Cartman Gets an Anal Probe
Encyclopedia
"Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" is the first episode of the animated television series South Park
. It first aired on Comedy Central
in the United States
on August 13, 1997. The episode introduces child protagonists Eric Cartman
, Kyle Broflovski
, Stan Marsh
and Kenny McCormick
, who attempt to rescue Kyle's younger brother Ike from being abducted by aliens.
At the time of the writing of the episode, South Park creators Trey Parker
and Matt Stone
did not yet have a series contract with Comedy Central, and Parker later commented that they felt "pressure" to live up to the internet shorts that first made them popular. Short on money, the duo animated the episode using cut paper
stop motion
techniques. As such, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" remains the only South Park episode animated without the use of computer technology.
Part of a reaction to the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s in the United States, South Park is deliberately offensive. Much of the show's humor, and of "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", arises from the juxtaposition of the seeming innocence of childhood and the violent, crude behavior exhibited by the main characters. The episode also exemplifies the carnivalesque
, which includes humor, bodily excess, linguistic games that challenge official discourse, and the inversion of social structures.
When the episode was first broadcast in Canada
, "objectionable material" was cut; it was later restored in subsequent showings. Initial reviews of the episode were generally negative; critics singled out the gratuitous obscenity of the show for particular scorn and compared South Park unfavorably with what they felt were the more complex and nuanced The Simpsons
and Beavis and Butt-head
.
and Matt Stone
, students at the University of Colorado
, met in a film class. They created two Christmas-related animated shorts called "Jesus vs. Frosty" and "Jesus vs. Santa". The low-budget, crudely made Jesus vs. Frosty featured prototypes for the main characters of South Park. Fox Broadcasting Company
(FOX) executive Brian Graden
saw the film and in 1995 commissioned Parker and Stone to create a second short that he could send to his friends as a video Christmas card. Titled "Jesus vs. Santa", it resembled the style of the later series more closely. The video was popular and widely shared, both by duplication and over the internet. After the shorts began to generate interest for a possible television series, Parker and Stone developed a concept based on the town of South Park and the characters Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman. Later, when Comedy Central
expressed interest in the series, Parker and Stone brought up the idea of a Mr. Hankey episode during negotiations with the network executives. Parker claimed he said during a meeting, "One thing we have to know before we really go any further: how do you feel about talking poo?" The executives were receptive to the idea, which Parker said was one of the main reasons he and Stone decided to sign on with the channel.
South Park was part of a reaction to the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s in the United States, in which issues such as Murphy Brown
's motherhood, Tinky Winky's sexuality, and the Simpsons
' family values were extensively debated. The culture wars, and political correctness
in particular, were driven by the belief that relativism
was becoming more relevant to daily life and thus what were perceived as "traditional" and reliable values were losing their place in American society. South Park, one scholar explains, "made a name for itself as rude, crude, vulgar, offensive, and potentially dangerous" within this debate about values. Its critics argued that Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny were poor role models for children while its supporters celebrated the show's defense of free speech.
, Stan
, Kenny
, and Cartman
wait for the school bus, Kyle's little brother, Ike comes up to them to try and follow them to school. Kyle tells Ike that he cannot come to school with him and Cartman says "Yeah, go home you little dildo
." After Kenny explains what a dildo is, Kyle whacks Cartman in the face with Ike, knocking Cartman out. When he comes to, Cartman tells the boys about a dream he had the previous night about being abducted by aliens. The others try to convince him that the events did happen and that the aliens are called "visitors", but Cartman refuses to believe them. Chef
pulls up in his car and asks if the boys saw the alien spaceship the previous evening, inadvertently confirming Cartman's "dream", and relays stories of alien anal probes (which throughout the episode Cartman denies he experienced). After Chef leaves, the school bus picks up the boys and they watch in horror as the "visitors" abduct Ike. Kyle spends the rest of the episode attempting to rescue him.
At school, Cartman begins to fart fire and Kyle unsuccessfully tries to convince his teacher Mr. Garrison to excuse him from class to find his brother. When Chef learns that Kyle's brother was abducted and sees a machine emerge from Cartman's anus, he helps the boys escape from school by pulling the fire alarm. Once they are outside, Cartman reiterates that his abduction was just a dream, when suddenly he is hit by a beam and starts singing and dancing. Soon afterward, a spaceship appears. Kyle throws a stone and the spaceship fires back, propelling Kenny into the road where he is run over by a herd of cows and a police car, killing him. This is the first time Stan and Kyle's famous lines "Oh my God! They killed Kenny! You bastards!" are heard.
