Eric Cartman and Kyle Broflovski: Black & Grey

South Park is Comedy Central’s clutch adult animated comedy running on for nearly three decades. The show features political commentary through the ages, gross out humor, a dark mirror on American culture, and most importantly the four most iconic cartoon 4th graders: Stan Marsh, Kenny McCormick, Kyle Broflovski, and Eric Cartman. Kyle and Cartman take on the role of being the medium for one of the show’s longest running jokes. Cartman says something stupid or bigoted. Kyle responds, “Shut up, fat ass!” Followed by Cartman’s, “Fuck you, you Jew!” Despite its simplicity the interaction between the two boys has been repeated since Season 1. The joke stands as a marker for their relationship and reveals complexities to Kyle’s character in particular. But to understand Kyle, we first must understand Cartman and the show as a whole.

South Park is famously satirical in nature. Making fun and mocking everything from real estate agents to Chocolate Rain, one can find an episode that deals with almost any divisive topic in American culture and beyond. The original creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker in interviews explain how they approach any given topic as that of a position of neutrality. Depending on the topic, a character or multiple characters are positioned on one side of the subject and more characters on the opposite. Both are portrayed to be downright stupid, operating under false pretenses, or being deceptive. Due to how every side is shown in its worst light it is sometimes difficult to know how the writers really feel on a subject. Often more than two sides are portrayed, but there is a trick to know which one is completely wrong in the writers’ eyes. If Eric Cartman agrees with you, go drown yourself in Stark’s Pond or take off to the skies with Whole Foods because you will be lucky to not go the way of the McCormick by the end.

Eric Cartman is the show’s embodiment of evil. While his truly despicable deeds and personality are written for laughs it arguably cannot be denied that Cartman’s deeds are hyperbolized representations of America’s worst people. We all know a Cartman in our lives. He is the animated embodiment of stereotypical white American. He is fat, racist, money-grubbing, woman bashing, homophobic, (famously) antisemitic, abusive, and violent. Considered to be the most offensive character on television, Cartman’s actions are ironically perceived as the face of the show and led to many an attempt to “cancel” South Park. Sitting down and watching only a single season of South Park makes it clear that the show does not back his positions. An example where he represents the moral wrong is in “Crack Baby Athletic Association.” Cartman looks to college sports teams and their unpaid primarily black athletes that leads to the school’s profits and sees slavery. However, he remarks how the colleges are geniuses for finding a way to have slavery in the modern day and realizes that he can make slaves out of the unwanted crack babies in hospitals by making them play a sport and distributing the footage. Cartman in an obvious clear as day metaphor represents the morally questionable practices of universities not paying their athletes that make them millions due to bureaucratic nonsense. In a famous example “The Passion of The Jew” shows Cartman literally form a Nazi regime in order to kill the Jewish people. “The Jewish People” being Kyle. He dresses up as Adolf himself and leads marches through the town in German. He really hates those Jews! (Granted, the people he leads misunderstand what Cartman means.) These two examples are but two in hundreds of times where Eric is explicitly the bad guy with no grey area.

Kyle Broflovski at first glance is the antithesis of Cartman. He is a kind, understanding, and a dynamic character who grows and changes throughout the show and is a person who acknowledges when he was wrong and corrects his mistakes. For example, the very first scene of South Park proper depicts Kyle violently kicking his baby brother Ike across the street. In “Ike’s Wee Wee,” he learns that Ike is adopted if the detached upper head and beady eyes did not give it away. Kyle feels that Ike is now not really his brother at all and having already been cruel to him this opinion was easy for him to arrive at. By the end of the episode, we see the beginning of the Kyle we would know for most of the series. He (sort of) accepts Ike as his brother and loves him. From here, Kyle develops into the kind and very moral young boy that seemingly cannot stop giving speeches about what he has learned today. He often defends Cartman’s victims such as David Rodriguez, points out the stupidity and ignorance of the town of South Park’s populous, eats Cartman’s yummy farts to protect the peace between the Abrahamic religions, tries to free the children in the Mexican border interment camps, saves Christmas with his poop, supports queer people, and saves Family Guy from being canceled… Maybe that last one was a mistake, but he did it out of good will. Kyle is seemingly the hero of South Park who is constantly faced with the antisemitic Cartman who wants him dead because he thinks the Jews killed Jesus. Kyle the Jewish Hero putting down Cartman the White-Trash Bigot, per say! But after watching 24 ½ seasons of South Park (I am almost caught up) I came to realize a shocking possibility…

Cartman. Doesn’t. Hate. Jews.

