Product Details
Blame Canada!: South Park and Contemporary Culture

Blame Canada!: South Park and Contemporary Culture
By Toni Johnson-Woods

List Price: CDN$ 23.95
Price: CDN$ 17.66 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $39. Details

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca

8 new or used available from CDN$ 14.38

Product Description

Now running into its tenth season, South Park has still not "jumped the shark". Satirically edgier than The Simpsons, South Park responds immediately to cultural controversies: four days after Saddam Hussein's capture, an episode lampooned it, and the show has no fear in tackling subjects as divisive and outlandish as Terry Schiavo, The Passion of the Christ, Tom Cruise's alleged homosexuality, and Michael Jackson. Its mixture of iconoclasm, cultural referents, and intertextuality makes it the perfect lens through which to examine contemporary popular culture in America - and television's role in the creation of that culture.
Blame Canada! is a smart, readable book that will appeal to the show's many fans, placing the show in a tradition of fearless and often foul-mouthed satire dating back as far as Rabelais.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #359259 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-03-30
  • Original language: English
  • Dimensions: .83" h x 6.01" w x 9.00" l, .92 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 288 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Australian pop-cultural scholar Johnson-Woods, who has also published on reality TV and pop fiction, lovingly limns Comedy Central's animated series South Park, in which a cast led by precocious little children has, over the years, lampooned matters sexual, political, and religious. No mere list of targets can do the show justice, as creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone spare nothing and nobody. So Johnson-Woods analyses episode plots, characters, and motivations, treating the showlike the legitimate object of social research that it is. Indeed, in her introduction she refers to South Park as "the postmodern pastiche par excellence." Perhaps slightly more obscure than its older peers in animated social satire, The Simpsons and King of the Hill, the cable-bound South Park presents a wilder, higher-energy brand of satire whose complex, rapid-fire delivery Johnson-Woods helps viewers understand and appreciate. Interesting reading for both committed fans and the merely curious. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"South Park's biggest badge of honour is that, ten seasons in, it remains lightning fast in its response to current events (four days for Saddam Hussein's capture). This book of essays shows it to be a surprisingly significant lens on US culture."
Empire


Mentioned.
(Eric Griffiths New Statesman )

Mentioned.
(, New Statesman )

About the Author
Toni Johnson-Woods is President of the Pop Culture Association of Australia (PopCANNZ) and Senior Lecturer in the English, Media Studies and Art History School at the University of Queensland.