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Eric Theodore Cartman, voiced by Trey Parker, is a fictional character in the animated series South Park. He is one of the four central characters. Cartman is arguably the most well-known and recognizable character of South Park.
Cartman wears a light blue and yellow cap, a red jacket, and brown pants most of the time. He wears a green or white T-Shirt under his jacket, though it is rarely seen. He has light brown hair (although it is occasionally black, such as when he is presented as Adolf Hitler or a sumo wrestler); and of the four leads is the one who is most frequently seen without his cap. He has a double chin, large hands and feet, and is often made fun of due to his obvious weight problem, a fact that Cartman himself is in denial about, claiming that he is "just big boned" when it is shown to obviously be his own fault as a result of his diet of excessive and unhealthy foods.
According to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, when they were creating South Park they were vexed that it would be impossible to put a character like Archie Bunker on late-20th Century television. They thought, however, that if he were an animated nine-year-old boy, it might just be allowed. Thus, Cartman was born.
Cartman's personality has notably changed over the course of series. While always self-centered and bigoted, he was portrayed as more of an immature brat in the earlier seasons. As the seasons progressed, his personality became more aggressive and cunning, eventually crossing the line into outright sociopathy, while his bigotry morphed seamlessly into Nazi-like hatred. His abilities to manipulate other people into doing what he wants have become keener, along with his overall intelligence.
In 2005, Cartman was ranked number nineteen on Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters.
Personality and impact
Cartman (typically addressed by his last name) is spoiled, foul-mouthed, ill-tempered, insensitive, sadistic, sociopathic, greedy, wildly insecure, bigoted, manipulative – and, most notably, overweight. He has a general lack of a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. He also seems to take pleasure from someone else's misfortune, as well as being unable to show empathy. In The Death of Eric Cartman, Kyle brands him a "fat, racist, self-centered, intolerant and manipulating sociopath."
A recurring joke throughout the series is that, despite his mother's sweetness and wholesome demeanor, Liane Cartman is in fact a promiscuous, intersexed, crack-smoking, Scheisse porn queen (not to mention a prostitute and overall degenerate). In episode "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" Cartman exclaims, "If a girl was ever beating me up I'd be like, ' AY! Why don't you stop dressing me up like a mailman, and making me dance for you, while you go and smoke crack in your bedroom and have sex with some guy I don't even know, on my dad's bed! '" Liane, meanwhile, dotes on her son endlessly—beyond simply spoiling him. Cartman usually gets what he wants simply by whining.
Popularity
As the anti-hero of the four leads, Cartman was never intended to be the focal point of the series. After the show premiered, however, his outrageous and shocking behavior made him instantly popular with viewers. Another reason Cartman tends to stand out is because he is generally the most pro-active of the four main characters. Cartman is frequently the one to come up with new ideas and plans, usually told excitedly to an often unimpressed Stan, Kyle, Butters and Kenny. Aware of Cartman's popularity, the show's writers are often careful to not temper the many unfavorable aspects of his behavior with contempt. Cartman frequently comes up with ideas that are ridiculous or offensive, and while he may appear to have the upper hand, his antics tend to inevitably turn on him. He is often shown receiving the brunt of consequences generated by his behavior by the end of the episode.
Physical confrontations
Although Cartman frequently insults and taunts his friends, he sometimes appears to be more cowardly than they are when it comes to physical confrontation. In "It's Christmas in Canada," Kyle slaps Cartman and he immediately bursts into tears; also in Goobacks Cartman threatens Kyle and it leads Kyle giving Cartman a bloody nose; in "Christian Rock Hard," Cartman is beaten up by Token after provoking him with racial jibes, and in several episodes, he's been unable to overpower Kenny. However, in such earlier episodes as "Damien," "Spookyfish," and "Tweek vs. Craig," Cartman has no problem with fighting the other boys back physically. Most recently, in episode "Cartoon Wars Part II," he did not back down from fisticuffs with Kyle. His peers, meanwhile, also give as much as they take—constantly calling him "fat ass," questioning his intelligence and intimating how they like him the least. In the episode "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson," he was dominant in a physical fight against a midget (who supposedly had a black belt in karate.)
Eccentricities
Cartman in drag on The Maury Povich Show.
