Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here to subscribe.Novemebr 14, 2018
In Not-So-Subtle Nod 👍 to Climate Change, South Park Shows a ManBearPig Denier Eaten by ManBearPig ''The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks,'' Dr. Wallace S. Broecker
warned humanity, decades ago. Now it looks like the beast is awakening, and even former critics seem to be coming around to the idea that we should stop poking it.This reversal is even showing up in what we watch after work. The libertarian-leaning sensibilities of South Park’s creators have been plainly evident on TV for years. Humor like South Park’s fuels the sort of nihilistic “both parties are the same” rhetoric that allows edgy young men to feel superior to both parties, without having to actually make a political choice.
Climate change has come up in the show multiple times, from skewering the over-the-top dramatics with a Day After Tomorrow parody to lampooning the smug self-satisfaction of Prius driving liberals. But the episode that has continued to resonate, particularly in the deniersphere, is the ManBearPig episode. This infamous 2006 bit mocked Al Gore’s pandering to the press and public while promoting his Inconvenient Truth movie.
To be fair, the episode was always more about Gore’s attention-seeking behavior and bitterness at losing the presidency. The titular mythical monster (half man, half bear, half pig) served a stand-in for his public concern for climate change. For deniers obsessed with Gore, though, “ManBearPig” became something of a meme.
But in last Wednesday’s episode, twelve long years after Gore was mocked mercilessly for warning of ManBearPig’s existence, the cryptid made its first (real world) appearance in the show. And real news like NBC and Vanity Fair--as well as conservative fake news like Newsbusters, the Washington Times and Fox--all wrote how
this new episode could be considered an anthropocene apology to Al Gore.
In the episode, the cartoon’s four young protagonists must seek out Gore after being blamed for the murders committed by ManBearPig (which police mistake for yet another school shooting). They’re determined to make amends so that they can clear their names and take down ManBearPig together. Lest you think the creators are now fans of the former VP, the cartoon Gore is less than gracious, requiring the kids apologize repeatedly and throw him a party at Olive Garden, where he bores them with a slideshow of his career. At the end, he gives them his Nobel prize and tells the kids it’s up to them now. (Presumably, this cliffhanger will be be picked up in tonight’s episode.)
But in one particularly climatic scene, captured by the right-wing “Media Research Center,” ManBearPig slaughters his way through a restaurant, while
a glib denier explains that “You can't just go along with what people are saying, Susan, okay? There's no scientific proof, no real evidence of a ManBearPig… everyone wants to use the fear of a ManBearPig to get what they want. They throw around bad science, bad taxidermy… ”
When ManBearPig crashes through the wall behind the man, and begins a violent rampage
he continues undaunted, saying “You can't just let people tell you that if you don't believe in ManBearPig, then you don't care about the world.”
When Susan points out that not only is ManBearPig real, but here, right now (and ripping the spine out of the guy behind him) the man shifts to the
denier line that it’s too late now: “What can we do that everyone else will also do, Susan? Come on, use your brain. Even if we do something about it... What about the Chinese? They’re just gonna keep right on--”
But ManBearPig picks him up and begins chomping down on the his skull, cutting off his denial mid-sentence.
While climate change was already plenty real twelve years ago, when ManBearPig was just a figment of Gore’s imagination,
a decade of Sandys and Harveys and Marias and Florences, of wildfires and droughts and pests and heat waves, have made the risk of poking Dr. Broecker’s
climate beast an
obvious, if inconvenient, truth.