Sandy Hobbs | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 16, 1998
To me one of the most satisfying features of commercial popular culture in recent years has been the appearance, and indeed the success, of television cartoon series aimed at adults. Matt Groening’s The Simpsons is the outstanding example. Halloween has been a recurring theme in The Simpsons, starting with The Simpsons Hallowe’en Special (also known as Treehouse of Horrors) in the second series. A number of different horror stories are told, which as is typical of The Simpsons, contain many allusions to other works such as Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven and William Friedkin’s film The Exorcist. This was followed by Treehouse of Horror II , III, IV, V, VI and VII, all of which seem to be compiled to a similar formula. This note deals with how Halloween has been treated in two of the other adult cartoon series, South Park and King of the Hill.
South Park was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone and produced by the company Comedy Central. The episode reviewed is available in Britain on a video released by Warner Vision International. It has no on-screen title, but in the packaging is labelled Pinkeye Halloween Special.
The central characters in South Park as four boys who attend the same school, Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny. The episode ones with Kenny being killed by the Russian Mir Space Station when it crashes to earth because of a malfunction. Kenny’s death will surprise only those unfamiliar with the series, since one of the running jokes is that Kenny gets killed in every episode. Kenny is taken to the local morgue where one of the attendants remarks that “Death is least funny when it happens to a child”. Kenny is embalmed but one of the attendants allows the Worcestershire sauce he has been putting on his snack drip into the embalming fluid. This has terrible consequences since, as we later discover, there is a warning on the bottle that the Worcestershire sauce should not be used for embalming. Kenny revives, bites the attendants and returns to his friends. The attendants go to a clinic for help and are diagnosed as suffering from pinkeye. However, from now on they and Ken seem to have a need to consume human blood.
There is a costume competition at the school. Cartman’s mother has made him a Hitler costume. The teachers disapprove. Cartman is made to watch a documentary which explains that “Adolf Hitler was very naughty man”. Almost all of the kids at school have turned up dressed a chubacas. Despite the fact that they are identical one of them wins the competition. The boys go Trick or Treating but are not very successful, in part because Kenny has a tendency to bit the householders. More and more of the citizens are turning into flesh-eating zombies and the school chef realises that the diagnosis Pinkeye is wrong. This, he decides is “The Living Dead”, an allusion to the film, Night of the Living Dead. He is himself turned into a zombie before he take effective action, but the boys ring the Worcestershire sauce hotline and are told “Kill the original zombie and the others will return to normal”. Of course, Kenny was the original zombie, so he gets killed again. After the community has returned to normal, the boys discuss the meaning of Halloween.
Stan: “You know, I learned something today. It isn’t about costumes or candy, it’s about being good to one another, and giving and loving.”
Kyle: “No, dude, that’s Christmas.”
Stan: “Oh! Then what’s Halloween about?”
Kyle: “Costumes and candy.”
Kenny is buried and, as happens in horror films, he begins to emerge from his grave. However, an angel from a nearby tombstone falls on him and he is killed for a third time.
King of the Hill was created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels. It is produced by Deedle-Dum Productions, Judgmental Films and 3 Arts Entertainment for Twentieth Century Fox. The episode under review has no on-screen title, but has the code number SEO6 and was copyrighted in 1997.
The central character in King of the Hill is Hank Hill a rather straight Texan who lives in a small town, Arlen, with his wife, son and teenage niece. As the episode opens, we discover that Hank has the contract to create a Haunted House for the local school’s Halloween celebrations. He is keen that his son Bobby should have “the perfect Halloween, the kind I had when I was a boy”. While Bobby is taken shopping by his parents to buy a Halloween costume, Luanne, Hank’s niece, attends the Church Youth Fellowship. A guest speaker, Junie Harper, is introduced as someone who has made herself known through “a series of gutsy letters, complaints and threats”. When she asks the audience to identify a picture, Luanne says it is a witch. This leads her to ask Luanne if she herself knows any witches. Luanne says that witches aren’t real, but Miss Harper explains that they are real. Halloween is the special holiday for witches, goblins and satanists.
The next day, Luanne conveys this information to the family. Hank objects that Halloween is “Just good clean fun” and is “Nothing to do with the devil”. The latter point is slightly undermined by the fact that Bobby is wearing the devil costume Hank himself wore as a child. Miss Harper is to organize a Hallelujah House, in opposition to Hank’s Haunted House, and indeed goes further in her campaign. She complains to the school principal about the school celebrating Halloween because “Our constitution guarantees separation of church and state”. The principal tells Hank that he has to go along with this because “She has a point – and an attorney”, The school just can’t afford another lawsuit”. Upset, Hank takes Bobby out on a trick or treat expedition which seems to be entirely devoted to tricks. When Miss Harper sees them throwing toilet rolls outside her house, she sets out the chase them in her car, accidentally running over her own cat as she leaves. She calls the police and attributes the anti-social behaviour to the Hill family’s “Anti-Christian values”.
The next day, Luanne tries to persuade Bobby that Miss Harper is right about Halloween. She tells him that Hank is a satanist.
“Did your father ever make you drink blood?”
“He made me eat liver once.”
“That is called a recovered memory. Think, Bobby, what else can you remember?”
We see in flashback a couple of earlier incidents. In the costume store, Hank objected to the inappropriate costumes with the words “Where are the vampires and monsters and ghosts?” Hank had also praised Bobby, saying “You’re a regular hell raiser just like your old man!”
Bobby remarks on how keen his father seems to be for him to visit a Haunted House. He recalls that the last time his father had been so keen for him to go somewhere, he woke up without tonsils.
“This time he may be after your soul” comments Luanne.
Meanwhile Miss Harper goes to the city council demanding action on Halloween. She succeeds in persuading them to impose a Halloween curfew. The clinching argument was that the satanists made her run over her own cat.
On October 31st Luanne secretly takes Bobby to Miss Harper’s Hallelujah House. We see to of the scenes enacted to persuade the children who are attending. In one a young unmarried couple who “let their hormones get the best of them” end up deed in the morgue. Moral” Sex kills. In the second, a father tells his wife that he can’t stop grandpa (a gorilla) eating the baby because “It’s against the law to teach creationism”.
Disturbed by the quietness on Halloween, Hank dresses up in his old devil costume and walks the streets, shouting “Trick or treat! Trick or treat!” gradually, he is joined, first by his friends, then by other including Luanne, who has been confronted by Mrs Hill. The party arrive at Miss Harper’s house. Bobby has already signed a Hallelujah Club Pledge, and at first is resistant when Hank calls on him to leave. However, he does so because he just wants to be with his dad. Miss Harper shouts defiantly that without these lost souls there will be more room in heaven for her.
Note that both Luanne and Bobby gave up their attachment to Miss Harper’s views not on grounds of arguments but because of the strength of family ties.