Question 12 - Bonus!

12. Discuss the South Park episode “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson” (S11E01) in terms of its construction of race, particularly, as with the Chappelle Show episode (S1E01) we watched in class, in terms of whiteness. What elements of this critique come from the aesthetic, critical, and ontological modes of postmodernism (be specific about each) (150-200 words).

This South Park episode, race is constructed in a number of ways. Elements of the critique that come from the critical are the use of Wheel of Fortune, to introduce the plot, and the appearance of Jesse Jackson in the episode as the black person that Stan’s dad chooses to apologize to. These are critical because they incorporate elements from other texts, but only at face value, for “image’s sake”. Elements of the critique that come from the critical are the incorporation of rednecks chasing Randy for saying negative things about black people. This is still intertextual, but it is critical because Randy getting chased by rednecks for being racist is a critical allusion towards rednecks, who are generally seen as racists (at least stereotypically). They treat Randy as an “outcast”, critically alluding to how minorities might feel. The ontological comes in at the end, where ‘Nigger-Guys’ plead for the word ‘Nigger-Guy’ to be illegal, even if the words are spoken closely to each other. In this way, they are embodying the socially oppressed, even though Randy is a white person, constructing the way we react to race and the use of racial slurs in society.