South Park Season 18 Episode 9 “#REHASH”
“It’s really a simple thing. You just record yourself while playing video games and add your commentary to it.” – Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg
At first, this was going to be a review about this entire season of South Park, as it has done something that I could never believe would happen in the scenario presented. However, before I address the major topic at hand, I first have to bend over backwards to focus on this particular episode that is part of a larger idea.
As most may not know, I attend a university where my degree centers on the music business and the often-unavoidable entrepreneurial aspects of the industry. I personally have a great interest in the technology, legal, and managerial sides of the production. As such, I have taken several classes regarding marketing and advertising. Heck, the reason I’m doing this review in the first place is because I currently have a class called Digital Distribution, which focuses on the communication of ideas over the course of civilization.
So color me honestly touched when South Park, the slime-covered ruby of true knowledge it is, when they have an entire episode devoted solely to Internet brand of entertainment – commentary videos. I’m part of the generation that didn’t make the juggernaut called the Internet, but the people of my generation grew up on it, and as such have inherited it to do whatever we so please to it. Even if that means regretting our MySpace accounts (glad I never got one in the first place).
I have a Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr account, and I have seen the rise of the Internet celebrity. Like a gold rush, humans all over the world grabbed at the smallest straws they could find and soaked up as much soda before the glass could run dry with regulation and restriction. As such, we have PewDiePie, PSY, Epic Meal Time, Ray William Johnson, HolaSayGerman., JennaMarbles, and Smosh. These have become our Hollywood starlets from their basements with a microphone and a camera. The question then has to be posed. What has this done to our culture? I don’t have to introduce South Park to newcomers (you should know it), so let’s try our best to answer this question honestly.
The episode begins when Kyle comes home with a copy Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and wants to play with his brother Ike in the living room. His father can’t understand why they can’t go outside to play, but such is modernity. Kyle finds his brother watching PewDiePie play the exact same game on YouTube, and when he asks if they want to play in the living room, his brother declines, saying PewDiePie is arguably more fun. From the onset, I can see the enjoyment in watching someone provide commentary on a game you also enjoy. Opinions matter, and when you have a culture that has fostered the mentality that anyone can have an opinion everyone begins to matter. However, not everyone can be a star, and that is the ultimate criticism of the nurtured ides.
Kyle rails on the idea of the rehashing of material for attention. He defies its constant use of not being able to build new experiences, and even further into the episode, he claims it is killing the living room, as no one wants to build new experiences. Here’s where the episode’s major problem comes into play, and I do want to address this early. There is a mother lode of content worthy enough to fill three episodes, as South Park is wont to do now and again. Their trilogies are some of my favorite episodes ever from a content perspective, touching on large and sweeping issues while delivering the jokes in succession like a semi-automatic BB gun. However, placing all your philosophical cards on the table from the get-go is not necessarily a bright idea. It should be understood that South Park, one of the very first Internet sensations ever, might be surprised at the upstaging of their thunder. This isn’t a jab against them, but hearing them rail on the sanctity of the living room makes them sound like old men. Do I agree with them? Yes, but I’d put this opinion in a manner that wouldn’t smash purity over the heads of viewers. Besides, they already have Season 12 Episode 4 “Canada On Strike”, which discusses the lucrative profitability of YouTube (or at the time, lack thereof), and it’s still one of my favorites. I just wish they tried a similar approach on this episode.
In response to Kyle’s comments, Cartman decides he will enter the fray of YouTube under the tag CartmanBra. His material is solely devoted to commentary on happenings around South Park, including his fellow classmates. Overnight, he becomes a YouTube sensation and adapts his personality as a little man in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Now that, I call BS on. Not even King Pewds achieved a massive cult following overnight. It took years of repetition, two videos a day, and sleepless nights to achieve his status. Every other YouTuber who has made it can most likely attest to the amount of sheer man-hours it takes to run a channel and make it as impressive as humanly possible. Still, it is amusing to see Cartman’s persona become his day-to-day life, as he becomes what we like to call in the Internet community “stupidly overhyped”.
Meanwhile, our B plot follows Randy Marsh, who throughout the season has sparked incredible response from fans as being the canonical identity of Lorde, the famous New Zealander music wunderkind. As he decides to sing on stage for the first time, he must share the bill with Iggy Azalea, Nicki Minaj, and Miley Cyrus; all of which are famous for being fake. In an attempt to feel appreciated, Randy ends up having to sink to a new low when his musical talent can’t afford him fans. This has him effectively masturbating on stage in front of his fans, including his own daughter, to seem sexy. Despite the controversy his manager couldn’t be happier as the hashtags and hits keep rolling in. In a new direction of identity, he premieres a new Lorde hologram to take on demeaning activities for fans. Did I mention the holograms? Yeah, Michael Jackson escapes after doing a duet with Iggy Azalea at the concert and Tupac is sent as a hit man. Also, CartmanBra will be the face of a new reborn culture after striking a deal with Randy's manager.
Like I said earlier, this episode is playing a lot of philosophical cards too early for the first of a two parter. It wants to comment on the trend of Internet Let’s Play commentaries, the breaking apart of sibling bonds over similar subjects, the narcissism of YouTube celebrity, the lack of appreciation for down to earth musicians in a pop driven world, and the abuse of holographic imagery when it comes to the dead. There’s even the suggestion that this entire episode is parodying those who complain most about the generational gap, but the amount of hamfisting and subtlety never balance out to one side to invoke parody or satire. That’s a lot to swallow in thirty minutes, and South Park scrapes by with everything in tact. It did however take a lot of meandering. I don’t want meandering in my South Park. I want a singular awesome concept, some brilliant associative properties, and a moral that people effectively can take to heart or ignore in the end. The episode that came before “Cock Magic” was undeniably a break in the action, and features one of the most nonsensical ideas in recent memory and it works. That may seem like a lodged complaint against this episode, and it is. I may have missed the point and become like those the episode seeks to parody. I’d like to think not.
Yet, in this case, the situation is unique. As this season has come to commentate on a single plot thread that connects the episodes together, each episode brings a new element of current events of the middle class variety. Gluten-free, transgenders, freemium games, drones. These are a small piece of pie that affects society today and up until this episode the show has handled it well. The problem stems from trying to wrap everything up while introducing more concepts on the season’s penultimate episode.
Do I think still this episode was good? In the unique position it is in, the episode bridges the gap fine and does offer enough commentary to warrant interest. On it’s own, it suffers. Here’s to a season finale that will surely bring the fireworks, though, as the entire season comes to a head. Also, if I don’t see Hatsune Miku join the hologram subplot as a Terminator, somebody done goofed.
