South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut
A Study of a Postmodern Musical
Since the 1960s, production of musicals in Hollywood has declined steadily, and the musicals that are produced are usually geared toward children or adolescents, or considered an auteur project (Altman 121). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Oscar-nominated films Moulin Rouge and Chicago drew attention to a possible revival of the musical as a viable genre in America. While Chicago was a adaptation of the hit Broadway musical of the same name, other original films that choose the musical format tend to use the conventions of the musical to make a point, to facilitate the message, such as Moulin Rouge, whose spectacle, heightened emotion, and use of popular love songs served to produce a film that recreated the feeling of being in love. A few years earlier in 1999, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators, writers, directors, and voices of the popular animated television series South Park broadcast on the American cable channel Comedy Central, used the opportunity for the first full-length feature incarnation of their small-town world about crude young boys to continue the biting social commentary and shocking humor that is typical of the show, but also to create a sophisticated postmodern musical of pastiche, satire, and show tunes.
For people unfamiliar with Parker and Stone’s work, the choice of a musical format might seem surprising, but the musical is a format that recurs throughout their careers. Trey Parker was a music major in college, and he and Stone’s first live-action, low-budget features Cannibal: The Musical and Orgazmo were both musicals. South Park the television series sometimes did include music as well, though usually in Christmas specials. With the movie version of the television series, Parker and Stone take two well-known genres—the musical and the animated film—combine them (an act very common, for example, in Disney films), and create a film that mirrors the conventions of the genres while also overturning the traditional ideologies of each, producing hilarity as well as scathing social satire. In an article on the gender politics of the film, Judith Kegan Gardiner points to “its sophisticated intertextuality vying with its traditional musical score and simplified cartoon visuals,” which all works to place the film well within the boundaries set by Rick Altman in his book on the genre The American Film Musical (Gardiner 51).
The choice of animation for South Park, first for the show, and then the movie, serves many purposes. Firstly, the animation removes many limitations of filming and makes possible elaborate spectacle on a lower budget. Secondly, the animation has a dual function of putting the viewer off-guard—making the crude humor edgier and more shocking, since animation is typically the medium for children’s fare, something South Park is definitely not—and alternately, making the shocking words and actions of the boys easier to swallow since the colorful and (deceivingly) crude animation seemingly softens the content. Combined with numbers that a viewer easily recognizes as typical moments in a musical, Parker and Stone have set up a platform well supported by genre on which to tell their story. To ensure that their film has genuine musical credentials, Marc Shaiman, an award-winning composer, is brought in to help Parker compose the score. The back cover of the DVD for the film promises, “If you’re male or female or of any particular ethnic, sexual, religious or national persuasion, you may be offended by this movie. Or perhaps this movie may make you laugh more than any other recent comedy”; like the slogans of early musicals that promised all-singing all-dancing spectacle, Parker and Stone promise to break taboos and deliver comedy.
If utilizing the three subgenres of the American musical as established by Rick Altman (fairy tale, show, folk), South Park could easily be identified as a folk musical, though it has elements of a show musical in it as well. Gardiner even makes the case for South Park combining all three:
South Park’s pleasures derive from its evocation and alteration of familiar genres. South Park utilizes the musical’s conventions for character, plot, setting, and musical numbers, yet is fresh approach transforms pastiche to enliven the animated adult film musical….Altman’s taxonomies of the musical fit South Park at every turn—and, indeed, turned they are. The movie shares some elements with all three subgenres that Altman describes, the ‘show,’ ‘folk,’ and ‘fairy tale’ musical forms (52).
She points out that the film has Disney and fairy tale qualities, such as “young people going on magic quests,” a boy trying to win the love of a girl, good and evil characters, and parents blocking children’s desires (52). The film’s culmination at a USO show and its film-within-a-film subplot also employ elements of the show musical. However, South Park is above all a folk musical, one that reinforces community, though that community may not be traditional. According to Gardiner, South Park has folk elements “with its frequently collective protagonists, nostalgic settings, intergenerational themes, and the ensemble of everyday characters who may all burst into song for any occasion….Of course, these populist themes are evoked only to be mocked in South Park” (53).
