Professional Practice - Dissertation Proposal

Having followed on on Thursday and spoken in more depth with Chris during a tutorial, as to how to go about researching it, and what each of my chapters in the proposal should be about.

The first chapter will be based on the History of South Park and other animated shows that may have sparked controversy, such as Simpsons, Family Guy and King of the Hill, and why such shows can get away with what they do (mainly as they are animated, it is easier to get away with being offensive as it is fictional drawn characters doing the talking) but obviously a lot of research will be going into that.

The second chapter, I am going to talk about regression and the concept of it. And also go into detail in the controversies and even the taboos that the shows creators have broken, and how and why they have done this. Also, why they keep pushing the boundaries further and further. Many people have complained that it warps their children's minds if they watch the show (despite it being rated 15/18 so they shouldn't be watching anyway) and one of my favourite quotes regarding this is from South Park co-creator Matt Stone:

"KIDS ARE NOT nice, innocent, flower-loving little rainbow children;
Kids are all little bastards: they don't have any kind of social tact or etiquette, they're just complete little raging bastards."

This was said in response to people complaining about their children and what this new cartoon does to them, which I think is a brilliant response, yet also again, displaying signs of controversy about the show. Is he referring to children in general, or the four 8 year old kids he's created in his show? Or maybe even both?

The third chapter will be a case study, where I focus on a couple of episodes of South Park, and talk about my main subject of controversy and taboo. I have already decided which 2 episodes I will do, being the 2-part 200th episode special, cleverly titled '200' and '201'. In these episodes, Matt and Trey decided they would make fun of every single person they have in the past, mainly celebrities. However they have become known as being the most controversial episodes of all time, having been banned from Public Access and even Cable television in the United States and United Kingdom, only available on either their website, southparkstudios.com or via DVD format. This is because the whole premise of both episodes was about the prophet Mohammed, and how they wanted to show his image, which is obviously not allowed within the Muslim community.

It raised so many questions and controversies, it is by far the best thing to talk about for my case study.

As my research progresses, I shall post up here what I find out.