"Chocolate with Nuts" - Fake It To Make It

September 1, 2024.

Some time during my senior year, as I was working on my thesis, I was in a Discord call with someone who knew the entirety of the SpongeBob SquarePants episode “Chocolate with Nuts” by heart. As in, they were able to recite the entire episode, word-for-word, from memory, which they proceeded to do, to the astonishment and amusement of everyone else there. That moment lives rent-free in my head for two reasons. The first, obviously, is because it was legitimately impressive. The second, though, was more personal; there were several moments from the episode that directly related to my thesis research. This blog post takes the thoughts that have been bouncing around my head since that Discord call, elaborates on them, and connects them to a larger theme I hadn’t considered at the time— not all in that order, of course.

About "Chocolate with Nuts"

“Chocolate with Nuts” is an episode of the children’s animated comedy SpongeBob Squarepants, written and directed primarily by Paul Tibbitt and Kazimieras “Kaz” Prapuolenis, among several co-directors and co-writers (see references section). The episode begins with SpongeBob and Patrick reading through the magazine Fancy Living Digest, which shows the fabulous lives of extremely wealthy people. After Squidward tells them those people are entrepreneurs, SpongeBob and Patrick decide to become entrepreneurs themselves so they can live similarly fancy lifestyles. They attempt to sell chocolate bars door-to-door, with little to no success; for example, their first potential customer chases them across town in a blind rage, and their second potential customer, a slick salesman, flatters them into buying useless products not once but twice. SpongeBob and Patrick try to use that salesman’s techniques of flattery, again to no success, and they eventually resort to lying about the chocolate’s benefits in order to make sales. They are then scammed a third time by that same salesman, who pretends to be gravely injured to guilt them into selling chocolate bars for his own benefit. At the end, their first potential customer finally corners them… and reveals he actually wants to buy their entire stock. Newly rich, SpongeBob and Patrick celebrate by renting out an entire restaurant, living out their fantasy of an extremely wealthy life.

Reconstructing the Truth/Lie Binary

Let’s start with that larger theme. Throughout the latter half of “Chocolate with Nuts,” SpongeBob and Patrick begin lying to their customers in order to sell their chocolate bars— or, in their words, they “stretch the truth” (Tibbitt et al., 2002, 6:21). Though most readers will be familiar with this phrase (honestly, we’ve all done this at some point in our lives), it is helpful to have a specific definition to work from. This one from the Farlex Dictionary of Idioms puts it best:

To tell or explain something in such a way that, while not technically false, presents an exaggerated or misleading version of the truth. (“stretch the truth,” n.d.).

Though many may disagree as to where to draw the line between stretching the truth and outright lying, most will agree that SpongeBob and Patrick’s lies about their chocolate bars— “It’ll make your hair grow… It’ll make you sound smart… They’ll bring world peace” (Tibbitt et al., 2002, 7:50-8:08)— do not have any amount of truth in them to stretch. The humor, of course, comes from the dissonance between the magnitude of their lies and the minimizing language they use to describe them. But there’s a bit more nuance to it than that. There’s a particularly telling moment during this scene:

SpongeBob: If we keep exaggerating the truth, we’ll be fancy living in no time!

Patrick: Hooray for lying!

(ibid., 7:43).

There is no moment where SpongeBob corrects Patrick’s terminology. The two use “exaggerating the truth” (basically the same as “stretching the truth”) and “lying” interchangeably, to the point where they are fully willing to admit to themselves that they’re lying (they even proudly claim one of their later tactics is their “best lie yet;” ibid., 8:13). In fact, listen to this clip from the scene where the two decide to start lying to their customers:

TRANSCRIPT: “Well, maybe if they didn’t stretch the truth, they wouldn’t sell as many.” (ibid., 6:21, emphasis in original).

Though his hands (nubs?) don’t move, you can just hear the air quotes in his voice. From the very beginning, SpongeBob and Patrick consider “stretching the truth” just another name for lying. And while we as viewers go into the episode making a distinction between the two— and thus find the lack of distinction they make funny— I have reason to believe that this lack of distinction, the idea that stretching the truth is just another form of lying, is actually the argument the episode sincerely wants to make.