It has been repeatedly shown that Cartman has serious behavioral and emotional problems. He has displayed traits of gender confusion, as he occasionally has tea parties with stuffed dolls (pretending they are talking about how cool he is), owns a female cat named “Mister Kitty,” and in the episode “Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society,” he was seen re-enacting a scene from The Silence of the Lambs as Buffalo Bill with a rag doll he named Polly Prissy Pants trapped down a well. As well, in episode 316: "Are You There God? It's Me, Jesus," Cartman claims that he has begun his first period because he is bleeding from his anus due to a stomach virus. He believes that every boy needs to have their period to become a man, leading to the other boys to wait for theirs unsuccessfully. In episode 601: “Freak Strike,” Cartman goes on the Maury Povich Show to be a panelist during a discussion on out of control kids. In an attempt to win the assumed prize, he dresses up as a promiscuous teenage girl. In episode: “AWESOM-O,” Butters reveals to the residents of South Park a video of Cartman dressed as Britney Spears, while dancing around cut out cardboard of Justin Timberlake. In Cartman Sucks, Cartman takes pictures of himself with Butter's penis in his mouth, beliving it will make the other boy look homosexual. Kyle, Stan and Kenny however explain that such actions in truth make Cartman look gay, which results in Cartman trying to get a picture taken of his own penis in Butter's mouth.
Cartman has had brushes with sexual abuse. In the episode “Cartman joins NAMBLA,” his attempt to find older friends winds up with him almost being molested by members of the North American Man/Boy Love Association. In the episode, “Simpsons Already Did It,” after discovering that semen will fertilize his Sea-Monkeys, he goes to a sperm bank to collect more. When Cartman later empties a bowl of semen into the tank, he tells Stan and Kyle that he got some of it from a man named Ralph in an alley, who told him to close his eyes and suck it out of a hose.' In episode “AWESOM-O,” a movie producer asks Cartman (who’s disguised as a robot) if he is a pleasure model. Cartman does not understand him until he takes his pants off, at which point, he runs out screaming. Also, in the episode “Fat Butt and Pancake Head,” Cartman convinces Ben Affleck (among others) that his left hand is Jennifer Lopez; Affleck later has a sexual encounter with “Miss Lopez,” leaving Cartman’s hand covered with his ejaculate.
Although Cartman can at times be worldly, he is often wildly misinformed—once believing that dolphins lived in igloos. Cartman has also been known to formulate complex, yet insane, plans—some of which have succeeded. In episode, “I'm a Little Bit Country,” instead of studying, Cartman records various documentaries on the American Revolution from The History Channel on a TiVo and then electrocutes himself with it in a tub, which sends him on a flashback/time travel experience to 1776, and ultimately helps him stop the riots going on in present-day South Park between pro and anti-Iraq War activists after waking from a coma. Cartman’s ability to compose elaborate plots is demonstrated in episode “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” and hints at his intellectual prowess, which is often overlooked due to his ignorance.
Though he generally shows no outward signs of longing for a girlfriend, Cartman briefly became the object of affection by Wendy Testaburger during the episode “Chef Goes Nanners.” After being passionately kissed by Wendy at the end of the episode, he is disappointed when she later informs him that she no longer has any feelings for him. Cartman is insulted when the fourth grade girls, inspired by Paris Hilton to start discovering boys and sexually objectifying them in public, proceed to invite everyone but him to their boy-girl party. Later, after receiving a hip make-over in an attempt to make himself more attractive, he attempts to crash the party uninvited.
Despite Cartman and Kenny having, on several occasions, aligned themselves with each other (usually in response to Stan and Kyle being best friends and automatically gravitating toward each other), Cartman has frequently displayed a blatant dislike for him—sometimes for no reason at all. In the episode, “Jakovasaurs,” Cartman makes up a song called "I Hate You Guys" where he sings: “I hate you guys / you guys are assholes / especially Kenny / I hate him the most.” In episode, “Kenny Dies,” Cartman proclaims that Kenny is his best friend among the three boys (the end of the episode, however, reveals that Cartman himself cared very little of Kenny’s death.) In the episode “Best Friends Forever,” Kenny states in his Will that he felt sorry for Cartman, because of his inability to feel compassion and show decency. In truth, he appears to prefer Stan, as seen in quite a few episodes when he chooses Stan to join him first. Within the episode, "Quest For Ratings", Cartman also looks for Kenny when he's faced with problem of trying to come up with an idea for a better show, Kenny denys him since they showed a flashback of Eric laughing at him since he can't help make the show because Kenny's too poor.
Cartman has a disturbing habit of appearing in other peoples’ homes in the middle of the night. He has a preoccupation with becoming “mature,” or at least more so than his friends, which frequently ends in him doing something that is anything but. Cartman also appears to be driven by a desire to surpass Kyle (especially), Stan, and Kenny. Knowing that his satisfaction chiefly comes with seeing other people unhappy, Kyle once deliberately congratulated Cartman on winning a bet. This of course ruins all of Cartman’s egotistical satisfaction at having humiliated him.
