Preview

The Propaganda Behind South Park Essay Example

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1335 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Propaganda Behind South Park Essay Example
"Join Stan, Kenny, Kyle and Cartman as these four animated types take on the supernatural, the extraordinary and the insane. For them it is all part of growing up in South Park".
It all started in 1995, when filmmakers Trey Parker and Matt Stone were hired by a Fox executive who paid them $2,000 to make a video for him to send it as a Christmas card. The video was called "The spirit of Christmas" and showed an imaginary fight between Santa Claus and Jesus Christ. The video circulated around and soon the cable channel Comedy Central offered them a weekly series. It took fewer than six episodes to emerge as Comedy Central's biggest hit. South Park is the story of four third-grade boys, Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny, growing up in the small mountain town of South Park, Colorado. The show is a loose interpretation of the term "cartoon", which appears to be made with construction paper cut-outs (although it is actually done with computers now). One has to see it to believe it….and once he does, he will either be hooked or want it banned.
South Park contains adult language, animated violence, and very suggestive material (episode titles such as "Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson", "Not without My Anus" or "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut" are just the tip of the iceberg). Every race, religion or culture is made fun of or stereotyped. One viewing, and the watcher will either love it or want it taken off the air. Many viewers think that these rude boys are worth their time.
South Park's setting and characters are simple. In particular, each child has its own character which portrays propagandistic elements in various ways. Stanley Marsh, widely known as Stan, is a "normal" average American messed up kid. He has an aging grandfather, who continuously pressures Stan into killing him, and owns a gay dog named Sparky (played by George Clooney). In every episode Stan announces Kenny's death by saying "Oh my God, they killed Kenny". On the other hand, Kenny (whose full

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    There are three types of characters, including: the humans, the Looney Tunes, and the villains from Moron Mountain. First, the humans are regular everyday people who come in contact with fictional characters from a popular television show. The main human character is Michael Jordan. His primary goal is to prevent the MonStars from stealing the looney tune’s freedom. Second, the Looney Tunes are a fictional group of friendly cartoon characters who somehow manage to come into contact with the real world in search of help from the greatest basketball player known to man, Michael Jordan. Mastermind to this endeavor, Bugs Bunny, acts as a bridge between the cartoon and the real world. With Bugs Bunny’s constant relatable nature he is able to present the real problems they are facing in their cartoon dimension. Third, Mr. Swackhammer, the dictator of Moron Mountain, has the desire of taking over the Looney Tunes world. The Nerdlucks, small alien servants to Mr. Swackhammer, are forced to bring the Looney Tunes to their master. While the Nerdlucks are on their journey, they discover that stealing the NBA players skills would make them unstoppable. Eventually, the Nerdlucks attend a Phoenix Suns game with the intention to rob the NBA players from their basketball skills. Once they steal the athlete’s skills, the aliens ultimately increase about ten times…

    • 1158 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    CTCS 191 Paper

    • 1838 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Comedy Central has always been a channel that enjoys pushing societies limits. Devoting itself to an all-comedy line-up, Comedy Central has had success picking up shows too controversial for mainstream television, such as South Park, while remaining part of the Viacom Conglomerate (ATI, 22). Receiving almost constant criticism from parental groups, Comedy Central has unique promotion strategy; the channel markets itself as mature, vulgar, and provocative, which has stirred interest and excitement by its main demographic, the sought over 18-49 year old males (Middlebury). Comedy Central has been an outlet that doesn’t rely of mass-demographics and broad appeal, and is willing to try new, incendiary ideas, and therefore, often presents shows that are barely edited. While content presented on Comedy Central is too edgy for some, Comedy Central pushes the boundaries on controversial content to capture its target audience (Szalai).…

    • 1838 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    On April 20th, 1999, a school shooting took place in the Columbine High School. Two students, fully armed with a variety of firearms, murdered numerous students. This catastrophe resulted in numerous disputes over the issues with gun control laws in relation to the Second Amendment of the US Bill of Rights, which gave US residents the right to bear arms. Later in 2002, Michael Moore explored the causes of the Columbine shooting and such violence in his documentary Bowling for Columbine. In this documentary, Moore uses logos, pathos, and ethos to convey the message that US social media, along with the freedom to bear guns, plays a major role…

    • 834 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Boondock Saints movie exhibits and demonstrates many possible causes and reasons for social deviance. One example of this is shown in the Subjective view of deviance through a Constructionist Theory. The Subjectivist believes that a deviant person is a conscious, feeling, thinking subject and that one should understand the experience of that person. From a Constructionist perspective, deviants are actively seeking meanings in the deviant activities. The brothers in the movie are seeking meaning from their killing. They believe that they are on a mission from God, and that they will be protected and blessed for doing this.…

    • 420 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Satire is the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people 's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. “Family Guy” portrays carnivalesque imagery such as those seen in “South Park” and “The Simpsons.” The author Peacocke is a fan of “Family Guy” but she says, “It’s important not to lose sight of what’s truly unfunny in real life-even as we appreciate what is hilarious in fiction (308).” Peacocke liked “Family Guy” at first when she realized that the jokes were taking things too far she started to dislike it then liked it again. She felt some people was going overboard and not looking at it to be funny. The show is based…

    • 869 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Muckrakers Essay Example

    • 1986 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Muckraking was a powerful journalistic force, whose supporters made it become so. Muckraking was the practice of writers and critics exposing corrupt politicians and business practices. President Theodore Roosevelt made the term "muck-raker" popular. He once said…

