The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy (39 page)

9
. For more on this, see: James Sterba,
Morality in Practice
(Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2003); James Sterba, ed.,
Ethics: Classical Western Texts in Feminist and Multicultural Perspectives
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

10
. Of course the “Founding Fathers” probably meant
white male land-owners
when they said
men
, but it is more reasonably interpreted today to mean “all
people
are created equal.”

11
. Peter Singer,
Animal Liberation
; also, Peter Singer,
Practical Ethics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

12
. J.S. Mill,
Utilitarianism
(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2003).

13
. Dr. Jones wishes to thank her brilliant research assistants, Eduardo Flores and Justin O’Donnell, for their tireless efforts in watching
South Park
episodes that contributed to the completion of this chapter.

Per F. Broman

We’re not the artistic side; we are the thinking side.

— Eric Cartman, “Wing”

In the fifth-season episode “Kenny Dies,” Cartman gives a passionate and sentimental speech to the US House of Representatives, arguing for the legalization of stem-cell research to save his dying friend, Kenny. Unable to get the lawmakers’ full attention, Cartman begins to sing Asia’s “Heat of the Moment.” It turns into a sing-along with tight clapping fill-ins from the audience. Surprisingly enough, every Representative knows this rather rhythmically complicated song. The shared musical experience allows the legislation to move along, despite the fact that the love lyrics have nothing to do with the issue. So from this example, it would seem that music itself has greater value than the content of the lyrics, according to
South Park
. This should not surprise us since music that affects the emotions doesn’t necessarily need words. Think of the commanding opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the tear-jerking melody of
Love Story
, or the ­repetitive power-chord progression found throughout Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.”

Music’s ability to influence people’s thoughts and emotions has been an important part of Western philosophy’s look at art and beauty, a subfield called
aesthetics
. Philosophers, rulers, and parents have known this and tried, often in vain, to control and censor music. Sextus Empiricus’ (160–210)
Against the Musicians
talks about the power of music in poetic terms:

Pythagoras, when he once observed how lads who had been filled with Bacchic frenzy by alcoholic drink differed not at all from madmen, exhorted the
aulete
who was joining them in the carousal to play his
aulos
for them in the
spondaic melos
. When he thus did what was ordered, they suddenly changed and were given discretion as if they had been sober even at the beginning.
¹

The Greek term
spondaic melos
, refers to a solemn piece of music dominated by long note values. The
aulos
was the ancient double piped reed instrument often used as a Dionysian instrument of exaltation. Think of it as the distorted electric guitar of ancient Greece. Its use was controversial and some writers, including Plato (427–347
BCE
), argued that it should be banned.

This chapter is about the power of music, how characters in
South Park
use it in telling stories, and how music conveys ideas in the context of Western philosophy. I can’t provide a “philosophy of music of
South Park
” because the series is too eclectic and self-contradictory. But
South Park
does raise questions about music that philosophers—particularly Plato—have dealt with again and again.

In his
Republic
, Plato echoes the lesson of the Pythagoras story when he describes which of the seven
Harmoniai
were appropriate for performing music.
²
Harmoniai
is a term similar to today’s “modes,” or scales, though the Greek modes were different from our modal scales. The Ionian and the Lydian modes, they said, were “utterly unbecoming,” as they are “relaxed” and “soft or drinking harmonies.” Such modes are to be avoided, even “banished,” according to Plato. On the other hand, Dorian and Phrygian
Harmoniai
were acceptable because they were useful during military activities in defense of the Republic. Plato indicates his belief that simply altering the pitch would completely change the impression of the song. This is a suggestion that seems curious, yet German musicologist Hans Joachim Moser has suggested that today this kind of alteration would be equivalent to changing a minor-mode tango to a major mode, and so taking away its erotic appeal.
³

Both Plato and Pythagoras emphasize that changes in music can produce an entirely different effect on the listener. For both, listener’s souls were affected by music’s mathematical properties, the relationship between different pitches, and the correspondence of pitches with the movements of the planets. This occurred more or less automatically: the direct effect of music was subconscious.

Despite their flaws, these Greek thinkers’ views were instrumental to asking questions about music’s impact (often referred to as
ethos
), its mathematical properties in relation to the universe, and how these two aspects interact with one another. The stories are amazing in their simplicity: the power of music makes it a fundamental part of society.

In a 2008 interview, Trey Parker claimed, “My favorite musical? It changes all the time. I’m just a diehard, I’m totally old school, like I’ll sit and watch, if they are redoing
Oklahoma
in New York, I will be the first one there.”
⁴
Music is of immense importance to Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Parker started out at Berklee College of Music in Boston before transferring to the University of Colorado, and Stone is also an accomplished musician. Many of the songs on the show were composed by Parker—“Blame Canada” from
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
, for example. After 14 seasons of
South Park
, their musical
The Book of Mormon
premiered on Broadway (and received nine Tony Awards).

