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Popular Culture Review
At the outset of the final essay of Part Three, “Prophetic Profanity: South
Park on Religion or Thinking Theologically with Eric Cartman,” Michael W.
DeLashmutt and Brannon Hancock make the rather startling admission that they
“find South Park to be among the most theologically profound television
available today” (173). This being the case, they explore South Park's “often
scathing critique of religion as a form of ‘secular prophecy’ . . . which, like the
prophetic voice in the biblical tradition, employs profane speech and offensive
imagery to issue a call to self-examination and a return to authenticity” (173—
174). DeLashmutt and Hancock add that even though South Park “may appear
on the surface to be an unseemly bedfellow for Christian thought, its offensive,
profane character places South Park in a long line of subversive and corrective
pronouncements central to the prophetic within the Judeo-Christian tradition”
(176). They point out, as well, that in much of the Old Testament, “proph ets are
conscripted by Yahweh to scandalize conventional moralistic sensibilities to
indict Israel’s violation of their covenantal relationship with their god” (184).
DeLashmutt and Hancock conclude their entry with the following comment: “in
an America where the poor are oppressed for the sake of cheap sneakers and
carbonated beverages, perhaps we should turn our attention to the prophecy of
South Park as a self-reflexive call for repentance and a turn toward a life of
authenticity”—whether an agnostic, atheist, Jew, Muslim, or Christian (188).
Undoubtedly they are correct, although their essay, perhaps more so than any
other in Taking South Park Seriously, is the most likely to create a great deal of
much needed controversy.
“Specific Critiques,” Part Four of Taking South Park Seriously, presents
two final essays, one involving education, the other, celebrity culture. In ‘“ You
Know, I Learned Something Today . . . ’: Cultural Pedagogy and the Limits of
Formal Education in South Park," James Rennie notes that “classroom practices
and curricular goals are almost totally unsuccessful in the world of South Park.
Try as the system might, it just cannot seem to teach the kids much of anything”
(195). Indeed, given “its narrative reliance on the schoolhouse . . . South Park
routinely undermines the pedagogical influence and functions of formal
education” and “it also unapologetically diminishes the supreme importance of
schooling in childhood education” (195). Rennie later suggests that “children in
the real world might be better prepared for dealing with obstacles and issues if
they were encouraged to begin thinking about the ‘adult world’ at an earlier
age,” and South Park can only help them to do that, and in a way that traditional
educational systems never will be able to. And in “‘Omigod, It’s Russell
Crowe!’: South Park’s Assault on Celebrity,” Damion Sturm writes that as
opposed to “‘celebrating’ celebrity. . . South Park undoes or dismantles
celebrity in relation to elements of production, circulation, and consumption in
American culture. In particular,” the show continually “exposes and mocks the
manufacturing of celebrity, distorts celebrity representations and public images,
and undermines the authenticity or merit conventionally invested in most