South Park Two-fer

I didn't write about last week's South Park not because I hadn't the time, but because, frankly, I was a little nonplussed by the episode. So, today, we get a South Park two-for-one, because this week's episode was far better.

Last week's episode, “It's a Jersey Thing”, was less of a brilliant piece of satire than a simple pop culture spoof. The subject? Everyone's favorite dysfunctional reality show: Jersey Shore. The episode featured loads of greased hair, heavy tans, and near-unintelligible cursing (muff cabbage being my personal favorite). There was also a Gollum-like Snookie stalking around, humping everything in sight.

If you like poking fun at pop culture, and are familiar with the trainwreck that is The Jersey Shore, you might have a good time with this episode, but other than that, there really isn't that much commentary there. At least not that I found. I, of course, generally prefer South Parkepisodes that are heavily grounded in political satire, and overall, that's just not what this episode was about.

But I would argue that non-political episodes like “It's a Jersey Thing” are critical building blocks to South Park as a whole. Not only do they typify the kind of broad humor that is generally accessible to those who haven't seen the show before (these are the kinds of episodes that surely help recruit more viewers), but they also ground it as a subversive playground where the idols of pop culture can be quickly cut down to size. This is also the reason that celebrities are constantly present in different episodes of South Park. By constantly reinforcing the notion that these people can be made fun of with impunity, South Park positions itself in opposition to the established powers that be, and readies itself to lob grenades at more substantial targets: i.e. the financial crisis, religious hypocrisy, government arms races, etc.

This week's South Park, "InSheeption," was also heavily concentrated on pop culture critique. It, however, feels much more significant and successful that “It’s a Jersey Thing.” The episode begins with an outbreak of “hoarding” (the inability to throw things away as shown on the popular [and in my opinion trashy] television show of the same name), infecting Stan and Mr. Macky. The cure, apparently, for hoarding is to go deep into the Unconscious of the subject, and find and destroy the source of the trauma that began the hoarding. So, Stan, Mr. Macky, and a hapless sheep herder (brought in for hoarding sheep) are hooked up to electrodes, hypnotized, and somehow flung into the childhood memories of Mr. Macky.

Entering into one’s dreams, of course, is a conceit of the recent Inception, and it is what happens surrounding this dream world that the episode is really about. For instance, those who are outside of the dream world question the logic of going into the dream world in the first place, a backhanded questioning of the basic logic of Inception’s premise. As those in the dream world wander aimlessly about, doing little but highlighting Macky’s lifelong geekiness, the cast of characters from Inception burst into the therapy room and announce that they just have to go in to assist. Now, there are about nine people in Macky’s dream world, and more are soon added with firefighters going in to rescue those who were trapped inside as well as a pizza delivery man who has an order for someone inside.

The episode is finally resolved when Freddy Kruger, the king of all dreamgoers, destroys the source of Macky’s hoarding by killing a Smoky-the-Bear-like mascot that molested the man while on a school field trip in his youth. Stan’s hoarding is solved as well (as he learns that it’s simpler to just get over a hoarding tendency than to go through all the hubbub of entering one’s dreamworld again), and all is well, save for the sheep herder who was killed in the dream world. Oh well, casualties happen.

What I love about this episode, and about South Park in general, is its way of undermining pop culture by questioning its relatively high stature in society. Inception is a perfect target. It is a cultural object that entered the public sphere largely by placing itself within the field of high art. Seeing (and appreciating) Inception garnered one a goodly deal of cultural capital. In fact, one joke made in the South Park episode has a character saying condescendingly, “You just don’t get it because you’re not smart enough” after explaining the same complicated plot that makes upInception. What the South Park episode attempts to do is knock Inception off its pedestal and remind us that the movie is not in and of itself “intelligent,” but is created as that through the conversation that is waged around it.

