Kenny McCormick

Kenny McCormick is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is one of the four central characters along with his friends Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Eric Cartman. His oft-muffled and indiscernible speech, the result of his parka hood covering his mouth, is provided by co-creator Matt Stone. He debuted on television when South Park first aired on August 13, 1997, after having first appeared in The Spirit of Christmas shorts created by Stone and long-time collaborator Trey Parker in 1992 (Jesus vs. Frosty) and 1995 (Jesus vs. Santa).

Kenny is a fourth-grade student who commonly has extraordinary experiences not typical of conventional small-town life in the fictional town of South Park, Colorado, where he lives with his relatively poor family. In a running gag most prevalent during the first five seasons of the series, Kenny would die in nearly every episode before returning in the next with little or no explanation given. Since then, the practice of killing Kenny in each episode has been seldom used by the show's creators.

Role in South Park

Kenny attends South Park Elementary as part of Mr. Garrison's fourth grade class. During the show's first 58 episodes, Kenny and the other main child characters were in the third grade. Kenny comes from a poor household, resided over by his violent, alcoholic and unemployed parents, Stuart and Carol McCormick. Kenny has an older brother, Kevin, and an unspecified younger female sharing Kevin's features has been shown amongst his family in the episode "Best Friends Forever", without having made an appearance in another episode before or since. When addressing fan speculation that the girl was Kenny's sister, series co-creator Matt Stone merely stated that the character was a "mystery". Kenny shares a close friendship with Stan and Kyle, and has indicated that he maintains a friendship with Cartman solely out of pity. Kenny is regularly teased for living in poverty, particularly by Cartman. When it comes to sexually-related subjects, he is the most knowledgeable of the group, and the others will typically ask for his explanation of sexual matters unknown to them.

Deaths

Prior to season six, Kenny died in almost every episode, with only a few exceptions. The nature of the deaths were often gruesome and portrayed in a comically absurd fashion, and usually followed by Stan and Kyle yelling "Oh my God, they killed Kenny! ...You bastards!" (or some variation of it). Shortly afterward, rats would commonly appear and begin picking at his corpse. Stone and Parker revealed that when Stan or Kyle would exclaim "they" and "you bastards" to apparently no one in particular, they are actually referring to Stone and Parker themselves, as though they were an omnipresence within the show's universe. In a following episode, Kenny would reappear alive and well, usually without any explanation. Within the reality of the show, most characters appear incognizant of or indifferent to the running gag, although rarely one will acknowledge an awareness of the custom.

Near the end of the production run of the show's fifth season, Parker and Stone contemplated having an episode in which Kyle was killed off. The reasoning behind the idea was to genuinely surprise fans, and to allow an opportunity to provide a major role for Butters Stotch, a breakout character whose popularity was growing with the viewers and creators of the show. Parker and Stone initially chose Kyle because they deemed him as being too similar to Stan, in terms of personality. Instead, the character of Kenny was chosen. In the episode "Kenny Dies", Kenny dies after developing a terminal muscular disease, while Parker and Stone claimed that Kenny would not be returning in subsequent episodes. The duo insisted they grew tired of upholding the tradition of having Kenny die in each episode. Stone stated that thinking of humorous ways to kill the character was initially fun, but became more mundane as the series progressed. When they determined that it would be too difficult to develop the character because he was too much of a "prop", Parker and Stone finally decided to kill off Kenny permanently.

It was the one episode where [all the characters] cared [he was dying] for once. After that, we said, ‘Why doesn’t he just stay dead?’ And it was like, ‘Okay, let’s just do that.’ It was that easy of a decision. I think a lot of people probably haven’t noticed. I couldn’t care less. I am so sick of that character.

— Matt Stone, regarding "Kenny Dies" in an interview with the Knoxville News-Sentinel

For much of season six, Kenny remained gone from the show, though both Stone and Parker entertained the idea of eventually bringing the character back. According to Stone, only a small minority of fans were significantly angered by Kenny's absence, with some even threatening to boycott Comedy Central, the cable channel on which South Park is aired. For most of the season, Stan, Kyle, and Cartman fill the void left by Kenny by allowing the characters Butters and Tweek Tweak into their group, paving the way for the characters to receive more focus on the show. Nevertheless, Kenny returned from the year-long absence in the season six finale "Red Sleigh Down", and has remained a recurring character ever since. He has died in only a small number of episodes following his return, most recently in the Season 13 premiere where he died of syphilis.

Character

Creation and design

Kenny is loosely based on a childhood friend of Parker who was also named Kenny; the poorest kid in the neighborhood, he would wear a tightly-drawn orange parka that muffled his speech. When developing the character, the show's creators had observed that most groups of childhood friends in small middle-class towns always included "the one poor kid", and decided to portray Kenny in this light. The practice of killing off the character in each of the show's earlier episodes was inspired by events associated with the real-life Kenny's tendency to skip school; noting his absence at the school bus stop, Parker and his other friends would jokingly assume that he had actually died, and then act as if nothing had happened when the character's namesake would re-join them days later to resume attending class.