Stan and Kyle meet Wendy at Stark's Pond and she suggests using the machine lodged inside of Cartman to contact the visitors. To lure them back, the children tie Cartman to a tree and, the next time he farts, a massive satellite
dish emerges from his anus. The alien spaceship arrives and Ike jumps to safety. In the meantime, the visitors communicate with the cows in the area, having found them to be the most intelligent species on the planet. Cartman is again abducted by the aliens and returns to the bus stop the following day with pinkeye.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, wrote "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" and Parker directed; it was made on a budget of $300,000. It received poor results from test audiences and Comedy Central executives were uncertain whether to order additional episodes of the show. However, when the two original South Park shorts, "Jesus vs. Frosty" and "Jesus vs. Santa", began to produce internet buzz, the network paid Parker and Stone to write one more episode. In writing "Weight Gain 4000
", the duo sought to give the network an idea of how each episode could differ from the others. The network liked the script and agreed to commit to a series when Parker and Stone said they would not write another individual episode until Comedy Central signed off on a season of at least six episodes.
Parker has said that "In the first episode, we felt the pressure to live up to Spirit of Christmas, and tried to push things ... maybe further than we should". In contrast, he explains, "Subsequent episodes have been more about making fun of things that are taboo ... without just throwing a bunch of dirty words in there." The pilot was originally 28 minutes long, but Parker and Stone had to rewrite and reshoot parts of it so that it would fit in the 22-minute slot on Comedy Central. For example, in the original pilot, Cartman farts fire because some older kids feed him hot tamales, while in the shortened version, he does so because of the alien probe implanted in him.
"Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" is the only episode of South Park Parker and Stone animated completely with traditional cut paper
stop motion
animation techniques. This laborious process took three-and-a-half months to complete; the characters who are not speaking rarely move, saving time in the animation process. Almost all subsequent episodes, including the new scenes made for the television pilot, were computer animated.
explains that "South Park is a vicious social satire that works by spotlighting not the immorality of these kids but their amorality, and contrasting it with the conniving hypocrisy of the adults who surround them." Often compared to The Simpsons
and King of the Hill
, South Park, according to Tom Lappin of Scotland on Sunday
, "has a truly malevolent streak that sets it apart" from these shows; he cites the repeated death of Kenny as an example.
The humor of the show comes from the "disparity" between the "cute" appearance of the characters and their "crude" behavior. However, Parker and Stone said in an early interview that the show's language is realistic. "There are so many shows where little kids are good and sweet, and it's just not real...Don't people remember what they were like in third grade? We were little bastards." Frederic Biddle of The Boston Globe
notes how the show "constantly plays on its grade-school aesthetic for shock value, with great success", arguing that at its height, it is "more a profane 'Peanuts
' than a downsized 'Beavis and Butt-head
.'" He points, for example, to Kenny, who symbolically represents the voiceless underclass, which is eliminated in each episode. Claire Bickley of the Toronto Sun
explains that "The show captures that mix of innocence and viciousness that can co-exist in kids that age", that "the boys are fascinated by bodily functions", and that they "mimic adult behavior and language". For example, Kyle instructs Stan and Wendy to "make sweet love down by the fire", a phrase he learns from Chef. In a light-hearted study of the humor of flatulence, Jim Dawson explains how the rise of adult animation in the 1990s allowed television to indulge in such humor with The Ren and Stimpy Show
, The Simpsons, and Beavis and Butthead. Beginning with "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", South Park builds on this tradition.
The episode employs what literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin
calls the carnivalesque
. As Ethan Thompson explains in his article, "Good Demo, Bad Taste: South Park as Carnivalesque Satire", the style consists of four crucial elements: humor, bodily excess
, linguistic games that challenge official discourse, and the inversion of social structures. Cartman's body—his obesity and his inability to control his farting—exemplifies the grotesque. The boys swear throughout the episode, using words and phrases such as "fat ass" and "dildo", challenging the boundaries of appropriate language. Finally, the social structure of the town is inverted, as the episode focuses on the knowledge that the four boys have of the aliens as opposed to the ignorant and incompetent adults. Moreover, the aliens perceive the cows as more intelligent than the humans, inverting the species order.
South Park tends to employ large-scale musical numbers in its episodes, often parodying 1930s cartoons. For example, Cartman sings part of "I Love to Singa
", from the cartoon of the same name, when he is struck by a beam from the alien ship.
after Seinfeld
on Canada's Global TV, with objectionable material cut from the show. The "dildo" jokes were removed from the pilot as well as two scenes in which Kyle kicks his baby brother, Ike. After complaints from viewers, the series was moved to midnight on October 17, 1997 and the deleted material was restored. Almost a year later after its original air date, the episode was broadcast for the first time in Britain (outside of satellite television) on July 10, 1998 on Channel 4
. A station representative said "It's for the audience coming back from the pub with a curry". The episode was first released on video on May 5, 1998 as part of a the three-volume VHS
set, which included introductions to each show by Parker and Stone.
"Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" initially earned a Nielsen rating
of 1.3, translating to 980,000 viewers, which is considered high for a cable program
in the United States. In April 2007, The New Zealand Herald
called the first episode "a huge success", however reviews at the time of the episode's broadcast were generally negative, most focusing on the low, obscene comedy. Bruce Fretts of Entertainment Weekly
thought poorly of the writing and characters stating that "If only the kids' jokes were as fresh as their mouths" and "It might help if the South Park kids had personalities, but they're as one-dimensional as the show's cut-and-paste animation". Tim Goodman of The San Francisco Examiner
acknowledged that many viewers will find South Park "vile, rude, sick, potentially dangerous, childish and mean-spirited". He argued that viewers "have to come into 'South Park' with a bent for irony, sarcasm, anger and an understanding that cardboard cut-out animation of foul-mouthed third-graders is a tragically underused comic premise."
Calling the series "sophomoric, gross, and unfunny," Hal Boedeker of the Orlando Sentinel believed that this episode "makes such a bad impression that it's hard to get on the show's strange wavelength." Ann Hodges of the Houston Chronicle considered the show "made by and for childish grown-ups" and for "adults who enjoy kid shows". Seeing the show as the inheritor of The Simpsons and Beavis and Butthead, Ginia Bellafante of Time
noted its failure to cohere and considered the show "devoid of subtext". Caryn James of The New York Times commented that the series "succeeds best in small touches" but "seems to have a future." In a generally negative review of the first three episodes of the series, Tom Shales
of The Washington Post
, wrote that "Most of the alleged humor on the premiere is self-conscious and self-congratulatory in its vulgarity: flatulence jokes, repeated use of the word 'dildo' (in the literal as well as pejorative sense) and a general air of malicious unpleasantness." In one of the few generally positive reviews, Eric Mink of the Daily News praised the South Park universe and the "distinct, interesting characters" within it. He singled out Cartman, calling him "the most vibrant of the bunch", describing him as "a bitter old man living in an 8-year-old's body".
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
. It first aired on Comedy Central
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
on August 13, 1997. The episode introduces child protagonists Eric Cartman
Eric Cartman
Eric Theodore Cartman is a fictional character in the American animated television series South Park. One of four main characters, along with Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Kenny McCormick, he is generally referred to within the series by his last name...
, Kyle Broflovski
Kyle Broflovski
Kyle Broflovski is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is voiced by co-creator Matt Stone. Kyle is one of the show's four central characters, along with his friends Stan Marsh, Kenny McCormick, and Eric Cartman...
, Stan Marsh
Stan Marsh
Stanley Randall "Stan" Marsh is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is voiced by and loosely based on series co-creator Trey Parker. Stan is one of the show's four central characters, along with his friends Kyle Broflovski, Kenny McCormick, and Eric Cartman...
and Kenny McCormick
Kenny McCormick
Kenneth "Kenny" McCormick is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is one of the four central characters along with his friends Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Eric Cartman. His oft-muffled and indiscernible speech—the result of his parka hood covering his...
, who attempt to rescue Kyle's younger brother Ike from being abducted by aliens.
At the time of the writing of the episode, South Park creators Trey Parker
Trey Parker
Trey Parker is an American animator, screenwriter, director, producer, voice artist, musician and actor, best known for being the co-creator of the television series South Park along with his creative partner and best friend Matt Stone.Parker started his film career in 1992, making a holiday short...
and Matt Stone
Matt Stone
Matthew Richard "Matt" Stone is an American screenwriter, producer, voice artist, musician and actor, best known for being the co-creator of South Park along with creative partner and best friend, Trey Parker....
did not yet have a series contract with Comedy Central, and Parker later commented that they felt "pressure" to live up to the internet shorts that first made them popular. Short on money, the duo animated the episode using cut paper
Cutout animation
Cutout animation is a technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs...
stop motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
techniques. As such, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" remains the only South Park episode animated without the use of computer technology.
