South Park - "The Hobbit" spoilers
Dec. 13th, 2013 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
voxwomanYou may be able to watch it here, if you haven't seen this episode and want to.
Let me preface this by saying that I enjoyed South Park a lot more before I had a kid, and I watched it regularly, if not religiously in its early seasons. Once the kid was old enough, it went on the back burner because I thought she was too young to watch it (even though her classmates were watching and telling her about it in 4th and 5th grade - which I personally believe is way too young, but what do I know anymore?). Now that the kid is a couple of months from not being a teenager anymore (she'll be 20 soon), we sometimes watch it together and it's on our DVR schedule again.
So I watched the season finale, The Hobbit. I have not been so moved by a cartoon since Futurama's Jurassic Bark, and not because the episode focused on a character with the same named Wendy. The subject was altering images of women using PhotoShop to make them look "prettier". Wendy's stance echoes mine and many others: that altering images so much creates unrealistic expectations for girls (and boys, as well) about appearance, and that it's not something to be encouraged. Wendy isn't able to articulate what she finds offensive in the altered images well enough. She argues, early on in the episode, that Kim Kardashian doesn't look like that and describes her actual appearance using words like "fat", "hairy", etc to Butters (who is "in love" with Kim Kardashian), and gets called into the guidance counselor's office and reprimanded for being a "hater" and "jealous". In frustration, Wendy takes a picture of this other girl (who likes Butters and was recently rejected by him for being too fat) and, while sitting with Butters, photoshops the picture to make her look like a hot 20-something. Then things get absurd, and the boys only see what's in the photo and not the reality in front of them, and the girl is now considered hot and Butters goes out with her. All the other girls at the school decide to go to the gym to improve their appearance, where the workout consists of hours of photoshopping their images. Wendy keeps trying to point out that the emperor is naked, but she's branded jelly and a hater. At the end of the episode, a tearful Wendy is in the computer lab, photoshopping her image. It was the saddest thing I've seen in long time.
Let me preface this by saying that I enjoyed South Park a lot more before I had a kid, and I watched it regularly, if not religiously in its early seasons. Once the kid was old enough, it went on the back burner because I thought she was too young to watch it (even though her classmates were watching and telling her about it in 4th and 5th grade - which I personally believe is way too young, but what do I know anymore?). Now that the kid is a couple of months from not being a teenager anymore (she'll be 20 soon), we sometimes watch it together and it's on our DVR schedule again.
So I watched the season finale, The Hobbit. I have not been so moved by a cartoon since Futurama's Jurassic Bark, and not because the episode focused on a character with the same named Wendy. The subject was altering images of women using PhotoShop to make them look "prettier". Wendy's stance echoes mine and many others: that altering images so much creates unrealistic expectations for girls (and boys, as well) about appearance, and that it's not something to be encouraged. Wendy isn't able to articulate what she finds offensive in the altered images well enough. She argues, early on in the episode, that Kim Kardashian doesn't look like that and describes her actual appearance using words like "fat", "hairy", etc to Butters (who is "in love" with Kim Kardashian), and gets called into the guidance counselor's office and reprimanded for being a "hater" and "jealous". In frustration, Wendy takes a picture of this other girl (who likes Butters and was recently rejected by him for being too fat) and, while sitting with Butters, photoshops the picture to make her look like a hot 20-something. Then things get absurd, and the boys only see what's in the photo and not the reality in front of them, and the girl is now considered hot and Butters goes out with her. All the other girls at the school decide to go to the gym to improve their appearance, where the workout consists of hours of photoshopping their images. Wendy keeps trying to point out that the emperor is naked, but she's branded jelly and a hater. At the end of the episode, a tearful Wendy is in the computer lab, photoshopping her image. It was the saddest thing I've seen in long time.
