Question 12

12) Discuss the South Park episode “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson” (S11E01) in terms of its construction of race, particularly, as with the Chappelle Show episode (S1E01) we watched in class, in terms of whiteness. What elements of this critique come from the aesthetic, critical, and ontological modes of postmodernism (be specific about each) (150-200 words).



Postmodernism can be separated into three categories: the aesthetic, the critical, and the ontological. The aesthetic is the allusion to something, or the flattening of signifiers. The critical is when you not only allude to something, but also make a critical statement about it. The ontological is when there is a critique on the construction in its purest, symbolic form. It is the breakdown of the absurd and actually inhabiting, consciously, a stereotype.

South Park makes many references to the aesthetic in this episode. Examples include referencing Wheel of Fortune and youtube. It also references when Kramer (aka Michael Richards) made slanderous racist remarks at one of his comedy shoes. Also, the father was picked on for saying “nigger,” being called “nigger guy” and referencing the fact that there are slanderous terms used about black people. When the “nigger guys” get together, they reference the fact that people are racist all the time when they tak about the guys that used the word “nigger” in an office joke.

Most of the references to race were made in the realm of the critical. South Park is in the critical of the post modern when the only black kid in the kid’s school is named “Token.” It is obvious that he is the only black kid, but by calling him “Token” (as both his name and the boy) they are referencing the fact that they are “racially accepting,” which they obviously aren’t. Also, they make a critical statement about how “rednecks” are often racist towards black people by instead making them “racist” against “nigger guys.” By making this unexpected twist it makes a statement about the absurdity of said racism. The “laugh factory” (the stage looks almost identical to the one in the scandal) comedy show turns the earlier reference to Kramer critical, because instead of a white man being racist to black people (Kramer), it is a black person being “racist” to the nigger guy, even though he claims its “okay” (much like Kramer did). When they propose a bill to have the term “nigger guy” banned, it is making a critical statement about the banning of the term “nigger.” They say “for the first time in American history a word is banned from use,” and yet the word “nigger” itself is not banned.

South park moves into the ontological when the white man is inhabiting the stereotypical feeling a black man has when he is called a “nigger,” and then tells a group of actually black people that “they don’t know what it feels like.”