South Park’s 2021’s Pandemic Specials depict the original future of the characters before the adult versions of Cartman, Kyle, and Stan changed the past into the current timeline where the four friends don’t go their separate ways. In the original timeline where they do split during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cartman becomes an orthodox Jew. Throughout the episodes in the future, we the audience cannot be sure if Cartman is pretending to be a Jew with an elaborate hoax or not until the near end. In the end, we realize that adult Cartman was being completely sincere for perhaps the first time in his life. He had genuinely become a Jew with a Jewish family. But one thing is out of place. When the adult South Park cast decide to go back in time and stop COVID-19, we see what the truth has perhaps been all along. Eric Cartman does not hate Jews. He hates Kyle. Not because he is a Jew, but because Kyle has always been cruel to him. He uses Kyle’s Jewish identity as something to latch onto. Despite being a genuine Jew in the future, Eric still hates Kyle. This is the best evidence that supports the idea that Cartman never truly hated Jews themselves. His hatred of Kyle led him to quote-on-quote “hate” the Jewish people when all he really wants is one in particular Jew’s suffering. But what did Kyle do to make Cartman hate him?

Kyle is not the completely innocent character he claims to be. He is a good person, but he is not perfect or free from his biases. He is a (fictional) human being with flaws. Flaws are what make characters compelling. Without them a character will show themselves to be stale. But in most cases one of a character’s flaws is not causing the nuclear destruction of Toronto, Canada. Yikes. The episode “Super Hard PCness,” is an homage to the South Park Movie “Bigger, Longer, and Uncut” and shows Kyle’s deepest flaws. Kyle becomes disenfranchised with his favorite crude Canadian show “Terrence and Phillip,” and feels that it is ruining American culture. Acting evocatively of his mother, he blames Canada for what he perceives as the downfall of comedy and claims that Canada needs to be punished on live television. South Park’s Trump stand-in President Garrison sees his former student’s outrage towards Canada and orders that the city of Toronto be nuked. Due to Kyle’s arrogance that says he is always right, millions of people die. While not nearly the start of his sins, this episode is key to understanding Kyle’s darker shades.

Cartman is sometimes humiliated and persecuted for his plans and ideas that are not bigoted that merely come out of a wandering child’s mind. Cartman coming out with an idea with no ulterior motive while rare does happen. Rather it be wanting to be a pirate or starting a small legitimate business, there is nearly always the voice that tells him he is a stupid fat ass for proposing the idea. That voice is Kyle. Kyle believes himself to be a righteous character who has a strict highly moral code. He believes that he is always right. Sometimes it is in regard to a social issue and the basic human rights of people, but other times it is to believe that Cartman is an idiot in all situations. And often times, he has the support of the supporting cast. Clyde, Tolkien, Jimmy, Craig, and the rest tend to take the side of Kyle even during Cartman’s rare instances of only wanting to have a good time. Cartman does propose zany ideas, but they are ones a kid would realistically want to do, and think is possible. At the end of the day despite all the crude humor and political commentary, the boys and girls of South Park are just kids. They want to throw snowballs at each other, play video games, use social media, etc. In our own childhoods it is likely that we all had a crazy idea at least once. While going to space or building a whole realistically sized castle out of dirt is near impossible for a kid, those ideas should be nurtured. It is when pessimists around us call us stupid for thinking of them that we begin to see the world in a darker tone. Kyle is the pessimist that always makes sure to make Cartman feels stupid for thinking outside of the box. And this is what I believe is the true reason Cartman hates Kyle. Cartman like anyone else is vulnerable and when Kyle verbally assaults him it hurts, and he retaliates. I should not this is to in no way to defend the horrible actions of Cartman, but to merely explain his relationship with Kyle in order to better understand the characters and the show as a whole.

The famous decades running feud between Cartman and Kyle while clearly having a more moral side is not black and white. Nor is it all grey. Eric Cartman and Kyle Broflovski are a clash of black and grey.