Part of a reaction to the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s in the United States, South Park is deliberately offensive. Much of the show's humor, and of "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", arises from the juxtaposition of the seeming innocence of childhood and the violent, crude behavior exhibited by the main characters. The episode also exemplifies the carnivalesque
Carnivalesque
Carnivalesque is an traces the origins of the carnivalesque to the concept of carnival, itself related to the Feast of Fools, a medieval festival originally of the sub-deacons of the cathedral, held about the time of the Feast of the Circumcision , in which the humbler cathedral officials...
, which includes humor, bodily excess, linguistic games that challenge official discourse, and the inversion of social structures.
When the episode was first broadcast in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, "objectionable material" was cut; it was later restored in subsequent showings. Initial reviews of the episode were generally negative; critics singled out the gratuitous obscenity of the show for particular scorn and compared South Park unfavorably with what they felt were the more complex and nuanced The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
and Beavis and Butt-head
Beavis and Butt-Head
Beavis and Butt-head is an American animated television series created by Mike Judge. The series originated from Frog Baseball, a 1992 short film by Judge. After seeing the short, MTV signed Judge to develop the concept. Beavis and Butt-head originally aired from March 8, 1993 to November 28, 1997...
.
Background
South Park began in 1992 when Trey ParkerTrey Parker
Trey Parker is an American animator, screenwriter, director, producer, voice artist, musician and actor, best known for being the co-creator of the television series South Park along with his creative partner and best friend Matt Stone.Parker started his film career in 1992, making a holiday short...
and Matt Stone
Matt Stone
Matthew Richard "Matt" Stone is an American screenwriter, producer, voice artist, musician and actor, best known for being the co-creator of South Park along with creative partner and best friend, Trey Parker....
, students at the University of Colorado
University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder is a public research university located in Boulder, Colorado...
, met in a film class. They created two Christmas-related animated shorts called "Jesus vs. Frosty" and "Jesus vs. Santa". The low-budget, crudely made Jesus vs. Frosty featured prototypes for the main characters of South Park. Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
(FOX) executive Brian Graden
Brian Graden
-Biography:Graden grew up in Illinois and graduated from Hillsboro High School in 1981. He graduated from Oral Roberts University in 1985 with a degree in business, and later graduated with an MBA from Harvard University....
saw the film and in 1995 commissioned Parker and Stone to create a second short that he could send to his friends as a video Christmas card. Titled "Jesus vs. Santa", it resembled the style of the later series more closely. The video was popular and widely shared, both by duplication and over the internet. After the shorts began to generate interest for a possible television series, Parker and Stone developed a concept based on the town of South Park and the characters Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman. Later, when Comedy Central
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....
expressed interest in the series, Parker and Stone brought up the idea of a Mr. Hankey episode during negotiations with the network executives. Parker claimed he said during a meeting, "One thing we have to know before we really go any further: how do you feel about talking poo?" The executives were receptive to the idea, which Parker said was one of the main reasons he and Stone decided to sign on with the channel.
South Park was part of a reaction to the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s in the United States, in which issues such as Murphy Brown
Murphy Brown
Murphy Brown is an American situation comedy which aired on CBS from November 14, 1988, to May 18, 1998, for a total of 247 episodes. The program starred Candice Bergen as the eponymous Murphy Brown, a famous investigative journalist and news anchor for FYI, a fictional CBS television...
's motherhood, Tinky Winky's sexuality, and the Simpsons
Simpson family
The Simpson family is a family of fictional characters featured in the animated television series The Simpsons. The Simpsons are a nuclear family consisting of the married couple Homer and Marge and their three children Bart, Lisa and Maggie. They live at 742 Evergreen Terrace in the fictional town...
' family values were extensively debated. The culture wars, and political correctness
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
in particular, were driven by the belief that relativism
Relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....
was becoming more relevant to daily life and thus what were perceived as "traditional" and reliable values were losing their place in American society. South Park, one scholar explains, "made a name for itself as rude, crude, vulgar, offensive, and potentially dangerous" within this debate about values. Its critics argued that Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny were poor role models for children while its supporters celebrated the show's defense of free speech.
