The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy (23 page)

Given our earlier discussion of
South Park
’s treatment of the Church of Scientology, and given the show’s infamous and insensitive ridicule of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, and other faiths, these are points worth remembering. According to Jefferson, living in the aftermath of tremendous religious violence, “free argument and debate” are the proper means for settling contentious issues. And, as we saw, Popper adds that “rational reflection” supplemented by open public discussion is the most effective way to solve complex social problems. As for
South Park
’s creators, consider Stone’s comments during his interview with Parker on
Charlie Rose
: “Where we live is, like, the liberalest liberal part of the world. There’s a groupthink, and you only get to some new truth by argument and by dissent, and so we just play devil’s advocate all of the time.” So
South Park
should be understood as part of a wider intellectual context that champions free—and sometimes offensive—investigation and expression. Instead of limiting discussion about difficult issues when it becomes uncomfortable, Popper, Jefferson, Parker, Stone, and others would be willing to tolerate such discussion for its greater benefits.

1
. Douglas Rushkoff,
Media Virus! Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 100–125, 179–209.

2
.
Charlie Rose
, Sept. 26, 2005.

3
. Karl Popper,
The Open Society and Its Enemies
(London: G. Routledge and Sons, 1945), 168.

4
. Ibid., 168.

5
. Ibid., 169.

6
. “Prediction and Prophecy in the Social Sciences,” in Karl Popper,
Conjectures and Refutations
(New York: Basic Books, 1962), 344–345. See also Popper’s “Public Opinion and Liberal Principles” contained in the same volume, 346–354.

7
. Bryan Magee,
Karl Popper
(New York: Viking, 1973), 70–71.

8
. “South Park Celebrates 14 Years of Fart Jokes,”
Fresh Air
, Mar. 24, 2010.

9
. Michael Fleming, “Inside Moves: Is ‘South Park’ Feeling Some Celebrity Heat?,”
Variety Daily
, Mar. 17, 2006: 3.

10
. “South Park Celebrates 14 Years of Fart Jokes,”
Fresh Air
, Mar. 24, 2010.

11
. Popper,
The Open Society and Its Enemies
, 546.

12
. Interview with Josh Grossberg, “‘South Park,’ ‘Galactica’ Peabody’d,”
E! Online
, April 5, 2006.

13
. The other two items were his writing of the Declaration of Indepen­dence and his founding of the University of Virginia; it is interesting to note the omission from this list of his two terms as President of the United States. See the “Epitaph” in Jefferson’s
Writings
, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Literary Classics of the U.S., 1984), 706–707.

14
. All quotations from
Writings
, 346–348.

15
. From Julian P. Boyd (ed.),
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), vol. 2, 547.

Jeffrey Ewing

If Marx had seen the
South Park
episode “The Last of the Meheecans,” he may have started his magnum opus
Das Kapital
by paraphrasing Craig Tucker, possibly wearing a blue hat topped with a yellow puffball: “The proletariat is one of those classes who economists can never remember whether they were there or not.” Marx, however, grounded his work in recognizing the central importance of labor to human production. The “labor theory of value,” a cornerstone of Marx’s criticism of capitalist economics, centers on the importance of human labor to the dominant Western system of economic ­production. The most important statement by Marx about the labor theory of value and economics is in
Das Kapital
, first published in 1867. What Marx seems to be missing is a statement of the impact of race, ethnicity, and gender on the value of “labor-power” under capitalism. One hundred and forty-four years later, its key “missing element” was brought to public attention, very surprisingly, in the
South Park
episode “The Last of the Meheecans.” This episode weaves a tale of immigration and labor through the story of Mantequilla, aka Butters, aka the leader of the Great Migration to Mexico of 2011 in a way that highlights how ethnicity and race, specifically, affect the “value of labor-power,” a central part of Marx’s theory. What can Marx teach us about Mantequilla? And what can Mantequilla teach us about Marx?

To Marx, human labor is important in several ways. Labor is the way in which humans create the social and cultural world, and, at the same time, the means by which they create themselves. Labor is also how people interact with non-human nature to meet their needs. Historically, the capitalist economic system (or “mode of production” in Marxian terms) contrasts with pre-capitalist economic systems because human labor makes
commodities
, goods produced specifically for sale on the market. In Marx’s theoretical framework, these commodities have two kinds of value:
use
value (how useful they are as a means to something) and
exchange
value (roughly based on the amount of labor and the skill required to produce the commodity). For Marx, the key of looking at economic systems through the lens of the labor theory of value is this: under capitalism, all goods are produced for sale on the market, and their prices are ultimately determined by the “value” of the labor used to produce them.

Under capitalism, however, more than products and raw materials are put up for sale on the market. Labor power is treated as a commodity (of a kind), but unlike other commodities, the value of labor power is directly related to “the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the laborer.”
¹
Needs and wants of workers vary, though, from place to place, and, as Marx writes, “the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also the modes of satisfying them, are themselves the product of historical development, and depend therefore to a great extent … on the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and degree of comfort in which, the class of free laborers has been formed.”
²

Marx thinks this introduces “a historical and moral element” into “the determination of the value of labor-power.”
³
The value of labor power to the capitalist, while depending on a host of historical factors, ultimately comes down to this: as human organisms, society will only survive if enough workers survive to maintain it. But this also means that the value of labor can be reduced if capitalists find a way to do more with less, and this drastically lowers workers’ standards of living.

