The Secret Love Language of Pop Culture References
By: Maura Sateriale
Tags: Sociology, Simpsons, Rick And Morty, Pop Culture, TV Series

The Secret Love Language of Pop Culture References

“I’m Pickle Rick!” yells a college-aged goth walking down the street with friends, all holwing with laughter. Several passersby give their boisterous noise the stinkeye.

“Snake jazz!” Yells another one, and the crew of misfits hiss, snap their fingers, and giggle.

Several more passersby express disapproval at the chaos. give the rowdy young adults the stinkeye, but a few in-the-know fans of the adult animated show “Rick and Morty” smirk. A good joke? Yes. A great joke? Maybe. But our goths don’t care. A reference is an inside joke, made funnier by the shared secret world. Fans of these words, especially movies and shows such as Star Wars, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Letterkenny, The Simpsons, and The Princess Bride, love spouting their favorite quotes. Internet culture, too has brought us the meme with it’s instant repeatability — from “All your base are belong to us” to “Daaaamnn, Daniel!” to whatever TikTok is trending today. Spend a days repeating it back and forth with your friends until you’ve used up all of its joy and then on to the next thing.

A reference to a beloved piece of media is a mating call —when I make a passing reference to the spinach dip at a party being “perfectly cromulent”, I’m sending my signal flare up — I’m shooting a beacon for fellow Simpsons fans, other weirdos like me tuned into my Simpsons frequency. If you like the Simpsons, come talk to me, you’re my kind of person! Is it a great joke? No, it’s an inside joke. It’s the password to our little Simpsons fort. If you don’t get it, haha, we really can’t explain it, maybe you should go catch up on some golden-era Simpsons.

Does this sound like something a weird kid-all-grown-up does? Well, we outsiders love our references, sometimes to an annoying degree. Maybe we were made to feel different because of our style and our taste, and we want to find a safe space. Maybe we’ve been bullied by people who don’t ‘get’ us and want to find ‘our people’, the people we can trust. The fraternity of Simpsons fans is a fairly kind one. The laughter we share isn’t necessarily at an old joke from the 90s, but at the relief and happiness at finding one of our own.

Our jokes are weird. That’s fine; we’re weirdos. This is best explained by an interview with When Mystery Science Theater 3000 creator Joel Hodgeson. This show is ideally unique and weird — there are puppets, mad scientists, inventions, song parodies and sketches, and, oh yeah, references to scientific theory, local Minnesota commercials, the history of Ethiopia, anything under the kitchen sink and also an old British joke about the kitchen sink. Jokes fly at you at a rate of 3–5 per minute-if you don’t get one, just hang on for another 10 seconds. When creator Joel Hodgeson was taken to task about how not everyone will get the show, he replied, “the right people will get it”. Put a signal flare in the air, and your people will find you. Mystery Science Theater 3000 was infamous for their passionate fanbase. People united under a shared love of such weird, specific comedy. Quote High Fidelity’s Rob Gordon: “what really matters is what you like, not what you are like”.

Of course, there’s a difference between a great reference and a cheap reference — look at a 1996 Simpsons episode and a 2007 Simpsons episode. The former folds the references in among a greater story arc like chunks of chocolate chips in a cookie, while the latter sacrifices story quality for hit-or-miss jokes. Consider the regrettable 2000s era parody films — Epic Movie, Date Movie, Disaster Movie — and many others it is better we all forget. Of course, these spun off from the Wayans Brother’s hilarious commercial success “Scary Movie”. This parody of “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” pummeled us with jokes and references from every angle, and showed Hollywood a formula for success. But a reference is a substitute for a joke, and the hastily made sequel, “Scary Movie 2”, received only a 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences know pandering, they know when you’re only using a reference as a substitute for substance. A good reference feels earned.

Our Rick and Morty fans laugh extra loudly because they feel they’ve earned the right to laugh — Rick and Morty appeals to the nerds, the misfits, the outcasts. It portrays a lonely scientist as possessing a super-power level brilliance. Some of the more rabid, passionate fans feel like they’ve earned this show through, perhaps a childhood of alienation. Through references, reddit posts, and conventions, they have found their family. And friendship to the friendless is especially dear.