Adults watching children watch South Park - Kristen A. Barr

For fifteen years South Park has shocked viewers with its ‘crude, scatological humour and political insensitivity’ (Weinstock, 2008) and has a strong following of children and young adult viewers despite the MA -not suitable for audiences under 17- rating. Nixon (1999) reports ‘In Australia, my school teacher colleagues report that their students can be overheard using such common South Park expressions as “Holy Crap, dude!” and “kick ****!” Due to its popularity, Nixon argues that South Park ‘requires serious consideration for the significant questions it raises about the relations between childhood and adulthood’. It has been twelve years since Nixon wrote her paper Adults watching children watch South Park but considering 2011 saw South Park televise its 15^th Season, an opening of the writers Broadway musical ‘The Book of Mormon’ and a contract for South Park until 2013 with the potential of continuing the questions Nixon raised are still as relevant today as they were twelve years ago.

South Park no doubt appealed to its audience and especially teens and young adults because it was the ‘bad boy of cartoons’. It was rebellious to anything like it at the time, and teenagers prone to rebellion than any other age group were attracted to its appeal contributing to South Parks’ largest viewer base. Nixon (1999) reports ‘ South Park has attracted over a million viewers , of these viewers 60% are teens (13-17) and young adults’. Fanpop blogger dilly53 (2009) recalls ‘Twelve years ago I sat at a friend’s house, doing my best to stay awake. We were waiting for midnight, for the very first episode of South Park to air. I can still remember how excited I was, this show was supposed to be funnier and more vulgar than "Beavis and Butthead" or "Ren and Stimpy". Which at the time were considered to be the "bad cartoons" that kids would watch behind their parents back. As everyone knows the first episode was about Cartman getting an anal probe. That was a big deal at the time. Parents freaked out about the show, kids were banned from wearing South Park merchandise from schools. I myself was suspended for wearing a t-shirt with a dead Kenny on it’.

In 1998 a boy tragically committed suicide ‘telling his parents to watch South Park to learn why’ (Brown, 1998) and this naturally reflects the moral panic associated with violence on television although a South Park scriptorium website (1999) explains ‘As Kenny is stifled so you can’t understand what he’s saying, the boy must have felt that no one understood what he was going through, and he couldn’t find a way to make them understand. His last effort was to have his parents see South Park’s Kenny so they couldn’t understand their son’s anguish’. With this in mind it is not surprising that Nixon reports in 1999, only one year after the reported suicide that ‘Kenny is frequently the subject of schoolyard chat and improvised conversations’. Silverstone (1999, cited in Quigley & Blashki, 2003) argues ‘for the parent television may represent an external source of knowledge/corruption that enables the dissolution of the boundaries between domestic/public and adult/child, whereas, for the child who has grown up with television, this media may form part of conception of ‘home’. In regards to South Park’s popular character Kenny, Nixon (1999) adds ‘there might also be productive ways of thinking about the appeal of Kenny’s death for children. It is possible, for example, so see this pattern as a contemporary illustration of that well-known mythic pattern of the literary hero’s death, rebirth, and renewal. It is also possible to understand children’s enjoyment of South Park as an example of an age-old narrative pleasure: the delightful anticipation of something inevitable and the gradual revelation of details about when and how it will happen.

We cannot return children to the secret garden of childhood, or find the magic key that will keep them forever locked within its walls. Children are escaping into the wider adult world -- a world of danger and opportunities, in which the electronic media are playing an ever more important role. The age in which we could hope to protect children from the world is passing. We must have the courage to prepare them to deal with it, to understand it, and to become more active participants in their own right – Buckingham (N.D. cited in Quigley, 2000)

As discussed throughout the unit Youth, Popular Culture, and Texts (2011: CLN647) concerns about youth and its culture are not new and can be traced back to ancient Greek and Roman societies. Popular culture according to Quigley (2000) has almost always been considered a threat to young people. ‘It has been associated with leisure or with the borderline area between family, school or work in which the control of guardians or supervisors has been limited or non-existent. The recurring attacks on popular culture have therefore been lodged primarily by representatives of these spheres: from parents, teachers, or others who concern themselves with young people’s spiritual and moral upbringing’ (Quigley, 2000).

Media play an increasingly significant role in defining the cultural experiences of contemporary childhood. Children can no longer be excluded from these media and the things they represent; nor can they be confined to material that adults perceive to be good for them. The attempt to protect children by restricting their access to media is doomed to fail. On the contrary, we now need to pay much closer attention to how we prepare children to deal with these experiences; and in doing so; we need to stop defining them simply in terms of what they lack. Buckingham (cited in Quigley, 2000) argues that children will only become competent media users if they are treated as though they are competent. Whilst admitting that there may be a case for special protection for the very young, he believes that most age-based restrictions on media texts are anachronistic. In addition he argues it is no longer possible to protect children from media even if it were desirable since the development of new media and the growing access to technology has resulted in more privatised and fragmented audiences, making parental and governmental control increasingly difficult. At the same time, boundaries between texts for children and adults are becoming increasingly blurred and audiences are more sophisticated. Buckingham (cited in Quigley, 2000) advocates regulation that is advisory rather than enforced and the need to consult and involve children in policy formation. “The practice of transgenerational address, I would argue, provides new opportunities for communication between adults and the young at media sites such as the South Park programme. Media is enabling the erosion of the child/youth/adult boundaries, allowing for the realisation that the path to citizenship is a continuum bound up with and dependent upon interaction with media texts”.

References

Brown, L. (1998) The Southeast Missourian: Suicide note cites ‘South Park’ cartoon. Available October 9, 2011 from http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1893&dat=19980523&id=_v4wAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VN0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=5896,3868420

Dilly53 (2009) Fanpop: My Good-bye to South Park. Available October 10, 2011 from http://www.fanpop.com/spots/south-park/articles/12576/title/good-bye-south-park

Nixon, Helen (1999) Adults watching children watch South Park. Available October 10, 2011 from http://acad.depauw.edu/~aevans/HONR101-02/WebPages/Fall2009/Paul/SFSP/adultswatchingsouthpark.pdf

Quigley, M. (2000) The Politics of Animation: South Park. Metro, (124/125), 48 [Online Submission]. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Quigley, M. & Blashki, K. (2003) Beyond the Boundaries of the Secret Garden: Children and the Internet. Available October 10, 2011 from http://www.aace.org/pubs/etr/issue4/quigley.pdf

South Park Scriptorium (1999) The SP Timeline 1991 – 1999. Available October 10, 2011 from http://www.spscriptorium.com/SPinfo/SPTimeline1990s.htm

Weinstock, Jeffrey A (2008) Taking South Park Seriously. Available October 9, 2011 from http://www.sunypress.edu/p-4663-taking-south-park-seriously.aspx