A defining arc during the show’s fourth season was Cartman’s single-minded quest to make US$10 million. The schemes he has tried include becoming a part of the “tooth trade” and stealing Tooth Fairy money from kids, starting a boy band called “Fingerbang,” and culminating in forming his own church and embezzling the church’s collection money.
Cartman apparently sees scenes of sickening and/or disturbing imagery every time he closes his eyes, but thinks nothing of it. He also occasionally has milk come out of his nose when he laughs, even when he was not drinking any. This milk-sneezing problem is due to a malfunctioning kidney, which Cartman is tricked into donating for transplant, benefiting his friend Kyle, who receives the malfunctioning organ as seen in the episode “Cherokee Hair Tampons.” Many of Cartman’s mannerisms were revealed to be inherited in "Merry Christmas Charlie Manson!", in which most of the Cartman family were depicted as being similar.
As evidenced in the Episode Go God Go, Cartman shows extreme impatience when waiting a long period for something he wants (In this case, the popular Nintendo Wii). Cartman, who is fed up with having to wait a few more weeks for the Wii, decides that he wants to freeze himself. He is brought up to the mountains and buried up to his head in the snow by Butters Scotch and Dougie and was to be thawed on November 19th, 2006 (The Wii's American launch date). Unfortuneately, he is covered by an avalanche and forgotten.
Anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry
"If you had a chance right now to go back in time and stop Hitler, would you do it? I mean, I personally wouldn't stop him because I think he was awesome, but you would, right?" — Cartman in Episode: "Make Love, Not Warcraft"
Due in part to his adversarial relationship with Kyle (who is Jewish), Cartman is very anti-Semitic. In the season eight episode "The Passion of the Jew", after seeing The Passion of the Christ, he believes the film was Mel Gibson's way of rallying people against the Jews, and idolizes him for it. He then dresses up as Hitler and manipulates people, who think that they are simply raising awareness for the movie and Christianity, to join him in an anti-Jew march while chanting in mispronounced German: "Es ist Zeit für Rache" (It is time for revenge.) and "Wir müssen die Juden ausrotten" (We must eradicate the Jews). When Cartman plans to cheat and win the special olympics by feigning a disability, Kyle attempts to talk him out of it by telling him, regardless of their differences, that Cartman will surely go to Hell for such an act; Cartman replies that Kyle does not understand that Hell is reserved for the Jews, indicating once again his self-rightousness.
In episode: "Pinkeye," Cartman dresses up as Hitler for Halloween. When shown a documentary to demonstrate why dressing like him "isn't cool," Cartman is enthralled and imagines himself being the one commanding the Nazi troops in the video. Cartman's admiration for Hitler is further emphasized in episode: "The Entity," after being offered $40 by Kyle to not tease Kyle's cousin, Kyle Schwartz, Cartman has trouble restraining himself from teasing Kyle about his Jewish heritage. When Ms. Choksondik later tells Kyle S. to concentrate, Cartman impulsively blurts out: "Maybe we should send him to concentration camp!"
In addition to taking regular jabs at racial, ethnic and religious minorities, as well as people of lower income, Cartman is also prejudicial against redheads, or "Gingers" as he calls them. When the other three boys lead him to believe he has become a redhead himself, he is horrified. Later, he organizes a cult of homicidal redheaded children bent on world conquest known as the 'Ginger Separatist Movement,' remarking: "I'm not going to live my life as a Goddamn minority!"
Cartman's most passionate abhorrence is aimed at hippies, though he seems to use this term for liberals in general. In episode: "Die, Hippie, Die," he believes that hippies will destroy the town, and while the rest of the town is initially skeptical, his fears are eventually borne out. In episode: "Smug Alert," Cartman entered San Francisco (after vowing to never enter it), the heart of liberal America, to save Kyle. In order to avoid possible contamination, he wears a biohazard suit. When too close to liberals, he suffers what could be called an allergic reaction.
Heroic moments
Despite Cartman's penchant for malevolence, he has displayed redeeming qualities, and has had a number of heroic moments where he has saved the boys, the town, and/or the entire world, though these moments often occur through motives on Cartman's part that are not necessarily altruistic. Also, there have been many moments where the other boys seem to appreciate him, or at least understand why he is so rude and obnoxious. An example would be in "Kenny Dies", where Kyle comforts Cartman. Another example is in "Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut", where the boys offer to give him 3,000 dollars for him to find out who his real father is.
