Mr. Garrison

Herbert Garrison (formerly Janet Garrison), voiced by Trey Parker, is a recurring character in the South Park cartoon series. For the first eight seasons of the series, the character was known as Mr. Garrison but in season 9 underwent sex reassignment surgery. The character is thereafter known as Mrs. Garrison, despite being unmarried. In the season 12 episode, "Eek, a Penis!", Garrison undergoes yet another sex change operation and becomes a man once again.

Garrison grew up in Arkansas , speaks with a Southern accent, and has a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Denver Community College (as seen in the episode "The Entity").

For the first three seasons, Mr. Garrison was the third-grade teacher at South Park Elementary School, and in constant denial about his blatant homosexuality (insisting that he liked "poontang"). In the fourth season, the status quo was shaken up when he was suspended indefinitely for (inadvertently) trying to solicit sex from Cartman , and afterwards he left the school to publish a sexually explicit romance novel titled In the Valley of Penises (a possible reference to Jean M. Auel's The Valley of Horses, or Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls, which were equally sexually explicit). He went into hiding after the book was considered the "best homoerotic novel since Huckleberry Finn". After he finally admitted his homosexuality, he tried to re-acquire his job as third-grade teacher but was turned down because the school did not hire gays (although it was likely just a joke because he was hired in the next episode). He was later rehired as the kindergarten teacher, where he enjoyed teaching sex education. By the end of the sixth season he was promoted to the fourth grade after the death of Ms. Choksondik. In contrast to the naive majority of adults in South Park, Mrs. Garrison is one of the show's more cynical characters, as well as being one of the only characters to ever break the fourth wall on the show.

Character history

File:Garrison Hat South Park.PNG

Mr. Garrison as a child, as seen in "Weight Gain 4000".

Children, there's a big difference between gay people and Mr. Garrison. Do you understand that?

— Chef

Mr. Garrison's sexuality is complex. During the entirety of the show he has had heterosexual and same-sex relationships, both as a male and female. However, across the series he displays a myriad somewhat conflicting and ambiguous sexual indentities, which he clings to exclusively for long periods of time. This may have some relation to the multiple personality disorder which Mr. Garrison manifested in earlier seasons through Mr. Hat and Mr. Twig.

Mr. Garrison was also, in many ways, a racist. In the episode Chef Goes Nanners, Mr. Hat, his puppet, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan (which Mr. Garrison resented and insisted that he wanted nothing to do with it). However, in the later episode Here Comes the Neighbourhood, he tries to get rid of the "richers" (who were all black) using Klan techniques, such as wearing their robes or burning crosses and reveals in his last line of the episode that his intentions were purely racist. Of course, as seen in Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo and It's Christmas in Canada, he suggests almost every Christmas that the town get rid of all the Mexicans (and is usually met with a flat-out "No"). His motivations for this, however, have never been mentioned.

In the early seasons, Garrison was portrayed as a closeted gay man and was ashamed and afraid to be open about it as a result of this. Mr. Garrison constantly held a puppet known as "Mr. Hat", which he used as a sort of second, more aggressive personality, as well as for emoting his internal conflicts. It was suggested that Mr. Hat (and subsequently Mr. Twig) were manners through which Mr. Garrison could express his repressed gay feelings. Though Garrison staunchly denied he was gay and tried to completely keep it a secret, he acknowledged that Mr. Hat and Mr. Twig were gay. It has been established that Garrison has had heterosexual relationships as a male, as with Liane Cartman (techically Ms. Cartman is a hermaphrodite), with whom most of the town has had sex at some point.

In the fourth season, Garrison was fired for soliciting sex from a minor (Cartman) in an online chat room; Garrison agreed to meet him near at South Park docks for anonymous sex. In his time off, Garrison wrote a romance novel that he intended to be purely heterosexual in nature; entitled "In the Valley of Penises", it contained 6,083 instances of the word "penis", which is more than any other book of its kind and was deemed to be "the best work of homo-erotic literature since 'Huckleberry Finn'". At some point after that, Garrison fled South Park to become a hermit, where he eventually came to terms with his gay tendencies. At this point, he openly embraced his homosexuality, and informed everyone of this fact. He even went so far as to cheerfully proclaim himself (and others) a "fag" repeatedly to anyone he encountered. Also around this time, Mr. Garrison was re-hired by South Park elementary, however he was "demoted" to teaching Kindergarten, which he resented.

Later on, Mr. Garrison was promoted to teaching the fourth grade. This was a move on the principal's part to avoid any semblance of sexual-orientation discrimination against him. However, when Garrison found that he could sue the school for substantial compensation if he were discriminated against, he attempted to be so offensive he would be fired. To that end, he abandoned his puppet counterpart in favor of a human assistant, "Mr. Slave", his personal BDSM slave and lover. He then proceeded to perform several sexually explicit and overtly gay acts in front of his students (including but not limited to putting the class gerbil into Mr. Slave's rectum). His plan, however, did not succeed, and he was instead praised for being "courageous".

