From Punk to the Musical: South Park, Music, and the Cartoon Format

Chapter 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 11 1 12 2 13 3 14 4 15 5 16 6 17 7 18 8 19 9 20 0 21 1 22 2 23 3 24 4 25 5 26 6 27 7 28 8 29 9 30 0 31 1 32 2 33 3 34 4 35 5 36 6 37 7 38 8 39 9 40 0 41 1 42 2 43 3 44 4 From Punk to the Musical South Park, Music, and the Cartoon Format Sean Nye Cartoon music on television entered an extraordinary new era in the 1990s and 2000s due to two important developments. First, the cartoon situation comedy (sitcom) experienced a rebirth in popularity, pioneered primarily by the Fox network.1 The series to inaugurate this trend, The Simpsons (1989–), has already surpassed all live-action sitcoms in the number of seasons. Through its composer Alf Clausen, The Simpsons set the stage for cartoon appropriation of elements of live-action sitcom music while pioneering innovative musical moments, represented in the cut episode, “All Singing, All Dancing” (Season 9, Episode 11). Beyond the cartoon sitcom, the rapid expansion of cable television has resulted in a greater variety of cartoons and television networks that focus entirely on animated programming: Cartoon Network (1992–), Toon Disney (1998–2009), Adult Swim (2001–), and Nicktoons (2002–). In particular, Cartoon Network exposes viewers to multiple generations of cartoon music, from the musical classics by Carl Stalling and Scott Bradley, up through the musical conventions of cartoons from the 1960s to the 1980s, Japanese anime, and more. In addition, many new and innovative series have been produced purely for cable television. Liquid Television (1991–1994) was a collection of shows that marked a period of independent animation on MTV, resulting in the series Beavis and Butt-Head (1992–1997), while Adult Swim has pioneered cartoons with adult themes such as Robot Chicken (2005–). Such an expanded array of programs, through both the trends of the cartoon sitcom and cable television, has meant that cartoon music on television has never been more complex. No longer aimed primarily at kids as it was in the heyday of Saturday morning cartoons during the 1970s and 1980s, cartoon music on television has returned to a broader appeal for adults and children.2 This chapter turns to one particular series, South Park (1997–), precisely because it combines both of these trends. Set in the fictional town of South Park in Colorado, the show is arguably the most significant cable cartoon sitcom of the 1990s and 2000s. On par with The Simpsons and Beavis and Butt-Head, the role of music, and above all musical satire, has been central to South Park’s success. Co-creator and director, Trey Parker, has an impressive musical background. 22570.indd 143 18/11/2010 15:53 144 Sean Nye Raised in Colorado, Parker studied music at the Berklee College of Music before transferring to the University of Colorado, Boulder, to study film, and he is the chief satirical writer and composer for songs on South Park. His eclectic mix of musical interests—from punk to the musical—has resulted in a unique engagement with music by South Park. Born in 1969, Parker is of a different musical generation and sensibility than The Simpsons’ Clausen (born in 1941). In South Park, Parker, along with co-creator Matt Stone (born in 1971), also raised in Colorado, has combined satire with the keen observation of musical trends of the past two decades. This satire is achieved in ways that appeal to the primary fan base and target demographic of this cable network program—chiefly, men ages eighteen to thirty-four.3 Though there are people outside of this demographic who watch the show, this audience is what I have in mind for the present chapter in terms of how the show is marketed and targeted. The musical practices resulting in this explosive intersection of media, genre, and generational influences make the examination of South Park particularly pertinent. In the following chapter, I argue that what results in South Park is, on the one hand, an appropriation of sitcom and film music practices in cartoons and, on the other, what I would call a new genre system of music. In his seminal book on cartoon music, Tunes for ‘Toons, Daniel Goldmark demonstrates the importance of an array of genres in the classic Hollywood cartoon: classical music (opera in particular), jazz, pop, and swing.4 South Park operates within a new genre system of musical reference: primarily, rock, punk, soul, pop, country, the musical, and blockbuster film music.5 I call this a genre system because it creates a world of cultural allusions unto itself, upon which much of the musical humor and satire relies. The musical values and humor of this world contrast in some important ways with that of the classic Hollywood cartoon. The Generation-X creators, whose cultural childhood is rooted in the 1970s and 1980s, negotiate this history, as well as the heritage of the baby boomers’ legendary cultural and political revolutions in the 1960s and Generation Y’s cultural childhood in the 1990s and 2000s.6 This musical genre system is not the clash of high and low culture (classical and jazz, opera and cartoon, etc.) as was the case in the MGM and Warner Brothers classics, as Goldmark discusses. Rather, the system finds its comic resources in the clash of pop culture, Hollywood blockbuster film music, and aging subcultures, whose claims to resistance and authenticity have become questionable. The musical score no longer serves high-art spoofs and comic relief but naive pop and film spectacle satire as well as subcultural self-critique. These critical practices are both reinforced and limited by the pervasive ironic distance of South Park. The chapter first introduces South Park with particular attention to the medial trends discussed above. The historical forces of media and music are set in the context of the show, and Parker’s and Stone’s rootedness in punk culture as a practice of satire, critique, and irony is explored. Then the discussion turns to the cue and background music that structures the show as a sitcom. I argue that the mix of voice acting with television music and 22570.indd 144 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 18/11/2010 15:53 From Punk to the Musical 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 145 intradiegetic film conventions, along with the musical parodies of extradiegetic TV commercials, forms the complex basis of South Park’s comedic style, in particular its ironic and satirical gestures.7 In the final section, the focus turns from the cartoon music in South Park to South Park as a music cartoon, in other words, from music in the score to music in the plot. I point out episodes and moments where musical issues and values are the central subject. The role of the new genre system is particularly prevalent in these moments of parody and satire, as will be noted in the overview of the important musical episodes and themes. To challenge the popular reputation of the show as a neutral practice of satire and irony regarding everything, I will demonstrate how it explores the continued tensions in American musical culture around issues of race, gender, religion, and identity. These episodes negotiate the history of rock and pop since the 1970s for, in this case, a demographic of primarily white males. Highlighting the role of music in South Park aims to offer an aesthetic twist to the chiefly political debates about the show concerning libertarianism, identity politics, and questions of free speech.8 I would argue that comprehending the cultural-aesthetic questions of music and entertainment helps to understand the full extent of South Park’s vexed relationship with politics and history. Introducing the Sound and Media of South Park Any analysis of South Park needs to address its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, not least because of their considerable star power. They demonstrate a new trend of cartoon auteurs such as Mike Judge (born in 1962), creator of Beavis and Butt-Head and co-creator of King of the Hill (1997–2009), and Seth MacFarlane (born in 1973), creator of Family Guy (1999–2002, 2005–) and co-creator of American Dad! (2005–), among other cartoon series. In this system, cartoonists write, direct, voice-act, and/or compose the music for their cartoons. Parker and Stone have also been involved in multiple musical projects. They founded a fun-punk band called DVDA (Double Vaginal, Double Anal) and have produced and acted in both live action and animated feature films including the mock musicals Cannibal! The Musical (1993) and South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999). Their musical practice in a punk band is strongly indicative of their appreciation and use of punk aesthetics and attitudes, reflected in the subcultural capital South Park has garnered as a kind of punk cartoon. A notoriously fluid term, “punk” has both musical and