Clones, Dream Machines, and Butterflies

[kleenexwoman]

Clones, Dream Machines, and Butterflies: An Examination of Simulacra and Simulation in the Venture Brothers

“The Venture Brothers” is a pastiche of old Hanna-Barbera action-adventure shows and superhero shows; in its concept and execution, it transcends mere parody to comment on the distinction between the hyperreal and the real, the simulation of conflict, and the reality of media itself. The show, created by Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer runs on the Cartoon Network affiliate Adult Swim, a spin-off network dedicated to “adult” cartoons. Many of the other shows on the network, like “Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law” or “Sealab 2021” involve Hanna-Barbera characters repurposed into more “realistic” settings than their original series provided, often struggling to reconcile day-to-day life with the trials of being a superhero; “Venture Brothers” is the only one of these repurposed action shows which focuses on original characters, providing more creative scope for the writers and artists to create an entirely new world in which the real and the fantastical hyperreal are almost seamlessly blended.

The characters themselves, rather than being simply displaced and obsolete superheroes, are second-generation superheroes trying to emulate an obsolete way of life. They are creating copies of the lives of their parents, who inculcated them into the modernistic, morally certain, future-facing world of the Cold War adventure genre, a world that the creators and target audience of the show were used to, if only passively. The fantastical world of cartoon adventure was a hyperreality in itself, a world in which the real-life fears of nuclear war, sudden social change, and ordinary childhood peril were filtered through metaphors of ghost pirates, supervillains, and child adventurers capable of saving the world as points of identification. “Venture Brothers” has been identified by critics, fans, and even its creators as a show about "beautiful sublime failure" (Doc Hammer, interview), "the death of the space-age dream world. The death of the jet-age promises" (Jackson Publick, interview). It is a reflection of the optimism of the past souring into an economic recession, cultural deconstruction, and the decay of the illusion of the real; the world of the Venture Brothers reflects an equivalent decay of that perception of the real for the audience, giving the audience a cast of supervillains who pose no threat and heroes who have nothing to fight against.

The protagonist of the show, Dr. Venture, is the ostensible point of identification for the older viewer. Dr. Venture is a former child adventurer, like the Johnny Quest figures that children watching Hanna-Barbera cartoons were meant to identify with. The few flashbacks the viewer sees of his adventures show young “Rusty” Venture as a passive figure, often playing with action figures (simulations of adventure themselves!) while his father, a scientist adventurer, leaps into action. In this, he is less a figure of wish-fulfillment than of true identification, the analogue of the viewer watching cartoons and playing with tie-in merchandise, but never genuinely taking part in the action. The artifacts which prove his existence as a boy adventurer are not memories from his own exploits, but rather lunchboxes, thermoses, and other merchandised paraphernalia which several of the other characters in the show (including two of Dr. Venture’s colleagues) collect. He is less a boy adventurer than an imitation of one, a character whose image outstrips his reality.

As an adult, Dr. Venture has inherited his father’s lab and his legacy. However, the imitative skill set that served him as a passive child adventurer does not translate to his new career—even his arch-nemesis characterizes his laboratory as “a museum of failure” (Venture Brothers, episode 1x06). His inventions, bizarre gadgets like walking eyes and shrink rays, are seldom more than barely-functioning imitations of his father’s creations. His acquaintances and allies often misjudge him, seeing either a replica of his father’s genius or a grown-up version of the boy adventurer he used to be, often becoming disillusioned when his talents fail their expectations—one of his “customers” even exclaims, “You’ve been riding [Dr. Venture’s father’s] corpse’s coattails your entire adult life!” (Venture Brothers, episode 1x05). He is bitter and cynical, seemingly able to recognize and occasionally articulate the unreality of his own position (even, at one point, pointing out that he and his companions are “trapped in a cliché” (Venture Brothers, episode 2x18)), still a point of identification for viewers who grew up to recognize the unreality of the optimistic world presented to them by television. However, he seems unwilling or unable to adjust his behavior to his new reality, continuing to imitate the behavior patterns that proved successful in his childhood.

