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Manbearpig: Half Man, Half Bear, Half Pig, but All Global Warming? South Park is a popular animated comedy series written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. While the episodes of South Park are always humorous on the surface, each show usually has a deeper, much more profound meaning and moral. One episode of South Park entitled Manbearpig, named after the monster in the episode, has a particularly potent deeper meaning. On the surface, the episode pokes fun at monster stories, politics, and specifically Al Gore. Deeper down, however, this monster story can be read as a national allegory alluding to the dangers of global warming, the problems with the politics behind global warming, and the eventual doom we will all face
if we do nothing about it. The story of South Park is centered around four fourth graders, Eric Cartman,
Kyle Broflovski, Stan Marsh, and Kenny McCormick, who attend South Park Elementary School in South Park, Colorado. While much of the humor in South Park is scatological in nature, the show is well known for its political satire. That is, “no matter how nasty and scatological [South Park] gets, it’s never just dumb and dumber. Besides all the bathroom humor, the show is built on clever, equal-opportunity satire” (Johnson-Woods 25).
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Jeffery Weinstock asserts in his book Taking South Park Seriously that South Park “intrepidly wades into the American ideological fray” (14). The episode Manbearpig utilizes a simple monster story to address an important ideological issue facing America. Much like stories about werewolves arose from fears regarding feudal society, and how the story of Godzilla arose from fears about nuclear warfare, the story of Manbearpig arises from issue of global warming.
The episode Ma...
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...plifies the use of monsters in literature. On the surface, Manbearpig is a man-animal hybrid monster. However, like many monsters throughout
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literature, Manbearpig has a deeper, more profound meaning. This episode of South Park can be seen as a national allegory alluding to the dangers of global warming, the problems with the politics behind global warming, and the eventual doom if nothing is done about the problem. South Park uses this monster story to illustrate the problem with politicizing global warming. It suggests that to solve the problem, we must step away from our political parties and actually examine real facts and data. The episode also shows how blindly believing in global warming can also be just as dangerous as disbelieving in it. Hopefully, someday, the world can put aside political differences and we all can be eradicated from Manbearpig.
South Park is an animated TV series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, which first aired on Comedy Central in 1997. The show features four boys Eric Cartman, Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Kenny McCormick. South Park has been seen as one of the most controversial shows due to its raunchy humor and obscene depiction of characters in the show. South Park deals with many current issues in the news surrounding anything from in politics to religion. In dealing with these issues South Park involves adult comedy that parodies current issues going on in the United States and around the world. South Park also uses many other rhetorical deceives, such as
Mr. McKibben provides a strong argument call of action for everyone to take action against global warming. But he doesn 't just want action, Mr. Mckibben is demanding action now, and lots of it. Throughout the passage, Meltdown: Running Our of Time on Global Warming, the reader can examine the many ways that McKibben attempts to persuade others to join his movement. When one examines Bill McKibben 's use of rhetoric appeals, persuasive fallacies, and counter augments, A reader can analyze and understand the real claim that the writer is attempting to address.
Even though Gore in the film says about the global warning that “this is really not a political issue, so much as a moral issue,” I believe that it is as much a political issue as it is a moral issue. The truth about the global warming is inconvenient to many economically developed countries.
For ages, we have wondered what is the difference between monsters and men that make them who they are. What are the characteristics that define a monster? Typically it’s the bad guy, the person or thing that comes into the story just to cause massacre or stand in the protagonist’s way. On the other Men are just defined as people who are the opposite of evil. There can be multiple people in a story who can be characterized as men. They don’t all necessarily have to be heroic to be considered as men. In the literature pieces of Macbeth, Beowulf and Frankenstein; there are countless instances where one might be able to distinguish between Monsters and Men. But they all fall in different genres. Macbeth is a story about a tragic hero; the fallen one or the man who brought misery upon himself. The monster can be identified as guilt. This guilt built stronger and stronger and led him to be his worst enemy. Beowulf is an epic about a hero (men) who takes on great challenges and adventures. His worst enemies are all the monsters that took place over the course of the story. Like: Grendel and his mother. This epic poem was made around the Anglo Saxon period. And lastly, Frankenstein is about a crazy doctor who created a monster. The monster name wasn’t Frankenstein, the doctor’s name was. That’s why the story is called “Frankenstein’s monster.” All these literary pieces are plotted so intelligently that it takes a moment before one can distinguish the monsters and the men.
From these comedians, satirical humor expresses some opinions about political acts so people can view them more critically.
“Oh my God, they killed Kenny!” South Park is an adult cartoon that circles around the abnormal life of four boys living in Colorado. This hilarious animated television series strives to be the most controversial show on air. The series has been on air since August 13, 1997 and while the show seems ridiculous, it is commonly known for incorporating high and low culture within the show. South Park has been known to take current issues from today’s society and convert them into a more simplified version while transforming it into satire.