Two types of music play a crucial role in the series.
Diegetic
, or source music, has a source of sound in the narrative.
Non-diegetic
music is part of the background, and isn’t perceived by the characters on screen. This kind of music is frequently used to set the mood, and you’ve heard it in
South Park
’s laid-back chord accompaniment to the hyper-ironic moral of many earlier episodes, “You know, I learned something today.” The show has many allusions to existing music, like the rhythmic pulse from
Jaws
heard before the man fishing on the lake in “Grey Dawn” gets hit by an elderly driver in a car; the use of Samuel Barber’s
Adagio
in “Up the Down Steroid” after Jimmy’s
Platoon
-like violent rampage; or Gabriel Fauré’s
Pie Jesu
—Merciful Jesus—when the dying louse Travis is rescued by a fly in “Lice Capades.”
⁵

Like background music, diegetic music is also a source of cultural reference. The show’s range of musical allusions is astonishing, including the musical
Oklahoma
in
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
, appearances of rock bands and musicians (Korn, Ronnie James Dio, Radiohead, Ozzy Osbourne, Meat Loaf, Blink 182, Metallica, Britney Spears, Alanis Morissette, Jimmy Buffett, Biggie Smalls, Michael Jackson, Kanye West, Puff Daddy, Neil Diamond, and the Jonas Brothers), allusions to nineteenth-century Italian opera (the Dreidl-Song quintet in “Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics”) and the genre of musicals, as characters burst into song in many of the series’ episodes. Musicals even form an integral part of some episodes, such as the “Elementary School Musical” episode, “Helen Keller! The Musical,” and the Terrance and Phillip film in
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
.

Controlled sound has a number of surprising uses. A company named Compound Security uses the analogy of “bug spray” for its own brand of teenager deterrent, a device that emits an annoying ­mosquito-like sound that’s
clearly
audible: “Acclaimed by the Police forces of many areas of the United Kingdom, the Mosquito ultrasonic teenage deterrent has been described as ‘the most effective tool in our fight against anti social behavior.’”
⁶
Similarly, the
Toronto Star
reports that classical music has been used successfully to “clear out undesirables” in Canadian parks, Australian railway stations, and London subway stations. With such accompaniment, robberies in the subway went down by 33 percent, assaults on staff by 25 percent, and vandalism of trains and stations by 37 percent. As a result, “London authorities now plan to expand the playing of Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel and opera (sung by Pavarotti) from three tube stations to an additional 35.”
⁷

These surprising uses of sound point to the same behavior-­changing capacity of music we saw in the Pythagoras story. Several
South Park
episodes draw on the power of music to do just this. In “Die Hippie, Die,” when South Park is infested by thousands of hippies holding a music festival, the only way to break up the gigantic crowd is by changing the music. “We use the power of rock ’n’ roll to change the world,” announces one hippie. Cartman’s response is to use even more powerful music—death metal. After having convinced the town that the hippies are bad, a group of town people builds a machine to drill through the masses of hippies to reach the center stage, as in the movie
The Core
. Once there, they play Slayer’s “Raining Blood.”
⁸
The hippies disappear quickly, as the music is “so angry,” and the town is saved. Strangely enough, the episode begins with actual bug spraying, as Cartman searches through a house, like an exterminator, looking for hippies hidden in the walls and the attic (“giggling stoners”).

Another instance of “musical spraying” occurs in “Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub.” During a wild party, the adults attract the attention of ATF agents, who believe that the party guests are members of a suicide sect. To break up the party, a version of Cher’s “Do You Believe in Love” is blasted through gigantic speakers. As one officer puts it: “Nobody can stand this much Cher. This is her new album. If this doesn’t drive them out, nothing will.” But ironically, the drunk party guests appreciate the music!

The difference between music and noise is not as clear-cut as it might seem.
South Park
shows that music has different effects on different people. Cher’s music fits into a mode for drinking and carousing (like Plato’s Ionian mode), while Slayer’s music is in a mode for war (like Plato’s Dorian mode). But in
South Park
there is no formula to predict music’s effects on everyone. Plato believed the impact of music was universal in scope. This is an unfeasible stance to defend today and a position note represented in
South Park
: Cher and Slayer work differently in different contexts and with different audiences.

In some episodes, music has universal power. In “World Wide Recorder Concert,” Cartman discovers the Brown Noise, a sound that causes the bowel to loosen, located “92 cent below the lowest octave of E-flat.” On a school-sanctioned trip to perform “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” Cartman alters the score to make the note heard. When the entire four-million-child orchestra plays this note, the consequences are global.
⁹
Such a low pitch could never be performed on recorders. But the story points to a connection between the magic in music and the how human physiology works: there is plenty of evidence to support the notion that sound waves could resonate and interfere with the electrical waves of the autonomous part of the nervous system, changing behavior.

Plato divides the soul into three parts. First is the “appetitive” part, the seat of our most base, irrational emotions and inclinations. Next is the spiritual part, which gives us our vim and vigor, and is supposed to respond to situations where we need to be courageous and moral. Finally, and most importantly, there’s the rational part, which is supposed to
direct
the spiritual part while controlling the appetitive part, like a charioteer directs a chariot pulled by two horses.
¹⁰
“Bug spray” music and the Brown Noise both “resonate with” (pun intended) the appetitive part of Plato’s human soul. In these cases, music directly affects the body in a visceral way.

But music also works directly on the spiritual part of the soul. In “Prehistoric Ice Man,” Ace of Base’s hit “All That She Wants” is played for the “Ice Man” Steve, unfrozen from the ice after two years. As a baby needs soothing lullaby, Steve needed the familiar music from 1996, his own time, in order to function. In “The Succubus,” Chef has fallen in love with Veronica, a woman who draws him to her by singing “The Morning After,” an Academy Award-winning song made famous in the 1972 movie
The Poseidon Adventure
. The boys believe that Victoria is taking Chef away from them, and Mr. Garrison tells them she’s a female demon that seduces men. They find a definition of “succubus” in an old dictionary: “Succubus: enchants its victim with eerie [sic] melody. This is succubus power. Only playing this melody backwards can vanquish the succubus power.” During the wedding of Chef and Veronica, the boys perform the song backwards, and her true diabolical self is revealed before being destroyed by the music. The power of music can create a spell, and the only way to break it is to reverse the order of the notes.
¹¹