Cultural References
The main plot of "Trapper Keeper" is a parody of the Terminator films. The episode also features references to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Akira.
The New York Post's Andrea Peyser analyzed the episode's references to the 2000 United States presidential election. She commented that in "Trapper Keeper", the election of class president ends in a deadlock, while in Florida, the election for president was "hopelessly deadlocked." She went on to say that in South Park, the school "rousts a sick kid from his hospital bed" to vote by absentee ballot, and in Florida, "officials roust people from the cemetery to vote by absentee ballot." Peyser added that Rosie O'Donnell appears in "Trapper Keeper" and gathers lawyers, media and her friends to "help settle the race the way she sees fit," while in Florida, O'Donnell, Harvey Weinstein, Gloria Steinem, Bianca Jagger "and all the usual members of the Hollywood nitwit brain trust have signed a petition demanding a revote in Palm Beach County, ensuring the race would go to Gore." One of the kindergarteners is named Flora, referencing the state Florida that was undecided in the election.
Read more about this topic: Trapper Keeper (South Park)
Famous quotes containing the word cultural:
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)