cultural associations, which need to be distinguished in this chapter. While there are moments of punk-rock music in the series, punk is used in this chapter chiefly as a cultural reference to the anti-establishment attitudes of trash humor, shocking scenes, crudeness, and ostensibly universal critique of society. In other words, rather than being a punk-rock show, the creators’ punk roots manifest themselves as anti-establishment attitudes that ground their approach and handling of all musical genres from country to hip-hop. 22570.indd 145 18/11/2010 15:53 146 Sean Nye This often takes the form of a non-serious parodying of a whole range of genres that are serious or stars that take themselves too seriously. Parker once explained, when we were growing up, the way to be punk rock was to be really liberal, because we grew up with Reagan in high school and all that. The problem is we moved to Los Angeles, and the only way to be punk rock in L.A. is to be a Republican.9 Parker indicates here that their understanding of punk is a question of offending accepted taste regardless of political stance, which is in keeping with South Park’s unsystematic politics of satire. However, as we shall see, how pervasive their “anti-establishment” attitude actually is remains open to debate. As auteurs, the mix of music and voice-acting by Parker and Stone has important consequences for the unified feel of humor and music on the show. Voice is central to the characters’ identities, especially the four main characters, the eight-year-old boys Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny. Stan (Parker) and Kyle (Stone) resemble each other and talk similarly, indicating a common, normal boyhood and stable path to bourgeois adulthood. In fact, in the choice of their religious background and the names of their respective family members, not to mention who voices the respective characters, Parker and Stone hint strongly that Stan is Parker and Kyle is Stone. The poor child, Kenny (Stone), has a muffled voice, a proper index of his position as the mute proletarian who is repeatedly killed off in most episodes. Cartman (Parker) is the most interesting voice of the four. He represents the bad bourgeois, modeled on Archie Bunker from All in the Family (1971–1979), and his grating, nasal voice is the mark of his infantility, an only child spoiled by his mother and lacking a father figure. These familial relations make Cartman a paradigmatic example of the “De-Oedipalized middle-class” male in post-countercultural America, as described by Fred Pfeil, with a rather skeptical outlook regarding the progressive potential of de-Oedipalization.10 Beyond the four kids, Butters (Stone) has become a fifth main character, the addition of a boy with stereotypical 1950s goodness and sincerity who is, in sharp contrast to Cartman, sheltered by his extremely authoritarian parents. Other characters in the town have also had waves of extensive presence on the show to the point where they become main characters: Mr./Mrs. Garrison and Stan’s father, Randy, could be mentioned here. With regard to Cartman, it is further indicative that the main characters from three of the most successful sitcoms currently—The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy—are fat, lazy, and relatively simple-minded white males (Homer Simpson, Eric Cartman, and Peter Griffin), all of whom have unforgettable voices. Cartman is distinguished by the fact that he is the only one of the three who is both a child and far more offensive in his prejudices and schemes. Completely dependent on his mother, Cartman is only inspired to 22570.indd 146 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 18/11/2010 15:53 From Punk to the Musical 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 147 activity for selfish reasons. As we shall see, numerous plots revolve around his get-rich schemes, many of which involve music, where his nasal voice takes center stage. Through Cartman, musical values and the correct attitude toward new trends are explored in South Park. Aside from the crude humor, the punk aesthetic is present in the do-ityourself (DIY) style of animation. Inspired by Terry Gilliam’s animations on Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969–1974), the cutout animation on South Park (the first episode was made entirely with construction paper) is a style that, like crayon drawings, recalls art class in elementary school, reflecting the child’s world of the protagonists. This DIY aesthetic was especially present in the initial seasons, though it was in fact digitally produced from Episode 2 onwards. While remaining close to the general stylistic feel in the subsequent seasons, the animation has been subtly refined with slick computer-generatedimagery (CGI) technology over the years. Yet this digital animation has also allowed South Park to make shows within a week so as to comment on contemporary cultural trends. Now in its fourteenth season, South Park has gradually morphed from the focus on town life and the four kids to current events and cultural phenomena. This change is closely related to South Park’s substantial presence on the Internet. Indeed, beyond its creators, important medial forces have shaped the show. A considerable online fan community was present at the show’s inception, and Comedy Central encouraged the free flow of South Park images.11 Its current position on the Internet is no less impressive. The program regularly scores in the top three in ratings of cable and broadcast television network websites.12 While early television shows had affinities with the medium of radio, South Park demonstrates affinities with the Internet: not just WebTV, it is a kind of television blog with ironic commentary on topical issues, including music.13 This medium is partly represented in the theme of compromised childhood innocence. As opposed to older moral panics regarding the influence of standard television on children, or of music television on teenagers, South Park presents the loss of innocence as a fait accompli in an advanced age of both cable television and internet.14 For example, in “Canada on Strike” (Season 12, Episode 4), Butters attains YouTube celebrity by performing a cover of Samwell’s “What What (in the Butt)” in more shocking fashion than the actual YouTube music stars featured in the episode, such as Tay “Chocolate Rain” Zonday and Gary “Numa Numa” Brolsma. Still, the creators demonstrate a curiously ironic love for the world of children, and childhood innocence is in fact refined in the digital age. While the minds of the children are inundated with inappropriate material, they still demonstrate an ability to play as children.15 With regard to the viewing audience, the child characters in an adult cartoon also draw on the historical associations of cartoons with children, alluding to the assumption that adults regress when they watch cartoons.16 Cable television’s focus on niche audiences plays a role in these ironic practices and in the construction of musical taste for the show’s primarily 22570.indd 147 18/11/2010 15:53 148 Sean Nye male audience. Cable shows have different hurdles regarding censorship, since advertisers rather than the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must be satisfied.17 Beavis and Butt-Head led the way for South Park, with its unique mix of sitcom and music video commentary. The show concerned the antics of two teenage metalheads, who have sessions watching music videos. In the apt words of Andrew Dell’Antonio, Beavis and Butt-Head were “the only MTV videojockeys to address music videos critically.”18 Their remarks could even influence success or failure in the careers of bands, which indicates the significance television can have for the construction of musical taste.19 As we will see, South Park’s moments of musical satire, as well as its ironic gestures toward the Generation-X rock macho, are comparable to Beavis and Butt-Head’s critiques of music videos. However, the plots of Beavis and Butt-Head are relatively divorced from the music video sessions, while South Park puts musical issues in the story line, often at its very center. The anxieties regarding the lack of musical and cultural values in teenagers was expanded by South Park to anxieties regarding the decadence of children; like the hybrid media of the show, these children are strangely hybrid figures, often taking on characteristics that seem appropriate to teenagers and adults. As we shall see, these are children with incredibly foul mouths and diverse musical interests who, for example, already at age eight are attempting to form boy bands called Fingerbang (Season 4, Episode 9). Yet despite the media deluge, they often appear more reasonable than the adults in the town. Music in Cartoons: South Park’s Intra- and Extradiegetic Music from Twangs to Hollywood That South Park carries on in the tradition of punk and Beavis and Butt-Head is sonically set by the theme song. Composed by the band Primus, the theme song to the initial seasons was a country-punk tune that featured various big beat, blue grass, and industrial-metal remixes during later seasons. These remixes were carefully produced to keep South Park trendy. The big-beat theme especially reflects the gradual watering down of the DIY aesthetic with the new CGI animation, announced in “Fourth Grade” (Season 4, Episode 12) with new imagery to the remixed theme song and the parodic “new and improved” advertisement slogans of “Faster. More explosions. You love it.” While Primus’s music is important (compare this music to the orchestral theme to The Simpsons by Danny Elfman), this section focuses on the background and cue music provided by the composers Adam Berry (born in 1966, Seasons 1–4) and Mad City Productions (Seasons 5–11), consisting of Jamie Dunlap (born in 1960) and Scott Nickoley (born in 1976), with Dunlap being credited as sole composer since Season 12. This music has not to date been addressed in any academic literature on the show, though it is central to South Park’s musical meaning. Adam Berry’s compositions set the ground structure of cue music that has been relatively consistent and refined by Dunlap and Nickoley up to the present. 