I'm sure this isn't something you don't already know, but last month I ran a column that was a Maoist critique of the children's cartoon show "SpongeBob SquarePants." As I'm sure you remember, I ruthlessly and efficiently pointed out the innumerable flaws inherent in the show, revealing it to be sick capitalist propaganda.
Despite the fact that my explication was unreadably long, I was only able to scratch the surface of this topic. This is because "SpongeBob SquarePants" is composed of layers upon layers of metaphorical meaning.
While everyone else watches "SpongeBob" while getting high and eating Cheetos, I am vigorously taking notes. I fill notebook upon notebook with brilliant observations about the complex characters and intricate plotlines. After a typical 11-minute episode, I usually have as many as 30 pages covered with things like "SpongeBob's tie is red: WHY???" or "Mr. Krabs talks like a pirate, yet he is a restaurant owner: dichotomy, also criticism."
This is because I'm smarter than everyone else.
You may think that it is pretentious, perhaps even retarded, to dissertate a children's cartoon show revolving around the lives of sea creatures and their pants. However, I understand SpongeBob on a much deeper level than you do.
So pay attention! There will be a test once this essay gets published in every scholarly journal ever, and it starts being taught in all your English classes.
THE AVARICE OF SPONGEBOB PART II: JUDGEMENT DAY
Those of you who read my previous explication already know that "SpongeBob SquarePants," although it may look like an irreverent romp of merriment through a cavalcade of stimulating colors, is actually a brutal and chauvinistic condemnation of all proven-correct Marxist principles.
It is not a cartoon, it is capitalist propaganda. Actually, it's also a cartoon, I guess. It is a cartoon and it is capitalist propaganda.
Or it is a brilliant satire of capitalist propaganda, simultaneously spoofing and condemning it by repeating verbatim what a capitalist propaganda film would spout. I can't really tell the difference because, as you've no doubt already noticed, I have absolutely no sense of humor. But regardless, this show is either atrocious or genius.
The show follows the antics of SpongeBob SquarePants, an imbecilic sea sponge who overcomes his obvious physical and mental flaws by becoming a cog in the industrial machine. His greatest thrill in life is to suffer in indentured servitude as a fry cook.
SpongeBob himself is also clearly retarded; this is highly inappropriate and offensive on the part of the show's creators. But in addition to that they are illustrating, in a capitalist economy, that the mentally handicapped are subjugated to the role of second-class citizens and should embrace a career flipping burgers.
Whether it was advertent, "SpongeBob SquarePants" shows the dystopia created by capitalism. As a brief aside, in communism nobody is subjugated to the role of second-class citizen. Everybody, regardless of handicap, is forced to work in the fields. SpongeBob would be a farmer.
But in addition to the actual retarded, happy-worker SpongeBob, there are countless characters that make up the society-gone-wrong that is SpongeBob's universe. These characters all represent obvious real-world archetypes, which should be clear to anyone who can read.
One of these characters is Plankton, who is a plankton. But he is also SpongeBob's nemesis. Plankton runs a restaurant that competes with The Krusty Krab, where SpongeBob is employed.
Instead of trying to advance his own restaurant's status with hard work and determination, Plankton constantly attempts daring heists of The Krusty Krab's secret formula - the prized recipe for Krabby patties. In other words, Plankton is an anarchist hero. He attempts to undermine the vile structure of Bikini Bottom's capitalist infrastructure with villainy.
However, the creators of "SpongeBob SquarePants" make an interesting (and wrong) commentary by making the heroic Plankton a tiny microorganism who is easily thwarted and crushed under the massive feet of the show's fish characters. This is extremely biased!
If "SpongeBob SquarePants" was a truly objective cartoon show, as it claims to be, then Plankton would have to be some sea creature grand enough to be worthy of the role of token revolutionary insurgent - something along the lines of a massive and unstoppable leviathan. A sea monster named Plankton is the most logical thing I've ever heard.
Another character on the show who perpetuates capitalist oppression is Sandy, a female squirrel who inexplicably lives underwater and is able to survive by wearing an empty fishbowl on her head.
One might think that Sandy the squirrel represents imperialism of land creatures who are voraciously raping (colonizing) the savage underwater creatures by forcing them to adopt their air-breathing, land-mammal customs.
However, being the brilliant and independent thinker that I am, I have come up with an alternate explanation of the squirrel in "SpongeBob SquarePants." Sandy represents "the other," someone who is alien and different from the population around her.
As "SpongeBob SquarePants" is blatant capitalist propaganda, Sandy is portrayed in the show as being well-adjusted and accepted by the hideous fish people who inhabit the colorful underwater city in which SpongeBob lives.
However, as this show is capitalist propaganda, it is also a complete lie. If this show about anthropomorphic fish who wear clothes, go to the beach and sit around campfires is expected to be taken seriously, then it would portray an outsider like the squirrel wearing a spacesuit in the same manner that outsiders and "the other" are treated in modern capitalist societies - that squirrel would be a pariah.
But the most damning evidence against capitalism that this show spews forward is in the human protectors of the undersea world, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. The heroes to billions of fish people, these two Nietzschean supermen have been charged with the task of protecting the populace from legions of fish-themed super villains.
These two defenders of the innocent should be gods among fish, as gods-among-men Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway voice their characters on the show. However, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy are senile and bumbling and are often incapable of solving a single crisis facing the fish people. In fact, they are prone to causing conflict themselves.
This clearly illustrates that the protectors of the capitalist status quo are feeble and inconsequential. Not only does this show how futile it is to try and save the sinking ship that is capitalism, but it proves that the only people who would want to take up such an endeavor are asinine ninnies who are past their primes and living in the past.
Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy are most likely only in the show for purposes of "comic relief" (I would not know because, as I have stated previously and as you have probably figured out if you've read this far, I have no sense of humor). This is disgusting on the part of the show's creators! Such weak, flabby fools should be pitied and eventually mercy-killed, not laughed at. When will Hollywood learn?
Also, it is apparent that Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy are both homosexuals, and it is obvious from his stunning resemblance to Aquaman that Mermaid Man pays prostitutes to defecate on his chest, but those are issues that are so important they deserve their own essays.
As you can surely surmise by now, Nickelodeon, the children's cable network that allows "SpongeBob SquarePants" to exist, should be shunned for polluting the world of children's television, which is usually sympathetic to the ideologies of socialism. This is a shame, because Nickelodeon has usually been a bastion for free-thinking communist creed.
You may remember your childhood being brightened with communist propaganda, or "freedom films," shown on Nickelodeon. Shows like "Salute your Shorts" or "You Can't Do That on Television" reinforced the iron curtain and made communism in the late 1980s as strong as it had ever been.
Despite the atrocities committed by SpongeBob every weekday at 5 p.m. Eastern/4 p.m. Central, Nickelodeon still shows some quality programming.
For example, I am especially impressed with "Dora the Explorer." While, on the surface and to an idiot, the show may seem to be about nothing more than a little Hispanic girl who goes on adventures with her talking boots-wearing monkey named Boots, it is actually substantially deeper.
Dora clearly is representative of epic hero Che Guevara. She even looks like Guevara, had he been two feet tall, lacking all facial hair, dressed in pink and was a 6-year-old girl. And Boots the monkey is so incredibly obviously Fidel Castro, and I just flat-out refuse to explain that, because if you don't see that immediately then you don't deserve to get it.