The film opens with music swelling over the visuals of a snow-capped mountain, birds chirping (and even holding the title card), and the boy Stan singing the praises of his quiet “Mountain Town.” The opening number takes the viewer through a typical Sunday morning in town of South Park, with families waking up, people shopping, and others going to church. The song seems happy and refreshing, but Parker and Stone undercut the snappy music with lyrics that immediately set up the dichotomies that will be exploited throughout the film. The idyllic (snow-covered mountains) is contrasted with the mundane (Cartman sitting on a sofa stuffing his face with junk food). Stan sees a homeless person lying in the street, but sings that “you just don’t care,” and then comments on the politeness of people, just as a man snaps at him, “Get out of my way.” Stan’s mother compares him to Jesus, “tender and mild,” just as Stan sneaks off to see an R-rated film. And throughout the song, even as Stan is praising his town, he also points out its flaws—redneck, white bread, podunk. Parker and Stone show the audience a different small town than the one usually praised in folk musicals; it is not “dark,” but simply has problems like every other locale. In their book on the musical, Bruce Babington and Peter William Evans point out “the pastoral [folk] musical can be significantly illuminated by seeing it as a specific lyrical embodiment of the anti-urban tendency” (142). South Park from the beginning condemns this simplified view of the small town usually portrayed in folk musicals.
Babington and Evans claim, “The pastoral musical is also family-centred” (144); South Park does concentrate on the family, and the extended family of community, but shows their flaws as well as joys. After Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman sneak off to enjoy the crude film Terrance and Phillip: Asses of Fire (a clever film-within-a-film parody of themselves and their own movie that Parker and Stone use as a plot point in the film), their mothers are appalled by their use of foul language they learned from Terrance and Phillip. The boys are quite creative and vulgar with their swearing (“donkey-raping shit-eater”), but Cartman also succinctly points out that the dreaded f-word does not hurt any one (which he demonstrates by repeating it, “fuckity fuck fuck,” and no, the world does not end). However, a few days later, Kenny, copying a prank from the movie (setting a fart on fire), severely injures himself, and then dies on the operating table. Now the livid parents, led by Kyle’s mom Shelia Broflovski, become adamant in stopping the children’s crude language; they form a coalition entitled Blame Canada (Terrance and Phillip are from Canada), and set out to rid America of the filthy Canadians’ influence. The Oscar-nominated song of the same name that overlays a montage of the coalition forming is a brilliant commentary on the tendency of parents to points fingers at the myriad of sources for their children’s problems, but never themselves. When asking who to blame for Kenny’s death, they sing,
Should we blame the government,
Or should we blame the fire,
Or the doctors who allowed him to expire?
Heck no! Blame Canada!
At the end of the song, they claim,
We must blame them and make a fuss
Before someone thinks of blaming us!
Meanwhile, as the parents are forming the group, protesting Canadian exports, marching on Washington, and ultimately leading the U.S. into war with Canada, their children sit at home alone.
As Parker and Stone point out the defects in the conventional American family and the overreactions of community, they also show an alternative—the small group of friends. Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny (before his death) are constantly together—playing, talking, planning; even when they argue, they stick together. As their parents abandon them to protest Terrance and Phillip, they are left to look out for each other, and in the end, save the world from their parents’ careless actions and reestablish the idyllic community. Ironically, the children are the ones with the most sense, the ones who care about the big and small issues. For example, Kyle’s younger brother Ike is adopted and a Canadian, a fact his mother Sheila seems to forget; while she is in Washington organizing the internment of Canadians in America, Kyle hides Ike in their attic so he will not be taken away. In South Park, the traditional family is not perfect, and sometimes even fails to hold the family together.
