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.

