No American television show of the past decade has been vilified as has
Comedy Central’s South Park . This is the show that has featured, in turn, a nine-year-old boy enmeshed in an affair with Ben Affleck, a maniacal Mel Gibson smearing feces everywhere, and the misadventures of Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo, a talking, bouncing, singing piece of poop. While it’s not always an exercise in good taste,
South Park
is a socially significant satire that has also devoted entire episodes to interpretations of
Great Expectations , Ken Burns’
Civil War , and
Hamlet . This volume explores the popularity and cultural relevance of
South Park
and its place as an artistically and politically worthy satire. Among the topics explored are the show’s parody of the processes of manufacturing political consent; its treatments of Shakespeare’s plays; the interrogation of anti-tobacco legislation; and the show’s creators’ seemingly irreverent and dismissive treatment of environmentalism.