- In the full-length feature film, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, his frequent use of vulgarity, after getting electrocuted by a power box, coupled with the experimental V-chip implanted in his brain to stop him swearing (which gave him temporary electrostatic powers), deliberately helps save the world from Saddam Hussein.
- In the episode "Rainforest Schmainforest", he rescues the students of the choir tour from the Amazon jungle.
- In the episode "Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods," Stan and Kyle were about to be brainwashed by the evil Dr. Adams while Cartman was on TV. This angered Cartman because nobody saw it and he destroyed the brainwashing machine before it was too late.
- In the episode "Starvin' Marvin in Space," just when the missionaries were about to capture them, Cartman via video-screen tells Sally Struthers that her career told people to help more people and convinces her to help them. Ironically, however, he considers this a bad thing in The Death of Eric Cartman.
- In the episode "Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants," he destroys the Taliban and sets up Osama bin Laden's death (in a spoof of a World War II Bugs Bunny propaganda cartoon).
- In "I'm a Little Bit Country," Cartman travels back in time to a vision of 1776 in order to meet the founding fathers and eventually saves the day and the town from total chaos.
- In the episode "Die Hippie, Die", his intolerance of hippies saves South Park from a drug-filled hippie music festival.
- In the episode "Best Friends Forever," although he doesn't know it, he saved Heaven by going to the Supreme Court and requesting the pulling Kenny's feeding tube (even though his motive was to get his hands on Kenny's PlayStation Portable). The result kills Kenny and sending him to Heaven to use the angels' "golden PSP" to fend off the invading demons from Hell.
- In "Smug Alert!," he travels to San Francisco (a place he had vowed never to go) and ultimately saves Kyle and his family from the smug storm that sucked San Francisco out of existence and into "its own asshole". This, however, is rooted in Cartman's realization that he needs Kyle around, because Kyle is a much better object of his hatred than Butters, who proved a poor replacement.
- In "The Death of Eric Cartman," Cartman, along with Butters, rescues 12 people being held hostage at the Red Cross by three convicted murderers that had escaped from prison. Cartman and Butters thought that Cartman was a ghost and attempted to scare the fugitives by making ghost cries, flipping books, opening file cabinets and throwing papers out of them, and ringing bells. The fugitives are merely befuddled by Cartman's behavior, which provides enough of a distraction for Butters to release the hostages and the police to arrest the convicts. This is one of the rare instances in which his actions are motivated by a need to be altruistic, as he thought that he had died and could not go to heaven because of all the horrible things he had done over the years, and needed to atone for them.
- In "Make Love, Not Warcraft," Cartman leads the attack with Stan, Kyle, and Kenny in World of Warcraft against the "one who has no life" and in the end uses his character's mallet to crush the enemy's head killing him, making the game safe for other players to play again.
- In "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy," Cartman, emboldened by his appointment as the school's hallway monitor, takes his authority seriously, and dresses up like Dog the Bounty Hunter, catching the kindergarten teacher and Ike making out in the school corridors, and reporting her to the principal. Kyle then comments, "Wow. I think I owe you one, Cartman".
- In "Go God Go XII," Cartman apparently manages to save the Earth from a fate of atheists at war. By his meddling in the past (Albeit still in the quest for a Wii) he changes future history enough for the war to be erased, and is sent home.
- In The Snuke, Cartman's bigoted actions against a new muslim child in class prompts others to coincidently identify a real threat that saves the country from war with the British.
- In Night of the Living Homeless, Cartman is under the impression that "jumping" homeless people on his skateboard will somehow get them to leave South Park.
Family
Cartman is the only boy in the series who does not have a father shown at any time. This is because of his intersexed mother (Liane Cartman), who actually fathered him with an unknown woman. This shocking twist is revealed at the end of the two-part story arc, "Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut" and "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut." Cartman subsequently vehemently denies the truth of this story, however.
NOTE: In the unaired version of the pilot, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe," Cartman has a father and sister, though neither had any lines.
Cartman's extended family is shown in episode: "Merry Christmas Charlie Manson!," where he and the others go on a trip to Nebraska to visit them for Christmas. Most of his relatives appear to be similar in manner to him; all fat, with the same speech accent and catchphrases. The family is seen again in the episode "Cartmanland," at his grandmother's funeral—where she leaves her estate (valued at $1,000,000) to Eric, citing that all the other family members would have spent it all on crack.
Cartman's mother frequently calls her son "poopiekins" or "poopykins", and is one of the few characters who usually refers to Cartman by his first name (the other characters refer to him by his surname or some pejorative phrase, "fat ass" being among the most popular). The other is Mr. Garrison.
