Eric Cartman
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Template:South Park character 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, all of whom are nine-year old boys.
Cartman wears a light blue and yellow cap, a red jacket, yellow gloves, and brown pants. He has light brown hair, which has been regularly seen since late in Season 5 (his hair magically turns black whenever he wears his Adolf Hitler or sumo wrestler outfit). He has a double chin, large hands, and is often made fun of because of his obvious weight problem.
According to creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, when they were creating South Park, they were upset that "nowadays, it would be impossible to put a character like Archie Bunker on TV." But they thought that if he was an animated eight-year-old boy, it might just be allowed. Thus, Cartman was born.
Cartman's personality has changed significantly over the series. While always being self-centered and bigoted, it seems that in the first two seasons of the show he was portrayed as a juvenile, stupid and immature bully with a much raspier voice. It seems that since then he has matured a lot more, with a more aggressive personality and a smoother, slightly deeper voice. His manipulative skills when it comes to getting other people to do what he wants have improved tremendously, along with his overall intelligence; traits particularly espoused in the episode Scott Tenorman Must Die. He is also much more well-informed and far less naïve on political and social aspects of the world, all things that the earlier Cartman would never be aware of.
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Cartman's Personality and Impact
Cartman, who is usually only addressed by his last name or weight-related pejorative nicknames ("fat ass" being the most common; only Chef, Butters, Pip, Jimmy his mother, and his teacher, Mr./Miss Garrison address him as Eric), is spoiled, foul-mouthed, ill-tempered, insensitive, racist, manipulative, greedy, and bitterly anti-Semitic and anti-Hippie. Generally speaking, every negative trait that can be found in a human being, Cartman has exhibited at one time or another (or expressed a desire to do so). A recurring joke throughout the series is that despite the seeming sweetness and surface wholesome appearance of his 'mother', she is, in fact, a promiscuous, hermaphroditic, crack-smoking porn queen, prostitute, and overall degenerate, not to mention Cartman's biological father. In the episode "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig", Cartman lets her little secret slide. When Stan Marsh complains about his sister beating him up 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 bed room and have sex with some guy I dont even know, on my dad's bed!'" When the boys question his statement, Cartman replies, "I'm just saying you're a pussy." Typically, she dotes on her son endlessly, beyond simply spoiling him. Cartman can almost always get what he wants simply by whining. Then again, his bad attitude may possibly be genetic, as all of his other relatives appear to have exactly the same temperament as Eric himself. His attitude could also be explained by the environment he was brought up in, as when the children had to use Clyde as a 'replacement Cartman' because the real one was in jail for hate crimes, Clyde became as bad tempered as Cartman in the short amount of time he was subjected to the teasing of others, implying that Cartman acts the way he does as a sort of defense mechanism.
As the fat anti-hero of the four lads, he was never intended to be the focus of the series, but within the first season he captured the popular imagination more than his three friends Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Kenny McCormick. The more outrageous and shocking his behavior, the more audiences seem to love him. Another reason for his apparent popularity is that Cartman tends to be the most pro-active of the four main characters. He is frequently the one to come up with new ideas and plans, usually told excitedly to his (often unimpressed) friends after running up to them and breathlessly shouting "You guys! You guys! Guess what?"
The show's writers do seem to be careful to treat the many unfavorable aspects of Cartman's behavior with contempt and Cartman is often shown receiving the brunt of consequences generated by his behavior. For example, although Cartman frequently insults and taunts his friends, especially Kyle, Kenny, and Butters, he sometimes appears to be more cowardly than they are when it comes to physical confrontation. In "It's Christmas in Canada", Kyle slaps him and Cartman immediately bursts into tears. In "Christian Rock Hard", he provokes Token with racial jibes and Token easily beats him up, and in several episodes he is unable to overpower Kenny. However, this usually depends on the situation, as in the earlier episodes such as "Damien", "Spookyfish" and "Tweek vs. Craig", Cartman has no problem with fighting the other boys back physically. His peers also give as much as they take, constantly calling him "fat ass," questioning his intelligence, and intimating that they like him the least.
