Oh my god, they cut paper! You B*****d! The shape of South Park.

The mountain town of South Park has always had a distinct look. The snowy bus stops with the Colorado mountains in the background, as well as the four boys, all formed from crudely cut out (digital) construction paper. So flat and simple, using the same textures since 1997, yet these decade-old visuals have clearly conveyed episode after episode. The question is, how does the show utilize clear staging with such simplistic visuals?  

The best way to demonstrate the show’s staging is with some of the more meta episodes of the show. For starters, “Good Times with Weapons” experiences an entire art style shift. Before diving into the episode itself, the intro, stylized as a construction paper time-lapse shows the background cutting from a light table to the famous bus stop, as Stan is being cut and glued together. It’s very fast, only lasting a handful of seconds, yet it gets the job done effectively, telling us this is a quirky, sometimes meta show that takes place in a snowy mountain town, with the rest of the intro rapidly montaging the most absurd clips South Park has to offer as a backdrop, telling us exactly what we’re in for.  

Once the episode begins, we’re delivering what the intro has established, opening in the title mountain town with a county fair in progress. We know this because there’s a sign for it in plain view in the first shot. The shot also tells us the sheer number of people in attendance at this fair, including the four boys, as seen in the following shot. Two shots in, and we already know where we’re at and who we’re following, leaving us to speculate that the county fair is where we’re getting our plot, being the weapons. The show, taking the form of an animated sitcom, habitually uses static establishing shots to sell the backwater setting.  

The real meat and potatoes of this episode come from what the boys do with the weapons, playing pretend and filling the roles of ninja warriors. When this happens, the boys take on the appearance of gritty anime characters, telling us what specifically they’re trying to get out of these weapons. Not only that, but the backdrop takes on a rasterized, hand-painted look; the setting stylized to match the orient. Interestingly, while the HD re-render available on streaming omits this detail, the original standard definition master available on the DVD releases hard-mattes letterbox bars for the “anime” scenes, giving said scenes the scope aspect ratio. One can argue that this contributes to the staging of the episode, as it’s part of the editing and animation, giving a cinematic look.  

“A Very Crappy Christmas” uses staging to go even deeper into its meta, addressing its own animation style. In the episode, the boys come up with the idea to create an animated short to bring commercialism back to the Christmas of South Park, with the aid of Mr. Hankey and his family of shitlets. The twist comes from the animated short in question, as the boys create the 1995 Spirit of Christmas short that resulted in South Park getting a pilot. While the episode doesn’t precisely mirror what Matt and Trey went through creating Spirit of Christmas, it certainly highlights the struggles of such. The staging here plays more into meta comedy. For example, the shots of the boys creating the short frame by frame with construction paper, before transitioning to them exhausted from the process, barely putting a dent into their progress before Cartman sneezes and blows their shot apart, whilst the shot in the episode itself giving the appearance of construction paper. 

Further comedic staging comes from the music number in the middle of the episode, where Mr. Hankey sings with his shitlet. The number is a reference to “The Lion King,” a film Matt and Trey would come to reference a few more times in future episodes. There’s a shot where Hankey and his shitlet are singing on a rock formation eerily similar to the one from pride rock from the 1994 feature, at the same time with animals below laying feces across the land. Whenever the show makes a reference, the show will do its best to make the visual parallels obvious to the average viewer, a difficult task given the art style of South Park. Had the show continued using physical construction paper, a shot referencing “The Lion King” would have taken weeks at the minimum. Thankfully, being animated with the CG software “Poweranimator” in season 4, visual references like the aforementioned can be done within the show’s weekly workflow. 

Once the animated short is finished (in South Korea), it is screened to the citizens of South Park, the comedy this time centering around the short looking exactly like the surroundings beyond the screen showing it, as well as a slightly harder chuckle for those who get the reference. That’s the thing about South Park: the show’s style doesn’t limit it. If anything, it assists with the staging because the style is so simple. These character designs can be bogged down to basic shapes, yet you can still identify them via a silhouette. The landscapes and settings can tell you everything you need to know despite the basic colors and shapes, and when the show wants to, in can bend our understanding of the style and shift freely to get a laugh, and nothing more than a laugh...  So, laugh. 

Prodcer: Jamie Soliz, Writer: Dante Ellis, Photos: Isabel Cisneros