppressive as the forces of bureaucracy.
His short story "A Hunger Artist"
is about a performer who makes a living
starving himself for the entertainment of others,
like a turn-of-the-century David Blaine.
The performer, though, singularly obsessed with his craft,
laments the fact that he's only legally allowed
to fast for 40 days, lest he, you know, starve to death.
When this restriction is lifted,
mainly due to a lack of public interest in his act,
he's finally allowed to achieve his goal
of starving himself to death.
Here, the irony is that this guy's greatest dream
is literally the cause of his own very hungry demise.
Loki has a similar confrontation
with his own individual ambition.
Over the course of the series, his catchphrase-
- I am burdened with glorious purpose.
(woman speaks in Mongolian)
- [Michael] Begins to change in meaning,
with the emphasis less on the glorious purpose
and more on the burden.
When he finally escapes the TVA and reaches the end of time,
he's confronted with the possibility
of finally getting what he always desired.
- You want the Infinity Gauntlet?
Yours.
Throne of Asgard?
No problem.
- [Michael] But unlike the hunger artist
doubling down on the whole starvation thing,
Loki decides to relinquish his ambitions.
By now, he doesn't seem to care much
about taking down the TVA and exposing the truth, either.
He simply wants to spend his life,
even if it is an artificial one, with Sylvie.
In a way, he is freed from his shackles,
not by overthrowing his oppressors,
but from laying down the burden of his ambition.
- I don't want a throne.
I just... (dramatic music)
(Loki sighs)
I just want you to be okay.
- Sylvie, on the other hand,
comes to the opposite conclusion.
Having been burdened her whole life
with the task of destroying the TVA
and killing whoever created it,
she finds it impossible to abandon that quest.
But in a truly Kafkaesque turn,
once she finally achieves her goal,
she's left alone and defeated.
But rather than starving herself to death,
she simply ruined the hole of reality.
(Sylvie breathing heavily) (sorrowful music)
Hey, it, uh, it happens to the best of us.
And despite her actions, the TVA persist,
and on multiple timelines under the leadership
of an even more oppressive authority.
Kafkaesque indeed.
And oh, yeah, Loki's even more screwed
than he was at the beginning.
But if the show, and Kafka, are right about the way
in which bureaucratic institutions slowly chip away
at our freedom and individuality,
what does this mean for us?
You don't have to be arrested for an unknown crime to think,
nothing good.
Sure, Kafka had his gripes about 20th century bureaucracy,
but dude would lose his (beep)
if he could see the modern world.
As anthropologist David Graeber argues
in his book "The Utopia of Rules,"
"bureaucracy has become the water in which we swim,"
and our contemporary times
are an "age of total bureaucratization"
in that it's so ubiquitous,
we almost don't even recognize it anymore.
We may think we're swimming freely,
but we're simply going with the current.
From excessive standardized testing in grade school
to megalithic prison systems
to the 14 pages of paperwork you fill out
every time you go to the eye doctor,
bureaucracy is everywhere.
Increasingly, every job requires higher education,
certificate programs, and written tests to be hired,
and increasingly,
those hired office workers find more and more of their time
sucked up by administrative bureaucratic tasks
in what Graeber not-so-fondly calls "(beep) jobs."
And he argues that this bureaucracy
ultimately serves to make us less free
by encouraging conformity and rule-following
and situating us in a society run by rules
that are enforced by violence.
(baton crackles) (victim screams)
We're not the TVA's synthetic android drones
living outside of time and space,
but if Kafka and Graeber are right,
bureaucracy and the institutions that govern our lives
are still entirely capable
of slowly chipping away at our freedom.
So what do we do, and is there any way to fight back?
Let's turn to our two favorite Lokis.
Or is it Lokii?
The original god of mischief decides
to accept the systems that govern him,
take over the keys to the timeline from He Who Remains,
who is absolutely Kang the Conqueror,
and try to change bureaucracy from the inside.
- You take over
and return to the TVA as its benevolent rulers.
- And in the meantime, he'll try to live his best life.
Sylvie, on the other hand,
would argue that these systems are beyond reform
and need to be burned the F down so we can start over
and stop filling out so much goddamn paperwork.
But what do you guys think?
Are any of us truly free,
or are we merely at the whims of the social structures
and bureaucratic systems that surround us?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
Either way, smash that like and subscribe button,
but do it because you want to, not because I told you to.
Big thanks to our patrons for all your support,
and as always, thanks for watching.
Later.
(energetic music)