This review of Robert Arp’s edited volume South Park and Philosophy (2006), which was the first book to appear on South Park, appeared in the Journal of Popular Culture, 40.4 (2007).

Drawing on analyses of two South Park censorship controversies, one surrounding the “Trapped in the Closet” attack on Scientology and Tom Cruise and the other inspired by the “Cartoon Wars” engagement of the Prophet Muhammad cartoon scandal, this chapter discusses the connections between religion and liberal state identity in the contemporary United States. These two case studies imply not only a close juridical relationship between religion and the state, in which each institution works to mask the other’s limit event (the breakdown of religious rhetoric in blasphemy and the breakdown of liberalism in censorship), but also the importance of new media in making that relationship evident, in which the self consciously new media focus of the show’s creators allowed them to publicize and attack what would probably have been hidden in residual media forms. Rather than separate discussion of religion and secular liberal identity, South Park relies on its own cultural capital and a close connection to independent new media producers to expose their symbiotic relationship in U.S. politics. Underscoring fights for free speech by highlighting the hypocritical rhetoric of blasphemy claims, South Park accentuates both. However, the iterative quality of viral media that made the show famous is what allows such a discussion to push past either the editing room or the board room, and begins to suggest possibilities for an “open society” beyond satirical popular culture itself.presented at the annual National Communications Association conference, San Diego, November 2008presented at the annual American Studies Associaiton conference, Albuquerque, October 2008

Drawing on analyses of two South Park censorship controversies, onesurrounding the “Trapped in the Closet” attack on Scientology and Tom Cruise and the other inspired by the “Cartoon Wars” engagement of the Prophet Muhammad cartoon scandal, this paper discusses the connectionsbetween religion and liberal state identity in the contemporary United States.  These two case studies imply not only a close juridicalrelationship between religion and the state, in which each institutionworks to mask the other’s limit event (the breakdown of religious rhetoric in blasphemy and the breakdown of liberalism in censorship), but also the importance of new media in making that relationship evident.  Blogs and video sharing communities like YouTube were essential for the discussion of and protests against Comedy Central’s censorship of South Park, and the self consciously new media focus of the show’s creators allowed them to publicize and attack what would probably have been hidden in residual media forms.Rather than separate discussion of religion and secular liberal identity, this paper will demonstrate how South Park relies on its owncultural capital and a close connection to independent new mediaproducers to reconnect the issues and expose their symbiotic relationship.  Underscoring fights for free speech by attending to the hypocritical rhetoric of blasphemy claims, South Park accentuates both.  However, the iterative quality of viral media that made theshow famous is what allows such a discussion to push past either theediting room or the board room, and itself begins to suggestpossibilities for an “open society” beyond the satire and irony of apopular culture production.

 “Boobs, Barf and Bloody Asses” charts the  changes in gender construction and performance in the television show South Park.  Over ten seasons, the show has methodically confronted and violated preconceptions and taboos regarding sexuality and gender, and has mounted a series of harsh critiques of neoliberal and neoconservative conceptions of identity and tolerance.  Through an examination of developments in the show’s rhetoric and a deeper textual analysis of two episodes in particular, this paper will discuss the ramifications of anarchic and aggressive critiques of reified gender identity.  The analysis draws primarily on Haraway and Butler for a theoretical backdrop, but engages gender precisely through its performative or blasphemous potentials for political activism and oppositional culture.  It suggests that scholars consider mass media as locations for hyper-allusive discourse and as transgressively polysemic, even in productions some would consider to be juvenile or “masculine.”  More importantly, it suggests ways in which radically (and institutionally) transgressive cultural productions can force open previously closed topics or rhetorical binaries, making room both for alternative discourses and for future exploration (i.e. the rise of youtube or Sarah Silverman).  The episodes discussed, “Bebe’s Boobs Destroy Society” and “Marjorine,” demonstrate the possibility for a fluid conception of gender and a highly intertextual approach to gender development.  Rather than asserting a coherent worldview or political position, South Park examines and disrupts gender norms precisely through its multiplicity and fragmentation, and demonstrates an emergent paradigm for social activism.

presented at the annual National Communications Association conference, Chicago, November 2007

Panel Description

 Following the deeply divisive and traumatic aftermath of the September 11^th attacks and the subsequent Adorno-derived calls for the “end of irony,” it seems time to interrogate how rhetoric surrounding the attacks was destabilized rather than mobilized.  Humor, following Freud, is one of the most advanced and intricate rhetorical and aesthetic of social strategies, and as such is an ideal entrance into this discussion.  This panel will attempt to interrogate how humor has been used in various ways to engage the September 11^th attacks, focusing on the ways in which instability and disruption are productive socio-political interventions.  From alternative print (The Onion) to animation (South Park) to live-action television (The Colbert Report), humor has been one of the most powerful, and perhaps one of the only, strategies which has successfully challenged dominant media discourse on the topic.  Therefore the papers in this panel will demonstrate humor in cultural production not only as a source of entertainment or catharsis, but as an essential component in politics and cultural memory.