    • 1986 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In March of 2012 an ingénues comedy show aired for the first time. That show was miraculously called Duck Dynasty. This showed opened the eyes of America proclaiming that a show can have clean humor and support family love and still be a good show! Down in the South, people “ate it up” because it was a very comical, clean. Christian based show. But what should we call such a show like this one? “Reality series? Sitcom? Religious Television? Anthropological study?” Well according to Mr. Richard Lindsay,” Duck Dynasty is all of these.” I strongly believe that after this one show has aired that it set high standards of what new upcoming shows should try to reach. This one show s the media and public eye that a show doesn’t have to have half naked women, alcohol, drugs, or even sinful drama for a television show to be “Off the Chart” good! So other than clean Comedy what else are you getting from Duck Dynasty? Well you get to see what Christ can do in a family. People are exposed to the love the Robertson family has toward one another even when they disagree on things and see things in different ways, Alan noted. He also stated, “When you see the show, you can tell we [Robertson Family] enjoy being around one another…” (CP reporter Melissa Barnhart). Ideally looking through the Worlds point of view this is ideally what a Christian based family should look like when it come to challenges and difficulties and working together to make one heart, soul and mind. According to F. Eric Douglas of,”Duck Dynasty is a positive example of Matthew 5:13-16:…

    • 476 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Family Guy Satire

    • 892 Words
    • 4 Pages

    South Park is an American animated television comedy series about four third grade schoolboys who live in the small, backward mountain town of South Park. The series was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and has been aired by Comedy Central since 1997. The show is well known for its pop-culture parody, outrageous humor, and sardonic handling of current events. Family Guy is an American animated television series about a family in the fictional town of Quahog, Rhode Island. The show focuses on the fictional Griffin family and its ungainly character Peter Griffin. Seth MacFarlane created the show for the FOX channel. Family Guy was cancelled once in 2000 and again in 2002, but strong DVD sales and the substantial viewership…

    • 892 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    An example of low humor in the show would be when Jonah and doug peterson are talking about an incedent that has occoured from jonah bulling a younger student:…

    • 561 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Family Guy Stereotypes

    • 642 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The television show Family Guy has been one of the most popular tv shows of all time, and for good reason. While an entertaining and amusing to most, the show reinforces stereotypes and labels given to those who are in lower social classes and of color. The premise of the whole show is following a man named Peter Griffin and his family on whatever adventure they may embark upon. In every episode, there is some type of remark, gesture, or even all out rant on another culture or person. In the episode, “Stewie Goes for a Drive”, Stewie, being the youngest in the family and only a baby, decides to go for a ride in Bryan’s car. Once Stewie is out on the open city streets, he becomes distracted by looking at his phone, then the radio, and before…

    • 642 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Analyzing Satire Unit Lesson

    • 3087 Words
    • 15 Pages

    society, politics, and other vice and follies. New literacies have helped grow the genre of satire…

    • 3087 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Dick Van Dyke show an old classic of the 60's when T.V. was in black and white and shows were so censored married couples lived in two separate beds. The Simpson's an everyday occasion when families come together at 5:00, 6:00, and 10:30 to watch their favorite family on colored T.V., drugs, and sex can be found in almost every episode. In a day when every one in America revolves around the next episode of their favorite violent, sexed up, drama filled sitcom where is the time to watch a nice fun filled sitcom such as the Dick Van Dyke show? In a world surrounded by sex drugs and violence it is almost impossible to have a clean funny show and keep good ratings.…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Obviously, the general public is not satisfied nowadays. After pushing the envelope (more than) a few too many times, many citizens cry in outrage the creators are going too far in their quest for a good laugh. A particularly memorable instance is the 2006 episode “Cartoon Wars: Part 1” which featured the Muslim prophet Muhammed; just the very idea that he was going to be onscreen for a couple seconds sparked retaliation from Middle…

    • 1352 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Budweiser is an American beer that is made in America. In 2015, they put out a commercial during the Super Bowl called “Lost Puppy.” The speaker of this commercial is Budweiser with the target audience of beer drinkers. The ultimate purpose of this commercial is to sell more Budweiser beer. Budweiser uses this very short story about a puppy becoming lost and eventually finding its way back home because people are going to want to watch it start to end to see how the story plays out.…

    • 1059 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Ku Klux Klan is a group of terrorizing whites who use violence to strike fear into their enemies. The name Ku Klux Klan is a mixture of Greek and Scottish, and the name is supposed to mean "family circle." Another name for the Ku Klux Klan is the KKK. The Klan was first founded in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee by Nathan Forrest. They were founded right after the Civil War. The KKK was started by six young Confederate veterans, and then later on, other whites joined the Klan. The Klan was basically a secret society based on hatred and violence. They organized to oppose the Reconstruction policies of the radical Republican Congress and also to maintain "white supremacy." They worked to keep blacks and white Republicans out of office. They would torture or sometimes even murder blacks, Catholics, Jews, white Republicans, and anyone else they thought were traitors to the white race. The first Klan took place from 1865 to the mid – 1870s. Then the Klan was reborn again in 1915 by William J. Simmons, because he wanted to start his own fraternal group. The night before Thanksgiving, Simmons, and 15 other followers lit a match on Stone Mountain in Georgia, and the Ku Klux Klan of the 20th century was born. Simmons clan was called the Invisible Empire. By the 1920's, the Klan was very effective in mostly southern states, such as Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, Oklahoma, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey. Nearly 100, 000 people had enrolled in the Invisible Empire by the late summer of 1921. In 1922, Hiram Wesley Evans planned to dethrone Simmons. They had a full scale war that was a power struggle, and in 1924, Simmons agreed to cash a settlement. In 1939, James A. Colescott replaced Evans. Then, that ended in 1944 when the Infernal Revenue Service filed against the Ku Klux Klan for their back taxes on profits in the 1920s. In 1949, the Klan was fractured by internal disputes, and many Klansmen went to jail for their criminal acts. The Klan…

    • 466 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays