The other day I was thinking about the grotesque in my everyday life. How it has changed me and weird places I have or am going to see it. This interests me because its such a new idea to me and I had not heard or seen many grotesque art pieces or reading until I got into this class. So there I was sitting on my couch talking to my roommates about Santa Sangre watching their faces loose interest as I explained the tattooed women. From this point I had completely lost everyone so we decided to watch south park, which is everyones favorite.
The episode was called Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina. Even from the title we laughed and decided it was a good one to watch.
South Park Mr Garrison’s new vagina
Although this is just the audio to the episode you get the idea of whats going on. I will explain the visual. It starts with Mr. Garrison a cartoon man wanting a sex change to become a women. He goes into the office and they ask him if he wants to do the proceeder. He agrees with out thought after the doctor tells him about the many dangers in this procedure. This use of satire shows how easy and willing people in this age of technology are willing to do to change the way they look physically, despite the many risks. Next the doctor goes into a detailed description of the operation while we as the viewer look at a slide show of real life sex change operation. I feel this is were the grotesque feeling really hit me and made me realize that this show was the best example of the grotesque in my life. Later on in the episode one character changes him self into a young black boy to make the basketball team, and his dad changes himself into a dolphin. The genius behind this show is the satire and use of grotesque, because every episode is based on something currently happening in our society from the view of four young boys.
Once I had came to this conclusion I continued watching the show and different episodes with a different view. I looked for similarities through the grotesque and looked for themes in the show that aligned with themes from art pieces, movies, and literature we had watched in class. One main one was the constant use of gore.
In this episode titled Bloody Mary, the town of south park has a local church claim they have seen a miracle. It is a statue of the virgin marry, bleeding out her asshole. Through out the episode people go to the statue to become healed from their disease. In this picture you see the pope getting sprayed with blood as he reassures the public that this is a real miracle. This is a very grotesque seen dealing with the body and blood in a way that critiques the church and how people view it.
Finally we talked a lot in class about the deformation of body and figures. This is the most constant similarity with the grotesque and the writing and animation of south park. The show constantly is making fun of people with disabilities and bodies that are different.
This image is from the episode dealing with the PETA organization. It is of a child born from a man and a duck. The whole episode the creature cries out, “kill me!”. This is a seem of the grotesque as we see creates that we cant tell who or what exactly they are. There are many more examples of this with an episode all about red haired children, crippled fights, future neutral looking space immigrants, Michael Jackson’s nose, Mr. Garrisons scientifically grown penis, Mrs. Chokesondick’s over sized breasts, and the list goes on and on. The show deals with the body, gore, and humor all dealing with problems unseen in our society. The best artists of grotesque in my mind.
joeydryer 