In Christopher Nolan's 2008 superhero film The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger played The Joker, a conniving criminal and archnemesis of Batman. This incarnation of The Joker was a cackling mad/sad clown who employed the blackest of crime and comedy to disguise pontification on the futility of order, morality, and humanity.
Jreg is the nearest thing to a real life instance of that character that I know of. Oh, he's no criminal yet, but some of his videos are edgy enough to veer close. And somehow, he manages to simultaneously be one of the funniest and most depressing artists I've ever seen.
Greg Guevara, also known as Jreg, JrEg, or whatever he prefers this particular minute, is a YouTuber who uses irony & surrealism to satirize various sociopolitical issues. With his acting chops and editing that dances between skillful and Stylistic Suck, Jreg portrays Anthropomorphic Personifications of extremist political ideologies, including the supremacist Nazi, the authoritarian Communist, the greedy Anarcho-Capitalist, and the vindictive Anarcho-Communist of the "Punch a Nazi" variety. I say "extremist", but they might as well be classified as "wacky." They'd have to be to somehow be roommates with each other. An iconic scene depicts the Commie taking and equally redistributing the An-Cap's bread, which the An-Com accepts as "mutual aid." Then Nazi takes all the bread for himself.
These "extremists" band together to destroy their common enemy: Centrists. Moderates, the apathetic, horseshoe theorists, basically anyone who wants to maintain the Status Quo. What follows is a hilariously and depressingly dysfunctional mess of enemies and allies. The "extremists" embrace desperate depravity, and "centrists" embrace the Golden Mean Fallacy. Wacky hijinks are interrupted by existential crises. Ideologies backstab and kill each other one moment and question their own morality and identity the next. The fourth wall is left as broken as your mind. And the closest thing to a common theme that I can parse out in the midst of it is that you only have two clear choices: apathetically submit to the Status Quo, or give in to the madness. The latter is cooler.
Does that make it immoral? It may depend on your takeaway. Perhaps a "common theme" is a bad approach in the first place. Of course, Jreg would probably laugh at any attempt to extract a message from his work. He would describe it as an onion made up of infinite layers of irony, for which there is no center. And then he'd make a video about the meaning of irony, the death of objective truth, mental illness, or suicidal ideation, which hopefully crosses the line between comedic and tasteless an even number of times.
No sarcasm, I actually recommend having caution about watching his content. I don't know where his videos would take you mentally or emotionally, but they'll lead you down somewhere. Sometimes it's hysterical, but other times it does not feel good there at all.
The Saddest Clown
In Christopher Nolan's 2008 superhero film The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger played The Joker, a conniving criminal and archnemesis of Batman. This incarnation of The Joker was a cackling mad/sad clown who employed the blackest of crime and comedy to disguise pontification on the futility of order, morality, and humanity.
Jreg is the nearest thing to a real life instance of that character that I know of. Oh, he's no criminal yet, but some of his videos are edgy enough to veer close. And somehow, he manages to simultaneously be one of the funniest and most depressing artists I've ever seen.
Greg Guevara, also known as Jreg, JrEg, or whatever he prefers this particular minute, is a YouTuber who uses irony & surrealism to satirize various sociopolitical issues. With his acting chops and editing that dances between skillful and Stylistic Suck, Jreg portrays Anthropomorphic Personifications of extremist political ideologies, including the supremacist Nazi, the authoritarian Communist, the greedy Anarcho-Capitalist, and the vindictive Anarcho-Communist of the "Punch a Nazi" variety. I say "extremist", but they might as well be classified as "wacky." They'd have to be to somehow be roommates with each other. An iconic scene depicts the Commie taking and equally redistributing the An-Cap's bread, which the An-Com accepts as "mutual aid." Then Nazi takes all the bread for himself.
These "extremists" band together to destroy their common enemy: Centrists. Moderates, the apathetic, horseshoe theorists, basically anyone who wants to maintain the Status Quo. What follows is a hilariously and depressingly dysfunctional mess of enemies and allies. The "extremists" embrace desperate depravity, and "centrists" embrace the Golden Mean Fallacy. Wacky hijinks are interrupted by existential crises. Ideologies backstab and kill each other one moment and question their own morality and identity the next. The fourth wall is left as broken as your mind. And the closest thing to a common theme that I can parse out in the midst of it is that you only have two clear choices: apathetically submit to the Status Quo, or give in to the madness. The latter is cooler.
Does that make it immoral? It may depend on your takeaway. Perhaps a "common theme" is a bad approach in the first place. Of course, Jreg would probably laugh at any attempt to extract a message from his work. He would describe it as an onion made up of infinite layers of irony, for which there is no center. And then he'd make a video about the meaning of irony, the death of objective truth, mental illness, or suicidal ideation, which hopefully crosses the line between comedic and tasteless an even number of times.
No sarcasm, I actually recommend having caution about watching his content. I don't know where his videos would take you mentally or emotionally, but they'll lead you down somewhere. Sometimes it's hysterical, but other times it does not feel good there at all.