That reason is the Salesman. The first two times SpongeBob and Patrick encounter the Salesman, he successfully sells them multiple useless products (ibid., 2:54, 3:30). In these two encounters, he uses all the sales tactics at his disposal; he flatters them (ibid., 3:22), he uses flowery buzzwords (“specially designed to cradle each candy bar in bar in velvet-lined comfort”; ibid., 2:39), and he even negs them a little (ibid., 2:17). While these tactics are emotionally manipulative, and his claims about the product are exaggerated, he isn’t lying specifically. Using a bag to carry your merchandise more easily (or, considering Patrick’s stuff-it-down-his-pants approach, more sanitarily; ibid., 2:20) isn’t actually a bad idea; SpongeBob and Patrick are just completely incompetent at using them (ibid., 3:45). The bags are also not implied to be low-quality, though not necessarily as high-quality as the Salesman claims they are. Put simply, he isn’t lying so much as stretching the truth.

The third time they encounter the Salesman, though, is different. Disguised in bandages and armed with a sob story about his “glass bones and paper skin” (ibid., 8:41), SpongeBob and Patrick don’t even realize the injured man is the Salesman in the first place. He is no longer stretching the truth. He is outright scamming the two; in fact, he even refers to his actions here as a “con” (ibid., 9:29). The choice to make this scammer the Salesman again seems deliberate in an episode so willing to throw one-off extras at the screen (I counted and there are 9, not including the Salesman or the waiter fish at the restaurant at the end). There was a conscious decision to make the same character both an exaggerator and a liar, and it is to further equate the two.

A screenshot of an episode of SpongeBob Squarepants. SpongeBob and Patrick hold armfuls of orange bags as they walk away from the Salesman, a purple fish in an orange suit and hat. The Salesman, holding a wad of their cash, smiles and waves as they leave. A gif from an episode of SpongeBob Squarepants in which an injured purple fish, wrapped in bandages and connected to various medical tubes, unzips his skin, revealing it all to be a costume. The Salesman, an identical purple fish in an orange suit and hat, steps out of the costume with an evil expression.

Left: The salesman sells SpongeBob and Patrick useless bags (Tibbitt et al., 2002, 2:55). Right: The fish with 'glass bones and paper skin' reveals himself as the Salesman in disguise (Tibbitt et al., 2002, 2:55).

We tend to think of truth and falsehood as mutually exclusive concepts. The concept of stretching the truth deconstructs that binary; it describes a state in which a statement is simultaneously (part) true and (part) false, or rather true but to a false degree. “Chocolate with Nuts” equates stretching the truth with good old-fashioned lying, reconstructing the truth/lie binary. The question is, why choose to classify it as form of falsehood rather than a form of truth— and why reconstruct that binary in the first place?

The Role of Personal Gain

Let’s look again at SpongeBob and Patrick versus the Salesman. Despite the Salesman being an antagonistic figure, they are strikingly similar; they both lie to sell more of their respective products, i.e. for personal financial gain, against (or at least neutral towards) the better interests of their customers. Considering that SpongeBob and Patrick get the idea to start lying from a random billboard they see, this relationship between lying (including stretching the truth) and personal financial gain is treated not as something specific to these three characters but rather a generalized, even universalized connection. It seems that “Chocolate with Nuts” argues that stretching the truth should be classified as a kind of lying specifically because it is a means to the same end; like lying, and unlike truth, stretched truth can be used to deceive people into acting against their best interests so as to serve your own.

A screenshot from an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. The Salesman, a purple fish in an orange suit and hat, laughs evilly as he counts a wad of cash in his hands. A screenshot from an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Patrick pushes a red wheelbarrow filled with cash and coins down the street; SpongeBob pops out of the pile of money with a smile on his face. A screenshot from an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. SpongeBob and Patrick, the latter with his face covered in chocolate, look up at a bright yellow billboard advertising Barnacle Chips. The billboard, featuring bright red packaging and a barnacle mascot in a top hat, reads 'Eat Barnacle Chips; They're Delicious!'

