title: South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today  (The Blackwell Philosophy & Pop Culture Series)
author:  Robert Arp 
description: With a firm belief in the power of satire, and a number of complicated questions-including the morals of laughing at a ten-year-old's racist, sexually active hand-puppet-author and philosophy professor Arp presents an accessible collection of 22 essays on Comedy Central's controversial, long-running cartoon series South Park. Drawing on the usual suspects-Plato, Aristotle, Freud and Sartre among them-the contributors gleefully argue that the fiercely juvenile and politically incorrect show speaks to some of the most important issues of our-or any-time. In the first entry, William W. Young III draws comparisons between moralizing condemnation of South Park and the charges "leveled against Western philosophy since its beginnings" in a section titled "Oh my God! They Killed Socrates! You Bastards!" Other essays take on the "ethics of amusement" in the face of a Virgin Mary statue bleeding from a wholly inappropriate place, the existential crisis suggested by the Kenny's recurrent death and what a school mascot election between "a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich" says about America's two-party political system. Though the laundry list of philosophical issues-gender and sexuality, personal identity, the problem of evil, religious pluralism, the ethics of belief-feels familiar, and some of the writers' attempts at lowbrow humor can be embarrassingly off-mark, it's a serious but inviting roundup that high-minded South Park fans, as well as pop-philosophy devotees, will find worthwhile.<br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: South Park and Philosophy
  
  The Blackwell Philosophy and PopCulture Series
  Series editor William Irwin
  A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, and a healthy help-
  ing of popular culture clears the cobwebs from Kant. Philosophy has
  had a public relations problem for a few centuries now. This series
  aims to change that, showing that philosophy is relevant to your life
  – and not just for answering the big questions like “To be or not to
  be?” but for answering the little questions: “To watch or not to watch
  South Park?” Thinking deeply about TV, movies, and music doesn’t
  make you a “dummy” or a “complete idiot.” In fact it might make
  you a philosopher, someone who believes the unexamined life is not
  worth living and the unexamined cartoon is not worth watching.
  South Park and Philosophy
  Edited by Robert Arp
  Metallica and Philosophy
  Edited by William Irwin
  Family Guy and Philosophy
  Edited by Jeremy Wisnewski
  The Daily Show and Philosophy
  Edited by Jason Holt
  Lost and Philosophy
  Edite