But maybe the labor theory of value doesn’t capture the whole story. “Production” means the application of human labor power to either non-human nature or to the products of other human labors, and it’s through control over this human labor power that social classes and class power are maintained. Race and gender, both systems of dominating others, intersect with class but operate differently. Both race and gender depend upon the way
bodies
are interpreted in terms of language, behavior, and social institutions, and the socially constructed
meaning
of what it is to have that kind of body.
⁴
In other words, in Marx’s labor theory of value, human work has a particular value to capitalists, and it could take on board dominating relations of race and gender, for societies give different
meanings
to bodies in racialized and gendered ways. Though Marx himself didn’t frame his labor theory of value in that way, the convergence of labor power, race, and gender is highlighted in “The Last of the Meheecans.”

Racialized populations are often assumed to take up activities and kinds of work that they’re seen as more or less “fit for.” Where particular people are judged like this to be “less fit” for other kinds of labor, they are less likely (thanks to market logic) to get employed in those areas. Of course, the occupations fit only for groups who fall at the bottom of these dominating social orders are held to have less worth and deserve lower rewards. A capitalist wouldn’t even need to personally be a chauvinist to gain from applying this logic, at least if it increases profit harmonized with local norms, meets market demands, and damages labor unity. Is this perfectly consistent change to Marx’s own theory of the value of labor power implied in “The Last of the Meheecans”?

The episode begins with the South Park boys playing “Texans versus Mexicans,” where the “Texans” (led by Cartman) construct a “border fence” that the “Mexicans” attempt to cross. The faux-­Mexicans are led first by Butters, who adopts the “Meheecan” name Mantequilla, but Kyle takes over due to Butters’ “inability to lead.” The Mexicans succeed, winning the game, but at a sleepover at Cartman’s, the boys realize Mantequilla never successfully crossed the border, and the game isn’t over. The episode ends with Mantequilla—now recognized as a national hero for restoring Mexican national pride—in a standoff at the border with Cartman.

In “Meheecans,” stereotypes about class, labor, and “Mexicans” are hard to miss, from the very first game of “Texans versus Mexicans.” Cartman yells at his teammates for letting the Mexican team through: “If you let yourselves get distracted for even one minute, we’re gonna be overrun with these jobless, no good …” and is interrupted before he finishes his sentence. Even in the very beginning of the episode, the stereotypical connection of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans and joblessness is made. When Butters finds himself lost and unable to find the border, he wanders and sings to himself a song whose main lyric is “Work, Mexican, work,” alluding to the idea that illegal Latino immigrants are good for nothing in America except cheap, hard labor.

Subtleties of dialogue offer racialized images of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. Cartman, represents the hyper-patriotic, chew-spitting townie who sees Mexicans as shiftless and lazy, while Butters represents Mexican-Americans, and casually sings to himself a song showing an equally stereotypical image of the Mexican as doomed to perpetual labor. These images conflict, which brings two questions to mind—first, which is correct? Are Mexican-Americans lazy, shiftless, and jobless, or are they the hard-working backbone of much of the American workforce? And second, why do these opposite perceptions of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans and labor exist? Why is the racialization of Mexican-Americans so ambiguous on the topic of labor?

When Butters/Mantequilla is taken in by the couple who hit him with their car, they take him to their home to recover, assuming him to be a Mexican immigrant who has lost his “amigos” and family crossing the border. The woman begins to “teach” Mantequilla English words, like “Guest room. Bed, bed. Pillow.” Soon she directs him to the window, saying to her husband, “He’ll have so much more opportunity here than he ever would in Mexico!” Then, to Mantequilla: “Window. Window,” as she gives him a bottle of Windex. “Windex. Windex, Mantequilla. Paper towel.” His value as a “Mexican,” for them, is his capacity to perform their domestic labor.

Mantequilla’s situation gets worse rather than better. Later they give him a “present” they’ve “scraped some money together” for—a leaf blower. The husband asks, “How do you like that, Mantequilla? Your very own leaf blower! Ha-ha! I have no idea how it works, but I’m sure you do, huh? Say, how would you like to go in the back yard and play?” Mantequilla uses his gift later to clean the back yard of leaves: now his value as a Mexican is as an (unpaid) laborer. Their assumption about his ability to use a leaf blower seems to stem from him having some innate “Mexican”
knowledge
as a function of being a “Mexican laborer.” Mantequilla soon sings a more elaborate version of his “Work, Mexican, work” song, complete with backing singers. They sing:

SINGERS:
Work, Mexican, work.

BUTTERS:
All week long, bossman say …

SINGERS:
Work, Mexican, work.

BUTTERS:
Sing your song, earn your pay.

BOTH:
Work, Mexican, work. Work, Meheecan …

SINGERS:
Sweat.

BUTTERS:
Meheecan.

SINGERS:
Toil.

BUTTERS:
Meheecan, it’s your …

BOTH:
… lot in life.

BUTTERS:
While people play in the sun all day …

BOTH:
Work, Mexican, work.

Butters’ showier version of the song equates the life of a Mexican/Mexican-American with perpetual work (sweat and toil), while non-Mexicans/Mexican-Americans get to play in the sun and enjoy life, complete with a “bossman” or dominating employers demanding ever more labor from Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.

Mantequilla’s song and his treatment by the couple show that there’s a racialized association between being Mexican or Mexican-American and being inclined to, and happy with, hard, perpetual work by
nature
or
custom
. For Mantequilla, perpetual “sweat” and “toil” is what “bossman say,” and this is underscored by the fact that so many whites can “play in the sun all day”
because
of Mexican and Mexican-American work. Soon the husband finds his wife crying and asks her what’s wrong. She says: “It’s Mantequilla. We’ve tried giving him everything, but I don’t think he’s happy. Tonight I told him he could do whatever he wanted before bed—wash the dishes, mop up our bathroom—but you know what he said? ‘I need to go home.’ I tried telling him, ‘your home is here, Mantequilla! ¡Tu casa es aquí!’ But I don’t think he feels it.”