As if to cement his status as an imitation of a scientist, Dr. Venture’s most successful inventions seem to be those that involve imitation themselves. Arguably, his most enduring invention involves his sons, Hank and Dean, teenage boys who themselves attempt to imitate Dr. Venture’s past boy-adventurer role in every situation. In the first episode of the second season of the show (“Powerless in the Face of Death,” 2x20), the viewer discovers that the boys are in fact the fourteenth iterations of themselves; because their imitations of their father’s adventures constantly lead them to grisly deaths, Dr. Venture has created a system that will store their thought patterns and memories and implant them into new “clone slugs” when needed. The question of whether they are the “real” Hank and Dean is the subject of strenuous debate between Dr. Venture and his friend, the necromancer Dr. Orpheus; while Dr. Orpheus insists that the boys “have shed their mortal coil as a snake sheds its skin” and agonizes over the morality of resurrecting them as “soulless zombies” (after attempting to resurrect their immortal souls), Dr. Venture insists that “the boys never died…They are Hank and Dean. They have all the same memories, same annoying tendencies, same everything.” To the rationalist Dr. Venture, used to creating imitation life in the form of robots and stitched-together zombies, there is no difference between two sons created in “a moment of passion” (1x02) and their factory-produced replacements; to Dr. Orpheus, used to spirituality and dealing with magical thinking, the boys are dead and their immortal souls are trapped in Dr. Venture’s computer.

The beginning of the episode, in which Dr. Venture tries to emotionally recover from the boys’ deaths, does suggest that on a subconscious level he does think of the boys’ eventual replacements as counterfeits, at least temporarily; in an attempt to put off the task of cloning them, he goes on a journey of self-discovery to exotic locales, an archetype usually associated with an attempt to find the “real.” His journey culminates in a rave, where he begs to be left alone with his new “family” and announces his intentions to have a “real” child with one of his new friends. However, once he returns to his laboratory, the effects of his spiritual journey seem to be entirely forgotten.

Dr. Venture’s attempts at cloning are a reoccurring story arc within the show, one that almost inevitably leads to subtextual discussion of simulacra and simulation. In the episode “The Incredible Mr. Brisby” (1x05), Dr. Venture is kidnapped by a theme park magnate, modeled after Walt Disney, who seeks his help in creating a clone of himself so that he might live to see Brisbyland, the small-scale he has created, grow into an entire simulated existence, which he calls “Brisbylife.” He is opposed by a group of rebels calling themselves the Orange County Liberation Front, who seek to take back their property from the encroachments of Brisbyworld. Ironically, the existence they seek to reclaim from Brisby’s simulation is itself a recognizable simulation—the leader of the O.C.L.F. describes their lost home as consisting of “a beautiful residential neighborhood, with a very convenient shopping mall…a skate park too…[and] a very pleasant Applebee’s,” all simulations of real marketplaces, parks, and restaurants in themselves. Even more ironically, Hank and Dean, who themselves simulate their own world of adventure, are enthralled by the simulations of excitement Brisbyland provides. Like Baudrillard’s perception of its real-world analogue, Brisbyland “is there to conceal the fact that is it the “real” country” which is simulated (Baudrillard, 25).

In “Eeney, Meeney, Miney…Magic!” (1x04), Dr. Venture creates a simulation of his own in the form of a “dream machine” powered by the heart of an orphan. The machine is a metal pod which dips into the deepest fantasies of the person or people inside and creates the illusion that they are tangible. Like “real” dreams, the dreams created by the machine are exaggerated realities, hyperrealities tailored to the individual’s emotional needs. The function of the machine in the episode is to show the dream realities which each character creates while inside it. Hank imagines his distant, constantly distracted single father as a loving dad, willing to toss a football around, with a mother’s voice in the distance—his dream is an exaggeration of the domestic, peaceful life he is denied in his world of already exaggerated danger and fantasy, a reversal of the viewer’s presumed mundane reality. Brock Samson, Dr. Venture’s bodyguard, imagines a reality in which his moral conundrums with killing and violence are retroactively erased, a reality in which his first (accidental) victim forgives him, dozens of ninjas and other enemies present themselves to be slaughtered, and his unattainable love interest is ready to “go all the way” and begs him, “Promise me you won’t be gentle.” Although Dr. Venture himself does not go into the machine, he reveals that his main purpose in creating it was to allow himself to indulge in “the lonely kind of hanky-panky,” exaggerated sex fantasies which his social ineptness prevents him from fulfilling in real life. However, the hyperreal as a material fantasy cannot fool its inhabitants forever; overloaded, the machine’s dream realities begin to break down. In the end, it is Dean, who has only recently found his “true love”, who is able to unlock the machine and lead Hank and Brock out; the machine cannot provide that which is real, and at last opens itself up to reveal Dean’s love interest, Triana, on the other side of its doors.

As with the clones, it is interesting to note the characters’ differing reactions to the concept of the simulation itself; Dr. Venture, its rationalist creator, recognizes it as a simulation; Hank and Brock, once trapped in its realities, seem to confuse its illusions with physical reality even when snapped out of their fantasies; Dr. Orpheus, the magician, originally mistakes its shifting illusory realities for a gateway into the spirit world, and later rationalizes his discomfort with its existence by claiming that it is an abomination because it is powered by the heart of an orphan. Although magic and the supernatural are realities in the Venture world, and its practitioners are as sympathetic and dubiously successful as its scientist characters, they frequently lose intellectual debates or mistake advanced technology for magic (the Arthur C. Clarke principle at work). Despite its fantastic nature, the series may indeed be betraying a rationalist bias.

