More than 30 children have already been murdered this year in school shootings. It’s hard to even get an exact count of the deaths in classrooms and how many school shootings there have been in 2018, because most tallies don’t account for guns near school property, others just aren’t up to date. And even more outrageous is how routine it is today, that these incidents come and go in the regular news cycle.
In the final episode of South Park’s 19th season in 2015—one of its greatest of all time, which it hasn’t recreated since—the show satirized America’s obsession with guns. It detailed an anxious nation destroying itself with instruments of death.
Nearly three years later, nothing has changed—other than the body count.
South Park is a show that’s tough to like. It’s hit or miss; that’s the nature of this little, irreverent cartoon. Occasionally—like in 2015—entire seasons tap into the fucked up psyche of this fucked up nation. Other times, the show is lucky to get a joke to land, and lucky to not get something completely wrong.
But consistently, South Park has been at its best when it addresses gun control. This is because South Park co-creator Matt Stone grew up in Littleton, Colorado, where Columbine kicked off our epidemic of school massacres. In fact, a few years after Columbine, Stone was interviewed by Michael Moore where he discussed the shamelessness and insensitivity of the NRA holding a pro-gun rally in Colorado shortly after the 1999 shooting.
That shamelessness seems tame by today’s standards, when evil people are harassing and attempting to discredit survivors of school shootings.
So, last night’s episode wasn’t about one school shooting at South Park elementary school—it was about a lot of school shootings. I lost count because they were constantly happening in the background of the episodes—the students and teachers and parents carrying on their lives as if nothing is happening. In a rather mature move, we never actually see a child open fire. We never see the gruesome deaths of South Park Elementary School students. Instead, it’s just something that’s happening—an annoying hum—as the boys are all more concerned with failing a math test.
The conceit is first introduced with this interaction: Stan is sitting at the dinner table with his family when his mom Sharon asks him to tell his dad what happened in school today.
"Oh, I flunked my math quiz," he says.
"No, the other thing," she says.
"Oh, the school shooting?" Stan says. "Oh yeah, some kid shot up the school."
"Who shot up the school? Was it you? Did you get shot?" Randy Marsh asks.
"No," Stan replies.
"Oh, well what's this about you failing a math quiz?" Randy says.
Stan’s mom is outraged by their apathy. When she storms away from the table and screams, “Why are you acting like this is normal? What is wrong with you people?” Stan responds, “What’s up mom’s ass?”
It’s a scene and episode that at once captures indifference of this country and the fury that far too few of us have. There’s a side plot where Randy thinks his wife’s anger is only because she’s going through menopause (and one scene where he’s consulting an EMT who is directing where bodies should go outside the school), but it’s only a vehicle to show what lengths this country will go through to blame anything but guns. Sharon says:
Don’t you guys see what’s happened here? I want you to be angry. Every day we hear about another school shooting. It used to be a big deal. I want it to be a big deal again … I want you all to be shocked. I want you all to be sad.
The crowd protests. They don’t want to think about all the negativity. In the end Sharon gives up. And in the final scene she gets a call from school that Stan has been shot in a school shooting. “It’s not the end of the world,” she responds.
But it should be.
