Two Days Before the Day Before an Irritating Truth
The Simpsons and South Park’s Environmentalism as a Challenge for Mass Mediating Dark Green Ecological Ethics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.27199Keywords:
Satire, humor, humour, The Simpsons, South Park, Environment, Religion, Bron Taylor, Dark Green religion, cultural studies, media studies, mass media, garbage, popular cultureAbstract
Critical scholarship on pro-environmental and dark green religious themes in popular culture must engage more directly with that culture’s means of production. To make this argument, I first draw on Bron Taylor’s theory of ‘dark green religion’ as a foundation for articulating the sacredness underlying the call to deep ecological ethics. Reflecting on the means of mass mediating that message provides us with an opportunity to critically evaluate the challenges of ecological ethics in late capitalist society. Second, through analyzing two of the most popular sitcoms of the last twenty years—The Simpsons and South Park—I contend that the task of articulating dark green ethics through mass media is inherently challenged by the capitalist modes of production that make opposition to them possible. While other scholars have been hopeful about these programs’ ecological statements, I argue that the programs are inherently hampered by their reliance on consumer capitalism and its modes of production. In conclusion, I provide a warning for those who would perform ecological ethics in the contemporary media sphere and offer a way to build towards potential alternative paths.
References
Alberti, John (ed.). 2004. Leaving Spring?eld: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture (Detroit: Wayne State University Press).
Alexander, Jeffrey. 2003. The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press).
Arp, Robert (ed.). 2007. South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing).
Bainbridge, William Sims. 2010. ‘Virtual Nature: Environmentalism in Two Multi-Player Online Games’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture 4.3: 135-52. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v4i3.135.
Berger, Peter L. 1967. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Boston: Anchor Books).
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Boston: Anchor Books).
Box Of?ce Mojo. 2015. ‘All Time Box Of?ce’, Box Of?ce Mojo. Online: http://www.boxof?cemojo.com/alltime/world/.
Bozak, Nadia. 2012. The Cinematic Footprint: Lights, Camera, Natural Resources (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).
Broderick, Mick. 2004. ‘Releasing the Hounds: The Simpsons as Anti-Nuclear Satire’, in John Alberti (ed.), Leaving Spring?eld: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture (Detroit: Wayne State University Press): 244-72.
Byster, Leslie, and Ted Smith. 1999. ‘High-Tech and Toxic’, Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, Spring: 69-75.
Chiu, Hua-Mei. 2011. ‘The Dark Side of Silicon Island: High-Tech Pollution and the Environmental Movement in Taiwan’, Capitalism Nature Socialism 22.1: 40-57. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2010.546647.
Cieply, Michael. 2009. ‘A Movie’s Budget Pops from the Screen’, New York Times, November 8. Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/media/09avatar.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
Curry, Patrick. 2011. Ecological Ethics: An Introduction (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2nd edn).
Delaney, Tim. 2008. Simpsonology (Amherst: Prometheus Books).
DeWeese-Boyd, Ian. 2009. ‘Sh?jo Savior: Princess Nausicaä, Ecological Paci?sm, and The Green Gospel’, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 21.2: 44.
Durkheim, Emile. 1995 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (trans. Karen E. Fields; New York: The Free Press).
Emmerich, Roland (dir.). 2004. The Day After Tomorrow. Written by Roland Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff (20th Century FOX).
Feltmate, David. 2017. Drawn to the Gods: Religion and Humor in The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy (New York: New York University Press).
Gabrys, Jennifer. 2011. Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press).
Gillespie, Nick, and Jessie Walker. 2006. ‘South Park Libertarians: Trey Parker and Matt Stone on Liberals, Conservatives, Censorship, and Religion’, Reason.com, December. Online: http://reason.com/archives/2006/12/05/south-park-libertarians/.
Gournelos, Ted. 2009. Popular Culture and the Future of Politics: Cultural Studies and the Tao of South Park (Lanham: Lexington Books).
Gray, Jonathan. 2006. Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality (London and New York: Routledge).
Guggenheim, Davis (dir.). 2006. An Inconvenient Truth: A Global Warning. Written by Al Gore (Paramount Classics).
Haluza-DeLay, Randolph, Michael P. Ferber, and Tim Wiebe-Neufeld. 2013. ‘Watching Avatar from “AvaTar Sands” Land’, in Bron Taylor (ed.), Avatar and Nature Spirituality (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press): 123-40.
Henry, Matthew. 2012. The Simpsons, Satire, and American Culture (New York: Palgrave MacMillan). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137027795.
Ivakhiv, Adrian. 2013. Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, and Nature (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press).
James, William. 2002 [1902]. The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: The Modern Library).
Johnson-Woods, Toni. 2007. Blame Canada! South Park and Contemporary Culture (New York: Continuum).
Lynch, Gordon. 2012. The Sacred in the Modern World: A Cultural Sociological Approach (New York: Oxford University Press).
Maxwell, Richard, and Toby Miller. 2012. Greening the Media (New York: Oxford University Press).
Oring, Elliott. 2003. Engaging Humor (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press).
Peach, Sarah. 2011. ‘The Simpsons’ Take on Climate Change’, Yale Climate Connections, 5 February. Online: http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2011/02/the-simpsons-take-on-climate-change/.
Pellow, David Naguib, and Lisa Sun-Hee Park. 2002. The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy (New York: New York University Press).
Pike, Diedre. 2012. Enviro-Toons: Green Themes in Animated Cinema and Television (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.).
Silverman, David (dir.). 2007. The Simpsons Movie. Written by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Mike Scully, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder, and Jon Vitti (Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation).
Smith, Christian, with Michael Emerson, Sally Gallagher, Paul Kennedy, and David Sikkink. 1998. American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Smith, Ted, David A. Sonnenfeld, and David Naguib Pellow (eds.). 2006. Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry (Philadelphia: Temple University Press).
Starosielski, Nicole. 2015. The Undersea Network (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822376224.
Starosielski, Nicole, and Janet Walker (eds.). 2016. Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment (New York: Routledge).
Stewart, Julie, and Thomas Clark. 2011. ‘Lessons from South Park: Comic Corrective to Environmental Puritanism’, Environmental Communication 5.3: 320-36. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2011.584545.
Stibbe, Arran. 2007. ‘Zen and the Art of Environmental Education in the Japanese Animated Film Tonari no Totoro’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture 1.4: 468-88.
Taylor, Bron. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Taylor, Bron. (ed.). 2013a. Avatar and Nature Spirituality (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press).
Taylor, Bron. 2013b. ‘Epilogue: Truth and Fiction in Avatar’s Cosmogony’, in Bron Taylor (ed.), Avatar and Nature Spirituality (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press): 301-36.
Todd, Anne Marie. 2002. ‘Prime-Time Subversion: The Environmental Rhetoric of The Simpsons’, in M. Meister and P. Japp (eds.), Enviropop: Studies in Environmental Rhetoric and Popular Culture (Westport, CT: Praeger): 63-80.
Turner, Chris. 2004. Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece De?ned a Generation (Cambridge: Da Capo Press).
Wood, Andrew, and Anne Marie Todd. 2005. ‘ “Are We There Yet?”: Searching for Spring?eld and The Simpsons’ Rhetoric of Omnitopia’, Critical Studies in Media Communication 22.3: 207-22.
Wright, Lucy. 2005. ‘Forest Spirits, Giant Insects and World Trees: The Nature Vision of Hayao Miyazaki’, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 10: 40. Doi: https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.10.1.003.
Episodes Referenced
‘The Old Man and the Lisa’. The Simpsons. #4F17. Originally aired 20 April 1997 on FOX. Written by John Swartzwelder. Directed by Mark Kirkland.
‘Trash of the Titans’. The Simpsons. #5F09. Originally aired 26 April 1998 on FOX. Written by Ian Maxtone-Graham. Directed by Jim Reardon.
‘Rainforest Schmainforest’. South Park. #301. Originally aired 7 April 1999 on Comedy Central. Written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Directed by Trey Parker.
‘Lisa the Treehugger’. The Simpsons. #CABF01. Originally aired 19 November 2000 on FOX. Written by Matt Selman. Directed by Steven Dean Moore.
‘Terrance and Philip: Behind the Blow’. South Park. #505. Originally aired 18 July 2001 on Comedy Central. Written by Trey Parker. Directed by Trey Parker.