22570.indd 148 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 18/11/2010 15:53 From Punk to the Musical 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 149 Ostensibly inconsequential, the act-in, act-out, and bridge music, which takes the form of 3–5-second-long variations of mandolin and guitar twangs, is of utmost importance. It marks the “small mountain town” life of South Park, Colorado, with its primarily white population and lower-middle-class ethos, a sonic expression of Middle America similar to cartoon sitcoms such as The Simpsons and King of the Hill. Adam Berry relates that this music was initially rejected by Parker and Stone, probably for being too “on the nose.” However, when they heard it involving a scene with some cows, it eventually became “one of the signature sounds of the series.”20 The bridge, act-in, and act-out music situates the show within the sound traditions of a sitcom—compare it, for example, with the electric bass used in Seinfeld. Indeed, Berry confirms that he “intentionally stayed away from writing ‘cartoon music,’ ”21 demonstrating how diverse the possibilities of music in animated television series have become. Moreover, the bright chords invite a fun viewing experience that is neither abrasive nor threatening. The repetition of the twang points to the rebellion from and yet continual return to American “middle ground” common sense, which is, as we shall see, usually manifested by Kyle and Stan. Piano music is repeatedly employed in South Park as markers of confessions, insanity, and as moral music to accompany Kyle’s and Stan’s “I learned something today” monologues. The piano, usually accompanied by strings, is a sonic marker of interiority and sincerity of various kinds; importantly, by drawing attention to itself as a mirror of the stock conventions of Hollywood sincerity in a cartoon sitcom, it exposes these conventions. As Berry explains, “the scenes become funnier because the music plays the moments sincerely.”22 In other words, precisely through Berry’s, and later Nickoley’s and Dunlap’s, consistently direct and straight interpretation of these conventions, Parker and Stone could mine and highlight their very conventionality in the show. Music draws the discursive boundaries, indeed the existential and social parameters, of South Park and the possibility of humanity in fin-de-millennium America. The piano music is often alienating, revealing interiority as either hollow or a rhetorical ploy. South Park, furthermore, takes an ironic stance on psychological confession. Even the moments of sinister “revelation” are ironically detached through exaggerated voice-acting and dissonant piano and string music conventions. This music is reminiscent of horror and suspense genres in which the dark side of the town is revealed. This detachment is maintained in the “I learned something today” morals that often, though not always, appear at the end of each episode. Merging with the bridge music twangs, these ethics reinforce tradition at the same time that the piano accompaniments often reveal little faith in this tradition. The morals are nearly always uttered by Stan and Kyle, reinforcing the law of the good bourgeois and the ethics of the political middle, even though identification with Cartman is encouraged because he stands at the comic heart of the series.23 The piano accompaniment is a musical shrug of the shoulders regarding 22570.indd 149 18/11/2010 15:53 150 Sean Nye genuine decisions. It usually concludes that common sense is the best, though by no means perfect, of all the senses, which is indicative of the precarious balance between anti-establishment attitudes and pro-establishment normativity in South Park. Contrary to the belief that irony stands above any position, these moments tell the viewers exactly what to think. At the center of South Park’s play with authenticity and sincerity is the critique of Hollywood musical conventions in the experience of human interaction and love. This is especially clear in the parodies of epic “lighters in the air” music in its most commercialized forms, from pop ballads to power ballads, that extraordinary genre that developed in the 1970s, amplifying and electrifying pop-romantic love and triumph with stadium sound systems. Cartman finds one of the earliest power ballads, Styx’s “Come Sail Away” (Season 2, Episode 2), so catchy that he must sing it to the end anytime the first lines are mentioned. His version of “Come Sail Away” is also featured on the album Chef Aid.24 In a later episode, Cartman wins over Congress by playing Asia’s similarly epic single, “In the Heat of the Moment” (Season 5, Episode 13). And with regard to the merging of pop-musical love and film, in “Cartman’s Mom Is a Dirty Slut” (Season 1, Episode 13), each time Cartman’s mom is attracted to someone the creators play a variation by Toddy Walters of Céline Dion’s pop hit, “My Heart Will Go On,” from the highest-grossing blockbuster of the 1990s, Titanic. These practices are what make South Park so musically interesting. Even in the cue music—the short musical motifs that play in the intradiegetic “background” to set the mood, atmosphere, and comedy—the show draws attention to musical conventions in a way comparable to few other sitcoms. The combination of intentionally melodramatic voice-acting next to naive cue music serves to hold the audience at a distance from the diegesis— delighting in, yet conscious of, the clichéd Hollywood conventions. Already featured by Adam Berry in the first episode, the pervasive use of Hollywood symphonic clichés from multiple genres—action blockbusters, suspense films, science fiction, and superhero films—underlies these comic practices.25 In these moments, the everyday life of South Park is mediated by and at times clashes with the outside infiltrations of the Hollywood dream factory. Indeed, the precarious balancing of American culture is reflected in the biographies of Parker and Stone who, since their move to Los Angeles, have made their adult life in California (Hollywood) and their childhood in Colorado (South Park) two geographic points from which to negotiate American identity. The place of the symphonic strings and suspense music in South Park is key in the constant challenge of resisting the Hollywood Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art. As Anahid Kassabian remarks, “mainstream Hollywood film music practices may well constitute the only musical lingua franca in contemporary western industrialized societies.”26 Orchestral music in this context no longer signifies classical high culture but film music in itself. 