South Park is an amazing show to watch when celebrating 420 on a Monday afternoon with a hummus and veggies sandwiched on 9-grain bread. I’m not saying that I experienced this situation first hand, but I do know this is my ideal activity on the fourth week of April. It’s hard not to have heard of this infamous show that debuted in 1997. Some of my favorite episodes are from season 1 and season 22. An episode that I cannot seem to forget is Weight Gain 4000 which is episode 3 of season 1. I would like to think I love the episode for its drastic visual of an obese child or because I was watching this episode when I was making the best hummus and veggie sandwich. However, this episode hits home for me by bringing up my feelings of resentment towards the teachers who witnessed me being bullied.
Weight Gain 4000 revolves around overweight child, Eric Cartman, who is rewarded for plagiarizing a science essay. This child craves attention from a large crowd and seeks being on television. He does not differentiate positive or negative attention. While he and his peers know the award winning paper is a fraud, the people who enforce moral principals in his life – parents and teachers – exploit the lie for their own benefit. His teacher, Mr. Mackey, takes advantage of the opportunity by seeking retribution for feelings of inadequacy during his childhood. He struggles with having lost to someone who had more resources than than him (southern white hicks cannot stand not living without their privileges).
In a twenty minute show, themes such as childhood obesity, bad parenting, gun control, mental health, and willful ignorance are defined in such obvious scenes, you have to be blind and deaf not to understand.
In the United States, children are often left misguided such as Eric Cartman. His obesity is excused as being “big boned” or “ripped”. His cheating is rewarded which is often the case when a student’s actions has attracted valuable attention. When I was in middle school, my art teacher excused the student who cheated off of me because he was a part of the school’s basketball team. The kid had dreams and goals (as if I did not?). He promised he would not do it again. My experiences resulted in the lack of trust I have for my teachers. They are not my protectors and I felt this for sometime. Wendy Testaburger shares my feelings in this episode when she tries to prove Eric Cartman is a cheater.
After being told he will be rewarded, Cartman is given a task without an explanation. Vague statements like “Get in shape” may be confusing to a child who does not have the proper definition of “shape”. Shape could be a circle, which was not the task Cartman was given. When Cartman goes home, his displays his childishness by falling prey to a body building commercial. Sometimes we forget the mental capacity of a child and assume their competence. This scene also reveals the manipulative relationship he has with his mother. Since his mother lacks the backbone to discipline Cartman, not only does she comply to his requests without question, she allows her son to be educated by a capitalist tactic such as television commercials. Relationships like this are all too real. Some parents fear their child. Children can see this and exploit their parents’ weakness. When a child’s household allows narcissistic and manipulative behavior, they repeat this outside of the home and become extremely dangerous. The child will not deal with rejection well and may go to drastic measures to fulfill their own desires such as shooting a school for an ounce of attention. Of course I am just guessing because not every individual is the same. I know my cousin was never told “no” when he was a toddler and he had trouble dealing with rejection and discipline when he was older. He would lash out instead of expressing himself in a reasonable, constructive way.
Mental health and gun control seem to be tied together in this episode. Mr. Mackey is a teacher who fails to relate to his peers. His consciousness is displaced into a sock puppet resembling Cat in the Hat and Abraham Lincoln. When reminded of an embarrassing moment during his childhood, instead of seeking counsel, Mr. Mackey plots to murder Cathy Lee. Mr. Mackey’s imaginary friend is recognized as a real personality that can be punished. I am more than unnerved by this. Arresting the fake personality is a form of punishing mental illness or using an obvious fake problem as the scapegoat to not punish the criminal. Often when a white person commits a crime in the United States, the individual is not blamed. Instead, they get a slap on the wrist and their mental illness is blamed for the action. This makes avoiding responsibility and accountability a normalized behavior in society.
Of course, all that I have to say is purely my opinion. Not every child who grows up watching body building commercials end up misusing the product. There are a lot of possible reasons that may lead to a particular action but I do agree with some of the reasons this episode has given its viewers. Although, I believe in such drastic cases as school shootings, all of these triggers are simply catalyst and may occur simultaneously.
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