Entry One

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I have chosen to analyze an episode of the show south park for my first entry. In which Cartmen (a 3rd grader from a predominatley white suburb in colorado) becomes a teacher in an inner-city school. I chose this particular episode because of the over emphasism on the stereotypical social classes of race and oppression.

The show portrays this by having mostly all of the students from the inner city school being the stereotypical inner city race of African American and Mexican. The writers show how the students have been oppressed because as Cartmen takes control of the class he learns that none of the students have any hopes or dreams of becoming anything in life, but as Cartmen teaches he helps the students learn that there is more that they can do besides be "thugs." This relates to the material by showing that simply where the students have grown up has effected the way they think about their future because of the social opression of living in the inner city. The show puts a bigger emphasis on this because of the fact that Cartmen was a 3rd grader from a suburban area who didn't think that there was nothing for him in life, but was able to help highschool seniors from the inner city see that they could in fact be a "somebody."

Although the majority of the people who watch this program do not look at it in the sort of fashion to find a flaw in America, you can definately see how there is a message hidden behind all the crude language and racial jokes, in which points out the downfalls of America. In my opinion it is a shame of how some kids get poor schooling simply because they were born into a bad part of the city, or can not afford to get to a place where there is adequate schooling.