22570.indd 150 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 18/11/2010 15:53 From Punk to the Musical 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 151 Vocal music is also important in satirizing the Hollywood system. The grating voices of singers such as Cartman question musical transcendence as do singers of punk music. However, instead of fast, abrasive chords, the show relies primarily on anti-pop vocals, usually with foul language, where the total entertainment experience of Hollywood soundtracks and musicals becomes the object of satire. Cartman is crucial because he repeatedly represents the perceived ultimate desire of Generation X: to sit in bed with a pile of snacks and watch Saturday-morning cartoons (represented here by “Terrance and Phillip”) or to be forever immersed in total entertainment and an endless life of leisure. Cartman has triumphant moments of explosive ecstasy when his dreams are apparently attained, and all he can say is, “Yes! Yes!” These moments are either performed as the completely passive, television couchpotato slob, eating his favorite snack, “Cheesy Poofs,” and yelling at pet Mr. Kitty, or in the experience of total entertainment ecstatic moments, for example, when he buys his own theme park in “Cartmanland” (Season 5, Episode 6) and escapes to the “Super Phun Thyme” video arcade in the episode “Super Fun Time” (Season 12, Episode 7). During the television slob moments, Cartman experiences the cheapest form of entertainment: local television commercials. Here South Park explores the practice of “extradiegetic music” of advertisements that marks the television experience. In fact, Cartman wins a competition to sing the advertisement jingle of his favorite television snack: “I love Cheesy Poofs, you love Cheesy Poofs, if we didn’t eat Cheesy Poofs, we’d be lame” (Season 2, Episode 11). He himself then appears for a split second on television. In a sense, South Park anticipates its own inevitable transfer into the syndicated rerun with the appropriate sonic reference to cheap commercials. Such commercials return South Park to the limited possibilities of local entertainment in Colorado rather than far-off Hollywood—local theme parks in particular. In “Cartman Joins NAMBLA” (Season 4, Episode 5), while Kenny is watching television, the advertisement for the fictional ride named the “John Denver Experience” (parodying the singer John Denver and his tragic death) is amplified by some standard rock licks, and it includes the hyperbolic cliché of “the most extreme, insane ride ever built.” In “Casa Bonita” (Season 7, Episode 11), a show based on the actual Denver–Lockwood mega-restaurant Casa Bonita, Cartman sings an advertisement-jingle variation of “La Cucaracha”: “Casa Bonita! Casa Bonita! Food and fun in a festive atmosphere.” Furthermore, during Cartman’s dream sequences about all the local entertainment delights Casa Bonita has to offer, the classic “Jarabe Tapatío” (or “The Mexican Hat Dance”) is heard, exploited as an advertisement for the restaurant’s offerings. The episode even concludes with a parody of a Cartman ecstatic moment, when, chased by police and to the tune of “El Jarabe Tapatío,” he races through Casa Bonita’s entertainment delights in “less than a minute” before being arrested. In other examples, as we shall see, Cartman repeatedly exploits music to become a star and attain the riches necessary for a life of leisure. 22570.indd 151 18/11/2010 15:53 152 Sean Nye Yet Cartman is not an isolated figure affected by these experiences. Beyond his local dreams of television slobbery and theme-park fun is the general experience of the Hollywood blockbuster. Through their constant allusions to popular films from the 1970s to the present, Parker and Stone demonstrate the enormous role such entertainment industries have for their generation. For example, complaints are made a number of times that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (Season 6, Episode 9 and Season 12, Episode 8) are ruining the legacy of their classic adventure films. Behind this feeling of betrayal lies an apparent homage to the roles Lucas and Spielberg, and by extension John Williams, played in Generation X’s cultural childhood. Indeed, Hollywood background music and action-adventure flicks become prominent in numerous episodes.27 The Imaginationland trilogy (Season 11, Episodes 10–12) is a paradigmatic example of this engagement with Hollywood blockbuster conventions. The boys must defend the paradise of American commodified entertainment, highlighted by depictions of cartoons, advertisements, and toys such as Care Bears, ThunderCats, and Count Chocula, from terrorist attack. M. Night Shyamalan, Michael Bay, and Mel Gibson are consulted to construct an imaginative blockbuster plot to defeat the terrorists. Reflected in Dunlap’s and Nickoley’s similarly intricate score, Imaginationland includes further allusions to numerous Hollywood films: Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Stargate, and Gladiator, among others. The trilogy thereby plays with the dreams of heroism, adventure, and spectacle offered to the viewing audience. In South Park, the repetition of the guitar and mandolin twangs and the return of the piano music, combined with the constant allusions to blockbuster film music, represent the frustrated amor fati of both Generations X and Y and the heaps of cultural detritus in which they grew up—apparent in the masses of pop-cultural characters, primarily from the 1970s to the present, assembled in Imaginationland. As can be seen from these examples, Berry’s, Dunlap’s, and Nickoley’s innovative cue music and parodies of film music in South Park are already on the border of the actual subject of the plot, where the series becomes a show of musical satire. Thus it is important to turn to an overview of some episodes where musical issues stand at the very center of the show. Cartoons on Music: South Park and Musical Satire The plots with musical satire are the most obvious examples for fans and the current scholarly literature regarding what makes South Park musically interesting.28 There are good reasons for this. I would argue that many of these are South Park’s stronger episodes, demonstrating its greater talent for musicalcultural rather than political satire. Entire episodes focus on musical trends, values, and tastes from Christian rock to Guitar Hero: 22570.indd 152 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 18/11/2010 15:53 From Punk to the Musical 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 153 Table 7.1 List of South Park Episodes containing Musical Issues and Values at the Center of their Plot 1.10 2.14 3.15 3.17 4.4 4.9 4.14 7.1 7.5 7.9 8.5 9.2 11.13 12.13 Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo Chef Aid Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics World Wide Recorder Concert Timmy 2000 Something You Can Do With Your Finger Helen Keller! The Musical I’m a Little Bit Country Fat Butt and Pancake Head Christian Rock Hard You Got F’d In the A Die Hippie Die Guitar Queer-O Elementary School Musical Moreover, the following episodes have musical stars at their center: Table 7.2 List of South Park Episodes centering on Musical Stars 1.12 3.12 4.4 7.5 8.6 9.3 10.11 11.9 12.2 13.1 13.5 Mecha-Streisand—Barbra Streisand and Robert Smith Korn’s Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery—Korn Timmy 2000—Phil Collins Fat Butt and Pancake Head—Jennifer Lopez The Jeffersons—Michael Jackson Wing—Wing Hell on Earth 2006—Biggie Smalls More Crap—Bono Britney’s New Look—Britney Spears The Ring—Jonas Brothers Fishsticks—Kanye West The sheer number of music episodes prevents a comprehensive analysis of musical satire and parody in the series; furthermore, musical issues are not confined to these episodes, since there are moments of at least light musical parody, if not biting satire, in virtually every episode. Therefore, this section focuses on providing an overview of the allusions to popular music that link these episodes together. Specifically, I explore how these allusions deal with post-1960s tensions of race, gender, religion, and identity in music. Throughout the series, South Park weaves a complex web of popular music reference, a musical genre system as described in the introduction. While The Simpsons tends to assume considerable knowledge from its viewers of broad expanses of high and popular culture, South Park is directed more at pop and subcultural history concerned with Generations X and Y, which partly results from the show’s concern with current cultural events as comparable to a web log. The primarily male audience finds in these episodes 22570.indd 153 18/11/2010 15:53 154 Sean Nye the proper codes of pop-cultural capital—of being “in the know” but always maintaining the proper ironic distance as regards both subcultures and popular culture.29 Earlier, I mentioned the prominence of punk, rock, soul, pop, country, the musical, and blockbuster-film music for this genre system which contrasts with the styles of music prominent in the classic Hollywood cartoon. I have already discussed the role of the punk aesthetic and blockbuster-film music, so this section focuses on rock, pop, soul, country, and the musical. To be sure, a number of other popular traditions are prominent in the series, such as metal, hip-hop, and Goth music. All these traditions will be addressed, though they warrant greater examination than space allows. From these episodes, one can glean important recurring concerns in South Park regarding the course of popular music since the 1970s, which include: 1 2 3 4 5 minorities, music, and identity; religion, sex, and evil; American traditions from hippies to the musical; trends, commodification, and genuine musical commitment; music star cults. As an overview, I will mention some important scenes where these respective issues