Plot
As KyleKyle Broflovski
Kyle Broflovski is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is voiced by co-creator Matt Stone. Kyle is one of the show's four central characters, along with his friends Stan Marsh, Kenny McCormick, and Eric Cartman...
, Stan
Stan Marsh
Stanley Randall "Stan" Marsh is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is voiced by and loosely based on series co-creator Trey Parker. Stan is one of the show's four central characters, along with his friends Kyle Broflovski, Kenny McCormick, and Eric Cartman...
, Kenny
Kenny McCormick
Kenneth "Kenny" McCormick is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is one of the four central characters along with his friends Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Eric Cartman. His oft-muffled and indiscernible speech—the result of his parka hood covering his...
, and Cartman
Eric Cartman
Eric Theodore Cartman is a fictional character in the American animated television series South Park. One of four main characters, along with Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Kenny McCormick, he is generally referred to within the series by his last name...
wait for the school bus, Kyle's little brother, Ike comes up to them to try and follow them to school. Kyle tells Ike that he cannot come to school with him and Cartman says "Yeah, go home you little dildo
Dildo
A dildo is a sex toy, often explicitly phallic in appearance, intended for bodily penetration during masturbation or sex with partners.- Description and uses :...
." After Kenny explains what a dildo is, Kyle whacks Cartman in the face with Ike, knocking Cartman out. When he comes to, Cartman tells the boys about a dream he had the previous night about being abducted by aliens. The others try to convince him that the events did happen and that the aliens are called "visitors", but Cartman refuses to believe them. Chef
Chef (South Park)
Jerome "Chef" McElroy is a fictional character on the Comedy Central series South Park. He was voiced by Isaac Hayes. A cafeteria worker at the local elementary school in the town of South Park, Colorado, Chef was generally portrayed as more level-headed than the other adult residents of the town...
pulls up in his car and asks if the boys saw the alien spaceship the previous evening, inadvertently confirming Cartman's "dream", and relays stories of alien anal probes (which throughout the episode Cartman denies he experienced). After Chef leaves, the school bus picks up the boys and they watch in horror as the "visitors" abduct Ike. Kyle spends the rest of the episode attempting to rescue him.
At school, Cartman begins to fart fire and Kyle unsuccessfully tries to convince his teacher Mr. Garrison to excuse him from class to find his brother. When Chef learns that Kyle's brother was abducted and sees a machine emerge from Cartman's anus, he helps the boys escape from school by pulling the fire alarm. Once they are outside, Cartman reiterates that his abduction was just a dream, when suddenly he is hit by a beam and starts singing and dancing. Soon afterward, a spaceship appears. Kyle throws a stone and the spaceship fires back, propelling Kenny into the road where he is run over by a herd of cows and a police car, killing him. This is the first time Stan and Kyle's famous lines "Oh my God! They killed Kenny! You bastards!" are heard.
Stan and Kyle meet Wendy at Stark's Pond and she suggests using the machine lodged inside of Cartman to contact the visitors. To lure them back, the children tie Cartman to a tree and, the next time he farts, a massive satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
dish emerges from his anus. The alien spaceship arrives and Ike jumps to safety. In the meantime, the visitors communicate with the cows in the area, having found them to be the most intelligent species on the planet. Cartman is again abducted by the aliens and returns to the bus stop the following day with pinkeye.
Production
Weight Gain 4000
"Weight Gain 4000" is the second episode of the first season of the animated television series South Park. It first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on August 20, 1997. In the episode, the residents of South Park excitedly prepare for a visit by celebrity Kathie Lee Gifford, whom the...
", the duo sought to give the network an idea of how each episode could differ from the others. The network liked the script and agreed to commit to a series when Parker and Stone said they would not write another individual episode until Comedy Central signed off on a season of at least six episodes.
Parker has said that "In the first episode, we felt the pressure to live up to Spirit of Christmas, and tried to push things ... maybe further than we should". In contrast, he explains, "Subsequent episodes have been more about making fun of things that are taboo ... without just throwing a bunch of dirty words in there." The pilot was originally 28 minutes long, but Parker and Stone had to rewrite and reshoot parts of it so that it would fit in the 22-minute slot on Comedy Central. For example, in the original pilot, Cartman farts fire because some older kids feed him hot tamales, while in the shortened version, he does so because of the alien probe implanted in him.
"Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" is the only episode of South Park Parker and Stone animated completely with traditional cut paper
Cutout animation
Cutout animation is a technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs...
stop motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
animation techniques. This laborious process took three-and-a-half months to complete; the characters who are not speaking rarely move, saving time in the animation process. Almost all subsequent episodes, including the new scenes made for the television pilot, were computer animated.
Style and themes
Describing the general tone of the show, Teri Fitsell of The New Zealand HeraldThe New Zealand Herald
- External links :* * *...
explains that "South Park is a vicious social satire that works by spotlighting not the immorality of these kids but their amorality, and contrasting it with the conniving hypocrisy of the adults who surround them." Often compared to The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
and King of the Hill
King of the Hill
King of the Hill is an American animated dramedy series created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, that ran from January 12, 1997, to May 6, 2010, on Fox network. It centers on the Hills, a working-class Methodist family in the fictional small town of Arlen, Texas...
, South Park, according to Tom Lappin of Scotland on Sunday
Scotland on Sunday
Scotland on Sunday is a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published in Edinburgh by The Scotsman Publications Ltd and consequently assuming the role of Sunday sister to its daily stablemate The Scotsman...
, "has a truly malevolent streak that sets it apart" from these shows; he cites the repeated death of Kenny as an example.
The humor of the show comes from the "disparity" between the "cute" appearance of the characters and their "crude" behavior. However, Parker and Stone said in an early interview that the show's language is realistic. "There are so many shows where little kids are good and sweet, and it's just not real...Don't people remember what they were like in third grade? We were little bastards." Frederic Biddle of The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
notes how the show "constantly plays on its grade-school aesthetic for shock value, with great success", arguing that at its height, it is "more a profane 'Peanuts
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...
' than a downsized 'Beavis and Butt-head
Beavis and Butt-Head
Beavis and Butt-head is an American animated television series created by Mike Judge. The series originated from Frog Baseball, a 1992 short film by Judge. After seeing the short, MTV signed Judge to develop the concept. Beavis and Butt-head originally aired from March 8, 1993 to November 28, 1997...
.'" He points, for example, to Kenny, who symbolically represents the voiceless underclass, which is eliminated in each episode. Claire Bickley of the Toronto Sun
Toronto Sun
The Toronto Sun is an English-language daily tabloid newspaper published in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is known for its daily Sunshine Girl feature and for what it sees as a populist conservative editorial stance.-History:...
explains that "The show captures that mix of innocence and viciousness that can co-exist in kids that age", that "the boys are fascinated by bodily functions", and that they "mimic adult behavior and language". For example, Kyle instructs Stan and Wendy to "make sweet love down by the fire", a phrase he learns from Chef. In a light-hearted study of the humor of flatulence, Jim Dawson explains how the rise of adult animation in the 1990s allowed television to indulge in such humor with The Ren and Stimpy Show
The Ren and Stimpy Show
The Ren & Stimpy Show, often simply referred to as Ren & Stimpy, is an American animated television series, created by Canadian animator John Kricfalusi for Nickelodeon. The series focuses on the titular characters: Ren Höek, a psychotic chihuahua, and Stimpson J. Cat, a good-natured, dimwitted cat...
, The Simpsons, and Beavis and Butthead. Beginning with "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", South Park builds on this tradition.
The episode employs what literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language...
calls the carnivalesque
Carnivalesque
Carnivalesque is an traces the origins of the carnivalesque to the concept of carnival, itself related to the Feast of Fools, a medieval festival originally of the sub-deacons of the cathedral, held about the time of the Feast of the Circumcision , in which the humbler cathedral officials...
. As Ethan Thompson explains in his article, "Good Demo, Bad Taste: South Park as Carnivalesque Satire", the style consists of four crucial elements: humor, bodily excess
Grotesque body
The grotesque body is a concept, or literary trope, put forward by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin in his study of François Rabelais' work. The essential principle of grotesque realism is degradation, the lowering of all that is abstract, spiritual, noble, and ideal to the material level...