An unnamed precursor to Kenny first appeared in the first The Spirit of Christmas short, dubbed Jesus vs. Frosty, created by Parker and Stone in 1992 while they were students at the University of Colorado. The character was composed of construction paper cutouts and animated through the use of stop motion. When tasked three years later by friend Brian Graden to create another short as a video Christmas card that he could send to friends, Parker and Stone created another similarly-animated The Spirit of Christmas short, dubbed Jesus vs. Santa. In this short, Kenny is given his first name, and first appears as he does in the series. Kenny next appeared on August 13, 1997, when South Park debuted on Comedy Central with the episode "Cartman Gets An Anal Probe".

In tradition with the show's animation style, Kenny is composed of simple geometrical shapes and primary colors. He is not offered the same free range of motion associated with hand-drawn characters; his character is mostly shown from only one angle, and his movements are animated in an intentionally jerky fashion. Ever since the show's second episode, Kenny, like all other characters on the show, has been animated with computer software, though he is portrayed to give the impression that the show still utilizes its original technique.

Kenny un-hooded in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

Kenny is usually depicted wearing an orange parka. The hood is always tightly drawn, leaving only his eyes (and un-animated nose) exposed. Sometimes, when he is frightened, he will tighten the cords on his hood to hide even more of his face. As a result, all of Kenny's spoken lines are heavily muffled. While his friends understand him easily, adult residents often have problems understanding Kenny's speech, requiring the others to translate for him.

The effect of Kenny's speech is achieved by Stone mumbling into his own hand as he provides Kenny's lines, while the recorded audio is then edited with Pro Tools, and the pitch is altered to make the voice sound more like that of a fourth grader. As the technique of Kenny's muzzled enunciation frequently implies, many of his lines are indeed profane and sexually-explicit, the lengthier of which are mostly improvised by Stone.

He first appeared unobscured by his hood in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, where it was revealed that he had messy blond hair. In a cameo appearance during this moment in the film, Mike Judge provided the voice for Kenny's one line of uninsulated dialogue. On a few occasions during episodes that have originally aired since the film's release, he has been seen without the parka, and also speaks unmuffled during some of these instances.

Personality and traits

While most child characters on the show are foul-mouthed, Kenny is often even more risqué with his dialogue. Parker and Stone state that they depict Kenny and his friends in this manner in order to display how they claim young boys really talk when they are alone. While sometimes cynical and profane, Parker still notes that there is an "underlying sweetness" aspect to the character, and TIME described Kenny and his friends as "sometimes cruel but with a core of innocence". He is amused toilet humor and bodily functions, and his favorite television personalities are Terrance and Phillip, a Canadian duo whose comedy routines on their show-within-the-show revolve substantially around fart jokes. Kenny is also lecherous, a pyromaniac, and often portrayed as being eager to do and say disgusting things in an attempt to impress others.

Cultural impact

Kenny's deaths are well-known in popular culture, and the exclamation of "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" quickly became a popular catchphrase. Kenny and the phrase have appeared on some of the more popular pieces of South Park merchandise, including shirts, bumper stickers, calendars and baseball caps, and inspired the rap song "Kenny's Dead" by Master P, which was featured on Chef Aid: The South Park Album.

File:KennyInHospital.jpg

Kenny in a vegetative state in the season nine episode "Best Friends Forever".

The running gag of Kenny's deaths in earlier seasons was incorporated into the season nine episode "Best Friends Forever" when Kenny, in a vegetative state, was kept alive by a feeding tube while a media circus erupted over whether the tube should be removed and allow Kenny to die. The episode received much attention as it served to provide commentary on the Terri Schiavo case, originally airing just one day before Schiavo died. The episode earned South Park its first Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program.

Kenny's deaths have been subject to much critical analysis in the media and literary world. In the book South Park and Philosophy: Bigger, Longer, and More Penetrating, an essay by Southern Illinois University philosophy professor Dr. Randall Auxier, entitled "Killing Kenny: Our Daily Dose of Death", suggests that the fashion of the recurring gag serves to help the viewer become more comfortable with the inevitability of their own death. In the book South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point professor Karin Fry wrote an essay concerning the parallels between Kenny's role in the show and the different concepts of existentialism.

When Sophie Rutschmann of the University of Strasbourg discovered a mutated gene that causes an adult fruit fly to die within two days after if it is infected with certain bacteria, she named the gene "Kenny" in honor of the character.

In other media

Kenny had a major role in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, the full-length film based on the series, and appeared on the film's soundtrack singing (albeit muffled) some the same musical numbers performed in the movie. Kenny was also featured in the documentary film The Aristocrats, listening to Cartman tell his version of the film's titular joke.

Kenny also appears in all three South Park-related video games: South Park, South Park: Chef's Luv Shack, and South Park Rally.

External links

• Kenny McCormick on SouthParkStudios.com
• Kenny McCormick on South Park Archives, a South Park wiki