Doubleness and Alienation in the South Park Version of Great Expectations

Claudia Cao

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.5n.2p.25

Claudia Cao

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.5n.2p.25

Copy DOI

Abstract

This paper proposes a comparative analysis of the South Park episode “Pip” dedicated to Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens. Starting from the assumption that every transposition is a form of active reworking that opens up and multiplies the source text on a semantic level, my essay shows how this animated series highlights a main theme of Great Expectations and refunctionalizes it in a science-fictional revisitation of the story: the theme of doubles and the alienation of the two youngest characters, Pip and Estella.My methodological approach is based on the premise that, as a syncretic text, the transposition uses multiple languages to convey its communicative intention. In particular, the South Park episode emphasizes the focal point chosen throughout four closely interdependent means: the presence of a storyteller, the use of cuts and condensations, the dialectic between parody and fidelity to the original text and, finally, in the third part of the episode, the change of the genre from the original Bildungsroman to a science-fictional version.

Highlights

The South Park episode dedicated to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – aired in the United States on TV-MA on November 29, 2000 – is the nineteenth adaptation of this literary classic if we take into consideration only cinematographic, televised, and animated versions[1]
The consistent attention of adaptors and rewriters in the last century undoubtedly testifies to the novel’s immortality and its constant actuality, further confirmed by the continuous publication in the last ten years of fanfictions, crossovers, and the experimental Twitterature retelling by Aciman and Rensin[3]. What these works have in common, according to a postmodern trend, is often the aim to rewrite the destiny of some characters or add new episodes absent in the original plot, or – varying the setting and the original characters – to emphasize a main theme and modernize the hypotext, the characters, and the value-system, showing the vitality of the original story transposed into a new context and in the contemporary era[2]
Referring to South Park it is important to remember that, in keeping with the most recurrent themes of the animated series ‒ known to be inclined to the most pressing and controversial aspects of contemporary society and attentive to minorities ‒ Pip had already been featured in a number of episodes of South Park, embodying the stereotype of the unfortunate orphan abused by adults and peers, just as in the original text

Summary

Introduction

The South Park episode dedicated to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – aired in the United States on TV-MA on November 29, 2000 – is the nineteenth adaptation of this literary classic if we take into consideration only cinematographic, televised, and animated versions[1]. The consistent attention of adaptors and rewriters in the last century undoubtedly testifies to the novel’s immortality and its constant actuality, further confirmed by the continuous publication in the last ten years of fanfictions, crossovers, and the experimental Twitterature retelling by Aciman and Rensin[3] What these works have in common, according to a postmodern trend, is often the aim to rewrite the destiny of some characters or add new episodes absent in the original plot, or – varying the setting and the original characters – to emphasize a main theme and modernize the hypotext, the characters, and the value-system, showing the vitality of the original story transposed into a new context and in the contemporary era[2]. Starting from the predominant role of the heteroglossia, both in Dickens and in the South Park episode, the following analysis aims to demonstrate how the science-fictional rereading of this Dickensian novel modernizes the story through the use of multiple languages, and takes to the extreme a focal point, mostly neglected by other transpositions and rewritings of this classic: the theme of doubles and alienation, in particular with regard to Estella and Miss Havisham

The transposition

Double and alienation in Great Expectations

The South Park episode