Pets and toys
Cartman has a cat named Mr. Kitty (who despite its name is actually female), and a pig named Fluffy. He also has a stuffed frog toy named "Clyde Frog" (based on a character from the Clyde Frog Show, a program that was played in schools in the 1970s.) Other beloved stuffed animals include Wellington Bear (a take on Paddington Bear), Polly Prissy Pants the rag doll, purple lizard Rumpertumskin (a take on Rumpelstiltskin), and Peter Panda.
Talents
Music
Cartman appears to be very musically talented. He plays the piano quite well in the episode "Christian Rock Hard," the violin in "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes," the French horn in "Summer Sucks," the drums in "The Red Badge of Gayness," the harmonica in "Jakovasaurs," the recorder in "World Wide Recorder Concert," and the acoustic guitar in "Chinpokomon." Cartman frequently bursts into song, often spontaneously. This penchant for ad hoc songs was specifically mentioned in "Ginger Kids". His Christian rock group "Faith + 1" sold 1,000,000 copies of its album in the episode "Christian Rock Hard." In the film South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, Cartman is shown singing in Chinese, French, Dutch and an unidentified African language. In "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics", Cartman sings, "O, Holy Night" (despite several interruptions). In Chef Aid, he sings and does a German dance to raise money for Chef's legal fees. This same episode shows for the first time that Cartman has the uncontrollable urge to finish singing "Come Sail Away" by Styx whenever he hears any part of the song, which he can do, under pressure, in 27 seconds.
Manipulation and leadership ability
Although having his origins as little more than a comic foil, Cartman has evolved into a character of stunningly articulate manipulative talents, following closely in the footsteps of other famous manipulators such as the character Iago from William Shakespeare's Othello. In several episodes throughout the series, he employs this skill to get what he wants. His most frequent targets are Butters and adults in general, including convincing Butters to "take one for the team" and be anally pack raped by men from NAMBLA in Cartman Joins NAMBLA. He was able to get Congress to lift the ban on stem-cell research in the episode "Kenny Dies" and talked the ginger kids out of killing all non-gingers after Kyle told him that they had played a trick on him in "Ginger Kids". Earlier in that episode he had rallied all the gingers to exterminate all non-gingers in a Hitler-esque way. In the episode "Tsst", Cartman was able to drive several nannies from his house with insults and insinuation (even causing one to be put in a mental home).
Cartman's perceived stupidity by his friends can be attributed to his sometimes naive behavior, however his uncanny skill at manipulation, bilingualism, and ability to create elaborate schemes which are often effective imply a suprisingly high intellect. Cartman seems to have no problem talking to people and speaking in general. He has an uncanny way with words and uses that to his advantage whenever he plots an idea. For example, in episode: "Kenny Dies," Cartman delivers a speech to the United States House of Representatives convincing them to vote in favor of stem cell research. He also appears to be multilingual. He claims to be able to speak Spanish in Rainforest Schmainforest, and in My Future Self n' Me, he actually speaks Spanish to the Mexican workers hired to smear Butter's home with excrement. In D-Yikes Eric Cartman again demonstrates his proficiency in Spanish when hiring Mexicans to write an "essay" on The Old Man and the Sea.
In "Cartoon Wars", he exploited a controversy involving the appearance of Muhammad on FOX's Family Guy to try to get the show off the air; he pretended to be the hapless victim of an Islamic terrorist attack to try to discourage the FOX president and the Family Guy staff writers from airing the Muhammad episode. On another occasion he was able to convince the majority of the adults of South Park to nearly take over the U.S. via an out-of-hand re-enactment of the Civil War, as long as he kept them drunk so they wouldn't realize what they were doing.
Cartman's shining accomplishment (according to Comedy Central's list of "Cartman's 25 Greatest Moments") came in the episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die." Though Scott Tenorman continually defeats Cartman throughout the episode, Cartman has the last laugh as he indirectly coerces Scott's parents into a situation where they are trespassing, and are consequently shot and killed. Cartman then steals the bodies and makes them into a chili which he promptly feeds to Scott. To make matters worse, Tenorman's favorite band, Radiohead, whom Cartman had arranged to be there so that they would be at the scene just as Scott had found out about his parents' deaths, sees him crying over the loss of his parents and deems him a cry baby.
References
- Trey Parker; Matt Stone (2002-03-01). "Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Larry Divney 'Speaking Freely' transcript" (Interview).
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External links
- South Park Studios - Official Site
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