Butters Stotch

Butters Stotch
South Park character
First appearance	Cartman Gets an Anal Probe (Background character) Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub (first major appearance)
Portrayed by	Matt Stone
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Student
Parents	Linda Stotch (mother) Stephen Stotch (father)
Residence	South Park, Calardo

Leopold "Butters" Stotch is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. He is voiced by series co-creator Matt Stone and loosely based on co-producer Eric Stough. He is a fourth-grade student who commonly has extraordinary experiences not typical of conventional small-town life in his fictional hometown of South Park, Colorado. Butters is cheerful, naive, optimistic, and more passive relative to the show's other child characters, and can become increasingly anxious, especially when faced with the likelihood of his parents' punishments.

Butters debuted as a background character when South Park first aired on August 13, 1997, and his role gradually increased as the series progressed, beginning with the show's sixth season (2002). The scenes involving his exploitation at the hands of antagonist Eric Cartman are ones that the show's creators have most enjoyed writing, and have become one of the show's more recent recurring staples.

Role in South Park

Butters attends South Park Elementary as part of Mr. Garrison's 4th grade class. During the show's first 58 episodes (1997 through the season four episode "4th Grade" in 2000), Butters and the other main child characters were in the third grade. He lives in South Park as the only child of Stephen and Linda Stotch, by whom he perpetually faces the looming prospect of getting grounded. Everything seems to go wrong for Butters as bad luck and punishment seem to follow him. For instance, the end of many episodes end with him being grounded. It is revealed in the Episode Awesom-O that his birthday is September 11. When the character of Kenny McCormick was temporarily written off the show near the end of the fifth season (2001), Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Cartman allow Butters into their group as the "fourth friend",^[1] a role he continued to fill until midway through season six. During this period, the boys would often take advantage of Butters's mild temperament by making him a stooge in their own personal schemes. The three eventually ousted him in favor of Tweek Tweak.

Butters as his evil alter ego "Professor Chaos"

As a result, Butters vengefully adopted the mean alter ego of Professor Chaos. Intending to be a supervillain, Professor Chaos wears a green cape, and a helmet and gauntlets constructed out of cardboard and aluminum foil. Butters as Professor Chaos received much focus during the back-to-back episodes "Professor Chaos" and "Simpsons Already Did It", where he took on his younger friend Dougie as his sidekick General Disarray and ultimately failed at their several ill-prepared attempts to create "worldwide chaos". Professor Chaos has occasionally made a few appearances since, appearing to be a known supervillain to South Park's police force. Despite being displaced from both his role as the "fourth friend" and from the eventual return of Kenny, Butters has continued to be a major character in recent seasons. Still the social outcast, he has nevertheless been seen spending considerable amount of time with the other children, and continues to be a frequent source of help to Cartman, while also being the main victim of Cartman's pranks and manipulation.^[2] Though the act is customarily performed by Stan or Kyle, Butters will occasionally reflect on the lessons he has attained during the course of an episode with a brief speech, and will sometimes muster up enough courage to act as the voice of reason when his parents or other adults in town engage in irrational behavior.^[3][4][5][6]

Character

Creation and design

On August 13, 1997, Butters first appeared as a background character when South Park debuted on Comedy Central with the episode "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe".^[7] For the episode, the character was composed of construction paper cutouts and animated through the use of stop motion.^[8] Since then, like all other characters on the show, Butters has been animated with computer software, though he is portrayed to give the impression that the show still utilizes its original technique.^[8] In the tradition of the show's animation style, Butters is composed of simple geometrical shapes and colors.^[8][9] 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.^[2][8][9] Butters has a large tuft of blond hair on top of his head, and is usually depicted wearing an aquamarine jacket with dark green trousers. When voicing Butters, Stone speaks within his normal vocal range while adding a child-like inflection. 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.^[10][11]

Development

The character is loosely based on South Park co-producer Eric Stough,^[12] whom Stone and Trey Parker regard as a "goody-goody" because of his reluctance to offend.^[13] The nickname "Butters" evolved from Parker and Stone calling Stough "little buddy" for about three years.^[14][15] Prior to making his first major speaking appearance in the episode "Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub", crew members referred to the character as "Puff Puff".^[16] Butters gradually became one of Parker and Stone's favorite characters, and for the show's season five finale they created the episode "Butters' Very Own Episode," which revolves entirely around Butters and his parents. The intention was to give the character a proper introduction to the South Park audience and prepare them for the larger role he would come to play in further seasons.^[14] Butters eventually took part in more and more scenes in which he is paired with Cartman, and Parker declares that the scenes involving the two together are his favorite of the series.^[17] Butters had no dialog in the 1999 film South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, though he did "ooh" and grunt during separate scenes; his popularity and use to the creators has risen to such a degree that, in a 2009 audio commentary for the Blu-Ray edition of the film, Parker and Stone are shocked to see how little the character was used, and agree that any South Park movie made today would demand he play a role in the plot.

Personality and traits

Though using profanity on occasion, Butters doesn't indulge in foul-mouthed language nearly as often as the other children on the show, instead preferring to use minced oaths. He is also famous for his line, "Oh, Hamburgers!" Butters speaks with a mild stutter and tends to fidget with his hands.^[18] The other characters perceive him as "nerdy",^[19] and he obliviously maintains a wholesome attitude and mild disposition despite the tragedy and abuse that he frequently encounters.^[18][20] His happy-go-lucky persona has been described as resembling that of a typical 1950s sitcom child character,^[2] and is usually presented in stark contrast to the harsh treatment he receives at the hands of his alleged friends and strict parents.^[18] Stone describes him as embodying "permanent innocence".^[2]

In other media

Butters played a major role in the three-episode Imaginationland story arc, which was reissued straight-to-DVD as a full-length feature in 2008.^[21][22] Butters is the main playable character in South Park Imaginationland, a mobile game for the iPhone loosely based on the show's Imaginationland trilogy of episodes.^[23] In the video game South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play!, Butters can be selected as a playable character used to establish a tower defense against the game's antagonists.^[24]

Notes

Sources

• Arp, Robert (Editor); Yu, Catherine (2006). South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today. Blackwell Publishing (The Blackwell Philosophy & Pop Culture Series). ISBN 978-1-4051-6160-2. 

External links

• Butters Stotch at South Park Studios