Left: The Salesman counts his money after scamming SpongeBob and Patrick (Tibbitt et al., 2002, 9:30). Middle: SpongeBob and Patrick wheel away their profits after selling all their chocolate (Tibbitt et al., 2002, 10:33). Right: SpongeBob and Patrick come across a misleading billboard for Barnacle Chips (Tibbitt et al., 2002, 6:11).

This is where my thesis research comes into play. Scholars Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, in their book The New Way of the World: On Neo-liberal Society, write:

“…’transactions’ take up more and more space at the expense of ‘relations’… instrumentalization of others gains in importance, to the detriment of all possible ways of relating to others.” (2013, p. 280).

“Instrumentalization” in this case refers to thinking of and treating other people as a way to benefit yourself, as opposed to a deeper, mutual, or altruistic relationship; all interactions with other people become some sort of transaction you expect to profit from, even when they appear charitable (think improvements to one’s reputation, etc). Though of course the actual breadth and depth of human relationships far exceeds this narrow framework, neoliberalism as an economic-system-ideology-hybrid assumes “absolute primacy of self-interest to the exclusion of any other motive for action,” referred to as “rationality” (ibid., p. 108). What is a scam if not the absolute extremity of instrumentalization and rationality, an “absolute primacy of self-interest” that compels one to completely deceive and hurt others for their own gain? And what is a better example of societally-expected and accepted (if disliked) instrumentalization than flattering a customer to make a sale? The fact that all parties in this episode are lying specifically for financial gain (as opposed to, say, saving one’s reputation, avoiding hurting someone’s feelings, or any of the many other reasons one may lie) makes Dardot & Laval’s work even more relevant here. The episode’s argument about what counts as a lie and why, quite the broad philosophical question, occurs within the specific context of neoliberalism— or, rather, an illustration of criticisms of it.

More on Neoliberalism

Let’s look a bit deeper at rationality. Dardot & Laval write:

…neo-liberal rationality produces the subject… as an entity in a competition who must maximize his results by exposing himself to risks and taking full responsibility for possible failures. (2013, p. 261).

SpongeBob and Patrick, of course, expose themselves to many risks, from simple failed sales to physical danger, as they attempt to “maximize the results” of their chocolate-selling endeavors. But I think the most interesting of those risks is their very first potential customer, the raving madman who iconically screams “CHOCOLATE!” on loop (Tibbitt et al., 1:52)— though he is unnamed in this episode, the fandom calls him Tom based on dialogue from the episode “Patty Hype” (“Tom,” 2024). Tom is a looming threat throughout “Chocolate with Nuts,” reappearing multiple times as he chases SpongeBob and Patrick all around Bikini Bottom (Tibbitt et al., 4:12, 6:28, 9:59). Given his anger (or at least what at first looks like anger) towards the two and their product, he also represents their first failed sale; SpongeBob implicitly acknowledges by trying to write him off by calling a mulligan, claiming “okay, that first guy didn’t count” (ibid., 2:05). When combined, Tom seems to represent the ever-present threat of possible failure, i.e. the risk that participants in neoliberal competition expose themselves to. Even more fittingly, when Tom finally corners SpongeBob and Patrick, it is revealed that he was never a threat at all, but rather a massive chocolate fan who wanted to buy all their entire stock (ibid., 10:15). It is only by exposing themselves to risk, i.e. Tom, that SpongeBob and Patrick are able to maximize their results, i.e. sell all their chocolate.

A gif from an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Tom, a greenish-brown fish in a purple shirt, chases SpongeBob and Patrick down a winding road with an unhinged expression on his face, yelling at them the entire time. A screenshot from an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Tom, a greenish-brown fish in a purple shirt, holds a large pile of money in his hands. He has a friendly expression on his face.