One way that they do this is by reducing the complicated logic of the movie to ridiculousness. For instance, in the episode, when we first hear the premise of entering into one’s dreams, as one character explains the logic, another provides the “background”, that is, an a capella rendition of the dramatic music that peppers every scene of Inception. This functions to remind the viewer that the “intelligent” premise of the movie gains much of its power through the use of other dramatic elements and cannot necessarily stand on its own ground.

Later on, as more and more people have to hear the explanation for the dream world (and how there can be dreams within dreams and such), the explanation becomes increasingly reductive.

“It’s very simple, you see, when the dream experts go in, they attempt to take inception to a dream within a dream.”

“Like a taco within a taco?” asks a confused fireman who’s for some reason being asked to go inside a dream. “Like a double-decker taco supreme!” exclaims another.

Finally, the logic of Inception is utterly destroyed when the architect of all the dream-entering shenanigans says, “Look if we can get the fire department in the dream [. . . ] it will be like a taco inside a taco within a Taco Bell that’s inside a KFC that’s in a mall in your dream!”

The South Park episode reminds us that the seeming smartness ofInception is actually quite arbitrary. It is defined as intelligent based on the conversation around it and other dramatic elements that operate on top of the logic.Inception isn’t a movie that’s inherently smart, but rather one that tellsyou that it’s smart – or that is constructed as smart by the discourse surrounding it.

One reason we needSouth Park is to be able to pop the cultural balloon every now and again. Culture and taste aren’t essences that one can achieve if he or she is smart enough, but rather artificial representations built by a myriad of political, economic, and social factors.

So, if you didn’t like Inception, not to worry. You’re not stupid – in fact, you may be smarter for saying no to cultural elitism. Yay you! Now let’s go get high and watch an episode of Hoarding.

South Park is Back!

So... yeah...

If you've ever heard a graduate student complaining over and over about how much work they have to do for school, it's probably because it's true.

Try as I might, I can't seem to tear myself away from my homework to keep up with this blog thing on a regular basis. However, I think I've found a possible solution. Instead of writing about sports, play reviews, movie reviews, and politics as often as I can, I'm going to try to write just one blog post a week on just a single topic. And since it takes a great deal of willpower to write a single word more than is required of me for class, I'm going to make it a subject that I care deeply and passionately about: South Park.

So here we go. The High Horse Blog is going to try (at least for the next 8 weeks) to be a South Park blog. These essays will likely be part critique and part structural analysis of each episode - that's graduate-speak for "what is the episode trying to say?" Let's see how this works. Hopefully, this will be a small enough endeavor to keep me writing from time to time.

And if Deidre can get her ass back in gear, we can include her column too.

Oh, and before I begin, I just want to say a brief word about the Reds: Fifteen years, guys. Fifteen years. It's not that I'm mad at you, I'm just very disappointed.

And now, on to season 14, episode 8 of South Park - Poor and Stupid.

Sad to say, this episode was not particularly funny. What gives, South Park? I waited four months with bated breath to take in your scatalogically-charged politically-savvy satire, and this is what I get?

But after the dust settled from the underwhelming comedic experience, I was left with a startlingly satisfying aftertaste. Because it's not the kind of episode you can sit down and watch over and over again, Poor and Stupid will probably never be high on my list of favorite South Park experiences, but it was still a very good episode that has very important subject matter.

To explore what I mean by this, what I'll do is take you through the episode. We begin with a rather disconcerting image: Eric Cartman is crying. When questioned as to why, he responds (something to the extent of): "It's always been my dream to race NASCAR, but I'll never be able to do it because I'm not poor and stupid." Ho, ho. Chuckle, chuckle. NASCAR is for ignorant, impoverished hillbillies. Very funny. Nothing I haven't heard before. And for the first fifteen minutes of the episode, this is the only real joke made. Over and over, Cartman states that he needs to try to get "poor and stupid" to be a NASCAR driver.

It's not really a funny joke, and this is what accounts for making the episode somewhat boring to watch. But hold on to this, because this overdone, unfunny bit is actually intentional and important to the overall message of the episode.

