Quality Social Commentary
Years ago the adult cartoon TV show Beavis and Butthead took center stage of American pop culture. I thought it was awful. Mark saw it as high social commentary. When it was replaced with South Park, I started to go to bed earlier just to avoid watching the awful thing. Mark howled with laughter; evidently the high social commentary carried this show too? Sorry, but I couldn't get past the low social insults.
But finally he explained one particular episode, The Underpants Gnomes, and the light dawned. It seemed that the South Park boys were missing underwear and, investigating, found that Underpants Gnomes were stealing it for profit. This was very interesting. The boys wanted to 'profit' too and asked how this scheme worked. It seemed there was a 3-step plan:
Step 1. Collect underpants
Step 2.
Step 3. Profit
But what is Step 2?, the boys wanted to know. The answer was to repeat "Step 1 - collect underpants, Step 3, profit." I guess they never did get Step #2.
I still didn't really see how that was all that funny until Mark explained that this was exactly the business model his then-employer appeared to be following.
This was before the tech bubble burst. We soon found that many American businesses were following that same model: Do some stuff... expect profits to follow. I'd say this is the model the government follows as well: Spend a bunch of tax money... get re-elected... start spending money again.
Very high social commentary.
posted by Cathy @ 5:27 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I was in Target one day and heard two moms complaining about how South Park was just not appropriate for children. This seemed to shock and amaze them since it was a cartoon. Apparently, it never occurred to them that their little 9 year old darlings shouldn't be watching TV at 11 o'clock at night....
Unfortunately, this may be the only education these poor children get in what's wrong with society and politics. Doubly sad is the fact that they've probably never been taught to recognize things like irony, sarcasm, hypocrisy, parody. So the lessons to be learned by this high social commentary will go right over their little heads.
Do you think they’re watching Tripping the Rift too?
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