The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
b-side
Thursday, October 17, 2019 — 5B
B-SIDE: TV NOTEBOOK
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, co-creators
of “South Park,” never apologize. Even
after getting banned in China last week for
satirizing Chinese censorship on the episode
“Band In China,” the duotweeteda mock
apology. “We too love money more than
freedom and democracy,” the statement reads.
“We good now, China?” (South Park and China
are currently not good).
The humor in “South Park” usually falls on
a spectrum from woke and relevant to kind
of fucked up. Still, the show and its creators
always
stand
by
their
sometimes-shitty
message. But once — and onlyonce, as far as my
research shows — did “South Park” go back on
their word. In 2018, they reversed their stance
on a topic they had once laughed off: climate
change.
In the 2006 episode “ManBearPig” where
Parker and Stone first took a stance, Al Gore
presents to South Park Elementary: “There
is something out there which threatens our
very existence … I’m talking of course, about
ManBearPig. ManBearPig doesn’t care who
you are or what you’ve done. ManBearPig
simply wants to get you.”
The euphemism of a “half-man, half-bear,
half-pig” boogie monster speaks to Parker and
Stone’s impression of global warming: Climate
change is something silly and unrealistic, a
childish fear, even an impossibility. The duo
doubles down on that impression in show’s
2007 “Imaginationland” arc — ManBearPig
appears as a character in Imaginationland, a
world full of made-up characters, suggesting
climate change is imaginary.
While palpable and perceptible today,
especially among the activism of Ann Arbor,
this impression of climate change as something
absurd wasn’t uncommon in the 2000s. In a
2009 report by Yale University, only 18 percent
of Americans were taking action about climate
change. Another 33 percent believed in it but
did not feel personally threatened by the issue;
the remaining 49 percent ranged from flimsy
belief to total dismissal.
Today “South Park” is a clear criticism of
American culture and politics, but earlier
seasons were less satire, more juvenile
humor. By the time “ManBearPig” aired in
’06, the show was full-fledged commentary,
and the episode accuses Al Gore of being
alarmist and self-serving. It especially mocks
“An Inconvenient Truth,” the documentary
chronicling his global warming awareness
campaign. The end of the episode makes the
show’s position clear when Stan has an angry
outburst at Gore: “You just use ManBearPig
as a way to get attention for yourself because
you’re a loser!”
Twelve years later, “South Park” revisits
climate change on season 22’s “Nobody Got
Cereal?” and “Time to Get Cereal.” In 2018,
it would turn out that the smug Al Gore was
right all along, when the two-episode special
opened with an attack from a realManBearPig.
In a telling scene, a father speaks to his wife
while his family enjoys dinner at Red Lobster.
“There’s no scientific proof, no real evidence
of a ManBearPig,” he says over a glass of wine.
Just as he begins to explain, ManBearPig
itself bursts into the restaurant window. As
the father continues to deny ManBearPig’s
existence, the monster wreaks havoc in the
background, destroying everything in its
reach and killing all bystanders. When his
wife points to the pandemonium behind him,
he simply observes, “OK, ManBearPig is real
… what are we gonna do that’s gonna make any
difference now, Susan?” The monster devours
him just as he begins to blame ManBearPig on
China. Parker and Stone’s new target in 2018
is not an alarmist Al Gore, but the delusional
climate change denier. In a total flip of opinion
from “South Park,” the climate change denier
is depicted as more smug and self-absorbed
than Al Gore was twelve years earlier.
The everyday ambivalence toward climate
change held by society at large is maybe the
most mocked. As fires rage in South Park
and citizens scream with terror throughout
the town, the community center hosts a
presentation titled “When should I start
to worry?” One character asks, “I’m pretty
sure there’s a ManBearPig and I’m fairly
certain that he’s eaten two of my children
and destroyed our home. When should I start
to worry?” Another character says, “I don’t
know if I believe in ManBearPig or not, but I
do know that I am open to the idea of starting
to worry,” earning proud applause from the
audience for his bravery. In a local TV talk
show discussion, one character declares,
“I don’t think there’s any more room for not
considering underestimating the importance
of beginning to start the process of mulling
over the conceptualization of starting to
worry. And the time to do it is very soon.”
Baby boomers are blamed for climate change
when Stan confronts his grandpa in the senior
home, accusing the older generation of making
a deal with ManBearPig. One old lady says, “We
thought we’d be dead by now! We didn’t think
we’d have to live to see the consequences!”
Stan accuses them of signing his future away,
to which his grandpa admits they traded the
present joy of cars and ice cream in exchange
for ManBearPig’s inevitable return. The show
mocks a generation of people who greedily
chose to enjoy frivolous luxuries without
thought for the future.