His changing sexual identities are a continual source of problems. Despite having come out, Garrison continued to be ashamed of it as part of his continual emotional and psychological problems. In "World Wide Recorder Concert", he also was in despair over the fact that his father had not sexually molested him as a boy, believing that he didn't love his son. Garrison Sr. considered having sex with his son in order to save his life, but he instead had recording artist Kenny G., whom Mr. Garrison thought was his father, sexually assault him. In "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" as well as "Jakovasaurs", it was implied that Mr. Garrison has practiced bestiality with a pig and a pigeon, respectively.

It is also apparent in many episodes that Mr. Garrison is very religious and extremely aggressive about his religion.

By season nine, Garrison transitioned from being a man to being a woman in "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina". She was then rejected by Mr. Slave, who no longer found Mrs. Garrison appealing to him, as he is gay. During this period, Mrs. Garrison remained attracted to men, just as Mr. Garrison had been, although the attraction had technically become heterosexual because Mrs. Garrison was now a woman. However, in season eleven, fed up with rejection by men, Garrison came out as lesbian, and began having relationships with women.

As a teacher, Mr. Garrison is almost completely inept, regularly teaching bizarre and pointless lessons (such as showing Barnaby Jones videos to the class for eight days, or asking the class why Chubby Checker left The Beatles in 1972), how to tell the difference between a prostitute and a police officer, or reducing Muslim resentment to religious prohibitions against masturbation. On the other hand, he will occasionally teach the children advanced subjects such as theories on Evolution, Stalin and Communism. Likewise, he also appears, despite his cynical nature, to genuinely enjoy his job.

Mrs. Garrison

In the ninth season premiere, "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina", Garrison, unhappy with being a gay man, decided instead to become a transsexual woman. Following a vaginoplasty, Mr. Garrison became Mrs. Garrison. In "D-Yikes!" it is revealed that she has adopted the first name "Janet". Despite also getting breast implants, she continues to have male-pattern baldness and a masculine voice. She often asserts her femininity, though in a somewhat unfeminine manner, including male-bashing and open proclamations about her sexuality.

File:Sp ep910.jpg

Mrs. Garrison arguing with Mr. Slave and Big Gay Al

The gender transition led to the end of her relationship with Mr. Slave, who had not been consulted before the operation, declining Garrison's sexual overtures because she's now a woman. Garrison also notes that there have been no menstrual periods after the sex change, leading her to believe she is pregnant. While attempting to have an abortion, Mrs. Garrison is told that a vaginoplasty does not result in the ability to have periods, pregnancies, or abortions, as sexual reassignment surgery does not include the creation of reproductive organs. Like many veteran characters, she has appeared with less frequency following "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina", but was given an important role again in "Follow That Egg!", where she attempted to prevent legislation granting gay citizens the right to marry after discovering his ex-lover Mr. Slave was planning to marry Big Gay Al.

In the episode "Go God Go", Mrs. Garrison is ordered by the school district to teach evolution to her class, but deliberately presents the theory in an extremely skewed light (due to her personal aversion to the concept of evolution) and is subsequently replaced by Richard Dawkins. Although Mrs. Garrison continues to inject snide and insulting remarks into Dawkins' lecture, Dawkins is drawn to her by her masculine boldness and directness (oblivious to the fact that Garrison was once a man). They begin to date and are even shown having sexual intercourse. Dawkins converts Mrs. Garrison to atheism, and they subsequently decide to eradicate all religion from the world. However, due to most likely Mrs. Garrison's influence, there is also the belief that mere logic doesn't work, but one must be a "dick" about it, leading to wars about the answer to "The Great Question". When Cartman freezes himself and wakes up five hundred years in the future, he finds that the entire world is now atheistic, thanks to the work of Dawkins and Mrs. Garrison.

In the subsequent episode, "Go God Go XII", Cartman calls Mrs. Garrison's home from the future. Dawkins answers the phone while he and Mrs. Garrison are having sex, and in the course of asking to talk to Mrs. Garrison, Cartman reveals that she had had a sex change. Dawkins flees from Mrs. Garrison's home in shock and disgust, effectively breaking them up, and Mrs. Garrison returns to her own religion. As it were, it was Mrs. Garrison's motivation that convinced Dawkins to teach atheism to the world, and now that they have broken up, the future changes again.

