A ‘South Park’ Montage of Kenny Dying to Phoebe Bridgers’ Music Is Making Gen Z Weep
The bus-stop boys of South Park probably aren’t regular listeners of Boy Genius, but, if they were, they’d probably find a more beautiful and poetic way to express their deep grief than their usual refrain of, “You bastards!”
In a modern media landscape where many legacy franchises struggle to connect to a new generation of young viewers who experience the entertainment world almost entirely through their phones, the medium of classic adult animated comedy is miraculously thriving, thanks, in part, to the massive proliferation of uber-viral social media clip montages. From Family Guy to The Simpsons to South Park, cartoon empires that could have been relegated to the realm of Gen X and Millennial nostalgia entertainment have found a new life and a new audience on Instagram, in YouTube Shorts and on TikTok, where new fans in their teens and twenties can watch endless crass cartoon clips scored by their favorite songs.
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Right now, countless Gen Z content creators are using CapCut to mash together compilation videos featuring the scenes of comedy past and the songs of today’s young people. Our favorite Zoomer-friendly South Park montage comes from South Park superfan and TikTok user allnaturalapplejuice, who noticed that nearly every single lyric from Phoebe Bridgers’ 2020 song “I Know the End” corresponds with a South Park scene where Kenny meets his own finale:
“Committed to bit too hard,” allnaturalapplejuice wrote in the comment section of the above mash-up masterpiece. “I had a list of things to do today but I thought this would be funny so I downloaded capcut and spent like 5 hours making this.”
And thank god they did — “Kenny McCormick: A South Park Edit Tribute” is a brilliant reminder of the tragedy hidden beneath the chaos and crass comedy of South Park.
One TikTok user commented on the juxtaposition between South Park’s immense pathos and its sense of humor, writing, “people make edits like this that make me emotional and then I think about the fecal transplant episode.”
“Thinking about Kenny for too long can make me feel more melancholic than any other character in TV history,” another commenter added.
One more fan added simply, “I’m gonna be real I’ve never cried at a south park edit until this.”
Considering the show’s massive backlog and the ample moments throughout South Park history when tragedy has struck, only to be forgotten after the credits rolled, both South Park and Kenny are, in hindsight, perfect candidates for this kind of impeccably edited tearjerker montage. Now I want to know what other sensitive singer/songwriter sensations can be paired with iconic running gags from South Park history — Clairo must have some B-side out there that perfectly captures the deep loss and longing of Butters getting grounded.