emerge in intriguing ways and are interlinked. As stated earlier, Parker and Stone, while interested in a wide variety of music, approach all musical traditions with the techniques of an anti-establishment punk aesthetic, often highlighting the conventionality of these musical histories and questioning their transcendent and/or political potential. The critique of identity politics has been one of South Park’s most sustaining foci in the 1990s backlash to political correctness. This critique was extended to include flat analogies of music and identity, a problem in film already pointed out by Theodor W. Adorno and Hanns Eisler in Composing for the Films.30 While these moments in South Park have often been critiqued, it is certain that in the history of animation during the twentieth century the cartoon medium has made possible the traffic in humor and stereotypes to a unique degree; South Park acknowledges, engages with, and arguably perpetuates this history through music. This is most clearly present in “Cartman’s Mom is a Dirty Slut” (Season 1, Episode 13), in which Cartman changes his identity, along with the musical background, each time he thinks he has found his real father. Stereotypes in excess are displayed by using music to highlight the conventionality of these stereotypes. Most memorable is the linking of African Americans and soul with the character Chef, who parodies the stereotype of the oversexed black man by combining sexual and musical soul food with such songs as “Love Gravy” (Season 1, Episode 1) and “Chocolate Salty Balls” (Season 2, Episode 9). South Park depoliticizes soul music and focuses on sexual rhetoric to reflect continued prejudice regarding black musical traditions in the USA. Especially in the first season, Chef provides musical numbers that are 22570.indd 154 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 18/11/2010 15:53 From Punk to the Musical 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 155 usually designed as pedagogy for the kids, but “they invariably become songs about sex and relationships whose satiric humor is beyond the full comprehension of the boys.”31 The soul singer-producer Isaac Hayes, voice of Chef, is himself associated with soul food imagery such as in his landmark album Hot Buttered Soul (1969) and is best known in film music for his Oscar-winning score of the blaxploitation film, Shaft (1971). Adam Berry confirms that Parker and Stone wrote the Chef songs and worked with Hayes personally when he sang them.32 As a television character, Chef highlights Hollywood’s typecasting of African Americans both during and after the history of blaxploitation with a logic of identity critique through exaggeration. An extension of this logic is found in the only African-American student at South Park Elementary, Token Black, who literally is the token black kid on the show.33 Identity critique through music is also explored with Token. When Cartman insists that Token can play bass because he is black, he actually does play bass (Season 7, Episode 9), parodying the force of belief stereotypes have. This moment admits the common, though often unstated, assumption that there is an element of truth to all stereotypes, a twisted but effective logic for maintaining prejudice. In such moments, South Park challenges viewers to examine the twisted logic of stereotypes themselves and their roles in truth, lies, and prejudice. At the same time, the show demands that viewers acknowledge and reflect upon the comedic resources and pleasure that caricatures and stereotypes can provide. In such ways, South Park works against the popular belief that racial caricature in Hollywood and prejudice in American culture is something of the past.34 Blaxploitation further linked African Americans to the 1970s panic about urban decay, and the Chef character often represents inner-city culture, seemingly out of place in this white mountain town. These allusions were updated by South Park after the Chef character faded from the series, for example, in the association of hip-hop and urban gangsters with the Crips (Season 7, Episode 2) and Biggie Smalls (Season 10, Episode 11).35 The history of white pop stars “borrowing” music from black musicians is also examined in “Chef Aid” (Season 2, Episode 10). The South Park kids organize a rock concert, itself called Chef Aid, where stars from Elton John to Ween perform in a parody of charity concerts such as Live Aid. The concert is designed to raise money for Chef in his legal battle with Capitalist Records and the use of his song “Stinky Britches” by their star Alanis Morissette. One of the most strident satires of star power and identity politics occurs in “Fat Butt and Pancake Head” (Season 7, Episode 5). This episode concerns Cartman’s hand puppet of Jennifer Lopez, who apparently comes alive and steals the career and boyfriend, Ben Affleck, from the actual Jennifer Lopez. With the puppet’s “spicy” music and songs like “Taco-Flavored Kisses,” again with allusions to advertisement jingles such as Taco Bell’s “Run for the Border,” the show critiques the pop industry’s methods of marketing identity. Ostensibly affirming diversity, pop culture’s commodification of culture is often the source of new stereotypes and the cheapening of the very musical traditions it 22570.indd 155 18/11/2010 15:53 156 Sean Nye attempts to market, a running theme in South Park. As Cartman tells the Lopez puppet: “Your style of music is so easy it doesn’t require any thought at all!” While there is a progressive aspect to this critique of identity politics and the ironic exposure of such conventions, South Park also tends toward the opposite extreme of emptying all minority traditions of real historical content, which is achieved from the perspective of hetero-normative white males. It is important to realize in the context of Jennifer Lopez that unlike many other sitcoms South Park features star appearances that are not benign cameos and promotional moments. The stars appear in contexts where musical values are put in question. In the first music-star episode, “Mecha-Streisand” (Season 1, Episode 12), Barbara Streisand becomes a Godzilla-like monster who battles Robert Smith, Goth-music star and head of the Cure. To be sure, the repeated accusation that Streisand is a “bitch” was indicative of a complicated politics of gender in relation to male and female stars and to music in general. I would argue that in this context South Park reproduces a gendered system of musical taste that, like Kyle’s and Stan’s morals, runs against the grain of South Park’s reputation as a program of ubiquitous and neutral ironic distance: put simply, men are associated with rock and women with pop. When female stars such as Madonna and Paris Hilton are ridiculed, the constant use of insults such as “bitch” and “whore” degrades them as women in a way that often does not distance the viewer from the convention. Male stars receive just as much flack, but they are countered with positive depictions of stars such as Korn and Robert Smith. Furthermore, when male stars are ridiculed, this often occurs by portraying them as effeminate or gay, thus implying that they fail as real men, as in the cases of Kenny G (Season 3, Episode 17), Michael Jackson (Season 8, Episode 6), and the Jonas Brothers (Season 13, Episode 1).36 In these moments, the show plays with American male anxieties and prejudices regarding music’s relation to femininity or gayness in a way that caters to its target demographic. Such moments demonstrate that, while musical irony and satire can be used as tools to some effect to critique prejudice, these practices still remain caught in gender, race, and class structures that themselves remain unchallenged. Part of the reason for the resignation to ironic practices is the post-1960s loss of faith in pop culture’s ability to resist commodification and to challenge the status quo. The most comprehensive episode in the tradition of satirizing pop commercialism was “Christian Rock Hard” (Season 7, Episode 9), which examines both religious and secular pop-music industries. During the culturalconservative backlash of the 1980s and 1990s, pop and rock musics were appropriated by successful Christian bands such as Creed (mentioned in the episode) and marketed as innocent music to teenagers. In this episode, South Park questions the authenticity and musical quality of these bands by demonstrating how easily Cartman can exploit a genre that is itself so easy to produce.37 The main artistic innovation needed, according to Cartman, is to change the addressee of love songs from “Baby” and “Darling” to “Jesus.” 