, linguistic games that challenge official discourse, and the inversion of social structures. Cartman's body—his obesity and his inability to control his farting—exemplifies the grotesque. The boys swear throughout the episode, using words and phrases such as "fat ass" and "dildo", challenging the boundaries of appropriate language. Finally, the social structure of the town is inverted, as the episode focuses on the knowledge that the four boys have of the aliens as opposed to the ignorant and incompetent adults. Moreover, the aliens perceive the cows as more intelligent than the humans, inverting the species order.
South Park tends to employ large-scale musical numbers in its episodes, often parodying 1930s cartoons. For example, Cartman sings part of "I Love to Singa
I Love to Singa
I Love to Singa is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Tex Avery, produced by Leon Schlesinger, and released to theatres on July 18, 1936 by Warner Bros. and Vitaphone. I Love to Singa depicts the story of a young owlet who wants to sing jazz, instead of the classical music that his...
", from the cartoon of the same name, when he is struck by a beam from the alien ship.
Release and reception
The episode was broadcast for the first time at 10 p.m. EDT in the United States on August 13, 1997 on Comedy Central. South Park was originally broadcast during prime timePrime time
Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast programming during the middle of the evening for television programing.The term prime time is often defined in terms of a fixed time period—for example, from 19:00 to 22:00 or 20:00 to 23:00 Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast...
after Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
on Canada's Global TV, with objectionable material cut from the show. The "dildo" jokes were removed from the pilot as well as two scenes in which Kyle kicks his baby brother, Ike. After complaints from viewers, the series was moved to midnight on October 17, 1997 and the deleted material was restored. Almost a year later after its original air date, the episode was broadcast for the first time in Britain (outside of satellite television) on July 10, 1998 on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
. A station representative said "It's for the audience coming back from the pub with a curry". The episode was first released on video on May 5, 1998 as part of a the three-volume VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
set, which included introductions to each show by Parker and Stone.
"Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" initially earned a Nielsen rating
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
of 1.3, translating to 980,000 viewers, which is considered high for a cable program
Cable television in the United States
Cable television in the United States is a common form of television delivery, generally by subscription. Cable television first became available in the United States in 1948, with subscription services in 1949. Data by SNL Kagan shows that as of 2006 about 58.4% of all American homes subscribe to...
in the United States. In April 2007, The New Zealand Herald
The New Zealand Herald
- External links :* * *...
called the first episode "a huge success", however reviews at the time of the episode's broadcast were generally negative, most focusing on the low, obscene comedy. Bruce Fretts of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
thought poorly of the writing and characters stating that "If only the kids' jokes were as fresh as their mouths" and "It might help if the South Park kids had personalities, but they're as one-dimensional as the show's cut-and-paste animation". Tim Goodman of The San Francisco Examiner
The San Francisco Examiner
The San Francisco Examiner is a U.S. daily newspaper. It has been published continuously in San Francisco, California, since the late 19th century.-19th century:...
acknowledged that many viewers will find South Park "vile, rude, sick, potentially dangerous, childish and mean-spirited". He argued that viewers "have to come into 'South Park' with a bent for irony, sarcasm, anger and an understanding that cardboard cut-out animation of foul-mouthed third-graders is a tragically underused comic premise."
Calling the series "sophomoric, gross, and unfunny," Hal Boedeker of the Orlando Sentinel believed that this episode "makes such a bad impression that it's hard to get on the show's strange wavelength." Ann Hodges of the Houston Chronicle considered the show "made by and for childish grown-ups" and for "adults who enjoy kid shows". Seeing the show as the inheritor of The Simpsons and Beavis and Butthead, Ginia Bellafante of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
noted its failure to cohere and considered the show "devoid of subtext". Caryn James of The New York Times commented that the series "succeeds best in small touches" but "seems to have a future." In a generally negative review of the first three episodes of the series, Tom Shales
Tom Shales
Thomas William "Tom" Shales is an American critic of television programming and operations. He is best known as TV critic for The Washington Post; in 1988, Shales received the Pulitzer Prize...
of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, wrote that "Most of the alleged humor on the premiere is self-conscious and self-congratulatory in its vulgarity: flatulence jokes, repeated use of the word 'dildo' (in the literal as well as pejorative sense) and a general air of malicious unpleasantness." In one of the few generally positive reviews, Eric Mink of the Daily News praised the South Park universe and the "distinct, interesting characters" within it. He singled out Cartman, calling him "the most vibrant of the bunch", describing him as "a bitter old man living in an 8-year-old's body".
External links
- "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" Full episode at South Park Studios
- "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" Episode Guide at South Park Studios