‘Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow’. South Park. #908. Originally aired 19 October 2005 on Comedy Central. Written by Trey Parker and Kenny Hotz. Directed by Trey Parker.
‘Smug Alert!’ South Park. #1002. Originally aired 29 March 2006 on Comedy Central. Written by Trey Parker. Directed by Trey Parker.
‘Manbearpig’. South Park. #1006. Originally aired 23 April 2006 on Comedy Central. Written by Trey Parker. Directed by Trey Parker.
Alexander, Jeffrey. 2003. The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press).
Arp, Robert (ed.). 2007. South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing).
Bainbridge, William Sims. 2010. ‘Virtual Nature: Environmentalism in Two Multi-Player Online Games’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture 4.3: 135-52. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v4i3.135.
Berger, Peter L. 1967. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Boston: Anchor Books).
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Boston: Anchor Books).
Box Of?ce Mojo. 2015. ‘All Time Box Of?ce’, Box Of?ce Mojo. Online: http://www.boxof?cemojo.com/alltime/world/.
Bozak, Nadia. 2012. The Cinematic Footprint: Lights, Camera, Natural Resources (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).
Broderick, Mick. 2004. ‘Releasing the Hounds: The Simpsons as Anti-Nuclear Satire’, in John Alberti (ed.), Leaving Spring?eld: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture (Detroit: Wayne State University Press): 244-72.
Byster, Leslie, and Ted Smith. 1999. ‘High-Tech and Toxic’, Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, Spring: 69-75.
Chiu, Hua-Mei. 2011. ‘The Dark Side of Silicon Island: High-Tech Pollution and the Environmental Movement in Taiwan’, Capitalism Nature Socialism 22.1: 40-57. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2010.546647.
Cieply, Michael. 2009. ‘A Movie’s Budget Pops from the Screen’, New York Times, November 8. Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/media/09avatar.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
Curry, Patrick. 2011. Ecological Ethics: An Introduction (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2nd edn).
Delaney, Tim. 2008. Simpsonology (Amherst: Prometheus Books).
DeWeese-Boyd, Ian. 2009. ‘Sh?jo Savior: Princess Nausicaä, Ecological Paci?sm, and The Green Gospel’, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 21.2: 44.
Durkheim, Emile. 1995 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (trans. Karen E. Fields; New York: The Free Press).
Emmerich, Roland (dir.). 2004. The Day After Tomorrow. Written by Roland Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff (20th Century FOX).
Feltmate, David. 2017. Drawn to the Gods: Religion and Humor in The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy (New York: New York University Press).
Gabrys, Jennifer. 2011. Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press).
Gillespie, Nick, and Jessie Walker. 2006. ‘South Park Libertarians: Trey Parker and Matt Stone on Liberals, Conservatives, Censorship, and Religion’, Reason.com, December. Online: http://reason.com/archives/2006/12/05/south-park-libertarians/.
Gournelos, Ted. 2009. Popular Culture and the Future of Politics: Cultural Studies and the Tao of South Park (Lanham: Lexington Books).
Gray, Jonathan. 2006. Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality (London and New York: Routledge).
Guggenheim, Davis (dir.). 2006. An Inconvenient Truth: A Global Warning. Written by Al Gore (Paramount Classics).
Haluza-DeLay, Randolph, Michael P. Ferber, and Tim Wiebe-Neufeld. 2013. ‘Watching Avatar from “AvaTar Sands” Land’, in Bron Taylor (ed.), Avatar and Nature Spirituality (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press): 123-40.
Henry, Matthew. 2012. The Simpsons, Satire, and American Culture (New York: Palgrave MacMillan). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137027795.
Ivakhiv, Adrian. 2013. Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, and Nature (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press).
James, William. 2002 [1902]. The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: The Modern Library).
Johnson-Woods, Toni. 2007. Blame Canada! South Park and Contemporary Culture (New York: Continuum).
Lynch, Gordon. 2012. The Sacred in the Modern World: A Cultural Sociological Approach (New York: Oxford University Press).
Maxwell, Richard, and Toby Miller. 2012. Greening the Media (New York: Oxford University Press).
