The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy (3 page)

In Plato’s (427–327
BCE
)
Apology
, Socrates defends himself against two charges: impiety, or false teachings about the gods, and corrup­ting the youth of Athens. Socrates probably had as much chance of winning his case as Chef did against Johnny Cochran’s “Chewbacca” defense! What is most important about Socrates’ own defense, though, isn’t so much
what
he says as
how
he says it. He defends himself by questioning his accuser, Meletus, leading him through a process of reasoning. For example, Socrates refutes the charge of corrupting the youth like this:

SOCRATES:
You say you have discovered the one who corrupts them, namely me, and you bring me here and accuse me to the jury … All the Athenians, it seems, make the young into fine good men, except me, and I alone corrupt them. Is that what you mean?

MELETUS:
That is most definitely what I mean.

SOCRATES:
You condemn me to a great misfortune. Tell me: does this also apply to horses do you think? That all men improve them and one individual corrupts them? Or is quite the contrary true, one individual is able to improve them, or very few, namely the horse breeders, whereas the majority, if they have horses and use them, corrupt them? Is that not
the case, Meletus, both with horses and all other animals? …
It would be a happy state of affairs if only one person
­corrupted our youth, while the others improved them. You have made it sufficiently obvious, Meletus, that you have never had any concern for our youth; you show your indifference clearly; that you have given no thought to the subjects about which you bring me to trial.
²

Through the analogy with horse training, Socrates shows that the accusations against him are quite illogical. Just as most people would injure horses by trying to train them, and only a few good trainers improve them, so too it’s likely that a few teachers improve the virtue of the youth, while many others corrupt them. Socrates argues that he’s the one teaching Athens’ youth about virtue, while many others—including the idiots sitting before him—corrupt them. (As you can imagine, this did not go over well with the jury.)

While showing that the accusations are groundless, this “apology”—a word that in this case mean “defense”—demonstrates why Socrates got the death sentence of drinking hemlock. Socrates is famous for saying “I know that I don’t know” and, actually, this is a wise insight. For Socrates, philosophy was the love and pursuit of wisdom, and this required questioning others to find out what they did or didn’t know. Unfortunately, people often believe they’re wiser than they are. By questioning them, Socrates would show them that they don’t know what they believe they know: “I go around seeking out anyone, citizen or stranger, whom I think wise. Then if I do not think he is, I come to the assistance of the god and show him that he is not wise.”
³
What makes Socrates wise is his recognition of his own ignorance. Many powerful people in Athens saw him as dangerous because they believed the debates he carried on would undermine their bases for power.

In the town of South Park, people in positions of power also believe they’re teaching the children wisdom and virtue. However, as in Athens, most “teachers” in South Park seem to make the children worse, not better. For example, Mr. Garrison “teaches” the children creationism before switching to an unflinching Darwinism; Mrs. Broflovski always goes to crazy extremes with her “moral” outrage; Uncle Jim and Ned teach the boys to kill harmless bunnies and squirrels in “self-defense”; and the mayor panders shamelessly to voters. None of the townsfolk really
talk
to the children, except Chef (R.I.P.), who taught the art of making sweet, sweet love to a woman. Blindly following the crowd, the parents of South Park protest
Terrance and Phillip
, boycott Harbucks, and—yes—bury their heads in the sand to avoid watching
Family Guy
. And they corrupt the children far more than a television show ever could. As in “Something Wal-Mart This Way Comes,” their mindless consumption leads to an unrestrained cycle of economic and mob destruction. Like the Athenians, the adults don’t know as much as they believe they know. Ultimately, if television does corrupt the children, it does so because they are left to passively absorb it by their parents, with no one to educate them about what they are seeing. Of course, there are also cases where parents and people in powerful positions
do
try to discuss issues and ideas with the children. In these discussions, though, the adults usually sound like bumbling idiots. Socrates might even say that since this treatment systematically harms the children, there’s evil at work in South Park.