So, for the majority of the episode Eric tries to become a NASCAR driver. He meets with failure (in one case by sneaking on to a NASCAR track and being involved in a horrific car accident) due to the fact that, in his mind, he's not poor and stupid enough. This, of course, offends his friend Kenny who is himself a NASCAR fan and resents being characterized in such a fashion by Cartman.

Then, another (seemingly random) thread comes in. After seeing a commercial for Vagisil (a product which promises to cure feminine odor) and noting that one of its side effects is short-term memory loss, in order to become more stupid Cartman goes to the store and ingests as much of the product as he can. After the NASCAR accident, the spokesman for Vagisil visits Cartman and exclaims that the boy's stunt his given their product lots of great publicity. He makes a custom NASCAR (sponsored by VAGISIL) for Cartman to drive, so the company will continue to get great press. He also mentions that he invented Vagisil for his wife, Patty, who has had troubles with feminine odor for some time.

So now we have two threads: NASCAR, and Vagisil. The two collide when Cartman races the Vagisil car at a NASCAR event, with the Vagisil owner one of the announcers for the event. Cartman, doing his best to impersonate the stereotypical hillbilly that he believes typifies NASCAR, drives around like a maniac, knocking his opponents off the track until he is the only car left in the competition. Meanwhile, as he announces the event, the Vagisil owner constantly takes time to humiliate Patty for her odor. "We want women to know that Vagisil is safe and effective for use every day - every day. Every. Day. - and is available nationwide," he says for instance.

Just as Cartman looks like he is going to win the race in the Vagisil car, out of nowhere, Patty jumps into a semi-wrecked car and proceeds to race against Cartman. Long story short, Patty wins.

Ok, so what do we have here? On the surface level, Patty is simply fed up with being humiliated in public by her husband. But the genius of South Park is that it shows that the issue goes far deeper. What they're really showing is the way in which the power structure within a society creates both pressures and preconceptions about different social groups. What is Vagisil but a product invented by a man to cure a feminine odor that he deems offensive? And worse, he makes her take it "diligently. Ve-ry Diligently" despite the fact that it is known to cause memory loss.

In our other plot thread, we have NASCAR and its being for the poor and stupid. What is the significance of this being repeated over and over again throughout the episode, despite the fact that it is not very funny? Well, by the end of the episode, it shows that the discourse surrounding NASCAR defines the way in which it is viewed. Cartman acts stupid and poor in a NASCAR outfit (even going so far as to tape a bigoted anti-Obama video), and by the end of the episode, the national news is saying, "This proves that NASCAR really is for the poor and the stupid."

Certainly, there is in certain circles a preconception of NASCAR being only for a "certain sect" of the American populous; what the South Park episode shows is that this preconception is not based upon any logical conclusion, but rather shaped through the dominant discourse. Similarly, our views of what constitutes regular female behavior is also shaped through this discourse. When Patty jumps into the NASCAR, it causes bedlam. "It looks like a woman is trying to take over for Jimmy Johnson's car," says the announcer with surprise. Another man says (as if talking to an eight-year-old) "Ma'am, you are on an active racetrack. This is very dangerous." The preconception exists that women cannot be involved in certain sports.

Finally, we must turn again to the Vagisil. The Vagisil owner says, "Patty, did you forget to take your medication? You know how you get when you don't take your Vagisil." He speaks to her like a child that has a disease that must be controlled, when in reality, he simply wants to make Patty more desirable to him.

Women are made to use certain products to please men despite the fact that the product is dangerous. Women shave their legs and armpits, put on makeup, and "freshen up" not necessarily because they want to, but because society deems it necessary. All this is done under the guise of "normal behavior," but whose "normal" are we talking about? The episode suggests that "Normal" is constructed by men who are in power. And if we remember the NASCAR thread, we realize that "Normal" is constructed by upper-class men who are in power.

So, though the episode wasn't a comedic success, surely many merits can be seen in it. How many shows talk about these kinds of issues today? Poor and Stupid is perfect evidence of how Trey Parker and Matt Stone are writers of the most pointed and poignant satire on television.