In the episode "D-Yikes", Mrs. Garrison starts to have lesbian relationships. After being dumped by an unnamed boyfriend, Garrison goes to a local gym in a huff. It is there that she meets Allison, a lesbian who is quickly attracted to Garrison's "strong-woman" attitude. Garrison, unaware of Allison's sexual orientation or growing affection, unwittingly joins her at a lesbian bar. When Garrison discovers the truth, she is initially shocked and repulsed, but quickly becomes attracted to Allison and begins a sexual relationship with her. By the end of the episode, Garrison has had sexual relationships with at least two women as a woman herself, and is now openly lesbian.

Janet enjoys "scissoring", and has scissored with many other women. She particularly enjoys when a partner "scissors her timbers", or "scissors her with their eyes".

In the episode Eek! A Penis!, Janet becomes tired of being a woman and wants to become a man again. After seeing a news report on TV about genetically enhancing human body parts on mice, she pays all of her money to the laboratory to grow a penis on a mouse. The mouse escapes and throughout the episode, Janet looks around various places, the penis comes to her and Janet becomes a man again. He then proclaims that anyone who can't make babies is a dude, including infertile women.

Mr. Hat

Mr. Hat initially appeared to be simply a puppet used by Mr. Garrison as a teaching aide; however it was soon apparent that Mr. Hat was actually somewhat different. Mr. Hat later appears to perform activities not possible if he were merely a puppet, and it is not entirely clear how much autonomy Mr. Hat and Mr. Garrison have from each other. In the episode "Chef Aid", Mr. Hat is able to drive a car through a prison wall to rescue Mr. Garrison and Chef(To which Chef replies, "How the Hell did he work the gas pedals?"). Mr. Hat has been able to move his eyes at Mr. Garrison, and in a fictional crossover psychotherapy session with Dr. Katz (from another Comedy Central series) in "Summer Sucks", Katz suggests that Mr. Hat was a personification of Mr. Garrison's gay side. Garrison rejected this, and Katz was never able to counterpoint because he was killed shortly afterwards by a gigantic novelty firework. Further evidence of Hat's autonomy is in "Worldwide Recorder Concert", where Mr. Hat beats up Mr. Mackey, but also in the self-titled game where Mr. Hat owns, and runs, a robot factory by himself, or in "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut" when Satan picks up Mr. Hat as a companion to replace Saddam Hussein. Satan speaks Mr. Hat's lines in a voice very similar to Mr. Garrison's.

Mr. Hat is also a racist, as seen in "Chef Goes Nanners", where he is a member of the South Park branch of the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Hat also appears to be somewhat psychotic; in "Weight Gain 4000", furious at Kathy Lee Gifford for a talent show he and Mr. Garrison had lost years ago, convinces Mr. Garrison to kill her, which he attempts to do. Again, whether this indicates that Mr. Hat is independent or if Mr. Garrison's own psychosis is simply projected to his puppet is impossible to say.

In the episode "Summer Sucks", we see Mr. Hat in the steam room, and when he is spoken to, he looks and blinks even though he is by himself.

Even though Mr. Hat was often used as a character device for Mr. Garrison's "gay side", Mr. Garrison retained use of Mr. Hat even after coming out as gay, during the period when both were seen to be teaching kindergarten. Mr. Hat is permanently abandoned in favor of Mr. Slave once Mr. Garrison begins teaching fourth grade, and has not been seen since except in the show's intro sequence (which employs a rapid amalgam of clips from previous episodes and seasons).

Mr. Hat is a parody of the character High Hat, a character used to teach children the alphabet and beginner's grammar. He appears in puppet form for teachers to use to illustrate the stories he appears in.

Mr. Twig

Template:South Park character Mr. Garrison temporarily replaced Mr. Hat with "Mr. Twig" (starting in the episode "Summer Sucks"), who consisted of a twig wearing a purple shirt with a pink triangle symbol. His voice was identical to Mr. Hat's until his final scene in "Chef Aid", where he spoke with a French accent. Mr. Twig was not well-received by the children in Garrison's third grade class, who repeatedly called for the return of Mr. Hat. Though Garrison constantly assured himself that Mr. Twig was a better choice than Mr. Hat, he came to terms with his attachment to Mr. Hat in "Chef Aid", upon being broken out of jail by him. Garrison got back with Mr. Hat after Mr. Twig advised him to follow his heart.

Name History

Mr. Garrison was commonly known as "Mr.Garrison" without a first name until the episode "The Entity" where it was revealed as 'Herbert Garrison'. However, in the episode "Cherokee Hair Tampons" when he wrote his book "The Valley of the Penises," his name on the cover read as 'Ethan Garrison'. Beginning with the episode "D-Yikes!", Garrison goes by the name 'Janet Garrison'. In the episode "Eek, A Penis!" he recieves a sex change and becomes a man again. It is unknown whether or not he has taken the name "Herbert Garrison" back.