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Popular Culture and Philosophy #87
Adventure Time and Philosophy
Adventure Time and Philosophy is a monster-beating, wild ride of philosophical mayhem. The authors have come together to understand and explore one of the deepest and most thoughtful television shows ever to assault human brain waves. Where Adventure Time shows us what the world could be like, this book screws open our cranial lids, mucks about in the mess that is our heads, and attempts to come to some answers about the nature of reality. Adventure Time challenges everything we know about life, meaning, heroism, and even burritos. And it’s time to give the show some serious thought. Adventure Time and Philosophy is a chance to put down your broadsword, put your exhausted monster-slaying feet up, and try to figure out why you spend your time rescuing people in distress and fighting for justice. What is justice anyway? If you don’t happen to have your pocket edition of the Enchiridion on hand, and Billy the Hero *wicked guitar solo* hasn’t been returning your calls, pick up Adventure Time and Philosophy and learn what it means to be a real hero! The authors of the chapters will prove that Adventure Time is much more than a cartoon, it’s a way of life. . . . It’s also the future!-—a post-apocalyptic future 10,000 years after the Great Mushroom War, actually.
Who better to have as companions than Finn and Jake when taking on Plato, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard or encountering the Slime Princess, the Ice King, and Marceline the Vampire Queen. In a review of the show in Entertainment Weekly, Darren Franich characterized Adventure Time as a “hybrid sci-fi/fantasy/horror/musical/fairy tale, with echoes of Calvin and Hobbes, Hayao Miyazaki, Final Fantasy, Richard Linklater, Where the Wild Things Are, and the music video you made with your high school garage band.” This book is filled with chapters written by a colorful cast of characters who enlighten us about the profound and life-affirming spiritual subtext and dark comedic elements of an awesomely fantastic show.
Who better to have as companions than Finn and Jake when taking on Plato, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard or encountering the Slime Princess, the Ice King, and Marceline the Vampire Queen. In a review of the show in Entertainment Weekly, Darren Franich characterized Adventure Time as a “hybrid sci-fi/fantasy/horror/musical/fairy tale, with echoes of Calvin and Hobbes, Hayao Miyazaki, Final Fantasy, Richard Linklater, Where the Wild Things Are, and the music video you made with your high school garage band.” This book is filled with chapters written by a colorful cast of characters who enlighten us about the profound and life-affirming spiritual subtext and dark comedic elements of an awesomely fantastic show.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 16, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 16, 2016
mostly disappointing but sometimes good
August 23, 2024
Essays that try hard to sound deep but are anything but. I am surprised someone edited this and said "yeah, this is def a *book* and it should be published"
Don't waste your time
Don't waste your time
January 13, 2023
Well this let me down. Adventure Time is my favorite show and I've watched it to the point of having it memorized. At the time this book was published 7 of their 10 seasons had already been released, and yet there were instances of them making up scenarios from the show rather than using actual events. More so a lot of this came across as just their opinion of the show rather than connecting it to any philosophy. If you love Adventure Time then don't buy this. If you love philosophy don't buy this. If you love some random ramblings that come to no point then sure this is the book for you.
August 4, 2016
I love everything about Adventure Time: It's fun, exciting, hilarious (though, in recent seasons, it has been rather serious). I think this book triumphs in its philosophical treatment of Adventure Time's characters and themes. Specifically, I enjoyed the book's discussion on magic and science, BMO, and the show's subtleties, which I never seemed to notice before reading this work.
August 3, 2023
After I recently finished watching the last season of the 2010-2018 Cartoon Network show Adventure Time, I decided to fill that hole by exploring some media that analyzed some of the deeper, more thoughtful elements that seemed evident to me throughout even through its silliness and bright colors. I really enjoyed, for instance, Emily Nussbaum’s essay on Adventure Time in her collection of TV criticism I Like to Watch, so I was curious about what this collection of academic essays would add to my understanding of the deeper meaning behind this lush and affirming fantasy adventure comedy show. Unfortunately, in the end, there wasn’t that much in Adventure Time and Philosophy that will really stick with me. As the first of those numerous “popular culture and philosophy” books I’ve read, if this is anything like a typical example, I’m not really inclined to check out any more even for those topics I might otherwise be interested in.
