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Popular Culture Review
In their entry, “Orphic Persuasions and Siren Seductions: Vocal Music in
South Park" Jason Boyd and Marc R. Plamondon argue that by “normalizing
the often bizarre situations and improbable cause and effect in South Park's
plots through the conventions of Orphic song. . . the satiric messages [in the
series’s episodes] expressed through the music are driven home to viewers who
would otherwise see South Park as only absurd” (59). They add later that the
“function of song goes well beyond the gliding of the philosophic pill: It helps
South Park challenge the viewer’s otherwise comfortable perspective on life and
community” (75). Meanwhile, in his contribution to the volume, “‘Simpsons Did
It!’: South Park as Differential Signifier,” editor Weinstock explores the idea of
how South Park “constructs its own identity through the process of comparing
itself against other animated programs and part of the pleasure of watching
South Park is appreciating the program precisely as a differential signifier,” or
“as an animated program that participates in and self-consciously refers to
specific aspects of the tradition of animated television even as it attempts to
distinguish itself within that tradition” (94). Nothing, it can be said, could be
more postmodern.
The three essays in Part Two of Taking South Park Seriously explore the
series in relation to the highly vexed issue of identity politics. In “Freud Goes to
South Park: Teaching Against Postmodern Prejudices and Equal Opportunity
Hatred,” Robert Samuels critiques South Park for contributing to the “process of
undermining the popular support for the welfare state while calling for tax
breaks for the wealthy” (99). From this perspective, Samuels contends,
“minorities are now often seen as victimizers and abusers of the welfare system,
whereas the wealthy majority is positioned to be the victim of excessive taxes
and reversed racism” (99). Wheth er purposefully or not, “shows such as South
Park feed this rhetorical reversal that influences so many students and makes
teaching about critical thinking and social change in higher education even more
difficult” (99). Meanwhile, in “Cynicism and Other Postideological Half
Measures in South Park," Stephen Groening situates the debut (and success) of
South Park firmly within the culture wars of the last two decades of the 20,h
century. Drawing on the work of Daniel Bell, Groening equates the
postideological with the related notions that “political ideas have been
exhausted . . . false consciousness declared nonexistent, ideology rendered
obsolete, and ideology critique unnecessary” (114). Thus, postideological
“subjects such as South Park viewers endeavor to adopt a kind of immateriality
that avoids the commitment imposed by ideology. Lack of commitment,”
furthermore, “has particular appeal in a society rhetorically dominated by the
micropolitics of identity, which call attention to an overwhelming list of
injustices. For South Park and its viewers, cynicism, manifesting as irony and
ironic detachment, justifies withdrawal from political action” of any kind in the
real world (114). According to Groening, here “lies the hidden danger of the
cynicism affirmed by South Park. To have no use for ideology and declare