One of the most memorable philosophical reflections on evil in the twentieth century is Hannah Arendt’s
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
, a study of the trial of Adolf Eichmann
for his role in the deportations of millions of European Jews to concentration camps during the Jewish Holocaust. Eichmann just
­followed the law of the land, whatever it happened to be, and when Hitler was making the laws, Eichmann simply carried them out.
⁴
In the words of Arendt, Eichmann was an unreflective person, unable to think for himself and
definitely
unable “to think from the standpoint of somebody else.”
⁵
What was really monstrous about Eichmann was not his vicious cruelty, but the fact that he wasn’t that different from so many Germans who, under Nazism, accepted and supported laws that were obviously evil and believed that they were doing what was right. Eichmann’s banality—the fact that there’s nothing distinctive or exceptional about him—is
precisely
what makes him evil. He was “one of the crowd” who
didn’t
walk to the beat of a different drummer and
didn’t
rock the boat. He was a compliant citizen under a dictatorship, which speaks
for
its subjects and, thus, cuts off their reflective and critical thought.

Thoughtlessness leads to evil, as Arendt says, because it doesn’t let us see things from others’ perspectives. By blindly following orders, Eichmann didn’t think about what his actions were doing to others, or even what they were doing to him. By saying he was “following the law” and “doing his duty,” he ignored how his actions sent millions to their deaths and, despite his protests, made him a murderer. Thinking, according to Arendt, requires taking another’s standpoint, reflecting on how you might be harming others, and asking if you can live with what you’re doing.

While the adults in South Park blindly follow the latest fad or what they are told, it’s the children who point out the absurdity and potential
harm that lurks in this thoughtlessness. To be more accurate, it’s usually Kyle or Stan who are the reflective ones, while Cartman’s mind is as empty as the Cheesy Poofs he devours daily. He’s often sadistic, cruel, and evil. Like Eichmann, Cartman is probably evil because, when it comes to “authoritah,” he lacks reflection and critical analysis. (And like Eichmann, he has a Nazi uniform that he’s sported on occasion.) Cartman sings the Cheesy Poofs song so well because he just imitates what he hears on television. His evil is an
imitation
of the evil characters of our culture, as prepackaged as his afternoon snacks. Cartman consumes evil and imitates it as blindly and thoughtlessly as Eichmann—even when feeding Scott Tenorman his own parents (like
Medea in Greek tragedy), trying to kill Kyle and Stan on a lake (like Fredo in
The Godfather
), or torturing Muslims with his farts
(like Jack Bauer in
24
) to find the “snuke.” Most importantly, because of this thoughtlessness, Cartman is unable to see things from anyone else’s viewpoint, as we see most clearly in his manipulation of his mother. Arendt says that such thoughtlessness is precisely what allows evil to emerge in modern society, and Cartman’s mindless consumption is as thoughtless as it gets.

Part of what makes
South Park
philosophically interesting is the contrast between Cartman’s evil stupidity and the nonconformist, reflective virtue of Kyle and Stan. Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle (384–322
BC
) have noted the importance of how critical reflection leads to harmony or balance and helps us to avoid extremes. After all, the “extremes” of thinking and acting often lead to mistaken beliefs and harmful behavior. Following Plato’s lead, Aristotle offered the idea that
virtue
is concerned with striking a balance or hitting the mark between two extreme viewpoints, ideas, beliefs, emotions, or actions.
⁶
South Park
addresses moral issues through a discussion and criticism of established “moral” positions, both conservative and liberal, which are found to be inadequate. Kyle and Stan come to a harmonious position, in part, by negotiating and listening to these views before reaching their own conclusion through questioning and reason. Frequently, their conclusion recognizes that there’s truth in each position, but that a limited perspective is still dangerous. For example, it’s true that hybrid cars are more environmentally responsible than gas-guzzling SUVs. But when an air of moral superiority clouds one’s judgment, this “smug cloud” creates hostility and pollutes society in other ways.

