The South Park Retrospective, Part Three

Grouping Three: Celebrities and Their Function in South Park

Trapped in the Closet (season nine)

Fishsticks (season thirteen)

Originally posted on March 15, 2011 on AD Forums.

Celebrities do not usually end up looking good on South Park. It’s a fact of life. Britney Spears gets horrifically mutilated in the episode she appeared in, to make a point about the destructive nature of paparazzi on human beings. Sarah Jessica Parker gets shot in Scrotie McBoogerballs, mainly because she’s Sarah Jessica Parker and is apparently incredibly ugly. (She’s not that bad looking. Is she?) We can go on. And on. And on. I could have literally picked any duo of episodes and probably made the argument that celebrities are paradoxically portrayed as humans worthy of being treated like any other human, and otherworldly beings whose stupidity and fanaticism is even more boundless than that of the adult denizens of South Park, but I went with two episodes that are probably best known for their portrayals of celebrities and the idiotic lengths to which, in this universe, they will go to ingrain themselves into a society that seems to uniformly not care for them on a personal level while being oddly fascinated with them, with disastrous results.

This is most obvious in Trapped in the Closet, one of the most infamous episodes of South Park for tackling two subsections of America that tend to not like being tackled: Scientology and Tom Cruise. The main thrust of the episode – the conflict between Stan Marsh, who is believed by Scientologists to be the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard, and the upper-level Scientologists who know the truth about this so-called ‘religion’ – is often forgotten in the popular landscape for what might be the simplest subplot in a sitcom ever. Tom Cruise, going to pay his respects to Stan, the new prophet of Scientology, is devastated by Stan saying that he isn’t as great an actor as Leonardo DiCaprio (okay), Gene Hackman (all right), or Jon Heder, the man who gave us Napoleon Dynamite (…well, he was the best part of ‘When In Rome’), and locks himself inside Stan’s closet to grieve. Thus starts a cavalcade of people, from a remarkably sane Randy Marsh to Nicole Kidman to R. Kelly begging Tom Cruise to ‘come out of the closet’.

Continuing with the theory of the South Park mirror world, the implicit thought behind these implorations is that, in this world, there would be no repercussions for Cruise were he to come out of the closet. Obviously this is supposed to be a knowing wink at our own reality, where Tom Cruise’s sexuality is a terribly-kept secret, but it goes back to how, in South Park, homosexuality really isn’t a huge deal to the straight citizens of South Park. However, going with our central thesis of this analysis, the main thrust of Tom Cruise’s existential crisis that causes him to lock himself in a ten-year-old’s closet is an overwhelming sense that he is not cared for. Which, in Stan’s case, he really isn’t. Randy could probably give a shit, too, seeing as he’s stuck trying to get a man out of his son’s bedroom. However, the amount of media attention devoted to the efforts to get Cruise out of the closet is overwhelming. National news, other prominent celebrities, other Scientologists, and a dangerously armed R. Kelly are all at hand to witness the latest madness perpetrated by a celebrity. The paradox of how the South Park universe relates to celebrity, unlike the funhouse mirror that takes overreaction to an extreme and deemphasizes current America’s treatment of homosexuality as a novelty or a danger, could easily be said to be a direct translation of current America’s attitude towards celebrity – we consume so much unnecessary information about the rich and famous that we idolize, yet so many of us have stories of personal irritation or distaste about meeting some of these people in person. It is the idea of the collective hive mind fighting against the individual reaction, another iteration of one of South Park’s favorite themes – us vs. them.

Of course, also present in Trapped in the Closet is a rather incredible sequence of events where Stan becomes the prophet of Scientology and is informed of just how completely whacked the whole enterprise is. His ideas to reinvigorate the church, which are antithetical to its main mission (to scam people, according to an elder Scientologist), are met with cries that Stan is going to get sued, and Cruise, John Travolta, and R. Kelly all come out of the closet to assert they will sue Stan’s ass into oblivion. But this plot, which is completely straight satire, doesn’t elucidate much of the South Park world. The next episode will not deal with Stan getting sued. But the celebrities will remain idiots crying for attention, and South Park will continue to see all these celebrities turn up for no real reason.

Case in point: the second episode being analyzed, Fishsticks. Like the preceding analysis, there is an interesting plot in the foreground of the episode that deals with the creative tensions of having a partnership while working on a comedic venture, with Jimmy coming up with a pretty dumb, but mildly funny, pun about people who like ‘fishsticks’ being gay fish. (If you aren’t getting it, this will help. Prepare to be mildly impressed by the power of puns.) Since Cartman was in the room during the creation of the joke, he immediately begins to lay claim to its popularity in the world at large, leaving Jimmy torn over what to do about Cartman’s rampant lying. If you read this like one might read many Terrance and Phillip episodes – as a treatise on Parker and Stone’s working process and the issues they face when it comes to making the show and dealing with each other’s quirks – it’s a fascinating episode that pretty much flat-out says that sometimes these guys have issues with crediting and with each other. Episodes that admit these issues in a more raw, blunter fashion generally raise a lot of consternation in the fandom (wait until we get to You’re Getting Old!); the fact that this episode’s nuanced look at people being assholes to each other slipped by is definitely a product of Kanye West taking over the entire episode in the public consciousness.

Basically, Kanye West doesn’t get the fishsticks joke, and is sure that people are calling him a gay fish. On a cultural level, everyone has told West all he needs to know prior to this episode – he is, after all, the genius voice of a generation, not a gay fish. The collective masses are now, in West’s mind, turning against him, attacking him, endlessly fascinated with shaming him with a slur that’s not even a slur.

On the individual level, the people who run interference for Kanye tend to treat him, at the very best, with a complete lack of artifice. His posse makes a valiant effort to explain that no one thinks he personally is a gay fish. Cartman, Jimmy, and Carlos Mencia end up terrified of West because of his complete lack of comprehension. Compared to the faceless masses who laugh endlessly at the stupid pun, West is regarded as either completely crazy, or someone to simply wave off. The dichotomy becomes clear once again in the South Park universe. The individual will never have the same opinion as the masses.

As I wrote this, there were plenty of other episodes I thought of that fit this dichotomy nicely (particularly Stupid Spoiled Whore…, which, if I wasn’t already about two weeks behind in delivering this analysis, I would definitely weave in, due to its portrayal of Paris Hilton as incredibly mentally disturbed, making the individual continually fearful for his safety, and collectively a source of pride and idolatry for the female population). But the similarities in Trapped and Fishsticks’ receptions made them an excellent pairing. Beyond the paradoxical enamored collective and irritated/terrified individual paradigm that shows up often in celebrity stories, there are the same generalized conflicts that appear in many South Park episodes: religious authority vs. the common man, Cartman versus the world (except Craig, who has apparently learned that the best way to deal with Eric is to just let him do whatever he wants and move on with one’s life), sense against the nonsensical. In terms of fleshing out our South Park universe, our overreacting mob, such a staple of the show, is given purpose in relation to celebrity, while the individual is usually given to an extreme viewpoint.

Next time, we’ll switch away from the South Park world construction for a bit to focus on physical comedy and animation, with Casa Bonita, which is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen put to film, and Osama Bin Laden has Farty Pants