Frequently, Cartman will come up with an idea (often one he bets on with Kyle) that sounds ridiculous, stupid, or even racist, but that eventually proves to be true. However, while Cartman appears to initially take the upper hand, and his stupid/racist ideas seem to be taken as true, he inevitably gets screwed over at the end of the episode. This has happened, for example, in "Red Hot Catholic Love" (he initially is thrilled at having beaten Kyle in a bet, but becomes furious when Kyle is not crushed) and "Christian Rock Hard" (where he wins a bet that he could sell a platinum album as a Christian band, but then discovers that Christian music has no platinum sales rank, only Myrrh). Therefore, in the end, Cartman almost always loses (though there are exceptions, such as in "Scott Tenorman Must Die" and "Die Hippie, Die"). His enormous ego often causes his failures to become even worse, i.e. in Christian Rock Hard, in which after selling 1,000,000 copies of his CD, spends all the money he made on a ceremony for his platinum album and loses all his fans by saying "Fuck Jesus!" after finding out Christian music doesn't have a platinum sales rank.
It has been repeatedly hinted that Cartman has serious behavioral and emotional problems and/or gender issues. It may be from his mother being a hermaphrodite, and/or not growing up with a father figure. He exhibits several compulsive behaviors, including the need to complete singing the Styx song "Come Sail Away" if someone sings the first few lyrics, and humming other prog-rock songs (including singing Asia's "Heat of the Moment", which helped him convince Congress to lift the ban on stem cell research). He also subconsciously mimics the line "they mostly come at night... mostly" from the 1986 Aliens movie. He occasionally has tea parties with stuffed dolls, pretending they're talking about how cool he is, and on one occasion was seen re-enacting a scene from The Silence of the Lambs as Buffalo Bill with a doll he named Polly Prissypants trapped down a well. Butters once videotaped him dressing up as and pretending to be Britney Spears while dancing round a cardboard cut-out of Justin Timberlake.
Cartman knows a lot of stuff from his mother, and he doesn't realise how explicit he is: for example, he tried to hook up with a lesbian by becoming one (his mother told him to lick carpet), and he says that to get sea-men, a man made him close his eyes and suck it out of a hose.
Although often wildly misinformed (he once thought dolphins lived in igloos), and frequently characterized as a "fat retard", Cartman has been known to formulate complex plans that have succeeded. In "I'm a Little Bit Country", instead of studying, Cartman records various documentaries on the American Revolution 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 pro-war/anti-war fighting going on back in present-day South Park.
Cartman also has a nasty habit of appearing in peoples' houses in the middle of the night. He frequently does this to Kyle (possibly entering via a hole in the ceiling he created in the episode "Mecha-Streisand"), but has magically appeared in Butters' room (in the episode "The Death of Eric Cartman"), possibly after stealing a copy of the key to his house while disguised as AWESOM-O; Cartman may also break into peoples' houses with his "Mission: Impossible Breaking and Entering Playset."
A defining character trait of Cartman is his single-mindedness when pursuing his life long goal of making $10 million. The schemes he has tried include starting a church and collecting donation money and starting a boy band called "Fingerbang" (Cartman doesn't realize the sexual innuendo — he says he overheard the term on HBO and assumed it described imitating a firearm with one's finger). He also appears to be driven by a desire to outdo Stan, Kyle, and Kenny, and often lays down challenges and bets to them, such as building a bigger tree house and recording a platinum album. In one episode Kyle deliberately congratulated Cartman on winning a bet, which of course ruined all of Cartman's egotistical satisfaction at having humiliated his peers.
Cartman is extremely racist, in particular anti-Semitic. He frequently appears to be determined to eradicate Jews (though Kyle is, of course, Jewish). In the episode "The Passion of the Jew", he sees The Passion of the Christ and thinks it is Mel Gibson's way to rally people against the Jews. He dresses up as Hitler and organizes people in his anti-Jew march; they think it is a march trying to raise awareness for the movie, and Christianity, and that the German lines Cartman gives them to chant in the march, "Es ist Zeit für Rache" (It is the time for revenge) and "Wir müssen die Juden ausrotten" (We must exterminate the Jews) are actually Aramaic. However, he does like Chef, who is African-American, although this is more than likely because Chef serves food.
Cartman's bêtes noires throughout the show have been hippies, whom he despises for a variety of reasons, maybe the biggest reason being because of his Conservative views. The show drops frequent hints that Cartman gets many of his attitudes from his mother.
