The scene cuts immediately to their parents dragging them into the house. Their angry and frustrated mother, Lois, is yelling at them, “Hitchhiking?! Hitchhiking out on the highway like hobos?!”43 An equally enraged father, Hal, says, “Thank God your mother undercooked the chicken last night or who knows when we might have found out about this!”44

Lois then asks her teenage sons a pivotal question. The first part of the question is one every parent of teenagers eventually asks—“What were you thinking”—but the rest of the question is rather unique—“sneaking off in the middle of the night to go to some overblown keg party in the desert?!”45 For some reason, Malcolm sees this as an opening. His exasperated mother wants to know why, and Malcolm says that Burning Man is not what she thinks it is. Full of passion, he says, “Burning Man is an incredible, interactive experiment in human creativity, where you do art just for art’s sake, and you make music from instruments that came to you in dreams.”46 Sensing that his parents are listening, Malcolm continues, “It’s the one place where you’re free to let go and really see what you’re capable of creating without worrying what anyone else thinks! That’s what Burning Man is all about!”47 There is a pause. Lois and Hal stand in stunned silence. Malcolm looks into the camera and confides in the viewers, “I think she actually might’ve bought that.”48

These are some of the important first moments in “Burning Man,” the first episode of the seventh season of the television show Malcolm in the Middle. The episode explores how each family member responds to the experimental community festival that is Burning Man. We could just watch this very funny episode, but instead we are going to metaphorically travel there with the family in the company of a dead Russian. Our dead Russian is Mikhail Bakhtin. It is doubtful that Bakhtin ever saw this particular television episode, mostly because he had been dead for thirty-two years when it first aired. Still, as we will see, some of Bakhtin’s ideas provide vivid insights into how the family members respond to the experiment in human creativity and freedom that is Burning Man.

Hal does not really understand the principles behind Burning Man. Hal does not see it as Malcolm described. For Hal it is not a “place where you’re free to let go and really see what you’re capable of creating without worrying what anyone else thinks.”51 For Hal this is merely taking the family for a camping vacation in the desert. It is camping in the desert with a really nice RV. Some of the festivalgoers seem entranced by what Hal is doing. One confused onlooker asks another, “What’s he doing?”52 The second onlooker responds with a sly smile, “It’s performance art. He’s skewering the empty banality of the modern suburban dad.”53 The festivalgoers take what Hal is doing as sarcastic parody. One says to another, “This piece is as vicious as it is funny.”54 But while they see what Hal is doing as darkly humorous, Hal has no idea why they are staring at him. At one point in the show, right at a time when Hal’s tired, confused, and frustrated with their staring, a Frisbee hits the side of the RV. Hal rushes to inspect the damage, worried that it may have left a mark. Grabbing the Frisbee and shaking it in his fist, Hal yells to the onlookers, “What the hell is wrong with you people?! Doesn’t anybody have respect for personal property anymore? You can think about that for a few days until I give this back to you.”55 Hal’s stereotypical angry-suburban-father punishment provokes loud and appreciative laughter from the onlookers. The onlookers are amused, and Hal, of course, is even more bewildered by their amusement.

At one point Hal tells Lois he really doesn’t like this place. Th...