Popular Culture Review Vol. 20, No. 1, Winter 2009 | Page 126

122 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