Cartman has some redeeming qualities: though not always intentionally, he has saved the boys, the town, and the entire world on quite a few occasions. In the episode "Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods", he gets angry at Stan and Kyle for not watching his television debut on a Cheesy Poofs commercial, but also unintentionally saves them and the entire town from becoming zombie planetarium slaves by destroying the planetarium's projector. In the episode "Rainforest Schmainforest", Cartman's hatred of the rainforest saves the boys and the choir group, Getting Gay with Kids, from the fictionalized violent native people of Costa Rica. In the full-length movie, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, his filthy mouth, coupled with the experimental V-chip implanted in his brain to stop him from swearing (which gave him temporary electrostatic powers), saves the world from Saddam Hussein. He destroyed the Taliban and set up Osama bin Laden's death in "Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants". More recently, in the episode "Die Hippie, Die", his intolerance of hippies saves South Park from a drug-filled hippie music festival, and in "Best Friends Forever", in an ironic twist, he saved the world from a gruesome Armageddon by going to the Supreme Court and acquiring the rights to pull out Kenny's feeding tube so that he can get his hands on a PSP, whereas Kyle and Stan try to save him by bringing the media to save his life because they believe those are Kenny's wishes, an obvious parody of the Terri Schiavo sensationalism that was going on at around the same time the episode aired. The most ironic characteristic of this episode that somehow dodged a lawsuit, was the fact that the episode "Best Friends Forever" originally aired just one day before Terri Schiavo was declared legally dead. Cartman was intentionally benevolent in the season 10 episode "Smug Alert!", wherein he entered San Francisco (a place he had vowed never to go) to save Kyle and his family from the smug storm that sucked San Francisco out of existence and into "its own asshole." He did this, however, in order to be able to rip on him for being Jewish in the future, since Butters was an unfit replacement for Kyle and did not respond in the 'proper' way when called a "stupid Jew". Quite uncharacteristically, Cartman did not take any credit for saving Kyle and his family.
Cartman's Family
Cartman is the only boy in the series who does not have a father shown at any time. This is because of his hermaphrodite mother, who actually had sex with a woman, thereby fathering him, then apparently took him after his birth and lied about having given birth to him. 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." So, in a way, Cartman does have a father on the show, but his mother is unknown (and he does not appear interested in finding out who she is because it took three episodes to find out who his father was). Interestingly, in the unaired pilot Cartman did have what appears to be a father and sister, though they have no lines.
Cartman has two pets: Mister Kitty (who is actually female) and Fluffy the Pig (also female), both of whom Cartman often chastises and hits with sticks. He also has a stuffed toy that he keeps with him sometimes, "Clyde Frog" (referred to as "Artemis Clyde Frog" in a "Wild Wild West" parody, referring to the Artemis Gordon character), and other dolls and stuffed animals which he plays with in secret. "Clyde Frog" appears to be Eric's closest and most beloved inanimate companion, which became obvious during the episode "Die Hippie, Die". Before the mission to the stage during the hippie jam fest, Mrs. Stotch painfully says goodbye to Mr. Stotch, Mr. Marsh and Mrs. Marsh share a tearful farewell, and Chef comforts two distraught hookers while Eric dramatically says goodbye to Clyde Frog. Eric apparently made up lines Clyde Frog would say, and responded in a one-sided conversation as confused onlookers observed.
Cartman's extended family is shown in the episode "Merry Christmas Charlie Manson!", where Cartman and the others go on a trip to see them for Christmas. All of his relatives seem to be the same as he is, all fat and even having the same unusual accent and catchphrases. Actually, the only question raised by that episode is why Liane Cartman isn't fat, whiny or selfish (though Parker and Stone have hinted that because she is a hermaphrodite, she does not have the full Cartman gene from either sex, making her immune). The family is seen again in the episode "Cartmanland" at a grandmothers funeral, (where she leaves the majority of her inheritence to Eric as the other family members would "have spent it all on crack".)
Talents
Music: Cartman is apparently able to play the piano quite well (although it plays itself on the Christfest stage), as seen in the episode "Christian Rock Hard", the violin ("Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes"), and the French horn ("Summer Sucks"). He can also sing the entirety of Styx's "Come Sail Away" in 27 seconds flat (in fact, he cannot avoid doing so once he hears the first few notes of the song, an occasional running gag used in the show, which first appeared in the episode "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut").
Public Speaking: Unlike the other boys, 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 comes up with an idea.
Manipulation: Cartman is able to get pretty much anyone to do pretty much anything. 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. He was able to get Congress to lift the ban on stem-cell research in the episode "Kenny Dies" and talked the ginger kids into, then out of killing all non-gingers when Kyle told him that they'd played a trick on him in "Ginger Kids". Cartman also convinced the boys that a creature named Skuzzlebutt was real in a story around a campfire. In "Cartoon Wars", he exploited a controversy involving the appearance of Mohammed 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 (before he finds out those writers are manatees) from airing the Mohammed episode.
