American producer Dan Harmon, AKA one of the creators of the popular adult cartoon, ‘Rick and Morty’, has recently come under fire after an old video resurfaced – a short film made by Harmon that featured the sickening theme of baby rape.
The recently resurrected video shows Dan Harmon playing a therapist who repeatedly molests babies. It comes from a 2009 sketch titled ‘Daryl’, a satire of the Showtime series ‘Dexter’, in which the protagonist kills murderers. It first aired during the live monthly LA Shorts film festival, Channel 101, which Dan Harmon co-founded in 2003.
Channel 101 offers “total creative freedom” to those who submit their work, so certain guidelines or limits don’t seem to apply. The festival specialises in short comedy pilots, and with a serious lack of rules on what’s appropriate or not, it has been known to air offensive content in the past. There is nothing funny about Harmon’s video ‘Daryl’, and it’s absolutely disgusting and sinister in nature.
Entertainment news site Vulture reported that the video had been taken offline with no explanation in 2012. However, six years on, and it became viral over the weekend after it resurfaced on 4chan.
Is this who you want creating stories for your children? A baby rapist? Source: The Mary Sue
Dan Harmon jokingly describes the sketch as “a little groundbreaking for normal people to handle – but maybe you’ll surprise me.”
Dan Harmon plays a therapist treating a new father and prescribes him sleeping pills. He then climbs through his patient’s window, takes down his pants and crawls on top of his baby (represented by a plastic doll) and mimes rubbing his genitals on, or molesting to baby while it cries.
Following this, Dan Harmon’s character later convinces another father that raping his baby will cure it of becoming a murderer. He then fondles the naked doll, before taking off his pants and mimicking raping the baby on the couch. The sketch finishes with Dan Harmon’s character promising to find more babies to molest. Who in the world finds this funny?
Dan Harmon made a statement on Tuesday about the sketch, apologising for its obscenity and said that the content was “way too distasteful”. He also deleted his Twitter account soon after the video became viral.
‘Rick and Morty’ is a very weird show, created by a very strange guy. Source: Indiewire
“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.”
However, Dan Harmon has been fortunate in this situation. Unlike James Gunn (director of Guardians of the Galaxy), who was fired from Disney following tweets made between 2009 and 2014, about child rape and pedophilia, but Adult Swim stood with Dan Harmon, and said he recognised his mistake.
“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 Harmon’s 2009 video that recently surfaced demonstrates poor judgement and does not reflect the type of content we seek out. Dan Harmon recognized his mistake at the time and has apologized. He understands there is no place for this type of content here at Adult Swim.”
Just as it always goes to show, be careful what you put out there, because these things will resurface and come back to haunt you. In saying that, there’s something seriously wrong with Dan Harmon and with James Gunn, otherwise there wouldn’t be these kinds of controversies surrounding their names.
Story by Emily Clark
Featured Photo Credit: GeekTyrant