South Park and PC Culture

South Park and Communication Theory: Symbolic Interactionism Introduction In the first episode (“Stunning and Brave”) of the 19th season of South Park, a new principal has come to the town of South Park named PC Principal. PC Principal’s primary objective is to clean up the town of its bigotry, sexism and hateful speech.

Halfway through the episode, other PC characters show up in a bar where the tired residents of South Park are attempting to relax away from all the stress of having to be PC all the time. PC Principal realizes there are others like him and they decide to “hang out” and start a PC frat house. The scene in the bar in which the PC characters come to meet one another is full of gestures and words that can be analyzed using the theory of Symbolic Interactionism.

The scene contains relevance as PC culture and social justice are very popular today (Poniewozik, 2015) and it shows how people of two different cultures coming together can clash over misperceptions of words and gestures. The entire 19th season in fact was “sketching something like a grand — if messy — unified theory of anger, inequality and disillusionment in 2015 America” (Poniewozik, 2015).

To better understand how all that anger is expressed and often misinterpreted with people being stigmatized inappropriately, this paper will analyze the “You PC, Bro?!” scene (South Park Studios, 2015). The research question this paper asks is: Can too much focus on what others think create stigmas that are over-communicated? Literature Review Mead (1934) asserted that gestures are symbols that exist in the mind and that its relationship to an attitude is what has to be considered.

Words are “arbitrary terms” that have some attachment to a designated stimulus (Mead, 1934, p. 224). The word is used a signal with an expected reaction that should accompany it. However, when there is non-conformity among persons as to what the gestures, symbols or words should mean, dissonance arises (Festinger, 1957). According to Festinger (1957), people aim for harmony with their environment and if they experience cognitive dissonance, they will change their behavior, change their perception, or change their beliefs in order to obtain harmony.

For example, a person wants to smoke but smoking is an unacceptable social gesture. The person will either stop smoking in order to be in conformity and harmony with his environment, smoke anyway and justify it by arguing that smoking is not bad for one’s health and those who condemn smoking are wrong; or tell oneself that it simply does not matter what others think as they cannot hurt one.

Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance could not have been expressed without the theory of symbolic interactionism, which stipulates that gestures have meaning because of the response. The problem of taboo in society occurs when individuals are faced with gestures and symbols that they cannot cope with or do not understand how to respond to appropriately. Mead (1982) stated that “the individual mind can exist only in relation to other minds with shared meanings” (p. 5).

So when two minds that do not relate to one another share the same space, conflict arises and dissonance occurs. This leads to one group associating negativity with the other and vice versa. It can also lead to negativity being reinforced through communication. Chambliss (1973) explained this concept with the problem of the saints and roughnecks. As Chambliss pointed out, the label of deviance can become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Or it can be explained as the issue of primary and secondary deviance, with primary deviance being largely accepted and unpunished while secondary deviance leads more to punishment and the feeling of being an outcast (Liberman, Kirk & Kim, 2014). What Chambliss (1973) showed was that the accepted group, the Saints, were not punished for their deviance because society shared the same mind as they and viewed them as good boys overall who came from good families and who would go on to do good things.

And as a result they went on to have successful lives and never felt the need to lash out. The Roughnecks on the other hand were punished for their deviance because society did not view them as like-minded and so they did not share the same idea of gesture-response relationships and deemed that they came from bad families and had nothing to offer society and would most likely lead bad lives in the future unless they were punished now.

As a result, only a third of the Roughnecks went on to succeed (Chambliss, 1973). The other two-thirds lapsed into the self-fulfilling prophecy aspect of deviance. Their secondary deviance pushed them into a feeling of social strain, wherein they sought to gain social control through deviance. Thus, from the Symbolic Interactionist perspective one can see that social behavior is a product of everyday interactions. People have an effect on people that goes down deep, alters their psychology and impacts the way they live and think and behave.

The evidence of the Saints and Roughnecks study shows that when people are treated like saints and respected as saints, they tend to go on to live better lives. When people are treated like deviants, like Roughnecks, they tend to go on to feel like deviants and to embrace a life of deviancy since that is what society is pushing them towards.