Quotes and Catchphrases
Note: Since about Season 6, Cartman has been using his classic words and catchphrases less and less, so you may find most of these words and catchphrases more in seasons 1 to 5. Some words are intentionally misspelled to imitate Cartman's accent.
Please see the article on South Park on Wikiquote for more.
- "Suck my balls!" (sometimes followed by the name of the person he says it to)
- "Kick ass!"
- "Shut your goddamn Jew-mouth!!!"
- "Gaawwd (God) Damnit!"
- "Screw you guys...I'm goin' home."
- "Respect my authoritah! (sic)"
- "I'm not fat, I'm big boned!"
- "Shweeeet!"
- "Super shweeeet!"
- "HEY! (pronounced- "AY!". Usually followed by an order.)
- "Lame!"
- "You guys! I'm seriously!"
- "Weak!"
- "H'nyah." ('Here')
- "I'll kick you (squawh) in the nuts!"
- "You guys! You guys! Guess what?"
- "But Mehhhhmmm! ('Mom')" (when whining)
- "I hate you guys." (said for no apparent reason)
- "I want Cheesy Poofs!"
- "Whatevuh! Whatevuh! I do what I waunt!"
- "Shut up, Jew!"
- "I'm totally seriously"
- "Democrats piss me off!
- "I am nothing like Family Guy! When I make jokes, they are inherent to a story, deep situational and emotional jokes based on what is relevant and has a point, not just one random interchangable joke after another!"
- "I'll ro sham bo you for it." (Followed up by kicking the person in the nuts.)
- "Dirty, tree-huggin' hippie."
- "Ah hate you, Kenny."
- "Words cannot express how much I truly, truly, hate you guys."
Who Cartman Hates
- Kyle Broflovski
- Sheila Broflovski
- Butters Stotch
- Scott Tenorman
- Occasionally Stan (usually when grouped with Kyle)
- Occasionally Kenny (usually when grouped with Stan and Kyle)
- Wendy Testaburger (although at the end of the season 4 episode "Chef Goes Nanners" and in the season 10 episode "Cartoon Wars", it is shown that he may still harbor feelings for her)
- Hippies
- Jews
- Redheads ("Gingers" and "Daywalkers")
- Midgets
- Poor People
- Minorities
- Democrats
- Liberals
- Foreigners
- The entire city of San Francisco (which he considers the breeding ground of hippies)
- Family Guy
- Gnomes
- British people (when referring to Pip, he says that French people piss him off, but Pip is British, which is what he really means)
- French people (when referring to the Mole in South Park BLU, he calls him a British piece of crap, but The Mole is French, which is what he really means)
- Small Animals of the Rainforest
Top Cartman Episodes
On October 14-October 16 of 2005, Comedy Central aired a marathon each night of episodes based on viewer votes on their favorite episodes related to Cartman. The list is as follows:
- 501 - Scott Tenorman Must Die
- 101 - Cartman Gets an Anal Probe
- 803 - Up the Down Steroid
- 902 - Die, Hippie, Die
- 107 - Pink Eye
- 709 - Christian Rock Hard
- 802 - AWESOM-O
- 705 - Fat Butt and Pancake Head
- 113 - Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut
- 906 - The Death of Eric Cartman
- 213 - Cow Days
- 102 - Weight Gain 4000
- 804 - Passion of the Jew
- 109 - Starvin' Marvin
- 807 - The Jeffersons
- 711 - Casa Bonita
- 601 - Freak Strike
- 617 - Red Sleigh Down
- 302 - Spontaneous Combustion
- 314 - The Red Badge of Gayness
- 506 - Cartmanland
- 607 - Simpsons Already Did It
- 406 - Cartman Joins NAMBLA
- 303 - The Succubus
- 608 - Red Hot Catholic Love
- 203 - Chickenlover
ğ==Trivia==
- According to [1], Eric Cartman's birthday is July 1st.
- "Cartman" is the codename for Red Hat Linux 6.
External links
- Eric Cartman Quotes
- 'Come Sail Away' by Styx
- South Park Sounds including 'Come Sail Away'
- www.southparkstudios.com
Template:South Parkes:Eric Cartman fr:Eric Cartman (personnage) he:אריק קרטמן nl:Eric Cartman pl:Eric Cartman ro:Eric Cartman ru:Эрик Картман tr:eric Cartman fi:Eric Cartman