As Garfinkel reminds us in his classic “breaching” experiments, the best way to identify and understand norms in a society is to break them and see what happens. Why are you offended?

Discussion Topic Follow Seeing South Park A few years back, I had an opportunity to devote an entire Popular Culture class to the Comedy Central show, South Park. This show, it turns out, is chock full of sociology, and is particularly useful in illustrating various norms, values and beliefs in our society (that’s why it is so funny). Although South Park is often vulgar in its depiction of American culture, this fact turn out to be one of the more fascinating things about the show, from a sociological perspective. South Park forces you to consider your own values (by way of pushing your “I am offended” buttons), making it a valuable learning opportunity, on both a social and more personal level. As strange as this activity/discussion might seem, you should know that I was not the first to offer an entire course to this show (it was first done by a Berkeley sociologist). Please understand that my goal is not to simply offend you by requiring you to watch an episode of South Park. Instead, my aim is to help you appreciate that media and culture studies require us to acknowledge our own personal biases and values, and to look beyond them in order to understand the larger cultural arena we are all living in. In this way, examining Shakespeare is inferior to South Park in exposing elements of our culture as it actually presents itself. We need not distinguish between “high culture” and “low culture” in our lesson plan, it is all culture! But Dr. Laundra, why can’t you make the same point but with less offensive material? Answer: I could, but the point of this activity would lose its sharpness, and because if we only examine media that everyone is comfortable with, we will miss the point of the activity, which is also to identify what offends you personally, as a means of more clearly understanding the power of norms, values, beliefs and ideologies. As Garfinkel reminds us in his classic “breaching” experiments, the best way to identify and understand norms in a society is to break them and see what happens. Why are you offended? What norms, values and/or beliefs are being breached for you personally? You won’t be able to fully understand or appreciate these concepts if you can’t directly related to them on a personal level. In other words, you have to BE offended in order to fully understand WHY you are offended, or to just understand the nature of ‘offense’ in the first place. More importantly, to understand offensive content in the public sphere more generally, the challenge it poses to free speech in a free, democratic society, to public education, and to the rights of individuals living in that free society, we cannot avoid that which offends us personally. And besides, it would be impossible to find media content that offends NO ONE, so any effort to censure course content for that reason would be futile. My personal favorite episode is the “Death Camp of Tolerance” episode (but it is not a free episode), which is the episode I show in the live class, but you can choose ANY episode – just be sure to choose an episode that confronts your own values and belief. You may even choose from a different adult cartoon entirely (e.g. Family Guy, American Dad, Boondocks, Rick and Morty, etc.) If you feel you will be genuinely traumatized by watching any of these cartoons, please email me to discuss an alternative assignment. With this in mind, this discussion forum requires you to watch an episode of South Park, looking for examples of cultural attitudes, values, beliefs and ideologies in our contemporary society. Using the link provided HERE, answer the following questions in the discussion forum provided. After posting your thoughts, read and respond to at least two other student posts, according to the content and “netiquette” guidelines set forth in the syllabus. Discussion Questions: In a few sentences, briefly summarize the episode’s main plot(s). What happened? What characters were involved? What was the outcome? Does the plot (or one main theme presented) seem to be poking fun at a recent political or social event that actually happened? What does the show make you think about, in terms of how our culture is represented in a main theme or plot of this episode? Did anything in the episode offend you personally? Why? What personal values or beliefs were breached by the episode? If your answer is ‘no’, discuss what values or beliefs are breached in the public at large. What is one obvious ideology (system of beliefs) represented in this episode? After describing a typical, American ideology that is represented in the show, provide a couple examples of how it was cartoonishly portrayed.

 

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