Panelist and Chair:  Ted Gournelos, PhD Candidate, Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

“A Neo-Con Parade:  South Park and the Call to War”

This paper is intended as an aggressive critique of neoconservative ideology, specifically as it relates to the “war on terror” and its portrayal in the media.  Primarily an examination of the relationship South Park has with post 9/11 politics (i.e. “Ladder to Heaven,” “Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants”), the main focus of the paper will be to demonstrate how political discourse as constructed by the Bush administration, as well as its mobilization in the media, can be decentered and denormalized through a humorous, disruptive approach to narrative.  A partial rebuttal to Brian Anderson’s South Park Conservatives, it is also meant to demonstrate how dissonant popular culture can be aggressively conceived to operate in what are often considered to be conservative domains.  It will also briefly discuss the movie Team America: World Police, one of the examples of “conservative” ideology Anderson celebrates in Parker and Stone’s work as an example of how a disruptive strategy can result in a text that is at once reactionary and progressive.  Through a discussion of neoconservative and neoliberal rhetoric surrounding 9/11, drawing primarily on Judith Butler, Susan Willis, and Wendy Brown as well as Slajov Zizek and Stuart Hall, the paper concludes that dissonant visual culture assimilates both types of discourse in order to produce a critical, and perhaps anarchic, sensibility. 

Panelist:  Marina Levina, Lecturer, University of California, Berkeley

“In Truthiness We Trust: “The Colbert Report” as a Postmodern Response to the Post-9/11 World.”

In one short year “The Colbert Report,” which features Stephen Colbert as a pompous right-wing commentator, transcended its role as an O’Reilly Factor caricature to become a cultural phenomenon in its own right.  Beginning with his coining of the word “truthiness” and culminating in a blistering speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Stephen Colbert has not only proven that irony did not die in the ashes of the World Trade Center, but has, in fact, become an essential weapon through which to critique the politics and policies of the post 9/11 world.  This paper argues that “The Colbert Report” relies for its existence, humor, and political poignancy on the context of the post-9/11 political landscape.  It is ironic that the attacks that reintroduced the rhetoric of “good vs. evil” and a political response reminiscent of the crusades became both a Baudrillardian “absolute event” and an atmosphere capable of giving birth to Stephen Colbert’s unabashedly and unapologetically postmodern performance.  In order to fully understand the role of irony in the post 9/11 world, this paper argues, we need to examine how one of its most shining examples straddles the boundary between modern and postmodern narratives and social conditions, resulting in an anarchically playful sensibility with remarkable cultural capital.  

Panelist:  David Monje, Visiting Assistant Professor, Northeastern University

“Hummer Rhymes with Dumber: The Political Cartoons of Jeff Danziger after 9/11”

Jeff Danziger’s political cartoons following September 11, 2001 are exemplary of the critical capacity of visual culture and irony. This paper argues that not only did 9/11 not signal “the end of the age of irony,” as predicted by Roger Rosenblatt in the New York Times, among others, but that the attacks in fact renewed the use of irony as a critical, rhetorical tool. Political cartoons, in addition to often being funny, are a longstanding, but often overlooked, means of identifying political rhetoric that dissimulates. They are, in this sense, a means of exposing lies and contradictions by juxtaposing, visually, metaphorically, and semantically, the inconsistencies in political discourse. Danziger’s cartoons following 9/11 have zeroed in on the Bush administration’s responses to the attacks by, literally, drawing connections between the Bush and Bin Laden families, between Enron, Halliburton, big oil, the rise in popularity of gas-guzzling Hummer SUVs, and finally the invasion of Iraq. As a Vietnam veteran, Danziger was one of the first pundits to articulate the worrisome, and indeed ironic, parallels between that war and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Using selections from his work over the last five years, this paper argues for the enduring—and exigent—criticality of irony and humor in visual culture, especially after 9/11.

