South Park: Why Terrorism Sucks…, By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

April 28, 2010 Whitney Farmer 10 Comments

I used to live in South Park.  It’s actually Park County in the mountains southwest of Denver off the 285 on the way to Breckenridge. I was only there for about nine months when my family who lived near Pine Junction went through a series of crises. For those of you who aren’t aware of it, “South Park” is a documentary. This is a place that elected an 18 year old County Commissioner. One of his first administrative acts was to buy a Hummer with public funds for “official” use. When you needed to speak to him regarding governmental matters, you’d have to ask his mom or dad to call him to the phone because he still lived with his parents.  A cadre of community business leaders was featured in a newspaper photo flashing bare asses to the camera in a protest against plans for Wal-Mart to open there. They have a newspaper there called “The Hustler”. One local restaurant – The Woodside – was purchased by a mildly bilingual Chinese immigrant who became the inspiration for the owner of the “Shitty Wok” on the show. The locals now call Woodside “Wooside”. The owner is known to sit outside any of many businesses he now owns and eat grapes with chopsticks. I used to get videos from the store that was the final destination of Kyle et al in the “Lord of the Rings” homage to return the porn shot by Butter’s parents that transformed him into Gollum.

And I met “Chef”. He hit on me. He has a restaurant with perfect barbeque ribs called Hog Heaven in Bailey right across the highway from the library which is near the ranch owned by Former Colorado Governor and former LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer. Its advertising reads, “All good little piggies go to Hog Heaven”. Chef’s dopplegaenger used to be a long haul trucker who delivered meat in Los Angeles. That one is too easy…I once brought a very pretty but amazingly shallow boyfriend to Park County for skiing and the winter holidays. He was on a cleansing fast because he needed to be filmed shirtless in a martial arts fight-to-the-death scene as soon as we got back to L.A. His diet consisted of purified water, maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.  It made him cranky, and me cranky when we had to make multiple trips through the snow to try to fulfill his exotic shopping lists.  His whining tantrums in the grocery store were the antidote I needed to get on a different type of cleansing diet myself, but his outbursts might not have been heard only by me. Later that year, his fasting regimen was featured on an episode.

South Park – I mean Park County – is full of tough people. Residents there drive off mountains, get hit by lightening in hotubs, carry sticks when they jog to beat off cougars and bears, and don’t wash their cars. Trey Parker and Matt Stone were raised around and about Conifer near that famous video store, infamous grocery store, and “Shitty Wok” and they ended up with more than a decade’s worth of material to inspire them. Their show offends everyone, which is why it is important. Pride makes us blind and ignorant, and a good shock to our self-worship can make us more civilized, muscled, smart and compassionate.

As perhaps all reading this have heard, an event last week wiped the smiles from many faces.  Revolution Muslim – a tiny group of extremists who run a fundamentalist Islamic website – issued a veiled threat against the creators of South Park for depicting Mohammed in a bear costume. This plot point was subtexted satire on the prohibition against depicting visual images of the religion’s founder under threat of death. Disregarding that Mohammed was shown in a 2001 episode alongside other religious characters, this episode apparently was lethally offensive. While the author of this post – a 20-year-old American former high school prep football player/death metal aficionado nee’ Zachary Adam Chesser – doesn’t say he will do the deed, he planted the seed in his recent posting. Ironically –  as news outlets report his recent elopement and marriage to a Muslim woman he met at college who has recently given birth to their son – it remains to be seen if Zack practices what he preaches.  Would he in fact support the honor killing of his new bride for committing fornication and marrying without the prior consent and arrangements of family, leading to dishonor? I had a project partner in grad school who was confronted by this horror. One day he was very quiet. He confided in me that a childhood friend from back in Lebanon had taken time out during Spring Break to rendezvous with his family to strangle his sister. She had eloped and married for love. Big mistake.

Here’s another mistake: It is a mistake to endorse all cultural practices. What happens from the skin out sometimes is everyone’s business.  Ritual killings suck. Female circumcision sucks. Bride burning sucks. Gender-based infanticide sucks. Once upon a time, male castration for the sake of operatic immortality sucks. Religious wars suck.

We are in a battle against terrorism, and I hesitate to say that we are winning. The weapons that we have been using are domestic and international laws, military engagement, and attempts at building cultural bridges.  To win against terrorists, however, might require using a weapon that is foreign to us.

Martyrdom. Ours, not theirs.

Following terrorist attacks and other forms of unconscionable violence, sympathy for innocent victims stirs. This happened after 911 and after the Oklahoma City bombings. When Emperor Nero went too far and used tar-covered Christians as screaming flaming torches to light his parties, he finally incited revolt against his leadership. He killed himself one step ahead of a rebelling mob. Ideological justifications that are presented for taking lives lose impact when weighed against innocent blood being shed. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi knew this, and Jesus knew this. They all won their battles.

How important is free speech to us, or justice, or any other principle that has held our country on a slim edge of blessings? There is truth in the notion that finding something worth dying for is when we truly begin to live. Doing the math on this one, it’s clear that everyone is going to bite the dust. We might as well make it worth the ride.

Show your support!  Turn yourself into a South Park avatar! I made the following personally-representative design choices: 1) I’m standing in front of a nightclub; 2) wearing a Star Trek uniform; 3) blond; 4) with the maximum of three accessories from the selection menu – a protest sign, big black glasses, and cleavage…

http://www.southparkstudios.com/avatar/

Quote of the Blog from Ed, the Little Lebowski, while looking to put his parking pass through our scanner after a show: “Oh dear me! I must validate myself, lest I forget!”

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Whitney runs a rock music club in L.A. She has an MBA and no one cares.