Hey, Wisecrack! Live action Jared, here.
These days social media means everything we do ends up on permanent record.
Just being on the internet is a minefield, and there’s no survival guide for handling it.
We’re not the only ones worrying about it either,
as the newest episode of South Park tackles these ideas head on,
so let’s get into this quick take on Season 21 Episode 3 Holiday Special.
And as always, spoilers ahead.
If you’ve been listening to our South Park podcast, Respect Our Authoritah, you know
we’ve been fascinated by the fact that this season has been more focused on people’s
REACTION to world events rather than the events themselves.
This has never been more clear than in this past episode, Holiday Special.
Randy’s quest for social justice hits a lot of ideas right on the nose,
YEEAAAHHH! TAKE IT DOWN! COLUMBUS WAS A MASS MURDERER!
but it also raises some really interesting questions.
First, a quick recap.
Randy, caught up in yet another wave of activism, gets Columbus Day canceled,
which means no more day off school.
It ain't right.
But that’s still not enough for South Park’s most vocal father.
He sets off to tear down a statue of Columbus, take a crap in columbus square, and berate
the residents of Columbus, Ohio.
You're an intolerant pig.
Oh, you're not? You just choose to live in a city named for ethnic cleansing?
His activism keeps escalating until the kids discover a treasure trove of Instagram pictures
depicting Randy in Columbus Cosplay.
After that Randy goes to great lengths, including falsifying a DNA test, in the randiest way
possible, to inoculate himself against criticism by presenting himself as a Native American,
i.e, a descendent of Columbus’ victims.
In the end, Randy finds out that he’s just an average white dude of European descent,
but with more than the average amount of Neanderthal DNA.
A fact he spins into his own story of victimhood,
The Earth wasn't big enough for Neanderthals, so your ancestors just got rid of them, HUH?!
after all those brutal homo sapiens erased
Neanderthals from the face of the earth.
So, what does Randy’s quest tell us about the world we live in?
Well, more than you think, and to explain why - we’re turning to something that we
talked about in one of our Walking Dead videos, the panopticon.
The panopticon is an idea originally created by philosopher Jeremy Bentham.
It’s a prison where a single guard in a tower can watch all the inmates at once.
The prisoners can’t tell if they’re being watched so they have to always be on their best behavior.
But postmodern theorist Michel Foucault thought it was a perfect metaphor for how society controls its citizens.
Because we never know when our actions might result in punishment, we try our best to follow
the rules, which means we become controlled by those rules even when no one can enforces them.
We even internalize those rules and systems so we don’t even know if we’re acting
because of our beliefs or because of that systemic control and fear of punishment.
Unfortunately for Randy, social media has become a kind of real life panopticon.
Don't post that.
Everything we do exists on the internet FOREVER, and because of that we all have to be careful
with what we do and what we say online.
Randy feels this in a very real way when the kids discover his prior predilection for Columbus.
Because he’s always being watched, Randy has internalized his fear of punishment and
his desire to live up to social ideals as means of creating social capital.
If you guys found those pictures online, it's only a matter of time before everyone else does.
People won't care about what I do now.
They'll just see me as a thoughtless, indigenous son of a bitch.
In other words, as a perpetual bandwagoner, Randy needs to be a guy who protests Columbus
because that’s what he thinks society wants from him.
But, with the advent of the internet, he’s constantly terrified of what his peers might
uncover about his past.
What's the point, Sharon? Soon they're gonna be coming after me.
With social media our culture is evolving faster than ever, but it’s also becoming more judgemental.
Mistakes made in the past are looked at through the lens of the present.
Just because he's suddenly not cool now doesn't mean I'm gonna be the effin scapegoat!
This goes for both Columbus, who definitely did horrible things, and Randy who is just
kind of an idiot.
It’s only now when everyone is being so indigenous to me that I realize how indigenous
I’ve been acting all along.
Randy tries to explain that he’s changed.
That what he did in the past shouldn’t matter.
Look, I was younger.
We were all younger.
It was another time.
You have to understand.
It was 2013.
Too bad for Randy there’s no codified statute of limitations on bad behavior.
Randy gets caught acting in the past in ways not entirely kosher with the present.
He can’t be an advocate for a cause if he’s seen as disingenuous, and since Randy defines
himself by his project of the week, he can’t afford to let that happen.
And, because social media judges all action, we often fetishize purity
when it comes to social issues.
Yeeehaw! I'm from New York. I drive around a big circle that celebrates a guy who murdered Native Americans!
Luckily for Randy, he stumbles across the commercial for what appears to be
a perfect solution: DNAandMe.
Wouldn't you like to know the story of you? What makes you you?
The DNA testing program lets people claim affinity with marginalized groups,
I'm also part Northern Asian and even some Kurdish. I'm a victim of oppression.
even if they aren’t apparently a part of them.
DNA and me showed I was 8% Navajo.
Nobody is making fun of me now, or my people who were victims.
The ability to claim victimhood enables people to stake out a moral high ground and make
themselves immune from criticism.
Are you in?
Hell fucking yes I'm in.
The irony of this is, of course, that most people who need a DNA test to find out if
they’re a victim of oppression probably are not oppressed.
I'm 13% victim.
I'm 21% victim.
To protect himself from potential fallout, Randy pays a Native American to make out with
him in order to guarantee he’ll end up with the DNA of an indigenous person.
In doing this, Randy demonstrates an indifference toward the feelings of the Native American
man who ends up falling in love with him,
I've never felt so alive until now.
and even manages to recreate the misdeeds of Columbus all over again.
Get off my land you piece of sh**!
This all adds up to show that Randy’s political aspirations are ultimately selfish.
He’s so desperate to claim victimhood, and so utterly ill-informed about pretty much
everything, that he leans on his 2.8% Neanderthal DNA to claim that his people were erased from history.
Yeah, sure, everyone gang up on the Neanderthal! Isn't it funny?!
Again, Randy’s bizarre behavior raises something important.
How do we decide when people can claim victimhood?
That’s not to minimize the suffering of anyone, but how do we distinguish between
people who are legitimately affected by a legacy of oppression and this guy
I use to get in trouble for always using the n word. But with DNAandMe I found out that I'm 2.1% black!
Morning Steve!
Sup ******?
Where’s the line?
How close do you need to be on the family tree for oppression to be passed down?
Certainly 1000 years is too much, but what about 100 years, or 50 years, even 5?
It’s a complicated debate, but we know exactly what Randy thinks.
Even tens of thousands of years is fair game.
All of these ideas add up to one compelling twenty minute critique of how we approach
politics in the age of social media.
Questions of how we deal with our public lives being saved online, how we treat past mistakes,
and how we understand victimhood in our hyper-aware era are ones that we need to answer
and South Park knows that.
Until we resolve all of that, there will be a whole lot of misguided Randys running around causing chaos.
That’s what the show is ultimately saying.
We need to figure out how we talk to each other about history and complicated ideas
of culture, or else we’ll just be crossing wires, making messes, and shitting in public places.
The 21st season of South Park wants us to think about how we handle an increasingly
complicated world that demands faster and less nuanced reactions.
You have to overdo it in today’s society, Stan.
You can’t be nuanced and subtle anymore or else critics go wow what was the point of that?!
The show doesn’t have answers though, and neither do we, but the first step is asking questions.
If you want to hear these question explored further,
check out our South Park podcast "Respect our Authoritah!"
Exploring every new episode of the show. You can find links to the podcast in the description below.
And you can subscribe by searching for "South Park Wisecrack" where ever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for watching guys! Peace!