The Twilight saga is a story with many threads. It tells the story of a love triangle between Bella Swan, a vampire named Edward Cullen, and a werewolf named Jacob Black. It tells a story of gender roles, as decisions about Bella’s well-being are often made by Edward and Jacob; not by her. It weaves together threads about abstinence, as Edward is afraid of having sex with Bella because if he doesn’t show restraint he could kill her. The saga even tells a story about Mormonism.

Operating in a manner that is sometimes more covert and often more insidious than these stories, however, is one about race. In “White,” Richard Dyer asserts that racial images pervade popular culture, even, or especially, where race seems unimportant. If Dyer’s argument is to be believed, then even though Twilight is not explicitly about race, it still tells a racial story and adjusts our attitudes towards it.
To assess Dyer’s claim, let’s examine how race is represented in three character types in the Twilight films: humans, vampires, and werewolves.

Cover art for Twilight

Humans

Twilight makes it hard not to be conscious of skin color from the opening minutes. As soon as Bella starts high school in Forks, Washington, she is subjected to the romantic and sexual advances of several boys. The advances made by these boys differ in tactics and in the response generated, and these differences parallel racial differences in the characters who make them.

A white character, Mike Newton, is always nervous around Bella and constantly fumbles over his words when he talks to her. Most of the time, when he gets the nerve to, say, ask Bella to prom, she simply blows him off. The one time she does accept his offer to go to a movie (on the condition that their friends can also come), Mike gets sick because the movie was too gory. With Mike gone, Jacob takes the opportunity to be forward about his feelings for Bella. It’s hard not to feel sorry for Mike in this case. He didn’t do anything wrong. The poor kid just lost his chance to get his girl.

The films picture different tactics that elicit different responses when a black student, Tyler Crowley hits on Bella. In one scene, Tyler runs up behind Bella at lunch and kisses her on the cheek; Bella responds with unmistakable annoyance. Tyler doesn’t ask her if she would like to be kissed, and he doesn’t seem phased by her annoyance. This kiss, between a black male and a white female, was sexual harassment.

Bella is visibly annoyed when Tyler kisses her on the cheek 

Besides Tyler, the only other named black human in the saga is a man named J. Jenks, who makes fake IDs and passports. Black humans in Twilight commit crimes. One role of white humans in the series, then, is to hold black humans accountable for their actions. Bella’s father, Charlie, is a cop; it’s his job to arrest people like J. Jenks. And when Tyler kisses Bella on the cheek, Mike Newton is the one to chase him away.

Vampires

The vampires in the Twilight films are noted as having skin like porcelain or alabaster. An overwhelming majority of the vampires prior to Breaking Dawn are played by Caucasian actor. One exception is Laurent, who is played by a black actor (Edi Gathegi); however, Gategi wears makeup to lighten his natural skin tone. It seems that the act of being made into a vampire confers a special paleness or whiteness. This notion is strengthened by the color symbolism prevalent in the films: vampires are represented by white. Breaking Dawn extensively uses white and red to represent vampires and humans, respectively. When Bella is turned to a vampire in part one, the film shows her red blood vessels crystalizing and becoming white. Part two opens with several scenes that juxtapose white and red, like the dawn on a snowy mountain top. Vampires are extensively associated with whiteness in the films.

According to Dyer, white people are depicted as pure and god-like, and as transcending the body. He also notes that whiteness is fraught with paradoxes. If Dyer is correct, then we should be able to see these observations come to fruition in the Twilight films.

Vampires are often associated with god- or Christ-like qualities in the films. In the sunlight, their skin shimmers and sparkles. In the texts, Bella uses the word “angelic” to describe Edward when he shows her this (Wilson); Bella’s reaction in the film appears to capture the same awe Meyer describes in the books. Some vampires add to the Christ-like metaphor by resisting the temptation to feed on humans by instead feeding on animals. Edward’s father Carlisle even has the discipline to be a doctor, constantly tempted by human blood. In a similar manner, Jesus was constantly tempted to sin, but through immense discipline was able to avoid doing so. Furthermore, Edward and Bella never do more than kiss before they marry, in part because Edward doesn’t want to test his restraint and risk killing Bella, but also because he has somewhat traditional (read: Christian) morals, which champion abstinence. Christian morals are seen elsewhere in the series: in Breaking Dawn, Rosalie encourages Bella not to try and terminate her pregnancy despite the fact that it may kill her; she’s staunchly pro-life, a stance which has been associated with Christians by modern popular culture. There is a clear association between vampires, especially the Cullens, and Christianity and purity. Vampires also often transcend the body using special abilities. Edward can read others’ minds, and so his being extends to the minds of others. Alice can see the future, and so her awareness transcends time itself.

Edward’s skin shimmers in the sunlight

Dyer notes that whiteness is also paradoxical. As a color, whiteness is both the combination and the absence of all colors. The manifestation of this principle in race is messy and varied, allowing whiteness to appear pervasive and attainable for all. One example of paradox has already been explored: how can one be granted the ability to transcend the body by their skin color, a characteristic of the very body they transcend? There are other examples of paradox in Twilight; for example, despite their strong association with whiteness, vampires (unlike all other species in the series) can be doubly associated with blackness. This distinction serves to demarcate the good vampires (those like the Cullens who feed on animals) and bad vampires (those who feed on humans). While the Cullens and other “good” vampires are extensively associated with white, other vampires that feed on humans and are otherwise coded as bad are associated with blackness. The Volturi are one group of vampires that are associated to blackness in addition to whiteness. One way that blackness is coded into the Volturi is that they all wear black robes. Such blackness carries connotations of evil and corruption: the Volturi are depicted as the corrupt oligarchs of vampire-kind, who act in their own interests, and also feed on humans. In Breaking Dawn, they attempt to destroy the Cullen coven for having a half-vampire, half-human child. They justify their politics using a rhetoric of fear: humans for the first time have weapons capable of destroying vampires, so it is more important than ever to keep secret. Anything that produces uncertainty, then, must be destroyed.

The story of Laurent, the black vampire, adds to the vampires’ sense of paradox. Laurent is a friend to the Cullens: he travels to Forks in New Moon to warn them that one of the vampires in his own coven is coming to kill Bella. Despite his occasional goodness, Laurent also does things that are contrary to the characteristics that the saga idealizes in the Cullens. In addition to feeding on humans, Laurent is impulsive (in contrast to the restraint shown by vampires who feed on animals). In New Moon, he crosses Bella in the wilderness and after telling her of Victoria’s plan to kill her, he said he couldn’t resist the urge to do it himself. This led intervention by a werewolf, who killed Laurent. Later, at Bella and Edward’s wedding, one animal-feeding vampire tells Edward that “(Laurent) wanted to be like us.” Laurent, it seems, envied the restraint, the likeness to Christ, the whiteness embodied by the Cullens.

The effect of the double-association granted to vampires like the Volturi is that, while they are unmistakably associated with whiteness, they are not strictly confined to it. As such, the actions of one vampire can hardly be made to represent all vampires – if a vampire does evil, that’s blackness; not all vampires are like that. Other characters, like the werewolves, are not afforded such flexibility.

Werewolves

If whiteness represents likeness to Christ, transcending the body, and paradox, we expect the opposite to be true for blackness in Dyer’s model.

Sure enough, these associations with blackness are seen in the case of the werewolves. Werewolves are the natural enemies of vampires, and so there is plenty of juxtaposition between the two groups in the films. On the whole, the werewolves are thoroughly associated with darkness. They are without exception Quileute Indians, having copper skin and dark features. Sam Uley becomes a jet black werewolf, and Jacob’s last name is even Black.

With the associations between werewolves and darkness in mind, let’s examine how the associations with whiteness seen in the vampires are flipped for werewolves. In vampires, likeness to Christ equates to Christian morals and restraint, and werewolves possess neither of these things. Melissa Burkley points out in Psychology Today that Sam Uley (whose wolf form is jet black, furthering his association with blackness) is an especially immoral character. After learning of Bella’s pregnancy in Breaking Dawn, Sam decides that Bella and her unborn child must be killed for no other reason than that he doesn’t know what to expect from a half-vampire child. Note that Sam has the same response as the Volturi, who are characterized by the double association with white and black. Sam’s immorality is furthered by his history of domestic abuse. His wife, Emily, has a scarred face from one instance when he was angered and struck her (presumably in werewolf form). This particular instance of immorality also begins to illustrate the werewolves’ lack of restraint. Of course Sam didn’t intend to permanently scar his wife; he got upset and it just happened. Impulsivity in werewolves extends beyond Sam: it is inextricably linked to their nature. When Quileutes first transform into werewolves (usually in their late teens), they act erratically and sometimes lose control of their own actions. Just before Jake transforms for the first time, he nearly starts a fight with Mike Newton for no reason in particular. Werewolves, in their darkness, are immoral and impulsive.

Furthermore, the films place a heavy emphasis on the bodies of the Quileutes. Bella greets Jacob in the beginning of New Moon: “Hey, muscles. You know, anabolic steroids are really bad for you.” Bella makes the viewer acutely aware of Jacob’s very muscular build, and the film builds on this by taking every opportunity to depict Jacob and the other young Quileutes with their shirts off. So the Quileutes’ bodies are sexualized in a way that the vampires’ bodies are not. Even though the Quileutes are shapeshifters and can literally escape their bodies, the films make an impressive effort to tie their identities to their bodies in the minds of the viewers. Ironically, vampires cannot escape their bodies in the same way as the Quileutes, but the films still lead the viewer to associate them with transcending the body.

Jacob’s body is often put on display for the viewers

___

While Twilight is not about race, it is still inundated with racial undertones. The racial story told by the saga associates whiteness and blackness with the characteristics Richard Dyer proposes in “White.” Given this, it is evident that race and racial associations are at play even in places where we wouldn’t expect to find them.

Sources:

Wilson, Natalie. “Got Vampire Privilege?: The Whiteness of Twilight.” SeducedByTwilight. WordPress, 2010.

Burkley, Melissa, PhD. “Is Twilight Prejudiced?: Is Racism a Major Theme in Twilight?” Psychology Today (2011).

It is said with some regularity that working class people in America are invisible to the middle and elite classes. Take for example William Deresiewicz’s essay “The Dispossessed,” in which he argues that the decline of working-class representation in popular culture has led to an ignorance of what a working-class life entails. “The working class,” Deresiewicz says, “ is American culture’s great lost continent.” Or take Heather Buckelew’s editorial in the Stanford Progressive, “Making the Invisible Visible: the Working Class in the Economic Crisis,” in which she posits that the struggles of the working class in the economic climate of 2010 were largely invisible to people outside the working class due to lack of media representation.

Deresiewicz and Buckelew may be right that the middle and elite classes have become disconnected from the poor, but that is by no accounts due a lack of representation in popular culture. In fact, the working class has always defined a fair portion of culture. Just look at the CBS Network’s lineup of sitcoms. Two Broke Girls uses the image of an elite woman’s descent into the working class to demonstrate that the elite are woefully unprepared for the rigors of working class life. Mike and Molly depicts a relationship between a cop and a teacher, showing images to the public of some of the financial hardships faced by the working class while still taking time to show the benefits of a large and tightly-knit family.

But the impact of the working class on these shows is mostly in the final product, as the shows are written, produced, and acted out by members of a higher class (even Mike and Molly producer Chuck Lorre, who had a working class childhood, has distanced himself from it in such ways as changing his surname from Levine due to the low self-esteem that he associated with it). The impact of the working class on culture goes much deeper than writing shows that appeal to the working class: some facets of popular culture are not just for or about the working class, but by the working class.

One interesting example of culture about the working class and by the working class is the original trilogy of the Star Wars saga (episodes IV, V, and VI). Scenes of the working class are coded into the trilogy: Luke Skywalker is the son of a farmer; Han Solo, a smuggler, performs for commission the dirty work required of him by his boss, Jabba the Hut; Even Princess Leia is working class, as she gives up the prospect of a comfortable elite lifestyle to aid the rebellion; there are even scenes of her doing work with her hands, like on Hoth in Empire Strikes Back.

It is of note that Star Wars creator and director George Lucas was the son of a stationery store owner, so he has a distinctly working class background. After the success of the first Star Wars movies, he purchased a property which he calls Skywalker Ranch; the working-class connotations of a ranch suggest that even though he is rich and famous, he is not estranged from his working-class roots, like Chuck Lorre is. Star Wars differs from the CBS comedies, then, in that its depictions of the working class are actually projections of George Lucas’s working class identity, as opposed to guesses at what a working class life might look like. Deresiewicz notes that television has many shows with people who have working class jobs, but live middle class lives; shows for the working class by members of higher classes just aren’t accurate.

Luke was raised on a moisture farm on the desert planet of Tatooine, giving him a distinctly working class upbringing (Source: StarWars.com)

Keeping this in mind, it would be of use to explore the writing of Raymond Williams. In his essay “Culture is Ordinary,” Williams establishes what I have already said; that there is a working class culture distinct from that of higher classes. Williams says that the working class have their own institutions distinct from the institutions of other classes, and that it is an industrial culture focused on “neighborhood, mutual obligation, and betterment.”

That the working class are often ignored by higher classes is not lost upon Williams. He opens “Culture is Ordinary” by using the image of a chained-off library at a cathedral that he is not allowed to enter because of his working-class status to convey this to the reader. The library is a place for the elite and for the clergy — not for the working class. The people who use the library want nothing to do with the working class, but, as Williams goes on to say in another essay, “Working Class Culture,” the joke is on the upper classes.

The reason for this is because the middle and elite class cultures have been visibly influenced by working class culture. So not only is there a working class culture that is distinct from that of other classes, but it’s not the result of the imposition of the latter onto the former (as some have argued); it’s the other way around. The most important thing that the working class have to impose upon the rest of society, according to Williams, is its democratic values — a consequence of the extension of its neighborhood- and family-based social organization.

How is this accomplished? Let’s go back to Star Wars. The trilogy depicts the working class heroes’ role in a rebellion to overthrow the oppressive Galactic Empire. These heroes, and the rebellion as a whole, are imposing their more democratic ideals upon the galaxy. Looking deeper, Emperor Palpatine, the man in charge of the empire, is distinctly elite: he was a prominent senator before he managed to bring about the end of the republic that preceded the Empire. The way Palpatine was able to get all the power of the Galactic Republic for himself — and this is admittedly outside the original trilogy — was by convincing the other elites in the senate to vote to give him their power in a state of emergency, which Palpatine himself had secretly perpetrated. Before it is challenged by the rebellion, the Empire exerts its dominance for some twenty years over the galaxy. That leads to an important observation: Lucas seems to be saying that in the absence of the working class, society will tend toward injustices like those of the Empire. The empire was the result of a lack of working-class representation in the vote which gave then-senator Palpatine power, and the Empire was not challenged until the working class rebelled, overthrew it, and established a new government. It seems, then, that one mode for the spread of democratic values by the working class is by rebellion.

Senator Palpatine wears distinctly elite clothing and is constantly surrounded by other elites in the senate (Source: ponikva.info)

Lucas’s argument about the working class continues in the last sequence with Luke, Darth Vader, and Emperor Palpatine. Luke defeats his Vader, his father, in a lightsaber duel, but refuses to kill him. Palpatine wants Luke to “join the dark side;” His refusal to kill Vader is a refusal to do so, so Palpatine tries to kill Luke using force lightning. Vader, in an act of redemption, picks up Palpatine and throws him into the ship’s reactor, killing him. This move is suicide on Vader’s part due to the lightning, and as he lays dying, he has a final conversation with his son Luke. The Jedi theme plays softly in the background, signalling Vader’s return to the light side of the force.

Darth Vader redeems himself by killing Emperor Palpatine, signalling his redemption from the dark side of the force (Source: Daily Mail)

Before looking into the working class images coded into this scene, we must understand that the Jedi are themselves part of the working class. The only model for the Jedi way of life in the original trilogy is Master Yoda, who lives in solitude and must work to be entirely self-sufficient. When Luke joins him to train, the two exhibit interactions typical of the working class as defined by Williams, forming a family-like bond. The Jedi way is not so different from the working class way.

So Luke, representative of the working class, defeats Vader, somebody who defected from the working class to the elite. The viewer is then made to cheer for Vader as he redeems himself by returning to the Jedi way and killing Emperor Palpatine, which is code for his rejoining the working class. Lucas uses this sequence to create an argument that, one, the working class will emerge superior to the elite (Luke defeats Vader), and two, we should cheer for the working class as it does this (Vader’s redemption). After Vader’s death, he becomes a force ghost, which is the Jedi analog of achieving Nirvana, due to his return to the working class, Jedi way of life (the Force is meant to resemble a deity and the Jedi are the clergy of a religion). If one considers that the that the most ardent practitioners of that religion are granted an ultimate afterlife, it’s like Lucas is saying that the best way to get to heaven is to be working class.

George Lucas’s Star Wars, then, is an argument for the working class. If Williams is to be believed, the people of the middle and elite classes aren’t aware that they are partaking something that is working class when they watch the movie, but nevertheless, they are unknowingly consuming something that they would otherwise try to distance themselves from. In fact, more than that, they’re cheering for the very working class culture that they’ve tried to make invisible. Deresiewicz and Buckelew are unintentionally correct that the working class is invisible. What they mean to say when they say this is that the working class is unrepresented, which seems to be untrue, given that one of the most popular movies of all time is about the working class. The working class is invisible to the middle and upper class, but this actually allows it to secretly impose upon these classes its institutions and its ideals of a democratic society.

Sources:

Deresiewicz, William. “The Dispossessed.” The American Scholar. Phi Beta Kappa, 1 Dec. 2006. Web.

Buckelew, Heather. “Making the Invisible Visible: The Working Class in the Economic Crisis.” The Stanford Progressive, Jan. 2010. Web.

Williams, Raymond. “Working Class Culture.” In The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working Class Life”, by Richard Hoggart (1957).

Williams, Raymond. “Culture is Ordinary.” 1958.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have something important to say – something that might be somewhat difficult and uncomfortable to come to terms with. Something that throws a wrench into a certain line of thought that claims to devote itself to the fair treatment and well-being of all people. That is to say, a movement that might be called “Political Correctness,” or “PC,” has the ability to be morphed from a well-intended attempt at inclusivity into something with sinister undertones. In the minds of Parker and Stone, PC commodifies and hurts the very people it aims to help and deprives those who partake in it of autonomy and free thought.

This point reveals itself in the 19^th season of the animated series, South Park, in the way that the show makes vivid a real social crises and then proposes an imagined (and flawed) solution to that crisis. Season 19 tells of South Park’s attempt to reshape its image from a vulgar and intolerant town to one that is inclusive and, in the show’s own words, PC.

South Park season 19 DVD cover

Perhaps the show presents Political Correctness as the solution to the issue of social injustice. PC Principal is ushered in as the new principal of South Park Elementary to reform it into a more tolerant school after someone made a rape joke (the show would later reveal that it was Mackie, the counselor, who made the joke). Kyle, one of the central characters, is excited for these changes, saying he looks forward to South Park becoming a place “where people can begin to have a dialogue.” While Political Correctness is displayed as having its faults – its most ardent followers are college-aged white males who live in a fraternity house together and are prone to prioritize women and alcohol over social justice – these faults are mostly worked through by the end of the season, and South Park is a happy town that embraces PC ideals.

The idea that PC is the imagined solution to the real problem of social injustice, however, is a red herring. If one looks deeper, PC culture itself is presented as the real social crisis in need of a solution. It all starts with the demographic of those partaking in PC culture. It is very curious that none of the people partaking in this PC culture are a part of any of the marginalized groups that they claim to defend. This leads to an interesting issue when PC Principal tries to indoctrinate Jimmy, a physically handicapped student, in the ways of Political Correctness. This is problematic, since there is no way PC Principal knows more about being handicapped than Jimmy does, having not actually had this experience himself. It becomes evident through this exchange that PC Principal cares more about his own smug sense of satisfaction that he gets from pointing others’ transgressions out to them than he cares about actually achieving positive social change. The relationship between PC and marginalized groups then, is not that of a protector and the protected, like it might seem to be at first glance, but something else.

The PC frat house  during a party. All the members are straight white males (Source: southpark.wikia.com/wiki/PC_Delta)

But what, then, is the relationship between PC culture and those it claims to defend? Parker and Stone use several instances throughout the season to suggest that this relationship that of a consumer to a product. Take for example the episode “The City Part of Town,” in which the people of South Park try to get a Whole Foods (which is used here as a symbol of PC culture and of gentrification). The grocery chain sends a representative who asks to visit a classroom. In the classroom, a handicapped child and an African-American child – who is by no coincidence named Token – are conspicuously displayed in the middle of the front row. If one pays attention to other depictions of the class without the Whole Foods representative, one sees that this is not the normal seating arrangement. So we have two people who are part of the marginalized groups that PC culture claims to defend being used as commodities or bargaining chips to push PC’s own agenda to get a Whole Foods, an agenda which is harmful to one marginalized group – the poor – in particular, for reasons that will be discussed later.

This consumer/product relationship is further fleshed out in the episode “Tweek x Craig.” When rumors start of a gay relationship between Tweek and Craig start, the entire town wants to show its support. The way that the people of South Park do this is by giving the two supposed lovers money. When the two face disciplinary trouble for fighting, PC Principal refuses to punish them because they are gay, and instead sends them home with $100 each. This puts a price tag on the identities of Tweek and Craig, showing how those who are PC act as consumers and commodify marginalized groups. Viewed this way, PC culture is more about the fulfillment of the egos of those who practice it than it is about social change, since giving money to gay couples does little more than make the donors feel good about themselves.

Another way that PC is depicted as a social crisis is that it brings with it gentrification. Early in the season, the run-down part of South Park is renovated as a revitalized arts and foods district called Sodosopa (this includes the aforementioned Whole Foods). This district is built up around Kenny’s old, derelict house, which is left standing with Kenny and his family still living in it. This is an example of further commodification by PC culture of those it claims to defend, since Kenny’s house is advertised as a novelty, a remnant of the past – to bring more consumers to Sodosopa. Any contentment that Kenny and his family had with their small, private home was lost as they were forcefully thrust into the heart of the busiest part of town as something not unlike a carnival attraction. Kenny represents one of the groups that PC culture claims to defend: the poor. In the case of Kenny, the wants and needs of the poor are ignored in favor of PC’s own selfish wants.

Sodosopa, South Parks gentrified arts and foods district, with Kenny’s house, center (Source: http://wiki.southpark.cc.com/wiki/Sodosopa)

Related to gentrification is perhaps the most significant way in which PC is a social crisis: it leads to a loss of autonomy and free thought. While hints of this phenomenon are evident throughout the season – PC Principal turns to physical violence to repress people who say politically incorrect things more often than he has a dialogue with them – its most notable instance is in the development of a conflict between PC culture and sentient advertisements. These advertisements look and talk like people, and ultimately have an agenda to gentrify the human race to extinction by making necessities too expensive to afford.