In classic “South Park” fashion, the show
makes a prediction of sorts. Stan enters
negotiations with ManBearPig, who offers to
never return so long as the town gives up two
things: soy sauce and “Red Dead Redemption
2.” But those luxuries are too much to sacrifice,
so in order to keep them, Stan signs away the
lives of all children in third world countries,
putting off ManBearPig’s return for five more
years, during which the carnage will be a
thousandfold higher.
This is the most grim assessment made
by “South Park”: Action to prevent climate
change will only be put off again. Swap soy
sauce and “Red Dead Redemption 2” for beef
and fossil fuels, and the reality of climate
change is depicted perfectly. As I fuel up my
car at the gas station and pick up burgers to
grill, I wonder if I should start to worry.
ManBearPig: ‘South Park’
and our sweet, fiery planet
DYLAN YONO
Daily Arts Writer
YOUTUBE / COMEDY CENTRAL
The everyday ambivalence toward climate
change held by society at large is maybe the
most mocked. As fires rage in South Park
and citizens scream with terror throughout
the town, the community center hosts a
presentation titled “When should I start to
worry?”
B-SIDE: BOOKS NOTEBOOK
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to write a
novel “about” climate change. Much like dealing
with its ramifications in the day-to-day life of
one individual, futility starts to set in when
confronting such an enormous problem woven
so tightly with modern society. It sometimes
seems like the more climate change becomes an
existential threat, the more difficult it is to talk
about. Even as novels are increasingly written
in a broad scope, incorporating multiple voices
and experimental techniques, the form of the
novel at its core still relies on the subjectivity of
individuals who are, generally speaking, not the
very few executives and government officials
responsible for the stasis of society in responding
to climate change. It’s possible, though, that
novelists are responding to the effects of climate
change in ways other than direct representation.
The kind of numbing anxiety that necessarily
has to coexist with mundanity has been poking
its head into numerous recent works of fiction,
possibly because it has seemed to increasingly
saturate daily life.
Julia
Phillips’s
brilliant
debut
novel
“Disappearing Earth” is what Jane Allison calls
a “radial” narrative — one where some inciting
incident creates ripples that move outward
and often compound in complexity rather than
resolving. Novels structured like this frequently
resemble a loose amalgamation of short stories,
but Phillips succeeds in her deft, transparent
prose and her ability to play narratives off each
other in a prismatic way. It coheres in its creation
of a community of people, in this case in an
incredibly isolated city in Russia. The plot orbits
around the mysterious disappearance of two
young girls, Sophia and Alyona Golosovsky, in the
coastal town of Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka
peninsula. Everyone in the town hears about it, is
haunted by it. Suddenly, other young girls aren’t
allowed to cross town to see friends, adults are
newly nervous about the other residents of the
small seaside town. Predictably enough, some
people in town use the disappearance as an
opportunity to stoke racial and ethnic tension.
An elementary school administrator, Valentina
Nikolaevna, blames the disappearance first on a
Central Asian and then on the father of the girls,
who lives in Moscow.
The theme of the book, broadly stated, is the
parochialism, blame and anxiety that ripples
through a community in the wake of grief. The
feelings the girls’ disappearance
evokes in the town are rarely
straightforward, but they get into
everything, their presence is felt
everywhere. They are dismissed,
relegated,
compartmentalized
only to hover over the scenes of
the novel in a blanket of worry.
The girls’ disappearance is used
as a justification for a boyfriend’s
anxious surveillance, and it comes
up as two young professionals go
on a camping trip in the “empty
wilderness” north of the town.
This
connection
between
an
increasingly vague anxiety and
the
xenophobia
that
emerges
is
fairly
straightforward,
but
it also feels important that the
Kamchatka peninsula is almost
unnavigable, where communities
are incredibly isolated from each
other geographically and culturally.
The isolation amplifies this sense of
echo. Petropavlovsk is more or less
inaccessible by land, and the city
has the feeling of being hemmed in,
surrounded by nature that appears
in many different guises. Nature
is almost a character in the book,
commenting on the goings-on. This
is especially true of the stunning
opening, which takes place in the
hours before Sophia and Alyona are
abducted. Alyona tells Sophia a story
of a city at the edge of the Pacific
ocean that was obliterated after a
tsunami: “Even in Zavoyko, they
didn’t notice how the sky had gotten
darker; they were busy sweeping
up, checking in on their next-door
neighbors, making repairs. But later,
when the electricity came back on,
somebody realized there were no
lights coming from the edge of the
cliff.”
‘Disappearing Earth’ is on
the planet’s radical edge
EMILY YANG
Daily Arts Writer
YOUTUBE
Julia Phillips’s
brilliant debut novel
“Disappearing Earth” is
what Jane Allison calls
a “radical” narrative —
one where some inciting
incident creates ripples
that move outward
and often compound in
complexity rather than
resolving.
This connection
between an
increasingly vague
anxiety and the
xenophobia that
emerges is fairly
straightforward, but
it also feels important
that the Kamchatka
peninsula is almost
unnavigable, where
communities are
incredibly isolated
from each other
geographically and
culturally.