Essentially, a show like South Park relies on “cynical remarks which oscillate between what is an apparent value and what is a real value. They force the hearer to recognize the value of oppositions” (Yoos 59). Furthermore, “irony as a mode of speech is ideally adapted to express cynical remarks, for it directs attention to the basic opposition between appearance and reality in the vision of the cynic” (Yoos 59). South Park is not the only show that accomplishes this binary deconstruction through satire or irony. As David Janssen contends in his article, “Time to Lose Faith in Humanity: The Simpsons, South Park, and the Satiric Tradition,” television shows like The Simpsons often rely on plot points or character actions which “strip away any semblance of value” in an attempt to “convey the raw power of the irrational (or non-rational) love of human beings for other human beings” (30).
However, a show like South Park uses satire and irony to deconstruct value systems in ways that not only question such notions of humanism, but assert a cynical stance on human potential to overcome the hierarchy of discourse which pits humans at odds with one and other economically, philosophically and linguistically. As Janssen explains, the two television shows do not share the same satiric territory. For Janssen, the “most striking difference between the two is the absence of any comfortable moral foundation in South Park” (30). It is here that I agree with Janssen and would like to extend his argument to suggest that this lack of a comfortable foundation is strikingly similar to the epistemological questions one may experience when reading Burke or Foucault. Each of these philosophers have significantly altered the academic paradigm in ways that that shake the very notion of a “comfortable moral foundation.” This distinction makes the apparent cynicism of South Park a rhetorical means to articulate theory through seemingly absurd story arcs with ambiguous moralism which often leave viewers without a comfort zone or clear didactic message.
One way this ambiguous sense of ideology avoids a clear stance on human potential is through the distortion South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker create through the use of non-traditional theories of satire. Turning to Fredric Bogel, Janssen suggests that “traditional theories of satire, such as the Juvenalian/Horatian taxonomy, do not adequately explain how satire functions and circulates in society” (35). According to Bogel, this is so because “traditional explications of satire make the erroneous assumption that the reader is always aligned with the satirist's critical voice against the satirized subject” (35). South Park deliberately subverts such audience assumptions and rather deconstructs such ideological assumptions of allegiance by offering no clear stance on the part of the creators. As Bogel states, “[T]he crucial fact is not that satirists find folly or wickedness in the world and then wish to expose that alien something. Instead satirists identify in the world something or someone that is both unattractive and curiously or dangerously like them, or like the culture or subculture that they identify with or speak for, or sympathize even as it is repellent—something, then, that is not alien enough”(35). South Park makes both its intentions and ideological messages alien to the audience.
One way this ambiguous sense of ideology avoids a clear stance on human potential is through the distortion South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker create through the use of non-traditional theories of satire. Turning to Fredric Bogel, Janssen suggests that “traditional theories of satire, such as the Juvenalian/Horatian taxonomy, do not adequately explain how satire functions and circulates in society” (35). According to Bogel, this is so because “traditional explications of satire make the erroneous assumption that the reader is always aligned with the satirist's critical voice against the satirized subject” (35). South Park deliberately subverts such audience assumptions and rather deconstructs such ideological assumptions of allegiance by offering no clear stance on the part of the creators. As Bogel states, “[T]he crucial fact is not that satirists find folly or wickedness in the world and then wish to expose that alien something. Instead satirists identify in the world something or someone that is both unattractive and curiously or dangerously like them, or like the culture or subculture that they identify with or speak for, or sympathize even as it is repellent—something, then, that is not alien enough”(35). South Park makes both its intentions and ideological messages alien to the audience.
In my view, this suggests that the apparent cynicism achieved by a non-traditional application of satire reveals that cynicism, not satire, “is a rhetorical means to the production of difference in the face of a potentially compromising similarity, not the articulation of differences already securely in place” (35). Such “compromising similarities” are the very essence of rhetorical theory and inquiry in my experience. When I use the term “non-traditional satire,” it is referring to the common viewer who is denied access to academic discourse in the everyday world but given epistemological insight through cynical texts such as South Park. By this I am suggesting that as academics, especially those in the Humanities, we are often engaged in “non-traditional satire” through our critical discussions that ultimately result in profound ambiguity. Theories of truth or non-truths that both perplex and confound us as scholars.