Oring, Elliott. 2003. Engaging Humor (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press).
Peach, Sarah. 2011. ‘The Simpsons’ Take on Climate Change’, Yale Climate Connections, 5 February. Online: http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2011/02/the-simpsons-take-on-climate-change/.
Pellow, David Naguib, and Lisa Sun-Hee Park. 2002. The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy (New York: New York University Press).
Pike, Diedre. 2012. Enviro-Toons: Green Themes in Animated Cinema and Television (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.).
Silverman, David (dir.). 2007. The Simpsons Movie. Written by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Mike Scully, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder, and Jon Vitti (Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation).
Smith, Christian, with Michael Emerson, Sally Gallagher, Paul Kennedy, and David Sikkink. 1998. American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Smith, Ted, David A. Sonnenfeld, and David Naguib Pellow (eds.). 2006. Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry (Philadelphia: Temple University Press).
Starosielski, Nicole. 2015. The Undersea Network (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822376224.
Starosielski, Nicole, and Janet Walker (eds.). 2016. Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment (New York: Routledge).
Stewart, Julie, and Thomas Clark. 2011. ‘Lessons from South Park: Comic Corrective to Environmental Puritanism’, Environmental Communication 5.3: 320-36. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2011.584545.
Stibbe, Arran. 2007. ‘Zen and the Art of Environmental Education in the Japanese Animated Film Tonari no Totoro’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture 1.4: 468-88.
Taylor, Bron. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Taylor, Bron. (ed.). 2013a. Avatar and Nature Spirituality (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press).
Taylor, Bron. 2013b. ‘Epilogue: Truth and Fiction in Avatar’s Cosmogony’, in Bron Taylor (ed.), Avatar and Nature Spirituality (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press): 301-36.
Todd, Anne Marie. 2002. ‘Prime-Time Subversion: The Environmental Rhetoric of The Simpsons’, in M. Meister and P. Japp (eds.), Enviropop: Studies in Environmental Rhetoric and Popular Culture (Westport, CT: Praeger): 63-80.
Turner, Chris. 2004. Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece De?ned a Generation (Cambridge: Da Capo Press).
Wood, Andrew, and Anne Marie Todd. 2005. ‘ “Are We There Yet?”: Searching for Spring?eld and The Simpsons’ Rhetoric of Omnitopia’, Critical Studies in Media Communication 22.3: 207-22.
Wright, Lucy. 2005. ‘Forest Spirits, Giant Insects and World Trees: The Nature Vision of Hayao Miyazaki’, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 10: 40. Doi: https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.10.1.003.
Episodes Referenced
‘The Old Man and the Lisa’. The Simpsons. #4F17. Originally aired 20 April 1997 on FOX. Written by John Swartzwelder. Directed by Mark Kirkland.
‘Trash of the Titans’. The Simpsons. #5F09. Originally aired 26 April 1998 on FOX. Written by Ian Maxtone-Graham. Directed by Jim Reardon.
‘Rainforest Schmainforest’. South Park. #301. Originally aired 7 April 1999 on Comedy Central. Written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Directed by Trey Parker.
‘Lisa the Treehugger’. The Simpsons. #CABF01. Originally aired 19 November 2000 on FOX. Written by Matt Selman. Directed by Steven Dean Moore.
‘Terrance and Philip: Behind the Blow’. South Park. #505. Originally aired 18 July 2001 on Comedy Central. Written by Trey Parker. Directed by Trey Parker.
‘Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow’. South Park. #908. Originally aired 19 October 2005 on Comedy Central. Written by Trey Parker and Kenny Hotz. Directed by Trey Parker.
‘Smug Alert!’ South Park. #1002. Originally aired 29 March 2006 on Comedy Central. Written by Trey Parker. Directed by Trey Parker.
‘Manbearpig’. South Park. #1006. Originally aired 23 April 2006 on Comedy Central. Written by Trey Parker. Directed by Trey Parker.
Published
2018-02-19
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Feltmate, D. (2018). Two Days Before the Day Before an Irritating Truth: The Simpsons and South Park’s Environmentalism as a Challenge for Mass Mediating Dark Green Ecological Ethics. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 11(3), 315-339. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.27199
