Aliens and Dilly Bars
A Defense of Childish Humor
— South Park, “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe” (pilot episode, 1997)
And there I was, ten-year-old Aziz, laughing my butt off. Too young, perhaps, for such immaturity, or what many call “potty humor.” But to me, both then and now, South Park’s childish humor was and is about more than farts. It had another layer to it, a complexity that even my 10-year-old self could appreciate. You see, Cartman was a liar — a liar who had been full of hot gas all episode long.
I now realize that those early South Park episodes had a special way of tapping into a childish worldview. Compulsive lying, the creation of pecking orders among friends and siblings, fiery farts, awkward crushes, the confused understanding of sex, the distorted understanding of danger, the flirtation with swear words: these distinctly childish tendencies and thought patterns make up what I call “childish humor” — humor seen through a child’s young eyes.
This humor-in-heelies is central to early South Park and, largely, why it is so funny. The childish premise is established so thoroughly that, when the kids do unchildish things — cussing with abandon or reeling off pop culture non sequiturs — they ring all the more dissonant. While later seasons are by no means devoid of childishness, South Park largely trended towards cutting satire whereas, earlier on, episodes tended to ramble loosely through absurdist “podunk mountain town” childhood experiences. I by no means seek a case against cutting satire. It’s just that the newer episodes don’t give me that same old feeling I grew up on, and I miss it. While advances in animation have certainly contributed to this feeling of childhood lost, the humor itself has undoubtedly changed as well; I remember, even in high school, the phrase “they’re trying too hard” running through my mind.
When I watch new South Park, I think of current events. When I watch old South Park, I relate to myself — to myself as a stupid youngster with a profoundly limited perspective on the world. This self-referential viewing experience is far from analytical. I find myself in the headspace of a younger Aziz, feeling the distance and dissonance between us — partly because young Aziz grew up on these episodes but also because the humor itself is special. And it makes me feel bubbly inside — a distinctive sensation that makes me want to “aww,” shake my head, and laugh at the same time. My eyes sometimes get soft, as silly as it sounds.
Last summer I felt this same sensation outside of South Park as I watched a theater production of sorts — that is, a hilarious fifteen-minute encounter with two ten-year-old kids in a Dairy Queen, in Eugene, Oregon, on a road trip with my friend Marina. DQ had become the trip’s grand inside joke, the destination of a mock-epic quest, but we never expected such a show. I’ll call the kids “Alpha” and “Beta” — pseudonyms that capture their unsavory, hierarchical friendship: as in so many childish pecking orders, Alpha asserted himself dominant and pulled no conversational punches as he called out Beta for bullshit. In all fairness, Beta was lying through his teeth — and I found the lies both adorable and mentally stimulating. As we laughed, Dilly Bars in hand, I saw myself in these kids: my limited perspective, my insecurity, my cuteness, my stupidity, and the comedy of it all. It was that same special flavor of nostalgia that I find in early South Park. It was also just funny as hell.
Childhood stupidity is serious, dark business. It’s precious years squandered, it’s self-loathing, and it sits at the base of our nearest and dearest psychological narratives. And that stupidity is irreversible — though certainly malleable in our minds and memories. It is for this reason that childhood needs so desperately to be laughed at, so that we might meet our previous selves with more fondness and less scorn as we construct our self-histories and self-understandings. So here I am, defending “childish humor.”
There are few South Park episodes more childish than the first, Cartman Gets an Anal Probe. Icing on the cake: it’s the only episode made fully with paper-cut animation. Everything about the episode harkens back — back to little Aziz, or, as my brothers still call me, little “Chubster.” Or, even better, little “Cheesecake,” which apparently was my luchador battle cry whenever I “stepped in the ring.” (I never stepped in any literal ring.) It’s funny, now. Back then, it sucked. So when Oregon-DQ Alpha ripped on Beta, I was of two minds about it — an adult’s and a child’s. One laughed, the other empathized. And the cognitive dissonance added a special flavor of funny. But let’s get back to South Park, Episode 1.
All episode long, chubby little “Fat-ass” Cartman is the big butt of the joke, and he’s struggling to cope. His anal probe is embarrassing, so he lies a lot — denying the increasingly undeniable existence of aliens. Refutations include common schoolyard comebacks like, “I know you’re making it all up” and “whateverrr.” And although South Park’s absurdist alien premise may not be the most relatable, Cartman’s childish reactions resonate with a fundamental childish experience all too common: he strays from the norm, from what should be, and it’s uncomfortable.
But the “childishness” that I defend here is about more than surface discomfort. It’s about glimpsing and feeling a child’s internal world of norms and ideals. Discomfort — the stuff of so many jokes — can be decoded so as to contour our understandings of what’s normal, what’s ideal, what should be.
For example, little Cheesecake was spastically embarrassed about writing poetry and, upon reflection, my blushing was rooted in childhood norms of masculinity and femininity. My taunting older brother was largely to blame. One day, in front of his friend Joseph, he tried to coax a few verses out of me. I was squirming, denying that I wrote any such thing as poetry, waving a metaphorical banner that desperately read, “Move along, nothing to see here!” My lie was as transparent as Cartman’s, so Joseph promised to say something embarrassing about himself if I came out with it. And I did, and he laughed: “You used to write poetry? That’s it? Poetry is cool, man. Why are you embarrassed of that? I…I have…I have cockroaches in my house!” I felt better but couldn’t understand why he was embarrassed of cockroaches. “But Joseph, that’s not even something about you,” I said. There was a lot I didn’t understand about Joseph’s world of norms. And, sadly, I had quit writing poetry over a year before this talk with Joseph. It took a long time to shake the “girly” construct; poetry and dudes were simply two things that shouldn’t go together.
