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.