The Importance Of Mass Media In South Park

These days, we are surrounded by mass media. From the radio to the television and to smart phones, mass media has dominated our lives and its influence is impeccable. Television, more than just about any of the other mass media, achieves a wide variety of different goals. Television not only has the power to implant ideas into the viewers’ heads, but it can also convince and alter the perceptions of the general public. For example, take any reality television show, be it Keeping Up with the Kardashians or The Hills; these shows are almost always revolving around tensions between family relationships or romantic relationships, which are inevitably accompanied by a lot of dramatic crying and excessive gossiping scenes. When people watch these

However, people may not be aware of just how powerful humor may be; it’s true humor can’t actually protect one from bullies nor can it help one heal after being physically injured, but when it comes to television shows humor is an essential tool that can actually act like a salve and a sword. Humor can attack and expose the “evils”, like the brainwashing reality televisions shows, that surrounds us today. It also has the ability to lighten the offensiveness and comfort those who were offended. This is actually best seen in the show South Park as it uses comedy and humor to satirize American popular culture. As Anne Gossage once said, “In American popular culture, nothing can be done ‘straight’ anymore. Everything must be ironic, self-mocking, tongue-in-cheek” (Gossage 43). In other words, bluntness is repulsive. Everyone is grounded to their own beliefs even if they have no explanation or a sound reasoning behind it. As a result, people don’t react well when they are told otherwise. Thus everything must be ironic and satirical because ironic humor allows viewers to interpret the messages that they see and this eases the harshness of reality and disarm tension. Take, for instance, South Park’s “The Hobbit” episode; as previously mentioned, reality television impacts society in all aspects, it not only skews our perception of reality, but it makes us more aggressive and it plays with our moral beliefs. In this episode, they consistently pick at and make jokes about the appearances of reality stars and at some point they even go as far as to say that Keeping Up with the Kardashians is a show about “short, loud, little people living in a fantasy world.” This is very on point and this episode does well to leave a message saying that even though shows like Keeping up with the Kardashians are labeled as “reality television”, it is not at all real. With the use of humor