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.