Containing 26 essays from various writers, some written more coherently than others, most are pretty dry despite the author’s occasionally obnoxious attempts to capture the blithe, slang-heavy voice of the show. The collection was published in 2015, in the middle of season six, so it obviously lacked access to the heavier topics and revelations of the later seasons, but there are a lot of thought-provoking motifs and material throughout the show for in depth discussions accessible to kids as well as adults. Unfortunately, the large majority of essays barely scratch the surface on these questions and mainly served as shallow Philosophy 101 introductions to various basic philosophical concepts, such as meta-physics, free will, and idealism, and thinkers like Plato, Kant, and Heidegger.
Often shoehorning Adventure Time characters to serve as examples or cases in point for what amounts to undergrad lectures, there was very little interest, it seemed, in actually taking on these topics through an Adventure Time lens aside from just the basic subjects like heroism, fantasy, and authority. Even as the contributors cite various episodes and situations in the show in their explanations of the tension between science and magic in the show or the spirit of play it embodies, I feel that all too often it didn’t really matter that they were talking about Adventure Time specifically, it was simply a convenient place to hang their heavy handed points and stick with the theme rather than any real interest in examining the show itself.
It was particularly disappointing to me how little analysis or discussion there was on the actual messages or intentions of the artistic expressions made by creator Pendleton Ward or the creative team at Cartoon Network, a topic barely discussed at all. I’m less interested, for instance, in what Finn or Jake or Marceline would do in a certain situation than I am in why they were written and designed the way they were, what influences and ideals inform these choices.
The best essays, such as What’s Time Anyhoo by Mary Green and Ronald S. Green capture something about the show and say something interesting, but far too much of the time the Adventure Time elements are more or less superfluous and could be said about any fantasy fiction. Ultimately, I feel that there are better introductions to basic philosophical concepts even if they might not use random exclamations of cabbage or reference Glob as much.
Containing 26 essays from various writers, some written more coherently than others, most are pretty dry despite the author’s occasionally obnoxious attempts to capture the blithe, slang-heavy voice of the show. The collection was published in 2015, in the middle of season six, so it obviously lacked access to the heavier topics and revelations of the later seasons, but there are a lot of thought-provoking motifs and material throughout the show for in depth discussions accessible to kids as well as adults. Unfortunately, the large majority of essays barely scratch the surface on these questions and mainly served as shallow Philosophy 101 introductions to various basic philosophical concepts, such as meta-physics, free will, and idealism, and thinkers like Plato, Kant, and Heidegger.
Often shoehorning Adventure Time characters to serve as examples or cases in point for what amounts to undergrad lectures, there was very little interest, it seemed, in actually taking on these topics through an Adventure Time lens aside from just the basic subjects like heroism, fantasy, and authority. Even as the contributors cite various episodes and situations in the show in their explanations of the tension between science and magic in the show or the spirit of play it embodies, I feel that all too often it didn’t really matter that they were talking about Adventure Time specifically, it was simply a convenient place to hang their heavy handed points and stick with the theme rather than any real interest in examining the show itself.
It was particularly disappointing to me how little analysis or discussion there was on the actual messages or intentions of the artistic expressions made by creator Pendleton Ward or the creative team at Cartoon Network, a topic barely discussed at all. I’m less interested, for instance, in what Finn or Jake or Marceline would do in a certain situation than I am in why they were written and designed the way they were, what influences and ideals inform these choices.
The best essays, such as What’s Time Anyhoo by Mary Green and Ronald S. Green capture something about the show and say something interesting, but far too much of the time the Adventure Time elements are more or less superfluous and could be said about any fantasy fiction. Ultimately, I feel that there are better introductions to basic philosophical concepts even if they might not use random exclamations of cabbage or reference Glob as much.
June 19, 2025
This is for people who enjoy philosophy and Adventure Time, but philosophy a whole lot more. A potential reader should have heard of a few philosophical concepts, but not be too knowledgable, because the concepts are quite basic. The reader should still have good reading comprehension, because it can get a bit too theoretical in some places. If none of this applies to you, you probably won't like it.
All in all it was an interesting read, but I wish they picked up a wider array of problems in the AT world, instead of authors repeating each other several times.
All in all it was an interesting read, but I wish they picked up a wider array of problems in the AT world, instead of authors repeating each other several times.
September 29, 2021
Love Adventure Time and this was a huge disappointment. Threw it out.
March 16, 2022
A slog.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews