OUTLINE EXAMPLE 1

Kyle Rayner

Instructor Andrew Winslow

ENGL 101 152

08 September 2003

Source Text: “O Holy Night” from SouthPark.

General overview: My general plan is to give a diachronic (vs. synchronic) analysis of the “O Holy Night” sketch. I’m not sure about everything yet, but I’d like to talk in general about the use of irony throughout the song. Later, I’d like to do an analysis of the “Dreidle Song” for the text-in context essay, which contains a twist on the themes developed here, and Cartman gets a chance to get even with Kyle for the cattle prod treatment.

  1. Introduction/ Background/ Argument
  2. SouthPark traditionally pokes fun at virtually every religious system sooner or later.
  3. In this case, the show exposes dissociations between the spirit of Christmas (charity, mercy, love, etc) with the commercial side by putting a self-serving character on the end of a cattle prod to remember a traditional Hymn.
  4. The Major Characters
  5. Mr. Garrison – an effete and widely considered homosexual character.
  6. Eric Cartman – all-around racist, rude, impolite, jerk. Defining characteristic: self-serving
  7. Kyle Brafslofsky – a young Jewish peer
  8. “Shock Therapy”
  9. Giving Kyle the Prod/ The use of irony
  10. First instance of dramatic irony: the Jewish kid is the one who gets to police a protestant kid on a traditional Christian hymn celebrating the birth of Christ.
  11. Themes of reverse-persecution played out here; Mr. Garrison, a homosexual, is the chief authority figure who’s endorsing corporal punishment by empowering a Jewish kid to enforce brutal discipline
  12. No provocation/ Electric Laughter
  13. First instance of the shock treatment is one where Cartman hasn’t even made a mistake; He’s mildly chided by Mr. Garrison.
  14. Significance: this proves that the cattle prod is real (within the world of the text) and that the punishment will hurt. Moreover, Kyle will enforce without hesitation
  15. Moreover, Kyle enjoys shocking Cartman as he giggles after each prod.
  16. The Mistakes: OK, rather than talk about each one of these, I’m putting them all in the same paragraph as a progression. During his first failure, Cartman mumbles along, but after a long shock, he tries to substitute what he thinks should be the words and accidentally substitutes Christmas commercial for spiritual. Later, his shocks are too intense to reply until he resists, but his gloating is cut off by Mr. Garrison, who also enjoys his disciplining.
  17. Mumbles
  18. “Christmas trees and pie”/“and so we give presents”
  19. Incoherence
  20. “Missed it”
  21. Just for the fun of it/The French words
  22. Sadism: at the end of the song, Kyle’s discipline has come full circle, he’s just punishing Cartman for the heck of it.
  23. Why the “French” words?
  24. Preliminary Conclusions: I really have to tease these out, but I want to talk about how Cartman’s substitution of cultural values creates the irony within the text (is irony the right word?). Everything in the sketch is in extremes, but the one constant is that when Cartman gets really pressed for the words, all he can do is try to “fake it” through to the other side using nothing more than what he thinks Christmas is about. So he cites, Christmas trees, pies, and presents instead of the actual religious themes that would normally be there. The greatest irony is that it is two traditionally disenfranchised groups (known for being persecuted by Christians) that are policing him.