Panelist:  Ryan Wepler, PhD Candidate, Brandeis University: Department of English and American Literature

“History Hits the Funnies Page: Memory, Rupture, and the Response to 9/11 in The Boondocks and Get Your War On”

 Within weeks of 9/11, comic strips The Boondocks and Get Your War On turned their attention to its cultural aftermath.  By focusing on such a traumatic and decidedly unfunny event, the authors of these series were able to transform the humor of the traditional 3-4 panel comic strip and transcend the apolitical tradition of “the funnies.”  In addition to breaking with the conventions observed by other comic strip authors, The Boondocks and Get Your War On counter the historical rupture created by the trauma of 9/11 by using humor to emphasize incongruity within their own forms.  Aaron McGruder’s fictionalized replacement of his dissenting comic strip The Boondocks with the patriotic “Adventures of Flagee and Ribbon” calls attention to political attempts to fill in the ruptured space created by the events of 9/11 with ideology and, in turn keeps this space open for individual memory.  In the less mainstream Get Your War On, David Rees further expands the space for individual memory by forging his humor almost solely from polyvalent and incongruous juxtapositions of language, idea, and image.  Despite Henri Bergson’s claim that “laughter has no greater foe than emotion,” Rees and McGruder rely on his idea that humor is created from the recognition of “something mechanical in something living.”  This paper explores the ways in which The Boondocks and Get Your War On create space for individual emotion by exposing the mechanicism of culture and ideology in the wake of the national trauma of 9/11. 

 presented at the annual American Studies Association conference, Boston, April 2007

 This paper is intended as an aggressive critique of neoconservative ideology, specifically as it relates to the “war on terror” and its portrayal in the media.  Primarily an examination of the relationship South Park has with post 9/11 politics (i.e. “Ladder to Heaven,” “Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants”), the main focus of the paper will be to demonstrate how political discourse as constructed by the Bush administration, as well as its mobilization in the media, can be decentered and denormalized through a humorous, disruptive approach to narrative.  A partial rebuttal to Brian Anderson’s South Park Conservatives, it is also meant to demonstrate how dissonant popular culture can be aggressively conceived to operate in what are often considered to be conservative domains.  It will also briefly discuss the movie Team America: World Police, one of the examples of “conservative” ideology Anderson celebrates in Parker and Stone’s work as an example of how a disruptive strategy can result in a text that is at once reactionary and progressive.  Through a discussion of neoconservative and neoliberal rhetoric surrounding 9/11, drawing primarily on Judith Butler, Susan Willis, and Wendy Brown as well as Slajov Zizek and Stuart Hall, the paper concludes that dissonant visual culture assimilates both types of discourse in order to produce a critical, and perhaps anarchic, sensibility. 

presented at the annual American Culture Association conference, Boston, April 2007

presented at the annual International Communications Association conference, San Francisco, May 2007

Although much work on media and politics is polarized into a utopian/dystopian binary, cultural studies has sought various ways in which to connect or problematize such simplistic approaches.  Unfortunately, even cultural studies has increasingly become disconnected from both close textual analyses of culture (specifically popular culture) and theory that is engaged with specific socio-political trends.  This paper will attempt to continue the project through which “production” and “audience” are destabilized within both political and popular culture.  Through an analysis of the changing sexuality of Mr. Garrison in the television show South Park, it will demonstrate how cultural texts can act discursively within the wider framework of contemporary politics.  Over the course of ten seasons, South Park has incorporated this character specifically to address and attack rhetoric surrounding queer identity, (hyper)masculinity, femininity, and heteronormative sexual politics.  Although the paper uses primarily a postmodern approach to narrative and character analysis, through an exploration of fragmentations and disconnections rather than continuity or its “utopic potential,” it will not seek to remove the show from its context.  Rather, it will be primarily concerned with tracing the genealogy of the character across ten years of political discourse.  Engaging with Michael Warner, Lisa Duggan, Wendy Brown, and other theorists of queer cultural politics, the paper attempts to formulate an understanding of queer identity based not in “difference,” “tolerance,” or “resistance,” but as an assemblage of discourses and representations that are both reactions to and attempted critiques of dominant (binary) positions on sexuality.  The movement from an anti-gay, highly performed masculinity to conflicted gay identity to highly exaggerated homosexuality is interesting enough, but as the character has recently been used to specifically address the politics of “metro” sexuality and gay marriage, often outside the range of either mainstream queer theory or politics, it has attained a level of discursiveness that has wide-ranging implications for cultural studies and theories of popular culture.Presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Chicago, March 2007