Today, my brother admits that he always admired my poetry, while in his mind’s eye, he sees his younger self as an often frustrated and alienated child. I suppose tearing me down made him feel more powerful. Less “beta” and more “alpha.” We’re good friends now.
Luckily for Oregonian Beta, two out of three of his DQ companions were “mature” enough not to be jerks when, in an effort to impress us elders, he lied a lot. He was a bad liar, and it was cute. First he claimed, after hearing we were from Berkeley, that he too lived in Berkeley for a few years. (This could very well be true.) Then he asked for my address. Although he clearly had no idea where my street was, he proceeded to ask if my house was yellow, then specified that he lived precisely four blocks away. He paused before the number “four”, and the word seemed to emerge before he knew it — from a vacuum that, in absence of something valuable to say, manifested his childish understanding of what should be said when discussing geography: the number of blocks to a friend’s house. I remember this age, when the tangible world was a matter of blocks.
The kids soon provided another glimpse into their psycho-geography, gravely warning us to avoid downtown because there were people in vans with guns and drugs, and scary homeless people too. These kids were dead serious, and we took their advice via pinky swear (a promise we later debated and chose to uphold). Alpha topped it off with an imitation of a homeless man popping out at us — and the imitation really did POP, although he did not intend any ironic hyperbole. Springing halfway out of his seat with eyes wide and hands flailing, he let out a manic “brgahbrahblahblah” that I couldn’t capture with even the most precise of onomatopoeia. Alpha’s intensity of emotion and facial extremes resembled Kyle in South Park Episode 1, consumed in ranting crescendo as he imitates how his parents will chew him out — interestingly assigning the same emotional intensity for (1) losing his baby brother to aliens and (2) not brushing his teeth. Childish proportions and fears work differently, and it’s really funny. And intriguing.
We’ll have to wait until later in the season to understand Kyle’s familial influences. Rather, Episode 1 holds the spotlight on Cartman — and for long enough to establish his beta reversal: the victim becomes the aggressor (like my brother). This character nuance — Victim Cartman — is lost in later seasons as the larger-than-life powerhouse Psychopath Cartman seizes the reins. It’s easy to forget that his classic comeback, “I’m not fat, I’m just big boned,” simply repeats what his mother tells him in Episode One after he returns home so dejected and ostracized that, at first, he doesn’t even have the stomach for his “powdered donut pancake surprise” (although, after further prodding, he can’t turn down an “eensy weensy woo woo” of chocolate chicken pot pie and cheesy poofs).
The dialogue of the entire episode is shaped by this pattern, of kids absorbing adult language and then repeating it haplessly. Cartman learns the episode’s recurring cuss word “dildo” at home, foreshadowing the season finale Cartman’s Mom is a Dirty Slut. Stan and Kyle learn distorted sexual expectations from the non-sequitur erotic funk belted by their cafeteria chef — lyrics they later regurgitate, expecting Stan and Wendy to “make sweet love down by the fire” on their first date.
These subtleties are easy to overlook because South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone don’t draw attention to these connections; rather, they leave them light, silly, quirky, and understated, so as not to squash the childishness that, regardless, is accessible on a variety of analytical planes. I imagine that only a rare handful of South Park enthusiasts interpret Cartman’s classic slogan, “Screw you guys, I’m going home” as a desperate and defiant act of empowerment as he, an alienated individual in an small group, does the only thing he can: withdraw. An awfully dramatic take on a light, silly episode.
But as a kid, I related to Cartman — I felt his “big bones” and I hated getting ripped on. Though I’ve since slimmed down, I’ve been a clinical withdrawer since my chubby elementary school days and, I must say, more power to Cartman for trying to do it with some attitude and snark. I was more soft-spoken. Looking back, I think that’s largely why young Cheesecake found young Cartman so funny.
Some days I scorn young Aziz, and I write a story where an unshakable, big-boned lame-ass squirms in my psyche. And other days, I laugh fondly because little Cheesecake — with his distant and dissonant understanding of the world — was adorable and innocent and human. And funny. On these days, I can imagine a future Aziz writing fond, funny stories of his stupid early twenties. I am still undoubtedly a child of sorts and, when I project an elder me who laughs more than scowls, I feel lighter, freer, less existentially anxious, and less afraid to make mistakes. On days of aliens and Dilly Bars, I write healthier stories for myself.
On the day of my fateful Oregon DQ escapade, those kids truly did impress us: they put on a show, and it was damn funny.
After some mumbled and disjointed banter, wide-eyed Alpha asked, “Do you want us to show you?” A bit confused, we nonetheless shot back an enthusiastic yes. Then, pointing to the window, Alpha asked, “Do you want us to show you out there?” Another enthusiastic yes. “Will you watch our food?” Sure, yeah. And with that, the giddy duo got up with their “Blizzard” ice cream cups, headed down the hall and turned right out the door. And just like that, DQ window became TV screen — and the only channel was showing an execution of sorts. Except instead of a gun, there was a long, bendy, plastic catapult-of-a-spoon loaded with Blizzard and, instead of taking the bullet to the back of his head, giggly Beta — willingly subservient — stared down the barrel point blank.
Splat!
We lost our shit. It was silly, it was immature, and it was so much more. As Beta slowly turned from his side-profile and made eye contact through the window, a fat glob of Blizzard slopped slowly down his forehead, over his eye, and down his cheek like a sweet, creamy tear. He smirked.
And Marina and I hit the road, windows down, laughing, feeling free.