How
Stan and Kyle reach their conclusions is more significant than the conclusions themselves. Think of how they talk about whether it’s wrong to kill Stan’s grandpa, who wants to die. Like Socrates, they question others, seeking people who are really as wise as they believe themselves to be. Their parents, Mr. Garrison, and Jesus won’t discuss or touch this issue “with a 60-foot pole.” What Kyle and Stan ultimately realize—with the help of Stan’s great-great-grandfather’s ghost—is that they shouldn’t kill his grandfather, because the action would change and harm them. As it turns out, Stan’s grandfather is wrong in asking them to do this vicious action. Note that the boys reach this conclusion through living with each other, recognizing their differences, and engaging in debate. Stan and Kyle—unlike Eichmann and Cartman—learn to see things from others’ perspectives, through their ongoing conversation.

In the
Apology
, Socrates makes the astounding claim that a good person cannot be harmed by the actions of others. This seems false. After all, aside from being a cartoon character, what could prevent Cartman from punching out the Dalai Lama? But what Socrates means by “good” is something different than we often realize. Goodness means being willing to think about your actions and
being able to live with what you’ve done
. Despite any
physical
harm—­torture, imprisonment, exile, or death—that may come a person’s way, no one could “hurt” a virtuous person by making them
do
something bad. Cartman, for example, couldn’t make the Dalai Lama punch
him
. Socrates, for his part, refused to execute an innocent
person, or to try generals for “crimes” beyond the laws of the city. And
Socrates would rather die than give up the thinking and ­questioning that he sees as central to philosophy:

Perhaps someone might say: But Socrates, if you leave us will you not be able to live quietly, without talking? Now this is the most difficult point on which to convince some of you. If I say that it is impossible for me to keep quiet because that means disobeying the god, you will not believe me … On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which
you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined
life is not worth living for man, you will believe me even less.
⁷

Arendt thinks likewise about goodness. Ethics, for those who resisted the Nazis, was being able to look back on their lives without shame, rather than adhering to a rigid set of questionable rules:

Their criterion [for goodness], I think, was a different one; they asked themselves to what extent they would still be able to live in peace with themselves after having committed certain deeds; and they decided that it would be better to do nothing, not because the world would then be changed for the better, but simply because only on this condition could they go on living with themselves at all. Hence, they also chose to die when they were forced to participate. To put it crudely, they refused to murder … because they were unwilling to live together with a murderer—themselves. The precondition for this kind of judging is not a highly developed intelligence or sophistication in moral matters, but rather the disposition to live together explicitly with oneself, to have intercourse with oneself, that is, to be engaged in that silent dialogue between me and myself which, since Socrates and Plato, we usually call thinking.
⁸

Thinking, for Arendt, is a twofold process: it involves seeing things through another’s eyes through dialogue and reflection, as well as asking what you can live with for yourself. It is, then, both an internal and an external dialogue, and only through this dialogue can critical reflection and goodness become real. Whereas Eichmann and Cartman don’t critically reflect upon the consequences of actions, nor put themselves in another’s shoes, thoughtful dialogue makes us attentive to others around us, lets us live with them, and helps us attend to our own goodness. Such dialogue allows us to live with ourselves—even when, like Socrates or those who resisted the Nazis, this means we must die.

Of course, in South Park there’s no Socrates to teach philosophy or help us engage in dialogue. Surrounded by ignorance and violence, the boys are on their own. While the four are friends,
South Park
makes its compelling points in philosophy and ethics through the friendship of Kyle and Stan. For instance, in “Spookyfish,” where the “evil” Cartman (who is good) arrives from a parallel universe, an evil Kyle and Stan arrive
together
. Their friendship—thinking from one another’s perspective—is what helps them to be good, both for ­themselves and for others. In Arendt’s words, to live well is to “be plural,” so that the good life is never simply one’s own.
⁹
This probably is why Plato wrote about important philosophical issues in dialogue form, so that it becomes clear that debate and discussion of ideas is essential to intellectual and moral growth.