Die Hippie, Die
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| South Park episode | |
| "Die Hippie, Die" | |
 Cartman in jail. |
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| Episode no. | 127 |
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| Airdate | March 16, 2005 |
| South Park - Season 9 March 9, 2005 – December 7, 2005 |
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| ← Season 8 | Season 10 → |
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| List of all South Park episodes | |
"Die Hippie, Die" is episode 902 of Comedy Central's South Park. It originally aired on March 16, 2005. Excerpts from this episode can be viewed here.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
Cartman runs a "pest control" service to try and rid the town of hippies, a foe he has feared and hated for most of the series, mainly because he considers their ideals of peace and love antithetical to his own views. Having studied hippies in his quest to eradicate them, Cartman deduces that the hippies are about to start a music festival in South Park. His attempts to warn the town council are futile, and he is arrested soon afterwards for imprisoning 63 captured hippies in his basement. The town of South Park is soon invaded by the largest population of hippies in the history of man, and the music festival threatens to 'destroy' the town. They manage to convert Stan, Kyle and Kenny to their cause with talks of corporate evils, and the trio get caught up in the massive hippie crowd, who spend their time listening to jam band music and doing drugs. Meanwhile, Cartman pleads with the mayor to stop the festival, but it turns out that the mayor was the one who permitted the music festival in the first place. After seeing the chaos that the hippies are creating, however, the mayor is ridden with guilt and shoots herself in the head. The rest of the town pleads with Cartman to rid the town of the hippies. Meanwhile, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny realize that the hippies are doing nothing to oppose the corporations that they have demonized and that their idea of a perfect society is the same as the currently existing one. They try to leave but the crowd is 7 miles in radius and Stan's efforts to talk sense into the hippies only make matters worse. In the end, Cartman, with the help of a scientist (Randy Marsh), an engineer (Linda Stotch), and "a black man to sacrifice himself in case anything goes wrong" (Chef), builds a giant drill to bore through the hippie crowd, the "Hippie Digger". His plan is to upload a Slayer CD, because "hippies can't stand death metal". Cartman receives a Tonka radio controlled bulldozer for his efforts and a promise from Kyle's mother that Kyle will never have one and that he has to watch Cartman having fun with his in the school parking lot.
[edit] Hippie JamFest '05
The festival devolves into what is essentially an excuse to take recreational drugs and party. Similar criticisms of the prevalence of drugs and partying rather than the intended environment of music and activism have been levied at other jam band festivals, such as Bonnaroo, Reggae on the River, and Burning Man. Negative caricatures of bands such as Phish and the Polyphonic Spree are the main stage headliners of this festival.
[edit] Trivia
- The term "little Eichmanns," which the neo-hippies often use in the episode, is a reference to the controversy over a Ward Churchill article titled Some People Push Back. In the piece, Churchill referred to the technocrats who worked at the World Trade Center in New York City as "little Eichmanns." Even though the piece was over three years old, it was just being discovered and discussed by the mainstream media shortly before this episode aired. Churchill is a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which is near South Park and is where Trey Parker and Matt Stone first met.
- This is the last episode in which Isaac Hayes voices Chef because he quits on March 13, 2006. Although Chef appears for the last time on The Return of Chef, all the dialogues that Chef did were sampled from older episodes of South Park.
[edit] Cultural References
- The drill crew's red suits and the scene where they board the drill is a spoof of astronauts boarding the Space Shuttle in the movie Armageddon.
- The red car driven by the "college know-it-all" hippies closely resembles the facelifted 6th generation Honda Accord.
- There is a statue from the Burning Man Festival in the background of one of the scenes.
- The scenes involving the plan constructed by Cartman to use a drill to reach the center of the music festival is a parody on the film style of the Bruckheimer/Bay producer/director team, most notably Journey to the Core
- having to drill to save the town (world)
- the mayor (government) wanting to nuke as soon as the drilling was put to a halt
- Chef (Lev) climbing outside the Drill (Armadillo) to restore power as well as the music and the astronaut suits.
- The vehicle that Cartman designed resembles the Gotengo from Atragon and Godzilla: Final Wars.
- There are also elements lifted from The Core, a similar disaster/adventure movie about "terranauts" who must drill to the center of the earth to save it. This film also had a "black person" who sacrificed himself for the good of the crew.
- Much of the music in the episode is a parody of that featured in movies like Armageddon, The Rock and Crimson Tide, all movies with bombastic "Horns and Male Choir" soundtracks by composers like Hans Zimmer.
- The music that Stan is trying to play in the guitar is "Signs Signs Everywhere A Sign" from the band Five Man Electrical Band.
- Kyle wears a Che Guevara t-shirt.
- Cartman's method to get rid of the hippies has similarities to Mars Attacks! and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
- The Slayer song used to drive the hippies away is "Raining Blood" from their album Reign in Blood.
- When Cartman plays the Slayer song, we can see he has other music on his computer like "Muhhhrtallicaz - Ride The Thunder" and "Motorface - Death From Behind" which are obviously spoofs of Metallica's Ride The Lightning And Motörhead, other famous metal bands
- The scene where Cartman warns the City Council of the incoming danger of the hippies is a spoof of The Day After Tomorrow, which South Park parodied more heavily in the episode "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow".
| Preceded by: "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" |
South Park episodes | Followed by: "Wing" |
