The Inspiration Behind Eric Cartman on ‘South Park’ Was Another Beloved Sitcom Racist
Do you think that, half a century ago, unemployed twenty-somethings across America were painting Carroll O’Connor on their bongs?
Every South Park fan has a personal pick for which one of the bus-stop boys is their favorite, but no one can argue that any one of Stan, Kyle or Kenny have any claim to being the show’s star. Eric Cartman, with all his foul-mouthed, fat-assed, respect-my-authoritah aura, is easily the most popular character in the entire South Park universe, and although South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone use Cartman as a stand-in for the most selfish and idiotic tendencies of the modern American public, many assholes who don’t understand when they’re being satirized see him as something of a figurehead for the chauvinist loser movement.
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Well, 50 years ago, America’s favorite bigot whom many fans mistakenly believed to be the hero of the sitcom was All in the Family’s Archie Bunker, played by the late great O’Connor. And, as it turns out, the cross-generational comedy similarities between All in the Family and South Park are no accident. When Parker and Stone appeared on 60 Minutes back in 2011, they revealed that the original idea behind Cartman was for him to be an animated Archie Bunker — “if Archie Bunker was eight years old.”
“We used to talk about All in the Family, and we were big fans of All in the Family,” Parker said of South Park and Cartman’s origins. “In the time of the early ‘90s, we were kind of sitting there going, ‘You know, a show like that couldn’t be on the air right now. You couldn’t do it, because things are so PC. You couldn’t have an Archie Bunker.’”
However, Parker and his creative partner found a loophole that would help them bring Archie Bunker into the age of “political correctness.” Or as Parker explained, “We used to talk about how if Archie Bunker was eight years old, I bet you could do it.”
The Norman Lear-created All in the Family satirized many American social issues throughout the tumultuous 1970s – albeit with a much lighter touch and stricter censors than Parker and Stone would later do it – and the cranky, old-fashioned patriarch Archie Bunker was both the nucleus and the target of the legendary sitcom‘s political commentary. However, in a less “political correct” era when being openly racist was more socially acceptable than it would be when South Park premiered, many small-minded viewers whom the writers were criticizing through Archie Bunker unironically identified with him and his ideas about race and gender.
Similarly, South Park fans have long struggled to understand that empathizing with Cartman‘s politics probably makes you a terrible person. Even today, you can see South Park fans parroting his catchphrase “Put a chick in it and make her gay!” from the 2023 streaming special South Park: Joining the Panderverse every time a kids‘ movie casts an actress whom assholes consider to be too PC.
Cartman and Archie Bunker aren‘t just twin souls — they‘re constant reminders that, when it comes to racism, sexism and general shitheadedness, many Americans won‘t recognize satire even if it‘s chopped up in their chili.
