Mental illness and disabilities are something a lot of people struggle with, and they can make an impact on their daily lives. It has been represented in pop culture and television shows, but some can be offensive or straight-up wrong. But how does South Park do it? South Park is known for being offensive and making parents slap their kids round the face for watching it, so how can it handle something as serious as this? Let's discuss it.
Note: I am not saying South Park is the only show or piece of media that does the best at representation, this is my personal research and other points taken from videos on how South Park does it in its own way. I'm not shaming other shows. Now let's get into it.
What do you mean by representation?
What I mean by representation is how they, well...You should know what I mean. Let's just get started.
Modern Media
Modern Media can represent these things very well, shedding light on disabilities or illnesses. For example, My Little Pony and the character Kerfuffle, who has a prosthetic leg.
But, as all things can be spoiled, there can be some inappropriate ways of representation. For example, the pop singer Sia's movie "Music". One of the main characters, named "Music" is on the autism spectrum but is represented very poorly and downright offensively. The character is higher on the spectrum and is non-verbal. But she makes that the entire characters..character.
What is proper representation?
Proper representation is making sure the disability the character has isn't the personality of the entire character like if a character has depression, it isn't their entire thing and it isn't constantly shoved in your face, or if a character has autism, the character isn't constantly making random sounds or is stupid. Because that's not what Autism or Depression is. Both are different for different people.
How does South Park do it?
How does South Park manage to represent something as serious as this better than modern media? Let me explain. Sure, there are times they deliberately mock or treat some as a joke, such as when Cartman used anxiety as an excuse for everything in the episode "Buddha Box". But let's get into actual representation.
Depression
The episode "You're getting old", the episode shows how Stan deals with changes after his 10th birthday. Soon, the world around him starts to..alter. The food he used to love turns to crap, the music he used to listen to turned to crap, even his friends and hearing people talk just aggravates him. Stan soon starts to feel negative over everything, to the point where his friends don't want to hang out with him anymore.
After his friends leave him, his parents soon get a divorce. Which changes Stan completely after that. Kyle does try to help him, but he doesn't want Stans's negativity to affect how he sees the world. It becomes more serious, as then he doesn't see the point to anything. The counselor and Kyle both push it off as "Your attitude sucks, and you need to get over yourself or nobody wants to hang out with you."
Stan soon gets sent to the Aspergers research center, which really is just a club meetup for some crazy people who force Stan to become an alcoholic because that's the only way he'll be fixed.
Stan soon then realizes, that he doesn't want things to go back to the way it was. He says it'll be boring and the only way to keep going is to just move on.
The way this is handled is my personal favorite, as it shows the different levels and feelings he goes through, until the final breaking point. And it's just not an "I'm sad for the sake of being sad"
Tourrettes
Tourettes was shown in the popular episode "Le Petit Tourette", where Cartman sees a boy in a toy store shouting swears (Who has Tourettes). Cartman soon finds out that he can use this as an advantage to say whatever he wants without consequences. Kyle is the only person who sees through this, who then gets sent to the Tourette's Tolerance and Understanding foundation to learn more about the condition and not be a 'Bully' and say everyone who has it is faking it.
There are multiple unnamed characters who have different tics in this episode, such as one girl who has to blink her eyes and say boop, one who bends their neck and snaps their fingers, and one who has to shake their head and yell. And of course the main three, the man who runs the thing who has to yell "Piss" or "Ass", Thomas who constantly yells "Shit" or "Cock", and Eric who yells random obscenities.
This episode even got recognized by the actual Tourettes Association of America, who adored and loved this episode. This episode was well-loved by the Tourettes community for mixing the 'making fun of' and Cartmnas shenanigans, to an actual Heartwarming episode of understanding this syndrome.
Conclusion
Now it's time for me to ask you, the reader, what do you think? Do you agree with what I said? Do you have different opinions? Let me know! I'd love to discuss this with you all! Comment below!
Thanks for reading, Fuzzy is out!
Some points were taken from this video