Television is the pinnacle of human creation. A box the size of an animal that could produce pictures that move and was created thousands of miles away in a studio by other humans whose job it was to entertain the public, but does the need to entertain remove from the possible knowledge to attain. Shows like Family Guy, Futurama, and South Park are some of the many shows that people decree as pointless, a joke, a waste of time, or idiotic. To the unknowing eye theses shows are indeed nothing more than a joke or entertain, but if one were to take a closer look into the shows it is possible to see that jokes, storylines, and characters represent a bigger picture. Family Guy, Futurama, and South Park are some of those shows that use satire to
The Secret of Seinfeld’s Humor: The significance of the Insignificant, an article written by Jorge Gracia briefly outlines what the author believes to be the origin of the humour with which the popular television show Seinfeld achieved such broad based success. A show that embraced the ordinary of everyday life, while atypically avoiding the mainstay of violence and sex of most of today’s popular visual media and culture. Gracia (19??) begins his article by posing the question “how, can a show that deals with ordinary, everyday occurrences have such wide appeal”? This is a very general question that could be analysed in any number of ways. The author however, suggest one possible answer. That a show such as Seinfeld is effective because its humour is based upon the dramatic tradition of the comedy and tragedy.
Pathos in Al Gore’s speech is used to express his empathy towards the problem as well as persuade the audience that Global Warming can ruin their future. Throughout his speech, he expands on the impact Global Warming can make on the future of the next generations and the audience. Al Gore begins by acknowledging the danger that Global Warming could have on the
The twelfth and thirteenth episodes of South Park’s tenth season, “Go God Go” and “Go God Go XII”, work as pieces of comedy because they effectively uses humorous triangular formats. Both episodes satirize extremist behavior involving religion and atheism. The episodes usually show situations that involve the audience watching a humorous exchange between two parties. On occasion, the audience watches one character being made fun of, but overall the jokes involve the audience observing an exchange between two parties. The creator’s also use the characters to demonstrate their own beliefs and criticisms.
This video successfully uses the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos and logos to support its claims on climate change. The way National Geographic uses ethos, or credibility, for this video is strong and thought out. The main speaker is none other than Bill Nye, who most students grew up watching in elementary school; to learn different aspects of science; and is a very respectable and credible speaker for this topic, of climate change. Nye graduated from Cornell University with a degree in mechanical engineering, then moved to Seattle, Washington to work as an engineer for Boeing and ultimately became a science educator, winning educational awards for his famous program, “Bill Nye the Science Guy”(Biography.com). Nye has extremely credible credentials to be able to speak about this topic of science, who speaks in a serious, concerned and informative manner to grab the attention of the viewer and explain that climate change is a serious affair that needs to be acted upon.
It is interesting to think that society today can justify or criticize its action with a piece of literature or movie. Today, humans can be blamed for the maltreatment toward nature, as well as all the issues that have resulted from it. These issues, as a result of treating nature as an object that continuously yields necessities for humans, like water, only causes us to approach nature as a symbol of necessity, rather than an entity whom provides the population of the Earth with stable nutrition and habitat for survival. From this, it can be determined that popular culture reflects human treatment and view of nature, mirroring the scarring of nature by human interaction and degradation of nature.
According to McClennen however, all mirror images of satire might not be beneficial. She believes that shows such as South Park and The Simpsons, which are not afraid to attack anything, do not lead to any kind of positive political discourse. This is because they provide negative critique that does not offer the elements required from an effective public pedagogy (McClennen 74). Theodore Gournelos, the author of The Tao of South Park: Dissonant Visual Culture and the Future of Politics refutes McClennen´s claim by arguing that eventhough South Park does not directly intervene with policy making or legislative initiatives, it forms a social landscape in which we challenge the status quo. He continues by saying that ”conflict-oriented cultural productions like South Park suggest an arra...
In their seminar, they showed graphic images of changes the earth has seen in the last billion years. They both argue that human beings have in fact had a hand in shaping the earth’s form. The growing population of the earth’s people has caused many of the land to become infertile. The building of dams, roads and cutting down of trees have also contributed to the major natural disasters. Many people think that the modern needs more technology, but in doing so we are messing with nature and it can prove disastrous for us in the end. One example, talked about the Arabs spring and its connection to the heat wave that hit Russia and destroyed about one-third of its crops. This connection seemed slightly far-fetched can be seen as global warming impacting government and our daily lives and if we don’t look into the issues, other form of revolution we begin to take place. Another example, they discussed the climate change and it can bring diseases, especially malaria and cholera. This was even worse than the “Zombie Apocalypse”. The meant it to be as a joke to the audience, referencing the shows that people watch and see the earth been infected by a strange disease and we have only select group who survive to fight this change. We don’t want to be put in this situation because clearly we were made for this earth and we don’t want it to be destroyed. So what is our solution,
Subpoint A: Not long ago, a documentary film called “An Inconvenient truth” came out in 2006. This film raised international public awareness of climate change and reenergizing the environmental movement. A former U.S Vice president Al Gore campaigned to educate citizens about global warming through a simp...