Won't somebody please think of the children? Or, South Park fanfic and the political realm

Fathallah, J. (2015) Won't somebody please think of the children? Or, South Park fanfic and the political realm. Journal of Youth Studies, 18 (10). pp. 1309-1325. ISSN 1367-6261

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Abstract

Comedy Central’s South Park has proved a bone of contention for traditional guardians of youth culture. From the denunciations of pressure groups on one hand, to academics attempting to claim South Park for various political positions on the other, it is ironic that a show addressing the failure of official pedagogy has had so little attention paid to its young fans. Academics argue over the ‘message’ of South Park, in a socio-political sense, or denounce it for irresponsibly embracing post-political cynicism. Yet as Mendes et al. have argued, to draw a false division between youth entertainment and some pre-conceived notion of the political realm is a fallacy: young people’s engagement with and meaning-making practices derived from popular culture are political in themselves. This paper uses a politically informed conception of discourse analysis developed from Laclau and Mouffe to code the top-rated South Park fanfics from Fanfiction.net, a site whose primary demographic is teenagers, in pursuit of the messages young people perceive and make of the show. This project prefers concrete data over impressionistic views of ‘young people’, and attends to what teenage fans make of and do with the text, rather than imagining them as passive consumers absorbing inherent messages.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Youth Studies
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3312
Subjects:
?? attitudesmediapoliticsleisureidentitysociology and political sciencegeneral social scienceslife-span and life-course studiessocial sciences(all) ??
ID Code:
152590
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
11 Mar 2021 10:30
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
16 Jul 2024 11:36