Left: Tom chases SpongeBob and Patrick down the road (Tibbitt et al., 2002, 1:52). Right: Tom, after calming down, offers to buy SpongeBob and Patrick's entire stock of chocolate (Tibbitt et al., 2002, 10:15).

It is also worth investigating why SpongeBob and Patrick choose to start selling chocolate in the first place. It was not a decision made out of, say, a passion for chocolate; in fact, the choice of what product to sell came from an arbitrary decision by Patrick (ibid., 1:20). It was a decision made in pursuit of a particular lifestyle, inspired by images they saw of the lives of the wealthy in a magazine (ibid., 0:38). Theorist and philosopher Guy Debord, in his book The Society of the Spectacle, writes that celebrities “embody the inaccessible result of social labor by dramatizing its by-products magically projected above it as its goal” (1977/1983, §60). The easier-to-read version: celebrities live visibly lavish lifestyles, and us non-celebrities aspire to have those lifestyles, and so we work and save and spend with the goal of getting closer to that lifestyle, even if we’re extremely unlikely to ever actually get there. That is, beat-for-beat, the thought process SpongeBob and Patrick go through when they read Fancy Living Digest and decide to become entrepreneurs— and the lifestyle they emulate once they succeed (Tibbitt et al., 10:56).

A screenshot from an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. It is a closeup of the magazine Fancy Living Digest, with a purple cover featuring a pink fish in a tuxedo and top had burning a dollar bill. A screenshot from an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. SpongeBob and Patrick sit at a table in a fancy restaurant, each wearing top hats. Sitting across from them are their dates, an old lady in a purple dress and her even older mother, a shriveled literal worm in a green wheelchair.

Left: The cover of Fancy Living Digest (Tibbitt et al., 2002, 0:32). Right: SpongeBob and Patrick rent out an entire restaurant, indulging in some fancy living themselves (Tibbitt et al., 2002, 10:56).

The use of the word “entrepreneur” in itself is telling, as entrepreneurship is a core tenet of neoliberalism. Dardot & Laval include an entire chapter in their work titled “Entrepreneurial Man,” which details point-by-point the way that neoliberalism entrepreneurship as a “dimension of humanity” that “spurs everyone to varying degrees,” and thus casts every agent within itself as an entrepreneur (2013, pp. 101-103). (Perhaps this universalization of entrepreneurship is why Squidward, the subscriber to Fancy Living Digest, is so annoyed about having to explain the concept to SpongeBob and Patrick; Tibbitt et al., 0:57. Then again, he is Squidward, so maybe he’s just like that.) The profit-seeking behavior and eternal competition baked into the definition of entrepreneur are at the heart of the rationality, instrumentalization, and risk/reward balance I talked about earlier, which themselves are central to the plot and themes of the episode. And if I remember correctly, it was not the looming threat of Tom or the lies and flattery of the Salesman that made me think of my thesis in that Discord call; it was hearing specifically the word “entrepreneur” that made me want to get out my (borrowed) copy of The New Way of the World and start taking notes. If only I had known back then just how perfectly it would work!

Conclusion

I chose to write about “Chocolate with Nuts” because I wanted a change of pace. After writing about two pieces of online indie audiovisual media related to video games (though in different amounts, and with very different tones), I felt that tackling an episode of children’s network television from Literal Actual Nickelodeon would net an interesting and different end result. But in the end, my analysis of “Chocolate with Nuts” lies smack-dab in between my analysis of “Borderline Forever” and ENA: Dream BBQ, working through both the nature of truth and critique of capitalism. On the one hand, it’s interesting to see how such different pieces of media can engage with the same topics. On the other hand, I think this means that if I want a change of pace, I need to change up the theories and disciplines I draw from more than the media itself. (Which means no more stealing from my own thesis, sadly.)

See you all in October— no spoilers, but I have something spooky lined up!

References

Cite This Article (APA)

Miller, A. (2024, September 1). "Chocolate with Nuts" - Fake It To Make It. Grab a Shovel. https://primmsfairytale.neocities.org/posts/2024-08=9-01-Chocolate-with-Nuts