However, the greatest and most pervasive simulation in the series may be in its treatment of good and evil, as expressed in its complex and unique portrayal of the relationship between its nominal heroes and self-identified villains. The Venture universe is home to an organization called the Guild of Calamitous Intent, the “recognized leader in organized havoc” which “[provides] first-rate professional menace to all who qualify” (Venture Brothers, episode 2x22). The Guild’s stated purpose is to match up heroes with costumed nemeses, ensuring that their rivalries are reciprocal, evenly matched, and stay within the bounds of any non-aggression treaties without interference from outside authorities, such as the police, who might spoil the fun. The aim of the conflicts between heroes and their corresponding villains is not to win a final victory, but to assure that carefully staged battles will last for as long as is satisfying to each party. Rivalries created by the Guild are seldom, if ever, based on real animosity; any personal feelings between nemeses seem to grow during the rivalry instead of leading to the rivalry, or are entirely incidental. Dr. Venture’s own nemesis, a butterfly-themed character who calls himself the Monarch (and who is himself as ineffectual at villainy as Dr. Venture is at science, making them evenly matched), articulates this purposelessness of conflict when Dr. Venture, presumably forgetting or ignoring the staged basis of their rivalry, asks him why he keeps antagonizing the Venture family: “You're my arch-enemy! That's what I do! That's my thing!” (Venture Brothers, episode uncertain). However, “Everybody pretends to believe in the reality of this menace…but there are precisely no strategic stakes at this level” (Baudrillard, 59), as without the emotion which results from these arranged matches, the game is spoiled. Indeed, the Monarch’s animosity towards Dr. Venture temporarily flags when he infiltrates his enemy’s lab and his hatred turns to pity: “What can I do to this guy that life hasn’t already? I almost feel sorry for him” (Venture Brothers, episode 1x06).

Thus, the satire of the Venture Brothers moves from the cultural to the political. The charade of battle that the Guild of Calamitous Intent enacts and enables is analogous to the deterrence adopted during the Cold War and continued in treaties and pacts by nations thereafter. Like deterrence, it “excludes the antiquated violence of expanding systems” (Baudrillard, 59) by controlling and channeling the aggression of supervillains, ensuring a “balance of terror” (Baudrillard, 60) that will not “disturb the general system and upset the balance” (ibid.) of the treaties between Guild-registered heroes and villains. The only time the Guild bothers to interfere in the interplay between costumed nemesis (by calling in the police, authorities who, even in the Venture universe, still mediate and punish genuine conflict) is when the Monarch oversteps his boundaries by trespassing on another Guild-affiliated villain’s property in an act of genuine emotion (an attempt to woo back his villainous collaborator and love interest, aptly named Dr. Girlfriend).

The universe of the Venture Brothers is based on simulation in every aspect, from the personal to the philosophical to the political—simulation of humanity, simulation of purpose, simulation of conflict. It is a satirical hyperreality that, rather than seeking to conflate the real with the simulated, seeks to point out the simulated nature of the “real” via metaphor, situation, and character.





Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. Semiotext[e], 1983.
The Venture Brothers. Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer. Adult Swim, Cartoon Network.
Adult Swim Video: "Hate Floats with bonus commentary from Jackson & Doc.”



I'm actually surprised at how well this paper turned out. I worked on it all weekend (which was a fairly grueling task) and had to watch several episodes of the Venture Brothers over and over (which was not nearly as grueling).

The Venture Brothers is one of my favorite shows; silly as it may seem, it's one of the few things that makes me feel like I'm actually part of a generation instead of being a drifting pop-culture vulture. I know I have had no hand in its actual creation, and I'm only peripherally part of the active fandom, but it somehow feels like my show in a way that most movies and TV shows I like don't. I tend to reinterpret media, to ferret out themes and images and try to subvert them or question them; this isn't so much a conscious philosophical stance as it is an instinctive response to being presented with assumptions and points of view I don't identify with or agree with on the level on which I think they're being presented to me. Maybe it's because that's what the Venture Brothers does in the first place, but it's one of the few media artifacts where I can analyze it and feel like yes, that's what the creators intended all along, and it's just that I've just managed to find it.

The more I watched the episodes, the more examples of simulacra I found--I don't know if it's just my new Baudrillard goggles, or whether so many of the episodes really sync up that way, but it was fascinating. I kind of wish I'd had the time and space to mention more, but I think I got the most important and interesting ones.