22570.indd 156 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 18/11/2010 15:53 From Punk to the Musical 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 157 Though dogmatic atheism is mocked as well (Season 10, Episodes 12 and 13), this episode is exemplary of South Park’s continuous satirizing of religious traditions in what can be described as a Generation-X reform of American conservatism, critiquing conservative social values if not economic values. Cartman’s exploitative imagery and commercial success are then represented with the most inauthentic of musical practices: the “Greatest Hits” infomercial produced by K-Tal (a variation on the actual K-Tel record company best known for its own compilation-album commercials). His success occurs amidst Kyle and Stan’s attempt to rescue the music industry from illegal downloading, in which they are eventually joined by materialistic pop stars from Metallica to Britney Spears in the desire to hold on to their own wealth, an interesting comment on music economics in the age of the Internet. The episode thus highlights the utter sellout potentials of both religious and secular pop music at the turn of the century. By emphasizing the speed of commercial sellouts, Parker and Stone demonstrate a consistent skepticism regarding the political efficacy of both pop cultures and subcultures. While having good taste, taking pleasure in music, and not falling for lame trends is still important in itself, the limits of music’s role in society must be acknowledged, according to Parker and Stone. We already saw this perspective in the parody of philanthropic stars and charity concerts such as Live Aid. This critique is, however, extended to subcultures who think of themselves as outside of society, represented by the Goths who constantly attack “the conformists,” while conforming themselves (Season 8, Episode 5; Season 12, Episode 14). Though this skepticism is rooted in Generation X, Parker and Stone attempt both to negotiate the cultural heritage of the baby boomers and to engage with the new cultural trends of Generation Y. Stan’s father, Randy, is the lame liberal baby-boomer father who occasionally dreams of being a rock star while trying to remain cool. He recalls when he was in a boy band (Season 4, Episode 9), plays covers of Kansas on his old electric guitar (Season 11, Episode 13), and, in the most important episode in this engagement with the heritage of the baby boomers, “Die Hippie Die” (Season 9, Episode 2), he reminiscences about Woodstock. In this episode, Cartman must rid the town of the massive “Hippie Jam Fest 2005,” comparable to major festivals from Woodstock to Burning Man, where the liberal but self-indulgent hippies plan to use “the power of rock and roll to change the world! Woo!” Cartman’s various attempts at the pesticide removal of hippies fail until he finally disperses them by drilling through the crowd to the main stage and playing a CD of the metal band Slayer. This music causes the crowd to flee because “[it] is so angry.”38 Here, dissonant sounds and anger are shown to be the source of South Park’s cultural humor and irony, because punk and metal are rooted in an engagement with negativity. Musical forms that come across as too positive and sweet are thus ripe for mockery. In the final scene, Cartman plays with a toy bulldozer as his reward for defeating the left-liberal conflation of politics and musical entertainment; Kyle must observe 22570.indd 157 18/11/2010 15:53 158 Sean Nye Cartman’s triumph in this micro-image of a Cartman ecstatic moment in the simple utopia of child’s play. In a sense, Cartman as a character takes on the bizarre form of a child punk as conservative sellout, because he displays the traditional punk hatred for hippies while being more invested in commercialism than any other kid. The later seasons of South Park have also demonstrated an increased engagement with new musical trends of Generation Y (and an emerging Generation Z).39 Boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync are mocked in “Something You Can Do With Your Finger” (Season 4, Episode 9), with the boys’ memorably named band “Fingerbang” and hit song of the same name, while the Jonas Brothers’ claims to purity, and by extension the entire Disney music industry, are dismissed as false in “The Ring” (Season 13, Episode 1). The kids even demonstrate amazement at the levels of commodification and bad taste that the new trends of Generation Y and Z can take. In “Elementary School Musical” (Season 12, Episode 13), after they watch Disney’s High School Musical (2006), Cartman throws up his hands and says, in a tone that seems to make him the mouthpiece of the Generation-X creators, “This is cool? We are really getting old you guys,” after which he declares he does not understand the world anymore and prepares to commit suicide. To be sure, gender politics are again used to satirize the musical, where the new kid, Bridon, is repeatedly slapped by his sissy musical-loving father because he would rather be a “sweaty little jock.” The new childhood and teen interests in High School Musical are thus viewed in South Park as a crisis of masculinity and a horrible betrayal of the traditions of rock. This earlier rock history and its Generation-X roots are lovingly parodied by Parker and Stone in “Timmy 2000” (Season 4, Episode 4). The physically and mentally handicapped kid, Timmy, becomes lead singer of the new band, Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld, and the band rocks out as the headliner of Lalapalalapaza (a parodic name for the actual music festival, Lollapalooza). This satire of Generation-Y Disney musicals returns us to issues of film music and entertainment. Whereas we saw the role blockbuster-film music played in the intradiegetic practices, conventions of the musical play important roles in the diegesis of many episodes. In terms of the Generation-X cultural references and the gender politics of satire, issues become particularly complex when examining South Park’s engagement with this genre. Parker’s admitted obsession with the musical feels something like a historical anomaly to his Generation-X engagement with rock, punk, and other pop-music genres, especially given that the musical remains closely associated with the 1930s and 1940s. Despite the sissy insults regarding High School Musical, the classic musical is certainly appreciated for both its music and cultural legacy. Indeed, Parker’s fascination with the musical as a genre is reflective of the show’s complicated resentment, and yet attachment to, the extreme positivity of Hollywood entertainment. Yet South Park resists the musical to 22570.indd 158 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 18/11/2010 15:53 From Punk to the Musical 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 159 the extent that it satirizes the light and spectacular topics of the classic Hollywood or Disney musical with an episode entitled “Helen Keller! The Musical” (Season 4, Episode 14).40 This episode presents the genre as an American cultural legacy connected with school institutions forced upon the kids. The episode is a satirical presentation of holidays, culture, and history where the kids are mostly concerned about beating the kindergartners in the holiday play competition. In this self-referential world of post-1960s pop culture, access to history remains mediated through the musical, television, and spectacle, such as in the memorable parody of Ken Burns’ PBS series The Civil War (1990), the History Channel, and battle reenactments in “The Red Badge of Gayness” (Season 3, Episode 14). The musical thus appears in the context of parodies of American film and television entertainment, with careful attention to a wide range of formats from music videos to holiday specials.41 South Park’s negotiation of American values, history, and media through the music genre system is represented and summed up with striking directness in the 100th episode, “I’m a Little Bit Country” (Season 7, Episode 1), in which battles over the Iraq War erupt in the town. The fight regarding America’s values is negotiated here by white males, either classified as hick conservatives who love country or middle-class liberals who love rock ’n’ roll. Actual historical knowledge is denied the town’s people. So Cartman’s method of historical education is to have a flashback to the American Revolution in the style of the musical, 1776 (1972). As an ironic tribute, where he sings a musical number “Look at me! I’m back in time in 1776!” as he passes through colonial America. He then sings “I Don’t Want to Wait” by Paula Cole, the theme song from the series symbolic of American wholesomeness, Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003), as he kills a messenger so that he himself can deliver the Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress. Finally, he returns to the present and resolves the conflict between the protesters with his lesson learned from the Continental Congress: the “have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too” conclusion, the original version of the “dick-pussy-asshole” conclusion in Team America: World Police (2004) and a most cynical form of dialectic—in other words, to keep up its positive image, America needs to appear for and against the war at the same time. The conservative straight white male, Skeeter, and the liberal straight white male, Randy, then celebrate their differences by performing a version of “I’m a Little Bit Country,” made famous on the Donny & Marie show (1976–1979). Country and rock ’n’ roll resolve their political quarrels. Indeed, this meeting of musical and political satire, in an attempt to defuse genuine conflict over music and political values, shows South Park at its most skeptical and flippant regarding taking sides in very serious and complex debates. A retreat back into the world of commodified pop culture and comedy seems to be the only answer left, as the final line in their satiric cover of Donny and Marie’s song announces, “For the war? Against the war? Who cares! 