“Krazy Kripples” and the Transformative Body Politics of Disability and Race

Abstract

Broadcast for over two decades, South Park is a satirical cartoon that challenges norms and asks its viewers to assess their values. A show whose existence has been challenged long before the era of consequences for offensive actions known as “cancel culture,” South Park remains popular in part because of its ability to evolve. While updating the show’s comedy to reflect the current cultural context, the willingness of the show’s creators to address prior comedic errors begs examination of older episodes to see what still works (and what does not). One episode that provides plenty of laughs and timely satire seventeen years after it first aired is “Krazy Kripples,” the second episode of the seventh season that was originally broadcast on 26 March 2003. Bringing the intersection of disability and race to the fore, episodes of South Park like “Krazy Kripples” act as a conduit through which both individual and societal discussions on difference and inequality can occur without temporal constraints. Encouraging self-reflection rather than just laughs, “Krazy Kripples” contains a transformative body politic, a concept coined by Nirmala Erevelles in her 2011 book Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic.