The culture I chose to write about is the popular cartoon, TV show South Park. It is important to discuss because it is not your typical cartoon, where it is for kids to watch, it is a cartoon intended for mature viewers. It kind of broke away from those typical cartoons for kids and was one of the first and more popular cartoons for mature viewers. I think they are critiques to the dominant ideology of a typical eight year old because all of them are portrayed as bad, rebellious kids (for the most part), but in real life a lot of kids are not looked at that they.
South Park is just a cartoon that centers around the four main characters, Eric Cartman, Kyle Broflovski, Stan Marsh, and Kenny McCormick. They all live in a fictional town named South Park that is supposed to be in the mountains of Colorado. Cartman is the obnoxious one that nobody likes; Kyle is the Jewish, red headed guy that gets made fun of by Cartman. Stan is the all around nice guy and Kyle best friend, and Kenny is the poor one that no one really acknowledges. They are all in the fourth grade and half of the time in the show the setting is at school. Every episode they go on or have an adventure that leads to some other bigger problem.
Almost every episode shows many examples of how they are rebellious against their teacher(s), parents, etc. An example of rebellion they show is in the episode named “The Jefferson’s.” They meet a man and go to his house and found out it is like a carnival and they just want to hang out there. There parents then find out and are really worried about them going to a strangers house. Against there parents command they all go back to his house and hang out there again. Another episode that Cartman shows rebellion is the episode named “Ginger Kids.” In this episode Cartman leads a rebellion against kids with red hair and freckles. But his ways soon change when he wakes up morning with red hair and freckles because of a prank his friend pulled on him. There are a lot more other examples in the show of rebellion and how they break away from the dominant ideology of typical elementary school kids.
3 comments:
I agree with your post 100% South Park does break from the dominant idealogy actions of elementry school kids , that a group of young adults can understand. There jokes shouldnt be taken seriously its just comedty show. - Ian T
I agree, south park is a comedy and not something kids should look up to. Hopefully, most kids would understand and not do the stuff that the southpark kids do.
I disagree. For the most part yeah, they aren't very exemplary kids. But at the same time I feel like thats kinda how kids are now. We learn about "things" at a very young age now. I've had a conversation with a ten year old not to long ago telling me about all the things that he and his friends talk about. Drugs and sex and things kids shouldn't even really know about in detail yet. I think that South Park as a show apart from being funny to watch its also a sarcastic cynical look at how kids are growing up now a days and how they lose their innocence at such a young age. The kids of south park elementary are just an exaggerated version of youth in america today.
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