However, identifying saints and roughnecks depends on the idea of the generalized other—i.e., the ability to identify like-mindedness as opposed to unlike-mindedness: as Mead (1934) states, “one takes his attitude over against one’s self” (p. 230). The other gives meaning to the self: “to have self-consciousness one must have the attitude of the other in one’s own organism as controlling the thing that he is going to do” (Mead, 1934, p. 230).

Thus, one’s sense of self is communicated as a response to the experience of the other. Chambliss (1973) emphasize this point in the study on Saints and Roughnecks and showed that what drove a community of others to be at odds with one another was their sense of self as being defined by the other who was different.

Those who were from a lower income background and had a lower socio-economic lifestyle were viewed as morally inferior to those who came from the middle class background because those who were of a higher socio-economic background wanted to feel superior—and both groups allowed these ideas to dictate their behaviors and senses of self. Yet, they were also reinforcing, too, because the group that believed it was superior went on to do superior things while the group that embraced its identity as being deviant did not (Chambliss, 1973).

Moreover, when groups view other groups as more likely to engage in deviance for life as a result of their socio-economic background, the latter groups tend to take part in the self-fulfilling prophecy and act like deviants since that seems to be what society wants them to be. However, if society really wants people to succeed, it has to recognize that all people have the power to become like the Saints if only they had the right support.

This means that people have to give better supports to the culture they want to develop. A culture that is focused on identifying negativity in certain groups will promote and propagate negativity and continue to perpetuate a culture of hostility, fear and aggression when there should be peace and harmony.

Thus, the criteria for understanding the theory of Symbolic Interactionism in relation to bias and the PC culture are: · Designated stimuli · The generalized other · The different other as deviant · Self-fulfilling prophecy Analysis Designated Stimuli The designated stimulus that sets off the PC Bros in the bar is the use of the name Caitlyn Jenner. The name prompts a PC Bro to come over and lecture the residents about their intolerant views and bias.

The residents try to explain themselves but they only end up using more words that have a symbol-response relationship for the PC Bros that trigger them even more. However, as more PC Bros come to the table they recognize one another by their use of appropriate words and the tension is deescalated thanks to the arrival of like-minded people. The Generalized Other The PC Bros recognize one another by their terminology. One speaks about marginalization, and another instantly recognizes him as a like-minded individual.

They all bond instantly and go on to form a fraternity. They have a sense of the generalized other that conforms with their sense of identity, so they all get along. They also have a sense of the other who is not like-minded like them, and that is why they all descend on the table where the South Park residents are sitting in the bar. They have heard their speech and it has triggered them.

They view all the residents as being non-PC and therefore being in need of education so as to crush their intolerant views. The Different Other as Deviant The South Park residents view the PC Principal as a deviant because he does not appreciate their views and is punishing their kids for not towing the PC line. Kyle’s dad is upset because Kyle has been given two weeks detention for saying he did not care for Caitlyn Jenner.

The use of the name Caitlyn Jenner in public causes more PC Bros to come over, which invites the clash of unlike-minded individuals. Dissonance occurs, with each group viewing the other as a deviant. The only problem is that it is unclear who has the power initially.

By the end of the scene it is clear that the PC Bros have the power and thus they are the ones who will say what is deviant and what is not, whereas at the start of the scene, the South Park residents were saying that the PC Bros were the deviants—but of course the residents have lost their power so their view is no longer meaningful and they can change their perception, their beliefs or their actions to conform with the meaning given them by the PC Bros or reject them and stay deviants.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy The self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when the PC Bros “throw down” on the residents and the residents react by using terms that continue to trigger the PC Bros even more. The residents are pushed more and more into their deviance as the PC Bros continue to act more and more like the residents are deviants.

Stigmas become ingrained in this way as anyone who is not using the “right” words is viewed as taboo and unacceptable and the residents themselves begin to live in fear of using the “wrong” words and triggering the PC Bros. The community is thus made even worse.