100 episodes!” 22570.indd 159 18/11/2010 15:53 160 Sean Nye Conclusion South Park is a sitcom saturated with music and musical judgments on multiple levels. The sheer density of musical and pop-cultural allusions creates a Generation-X referential world unto itself, in which Parker and Stone demonstrate a complex love–hate relationship with the mounds of cultural detritus from both their cultural childhood and adulthood. In the engagement with these various trends, Parker and Stone repeatedly show a rootedness in the culture of the 1970s and 1980s when punk and metal music were at their height of popularity. Their negative practices of satire have already inspired off-shoots and musical samples, including the breakcore tracks “Cripplefight” by Droon and Kid 606’s “Rudestyleindiejunglistmassive.” While I have shown Parker and Stone’s practice to be rooted in punk-rock experiences, I also argue that the aesthetics of negativity and irony at times turns into the disparaging of others from the position of the hetero-normative macho male, similar to how pop punk later became marketed to adolescents.42 Indeed, while trying to balance the most influential musical genres of its period, South Park reflects, carries forward, and remains caught in the aporias of its generation. They are aporias which often result in, as Stephen Groening has pointed out by drawing on Peter Sloterdijk, the position of the “enlightened false consciousness” of cynicism.43 This consciousness, a complex figure that marks the limits of Enlightenment, is hyper-aware and educated regarding the manipulation of the public, social strife, and injustice, and yet it clings to the status quo and realism, lacking the practical answers and political will to combat these problems. As I have tried to show here, if one cannot find a firm stance in South Park, then at many moments its music can have more to say than the ostensible semantic clarity of its political dialogue.44 South Park by no means stands alone. The exploration of cartoons that engage new music genres and new formats for Generations X and Y, from Jem and the Holograms (1985–1988) to Metalocalypse (2006–) will reveal striking changes in cartoon-music culture. Though not musical through and through like the Warner and MGM classics were, these new cartoons demonstrate that the cartoon continues to be an important medium for the engagement with music and musical values. Acknowledgments Many thanks to Adam Berry for the interview, and to Tyler Friedmann, Stephen Groening, Thomas Kwong, Emily Lechner, Richard Leppert, Elaine McLemore, Deniz Rudin, Sarah Stephens, and Joe Tompkins for reviewing various drafts of this article. This article is dedicated to Seth Nye, dear brother and cartoon companion. 22570.indd 160 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 18/11/2010 15:53 From Punk to the Musical 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 161 Notes 1 Wendy Hilton-Morrow and David T. McMahan, “The Flintstones to Futurama: RKS and Prime Time Animation,” in Carol A. Stabile and Mark Harrison (eds.), Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 74–88; Michael V. Tueth, Laughter in the Living Room: Comedy and the American Home Audience (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 191–204. 2 Jason Mittell, Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 56–93. 3 Brian L. Ott, “ ‘Oh My God, They Digitized Kenny!’ Travels in the South Park Cybercommunity V4.0,” in Carol A. Stabile and Mark Harrison (eds.), Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 220. 4 Daniel Goldmark, Tunes for ‘Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005). 5 To be sure, new genres have been cropping up in cartoons over many decades. Rock cartoons were already prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s. See Jake Austen, “Rock ’n’ Roll Cartoons,” in Daniel Goldmark and Yuval Taylor (eds.), The Cartoon Music Book (Chicago, IL: A Cappella Books, 2002), pp. 173–191. With this in mind, South Park could be described as a morphing of the rock-cartoon tradition (usually for children) into a cartoon sitcom for adults, where, as a result of its focus on satire and ironic parody, numerous other genres find their place in the series. 6 Matt Becker, “ ‘I Hate Hippies’: South Park and the Politics of Generation X,” in Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (ed.), Taking South Park Seriously (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008), pp. 145–164. In most accounts, the baby boomers refers to the postwar generation born between 1945 and 1960, while Generation X consists of people born between 1960 and 1975 and Generation Y of people born between 1975 and 1995. 7 I employ Ron Rodman’s distinction of extradiegetic and intradiegetic space (Tuning In, pp. 53–58). Intradiegetic music remains within the story world of the narrative (roughly corresponding to nondiegetic film music), whereas extradiegetic music is that of advertisements, station identifications, etc. This music is an essential part of the flow of television programming, but it is not part of the actual narrative world. Thus, intra- and extradiegetic space, and the transitional music between both spaces such as act-in and act-out themes, is what makes the television-music experience distinct from strictly intradiegetic film music. 8 See, for example, Brian C. Anderson, South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing Inc., 2005), pp. 75–88. 9 Trey Parker and Matt Stone, “Charlie Rose: A Conversation with Trey Parker and Matt Stone,” September 26, 2005, available online at http://www.charlierose.com/ view/interview/722 (accessed April 27, 2010). In this context, Parker’s reference of Los Angeles means the Hollywood entertainment industry considered to be politically liberal. 10 Fred Pfeil, “Postmodernism as a ‘Structure of Feeling,’ ” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 391–400. 11 Ott, “Oh My God, They Digitized Kenny!” p. 221. 12 See Robert Seidman, “Flash Forward, Dancing with the Stars No Match for SpongeBob on Internet,” available online at http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/09/30/flashforward-dancing-with-the-stars-no-match-for-spongebob-on-internet/29126 (accessed April 27, 2010); and Robert Seidman, “HitWise: SpongeBob Still Absorbing the 22570.indd 161 18/11/2010 15:53 162 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 22570.indd 162 Sean Nye Internet,” available online at http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/02/26/hitwise-spongebob-still-absorbing-the-internet/43165 (accessed April 27, 2010). Ron Rodman, Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 20–21, 103. Lynn Spigel, Making Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 50–60; Andrew Dell’Antonio, “Florestan and Butt-Head: A Glimpse into Postmodern Music Criticism,” American Music, 17 (1) (1999): 65–86. Furthermore, even if their minds are corrupted by the Internet, their bodies are fiercely defended from internet predators, such as in the episode “Cartman Joins NAMBLA” (Season 4, Episode 6). Allen Larson, “Re-drawing the Bottom Line,” in Carol A. Stabile and Mark Harrison (eds.), Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 55–73. Jeffery Andrew Weinstock, “Introduction,” in Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (ed.), Taking South Park Seriously (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008), pp. 10–11. Dell’Antonio, “Florestan and Butt-Head,” p. 65. Dell’Antonio, “Florestan and Butt-Head,” p. 67. See Appendix, p. 000. See Appendix, p. 000. See Appendix, p. 000. This identification is invoked in many episodes where Stan and Kyle question why they are still friends with Cartman, a theme that can be interpreted as the series also asking the viewers why they remain fans of Cartman. Various, Chef Aid: The South Park Album, American Recordings 491700 2, 1998. See Appendix, p. 000. Berry states regarding a key scene from “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe” (Season 