Why Pop Culture Needs Crap Sometimes (or How Mr. Hankey Makes TV a Better Place)

This week's class lecture about the validity and merits of good watchable crap versus utterly bad, totally unwatchable crap inspired this week's blog post.

Under normal circumstances a television program that featured feces as a character would get filed under juvenile, potty humor, distasteful. It's almost never an multiple Emmy-award winning and critically acclaimed television program.

That is unless that television show is South Park.

South Park is an animated series following the lives of four children, Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman, in South Park, Colorado. These kids cuss a lot, they regularly disrespect authority figures, and they stay in mischief. South Park has run 14 seasons and over that time has had its share of controversy, acclaim, celebrity cameos and memorable characters. The way the show takes on current events is witty and irreverent, while simultaneously being super smart and usually dead on.

Among those characters is Mr. Hankey. Mr. Hankey is quite simply a piece of excrement. He lives in the sewer and he talks. He first appeared on a Christmas episode of the show and is often a confidante to the little boys in South Park. Strangely enough, Mr. Hankey is apparently not the first animated feces character on television. Ren and Stimpy also featured such a character, "Nutty the Friendly Dump." (At least its good to know television has not neglected to represent the poo community.)

As gross as this sounds to me the Mr. Hankey character serves as a moral compass and often teaches good lessons to the boys. In his first episode, "Mr. Hankey: The Christmas Poo," the character encourages healthy eating. He was introduced to us delivering toys to all the kids who ate a high fiber diet (how many other television shows are giving that important message to kids.) Mr Hankey goes on to serve as a metaphor for the fact that no matter how we try to clean and sanitize things we as human beings are inherently dirty. (Not sure i agree with that, but a scholar with advanced degrees says so, so I'm willing to go with it.

Yet another analysis finds that Mr. Hankey mocks consumerism and the way that it has smeared, tainted, and essentially "shit on" the true meaning of Christmas. This goes well with Adorno's views of how mass production and capitalism is destroying or "shitting on" culture. Which is ironic considering some analyists of the series, including Alison Halsall in "Taking South Park Seriously" believe Mr. Hankey is a parody of Mickey Mouse. And we all Disney is classic capitalism at work.

Mr. Hankey is a rather extreme example, but its an effective one. Could creaters Trey Parker and Matt Stone have chosen something else to convey their points of dirtying up sanitized society or tainting the holiday spirit? Sure they could have, but I don't know that anything else would be as effective in conveying the point.

Crap is gross and disgusting. Literally and figuratively, it is a physical manifestation of all the things that are bad and wrong inside of us. The waste if you will. How it looks and turns out is a reflection of what we've been putting inside of us. In television the crap serves as a barometer for what's good and what's not in our world and society. We must let it do its job and then regularly purge it. Without a regular purging of the crap, things inside us can get pretty unhealthy. And that's good for no one.

Gone Hollywood

 When the Simpsons return from the summer hiatus in a few weeks, it will begin it's 22nd season. That's unheard of in today's television climate. It is the longest-running sitcom currently on television. It is also the longest-running animated show and scripted-primetime series still on television.

 The Simpsons began as a minute-long cartoon shorts that aired during the Tracy Ullman's sketch comedy show. The little family from Springfield gathered a following and eventually got their own series. The photo in the above right shows the family when they were a short sketch and the photo on the right is left is the Simpsons as we know them today. I like to imagine once they signed their TV deal some crackpot team of animated stylists (a la Carson Kressley of "Queer Eye") came in and cleaned the family up to give the stylish looks they have today.
  
 Twenty years later the show has spawned at least two movies, a couple of albums, and even a centerfold spread in Playboy for Marge (who still has the goods by the way). I remember when "Aye Carumba" and "Eat My Shorts" were like the cool catchphrases. I had a Simpson's lunchbox and outfits. My little brother (now a father with his own son) had Simpson tighty whiteys. And despite a small dip in ratings the show doesn't appear to be going anywhere.

 What's interesting about this show is the mass production and overexposure over the years has not seemed to diminish the fan's love of the show. The Simpsons have broken through. What probably should have been a be fad into an institution. If the show ends today it will have earned a fairly significant place in television and pop culture history. It's transcended generations. I watched it as a kid and now my nieces and nephews watch. And those Simpson's tchotchkes their nostalgia, a reminder of a wonderfully, happy time in my life.

 At the end of the day the Simpsons is a show about family. In twenty years very little about the show has changed. I think thats a big part of why its endured. Its a reminder that in a life where change is inevitable, we grow. We evolve. One thing in life should stay consistent and that's family.

 If you'd like to see a link to one of the original Simpsons cartoon shorts click here.

TV Industry Execs are Pricks Even in Cartoons

During yesterday's lecture my professor gave a visual example of how a person might come to TV executives with a great idea for a movie and then by the time the industry folks have had their way with it, it becomes this piece of shit mainstream work that is a shell of the former great idea.

 This reminded me of an episode of Family Guy. Regular viewers of the show might know that in addition to being the Griffin family's pet, a big time liberal, and raging alcoholic, Brian Griffin is also a failed, aspiring writer. The show has explored and referenced this in a few episodes.

 In last season's "Brian Griffin's House of Payne" episode, Stewie finds an old script Brian had written for a TV pilot. With some encouragement from Lois, Brian pitches his show to network executives. The executives love his premise, a touching drama about a 25-year-old single father raising his young daughter while trying to attend college, and decide to make the show.

 By the time Brian meets with them again, the execs have decided to make a few changes to the show:

• Instead of Elijah Wood for the father, the execs decided on James Woods
• Instead of his daughter being 4 or 5-years-old, its a hot teenage daughter preparing to start college.
• Instead of a drama, they change it to a comedy about a dad and his daughter who end up going to college together and the mayhem that ensues living in the same dorm room.
• Even the name changes from "What I Learned on Jefferson Street" to the not-at-all-offensive "Class-Holes" (Which I thought was fantastic by the way)

 By the time they're finish it's become a completely different show. It was exaggerated of course, but with Seth McFarlane and the writers being in TV so long, I'm certain its founded on a grain of truth. Plus McFarlane, through this show particularly, has become a social commentator and critic. I'm sure this episode was a statement of how the industry works. I'm curious how much of this particular episode had to be changed to appease the suits at Fox.

 Brian got a lot of flack for selling out, but how many people sell out just to get their product into the mainstream and millions of dollars. Is this always a bad thing? Class-holes was fantastically awful, but are there times where its a good thing? Is pop culture ever actually improved by this? Why do we always assume that indie and underground is always better? What do you think?

 If any of you'd like to watch this episode for yourself click here.