Besides family and community, Altman claims that the couple is the center of every musical, and that two sides of love, embodied in man and woman, coming together is the culmination of the plot (24). However, the restoration of the community in South Park is not contingent on the union of a heterosexual couple. A small subplot of young love between Stan and Wendy hardly qualifies as the hinge on which the fate of the community rests. In a brilliant inversion, South Park shows its satirical acumen—the continuation of the community relies not on the union of a couple, but the disintegration of one, and not a heterosexual couple, but a homosexual one. Satan, a recurring character in the South Park series, is planning to return to the surface of earth to rule, and by his side is a recently killed Saddam Hussein, with whom Satan is also in a relationship. Through Kenny, who is sent to hell after his death, the audience observes the abusive homosexual relationship between Satan and Saddam, and is actually made to feel sympathy for Satan who suffers degradation from Saddam. Gardiner views the joke being that “the huge scarlet Satan is the vulnerable feminine figure in relation to the hypermasculine Saddam. This feminine position makes him more sympathetic but also dooms him to emotional solitude” (53-4). They plan as a couple to rule over earth, but Saddam wants the power all to himself and constantly brushes Satan aside. The relationship still displays signs of musical conventions, as when Gardiner deftly points out Altman’s adage about dancing being an indicator of love (136)—“it is notable that Saddam dances solo to entice Satan, who ends up alone” (54). Altman claims that the extremes of a couple come together and balance themselves out, creating stability (307). Satan is the more stable side of the couple, who lives underground, and expresses in the solo number “Up There” his desire to join the joys and rituals on the surface of the earth; Saddam, however, wants to rule over the earth, and is hyper and sex-crazed. The extremes in this relationship only clash and lead to war and apocalypse; the dissolution of their relationship ensures the perseverance of live on earth, those things which Satan loves and Saddam hates. In this film, coupling is not always the best solution for the community.
Even though the journey is unconventional, at the end of the musical, all is restored. Gardiner notes, “The ending is a happy one. The children give speeches on the importance of free speech. Their parents realize that war is worse than swearing. Kenny earns his wings and flies to heaven…and Satan regains his manhood, all to a bouncy musical score” (52). As the community comes together to sing the reprise of “Mountain Town,” bringing the film full circle back to its beginning, the earth blooms with flowers and a rainbow forms overhead. The film began in winter, and ends in spring, reflecting the rebirth of the community, and tying the plot to rituals and cycles, another indicator of a folk musical (Altman 287). The song still acknowledges the idyllic and the mundane in their “quiet mountain town,” but the whole community is united in celebration and sings in harmony, a change from the beginning.
Altman claims, “All genres eventually become reflexive, self-critical, and often even self-destructive” (117). Though a late musical, and obviously satirical and deconstructive, South Park is not a self-destructive musical. For all its jabs at society, and its unending allusions to many other films (e.g., Star Wars, A Clockwork Orange), it still upholds musical conventions. Gardiner affirms: “Although South Park is indeed reflexive, self-critical, and parodic, it is not self-destructive but marvelously inventive” (54). The eighty-minute film is packed with eleven musical numbers; this is a film that is committed to its genre. Even if the songs’ subject matter is joking, their use is not, genuinely moving the plot forward and expressing characters’ emotions. “What Would Brian Boitano Do?”, though ridiculous in premise, is the enthusiastic song that convinces the boys to do the right thing; “La Resistance” is a medley (and a brilliant homage to the stage musical Les Miserables) that draws the action of the film to its climax. South Park qualifies as a postmodern musical, given its satire, pastiche and recycled clichés, but does not confront the shortcomings of the musical (Altman 121). Fully embracing its identity as a musical, South Park’s satire is about the state of American society, not the musical itself. Parker and Stone have created a film, which like musicals of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, is embraced by its generation, who can sing along with the now-familiar songs every time they watch the film. And if the musical as a genre continues to decline, we can always blame Canada.
Works Cited
Altman, Rick. The American Film Musical. London: BFI Publishing, 1989.
Babington, Bruce and Peter William Evans. “Summer Holiday (1948) and the pastoral musical.” Blue Skies and Silver Linings: Aspects of the Hollywood Musical. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 1985. 141-163.
Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “Why Saddam Is Gay: Masculinity Politics in South Park—Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 22.1 (2005): 51-62. MetaPress. 7 Nov 2006 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10509200590449958
South Park. Dir. Trey Parker. Warner Bros. and Paramount, 1999
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Newcastle University PhD student Katherine Farrimond for encouraging my pursuit of this topic, and for suggesting that I should somehow use the phrase “blame Canada” in the conclusion.
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