1, Episode 1): “when Cartman had a giant probe coming out of his butt, I used harmonies that you would find in a blockbuster movie that takes place in outer space.” Anahid Kassabian, Hearing Film: Tracking Identifications in Contemporary Hollywood Film Music (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 7–8. The references to Hollywood films are so prevalent that they could be the subject of an entire article. For example, “Super Fun Time” (Season 12, Episode 7) parodies Die Hard, “Grey Dawn” (Season 7, Episode 10) parodies Red Dawn, and “Red Sleigh Down” (Season 6, Episode 17) parodies Black Hawk Down. Hollywood montage sequences are often mocked, such as the parody of the romance montage in “Fat Butt and Pancake Head” (Season 7, Episode 5), where Ben Affleck falls in love with Cartman’s hand-puppet version of Jennifer Lopez. A montage of intimate scenes is played to the tune of the puppet’s song “Oh Ben, you are so perfect . . .” In “Make Love, Not Warcraft” (Season 10, Episode 8), the heroic training montage is parodied with the transformation of the boys into computer game slobs. And in “The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers” (Season 6, Episode 13), Parker and Stone celebrate The Lord of the Rings trilogy with pride (after all, they are members of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy generation), while having Cartman ridicule a group of stupid kids who are playing Harry Potter. Furthermore, Parker and Stone demonstrate a particular fascination with making parodies of blockbuster commercial and/or artistic failures, such as the films Volcano (1997) in “Volcano” (Season 1, Episode 3) and The Core (2003) in “Die Hippie Die” (Season 9, Episode 2). Like the reference to obscure Saturday-morning cartoons in Imaginationland, these allusions demonstrate the intricate web of associations and bizarre forms of attachment to the particularly kitschy and trashy products of Hollywood. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 18/11/2010 15:53 From Punk to the Musical 163 28 Jason Boyd and Marc R. Plamondon, “Orphic Persuasions and Siren Seductions: Vocal Music in South Park,” in Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (ed.), Taking South Park Seriously (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008), pp. 59–77; Per F. Broman, “Aesthetic Value, Ethos, and Phil Collins: The Power of Music in South Park,” in Robert Arp (ed.), South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 236–249. 29 These attitudes are comparable to Sarah Thornton’s descriptions of subcultural capital in Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996), 11–12. 30 Theodor W. Adorno and Hanns Eisler, Composing for the Films (London: Continuum, 2007), pp. 8–9. Originally published in 1947. 31 Boyd and Plamondon, “Orphic Persuasions and Siren Seductions,” p. 66. 32 See Appendix, p. 000. 33 Tokenism also affects Chef’s cultural coding, which exists on two levels. He is the only black man in South Park, thus acting as a site of projection regarding the entirety of black culture for the white townspeople. However, he is also a figure of 1970s soul music connected like Isaac Hayes both to urban life and the rural South, which Parker and Stone self-reflexively mine but which are out of place historically and culturally in South Park. 34 For an analysis of race and ethnicity in South Park, see Lindsay Coleman, “Shopping at J-Mart with the Williams: Race, Ethnicity, and Belonging in South Park,” in Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (ed.), Taking South Park Seriously (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008), pp. 131–141. 35 After his role as a main character in the first season, Chef’s appearances gradually diminished in the subsequent seasons. The Chef character was eventually cancelled in the ninth season after Isaac Hayes, a practicing Scientologist, quit as a result of Parker’s and Stone’s depiction of Scientology (Season 9, Episode 12). 36 I would argue this trend toward gendered satire was implicitly acknowledged by the series in “Britney’s New Look” (Season 12, Episode 2). The episode surprises expectations by not ridiculing Britney Spears, which is exactly the opposite of what fans might expect regarding South Park’s view of her. After all, Britney was part of the commercial sellouts (Season 7, Episode 9) and the “stupid spoiled whores” (Season 8, Episode 12) in previous episodes. Instead of ridiculing Britney, it focuses on the obsessed media attention around her. Basing the episode in part on Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” this media attention appears to be the preparation of a ritual sacrifice. When Britney realizes that the paparazzi chase will never end, she blows off half her head with a shotgun but miraculously survives. She walks around like the real-life headless chicken “Mike” and makes gurgling noises, but the press writes it off as a “new look.” She even gurgles out songs in the recording room and at the MTV Awards, but instead of complaining that half her head is gone, the audience complains about her chubbiness and lip-syncing. This is not necessarily a defense of Britney, however, but rather a satire of the media and fans. 37 He utters some disparaging lines regarding Christian rock music: “It’s the easiest crappiest music in the world, right? If we just play songs about how much we love Jesus, all the Christians will buy our crap!” (Season 7, Episode 9). 38 The failure of these older rock traditions is further demonstrated in the episode “Guitar Queer-O” (Season 11, Episode 13), which innovatively mixes a VH1 “Behind the Music” documentary style with the obsession for musical video games rather than actual musicianship. 39 A generation still to be defined, Generation Z usually refers to people born between 1995 and the present. 40 The most important example of the parodic engagement with the musical remains the musical film: South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 22570.indd 163 18/11/2010 15:53 164 Sean Nye 41 The show’s eight Christmas specials play with commercialism, naive sincerity, and the holiday season, mining popular television specials from A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) to John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together (1979). The late-modern negotiation between Jewish, Christian, and secular practices was set in “Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo” (Season 1, Episode 10), which included memorable songs such as Kyle’s “I’m a Jew, a Lonely Jew, on Christmas.” The elimination of religious traditions in the school musical even concludes with the performance of “abstract” minimal music of by Philip Glass. See Robert Fink, Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), pp. xii–xiii. An album was released called Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics (Columbia CK 62224, 1999), which resulted in a musical episode of the same title. This album contains impressive parodies of religious music such as Satan’s “Christmas Time in Hell” and Mr./Mrs. Garrison’s “Merry Fucking Christmas.” Consistent with their mocking of Christmas music is their positively Satanic episode “Critter Christmas” (Season 8, Episode 14) and celebration of Halloween, horror, and evil in “Korn’s Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery” (Season 3, Episode 12). The causal relation of music and evil is questioned by comparing the band Korn to the innocent Mystery Gang in a tribute to Scooby-Doo. The town condemns Korn as Satanists though the band redeems itself by solving the mystery of the pirate ghosts, and they celebrate with a metal performance. 42 To be sure, the position of negative critique can turn back onto these genres’ links to the male subject. At the end credits of “Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride” (Season 1, Episode 4), for example, DVDA’s song “Now You’re a Man” plays— with Parker’s absurdly exaggerated male voice demonstrating the ironic distance of men to manhood. 43 Stephen Groening, “Cynicism and Other Postideological Half Measures in South Park,” in Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (ed.), Taking South Park Seriously (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008), pp. 113–129. 44 Finding meaning is particularly challenging given Parker and Stone’s occasional satirizing of academia and interpretations of cultural meaning in the show, for example in “The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs” (Season 14, Episode 2). As such, though this article is devoted to South Park as a fascinating cultural object, its project apparently runs against the grain of the spirit of South Park. 22570.indd 164 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 100 111 122 133 144 155 166 177 188 199 200 211 222 233 244 255 266 277 288 299 300 311 322 333 344 355 366 377 388 399 400 411 422 433 444 18/11/2010 15:53