118
Popular Culture Review
neutralised. These are the experiences of life in a migration
exclusion zone, into which asylum seekers sail, and out of
which people emerge to speak of their longing to return, their
relief to have put distance between themselves and culinary
others, and their happiness at having left a place in which they
would never really belong. This is the place in which local
islanders are made and where they stay as locals in the
neighbourhoods that have been and are continually being built
at the last outpost of the nation. This is Christmas Island. (193)
A “Foreword” by Professor Nigel Rapport of the University of St. Andrews
in Scotland (of Prince William of Wales fame) complements Christmas Island:
An Anthropological Study, while an extensive list of references and an index
round out the volume. Throughout, Dennis’s writing is elegant, thoughtprovoking, and, above all, never less than accessible. For many of us, Christmas
Island will remain an exotic and unvisited place. But, through the magic of
reading, Dennis’s study allows us to go there, in the imagination if in no other
way.
Anthony Guy Patricia, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Taking South Park Seriously
Editor Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
State University of New York Press, 2008
Editor Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock begins his “Introduction” to Taking South
Park Seriously on a note that combines the professional with the personal in a
way that exudes both charm and humility. It seems that, when he began seeking
submissions for the volume, he discovered—in true 21s1 century fashion, via
Internet blogs and discussion forums—commentary as derisive toward academia
as toward the proposed subject matter of the collection. According to his
findings, the topic (the animated television series South Park) was at best
frivolous, and at worst, not only unnecessary but unworthy of scholarly inquiry;
and thus signaled nothing less than the complete iniquity into which the
discipline of English had fallen. Indeed, the tuition dollars of parents and
students alike oug ht to be spent on more traditional and acceptable literary
subjects like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, or even Jane Austen, for that matter.
Weinstock notes that “the participants in the conversation” his call for
submissions engendered “in all likelihood are fans of the program . . . and many
of them vigorously resist the idea that South Park, a program they enjoy, could
have anything of interest to say about modem culture” (2). For him, this
objection to his project only ratifies the fact that “the perception of a deep divide