Before looking into what this conflict means, it is important to realize the function of advertisements in our day-to-day lives. The job of advertisers is to make you, the consumer, buy their product. Through methods like catchy jingles or marketing to impressionable young children, advertisements deprive consumers of autonomy.  More often than not, the products you decide to buy are based more on the quality of the ads you’ve seen than the quality of the product itself.

So it should say a lot about what Parker and Stone think of PC when the ads manage to push their agenda on the back of PC culture by taking advantage of the fact that the two are nearly indistinguishable. One character, Nathan, explicitly states the similarities between ads and PC: “what is PC but verbal form of gentrification? You spruce everything up, get rid of the ugly in order to create a false sense of paradise. Only one thing could live in that world — ads.”  Ads and PC function in the same way and have the same agenda: they both deprive people of autonomy and seek to do away with the ugly and leave the pretty.

So Parker and Stone depict Political Correctness as a social crisis. What, then, is the imagined solution to this crisis? The solution starts with Mr. Garrison, a proxy for Donald Trump. Garrison gets angry at the influx of illegal immigrants from Canada in South Park early in the season, and he kicks off a political campaign based on the idea that the illegal immigrants should be “rounded up and f*cked to death.”

Mr. Garrison on the campaign trail. Garrison’s hat and the “Make America Great Again” poster, right, are meant to draw a comparison to Donald Trump (Source: southpark.cc.com)

It might be tempting to call Mr. Garrison anti-PC, but this is not quite the case. When one considers that his running mate is Caitlyn Jenner, whom the Politically Correct consider to be “stunning and brave,” the question of why Parker and Stone made the decision to pair these two arises.

The answer to this question lies in the show’s depiction of Jenner. The viewer is not allowed to forget about the time she committed a hit and run – she runs a person over (and presumably kills them) with a car in every episode that she appears in. This shows that despite being the object of PC culture’s affection, she is still a bad person. Furthermore, there exists for Garrison and Jenner a physical removal from PC culture, since the two leave South Park to campaign for most of the season, helping to put them outside the sphere of PC culture altogether.

Caitlyn Jenner hits a pedestrian every time she takes the wheel in season 19 (source: dailymail.co.uk)

When Garrison and Jenner return near the end of the season to help fight the advertisements, the two take on the role of protagonists, by virtue of the fact that they help to save the human race from extinction. In the very end of the season, Jenner and Garrison team up with those who are PC, and all the people of South Park decide to shun gentrification and pursue a continuing fight against the ads emphasizing human unity.

Parker and Stone are caught in a moment of fantasy here. They made the viewer cheer for a rapist and murderer, then implied that the solution to PC culture’s flaws is to be inclusive of them. This solution is problematic: The fact that no action was taken against Garrison and Jenner, both of whom committed murders, is disappointing. The implication is that criminals should be allowed amnesty without any consideration – that everybody deserves inclusion. Furthermore, recalling that Garrison is a proxy for Donald Trump, this might be seen as an implicit endorsement of Trump (recall that season 19 was created during the primaries). This is an noteworthy if for no other reason than that South Park is often seen as dismantling ideology rather than displaying it.

Despite Parker and Stone’s unsatisfying solution to the problem of PC culture, there is a hint of a better solution that exists in the South Park school newspaper, for which Jimmy is the editor. Jimmy refuses any sponsored content (i.e. ads), and the paper seems to be a place of legitimate discourse, providing a place for the dialogue that PC culture promotes but does not provide. There is little censorship, which runs contrary to the deprivation of autonomy by PC culture. The South Park school newspaper is a much better alternative to PC than that proposed by Parker and Stone. Perhaps the real answer to PC culture lies in having a no-holds-barred civil discord about the very real social problems that are faced by groups of people.