South Park and Philosophy

December 4, 2006
With a firm belief in the power of satire, and a number of complicated questions-including the morals of laughing at a ten-year-old's racist, sexually active hand-puppet-author and philosophy professor Arp presents an accessible collection of 22 essays on Comedy Central's controversial, long-running cartoon series South Park. Drawing on the usual suspects-Plato, Aristotle, Freud and Sartre among them-the contributors gleefully argue that the fiercely juvenile and politically incorrect show speaks to some of the most important issues of our-or any-time. In the first entry, William W. Young III draws comparisons between moralizing condemnation of South Park and the charges "leveled against Western philosophy since its beginnings" in a section titled "Oh my God! They Killed Socrates! You Bastards!" Other essays take on the "ethics of amusement" in the face of a Virgin Mary statue bleeding from a wholly inappropriate place, the existential crisis suggested by the Kenny's recurrent death and what a school mascot election between "a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich" says about America's two-party political system. Though the laundry list of philosophical issues-gender and sexuality, personal identity, the problem of evil, religious pluralism, the ethics of belief-feels familiar, and some of the writers' attempts at lowbrow humor can be embarrassingly off-mark, it's a serious but inviting roundup that high-minded South Park fans, as well as pop-philosophy devotees, will find worthwhile.

December 4, 2006
With a firm belief in the power of satire, and a number of complicated questions-including the morals of laughing at a ten-year-old's racist, sexually active hand-puppet-author and philosophy professor Arp presents an accessible collection of 22 essays on Comedy Central's controversial, long-running cartoon series South Park. Drawing on the usual suspects-Plato, Aristotle, Freud and Sartre among them-the contributors gleefully argue that the fiercely juvenile and politically incorrect show speaks to some of the most important issues of our-or any-time. In the first entry, William W. Young III draws comparisons between moralizing condemnation of South Park and the charges "leveled against Western philosophy since its beginnings" in a section titled "Oh my God! They Killed Socrates! You Bastards!" Other essays take on the "ethics of amusement" in the face of a Virgin Mary statue bleeding from a wholly inappropriate place, the existential crisis suggested by the Kenny's recurrent death and what a school mascot election between "a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich" says about America's two-party political system. Though the laundry list of philosophical issues-gender and sexuality, personal identity, the problem of evil, religious pluralism, the ethics of belief-feels familiar, and some of the writers' attempts at lowbrow humor can be embarrassingly off-mark, it's a serious but inviting roundup that high-minded South Park fans, as well as pop-philosophy devotees, will find worthwhile.

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.