Adult Swim Stands By ‘Rick & Morty’ Creator Dan Harmon After Video Of Him Pretending To Rape Doll Resurfaces
Adult Swim is standing by Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon after an uncomfortable video of him resurfaces.
According to the Huffington Post, the video is called Daryl and it’s a five minute Dexter spoof created by Harmon. In the skit, Harmon simulates raping a baby doll. The video has since been taken down and Harmon deleted his Twitter. According to Channel 101, the spoof’s logline states, “Originally made with Showtime, Dan Harmon presents a groundbreaking new show about the darker side of therapy.” Harmon calls the character “a baby rapist with a heart of gold.”
Harmon issued an apology released to Entertainment Weekly. “In 2009, I made a ‘pilot’ which strove to parody the series Dexter and only succeeded in offending. I quickly realized the content was way too distasteful and took the video down immediately. Nobody should ever have to see what you saw and for that, I sincerely apologize.”
Adult Swim, the network that airs Rick and Morty, also released a statement saying, “At Adult Swim, we seek out and encourage creative freedom and look to push the envelope in many ways, particularly around comedy. The offensive content of Dan’s 2009 video that recently surfaced demonstrates poor judgement and does not reflect the type of content we seek out. Dan recognized his mistake at the time and has apologized. He understands there is no place for this type of content here at Adult Swim.”
According to The Guardian, a right-winger on 4Chan with the username “The_Donald” posted it on Saturday. The paper stated, “One 4Chan user justified sharing the video created by Harmon – who has been a vocal critic of the US president, Donald Trump – as retribution for the downfall of Roseanne Barr: ‘If they get to take scalps for someone making racist jokes, we get to take scalps for them making paedophilia joke.'” The video has since been taken down and the user removed from the community.
Unfortunately, the right-winger didn’t get what he wanted as Adult Swim continues to back Harmon and the Rick and Morty franchise. It could be because in May, the network renewed the show for 70 more episodes.
Harmon has compared Trump and his supporters to Nazis. He also joked that he sees himself in Trump, saying that he is just “as narcissistic.”
Harmon got off lucky, unlike Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, who was fired earlier this week in a similar situation. After finding old tweets of his crude jokes implying pedophilia, Disney terminated him. Gunn has since released a long, sincere apology.
