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south park ginger You may have missed it, but South Park had an episode a few seasons ago where Cartman decided to rally against the pale-skinned, red-haired people known as "gingers," until Kyle and Stan put make-up on him while he was asleep so that he thought that he too was a ginger. Rather than learn the error of his ways, Cartman went in the opposite direction, rallying ginger kids to kill all the non-gingers. The episode meant to discuss and satire the idea of genocide by using a group that heretofore wasn't looked at as ethnically unique. It also made jokes at the expense of gingers, comparing them to children of the corn and outright saying that gingers don't have souls.

Well, South Park is a popular show and many kids began using the term "ginger" to tease the pale, red-haired kids in school. One such ginger, who was a South Park fan until this episode, decided to go on YouTube and say what he thought. Seven million hits later, he has become a figure of red-haired representation.

See his video after the jump.



He's mad as hell and he isn't going to take it anymore! Of course, he must have seen the dozens of episodes where South Park said racist things about Jews, but whatever. It's only funny when it's happening to other people.

Of course, Trey Parker couldn't let this go unanswered...



Well, since then the whole gingers-as-representation-of-minorities thing had died down, until visionary director Romain Gavras made a video for M.I.A.'s 'Born Free,' which depicts men in police uniforms dragging gingers from their homes. The gingers are shipped en masse to a desolate field, where they are told to run through an apparent mine field, a la Rambo 4. The survivors are killed. The captivating video is an obvious commentary on ethnic cleansing. So few people care when it isn't their group and it's so seldom that white people are that group, so Gavras went the South Park route and decided to take the whitest of the white. The video is well-made and chilling.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.



Is this trend effectively making points about people's lackluster response to human atrocities, or is it backfiring and turning pale, red-headed people into their own marginalized group?