In the Southern part of the US they're called "bubbas" - the sort of blue-collar workers who drink beer from cans, scratch their crotches, talk about cars a lot and aren't overly burdened down by any fancy intellectual notions. They've long been the butt of many a joke by the media and others for their simple, uncomplicated lifestyles, but thanks to a new smash hit animation series, King Of The Hill which is pulling in ratings almost as big as The Simpsons, Bubba pride is now sweeping through the US.
The show's star is Hank Hill, the King of the Bubbas, who lives in a Texas suburb with his plainlooking, slightly dim wife and their unfashionably fat son, Bobby. Hank's no-nonsense conservatism which sees him stumbling awkwardly through the obstacle course of modern life has endeared him to Middle America in a "back to basics" sort of way. Hank is the new Everyman.
Despite the superficial shallowness of the show, though, there are hidden creative depths at work - King Of The Hill uses personnel from two other animated miniphenomenons, The Simpsons and Beavis And Butt-Head. The main man behind the show is Mike Judge, who writes and voices both the characters in Beavis and Butt-Head and is also the voice of Hank Hill. Tired of the cappuccino-drinking, educated elite on American television who sneer at the trailer home, monster truck show, Dairy Queen and Wal-Mart existence of low-rent white suburbia, Judge turned to his neighbours in Texas for the inspiration behind the show.
"I had neighbours who would stand around on Saturday and compare their power tools," he says. "I always wanted to do something with that - the kind of guys who love to stare at their truck engine, sipping beers and talking about what's wrong with it. I've met so many people who work in television who come from upper middle-class New England families and they're really out of touch with what the rest of the country is thinking."
Displaying none of the intertextuality or cultural reference points of the far sexier Simpsons, the show succeeds solely on the strength of its writing as Hank wages daily war on the liberals and the progressives, indeed anything that doesn't fit into his severely limited world view. His best friends - or, rather, his drinking buddies - share Hank's redneck outlook on life. One of them, Bill, is forever going on about how the "goddam United Nations commissars are now running America" while another, Boomhauer, has a comically indecipherable voice which Judge has based on a trucker he met during his CB days: "I remember calling a guy for directions once in Oklahoma City and he just said `well, you're on that 35, you jus' gonna take it kind of go right up there and there's an exit at Ford and it come right there you just right there man'."
Apart from the strength of the writing, what really distinguishes King Of The Hill is that like The Simpsons it's a very subversive show, and for some people worryingly so. One episode sees Hank being investigated by a social worker for alleged cruelty to his son. The social worker is portrayed as an effete liberal (he drinks Cafe Latte for god's sake) over from Los Angeles with absolutely no knowledge of Bubba culture - some Americans were offended by the portrayal despite the fact that mainstream America has always ignorantly laughed at redneck life from The Beverly Hillbillies onwards.
A more substantial concern for liberal types may be Hank's friend Bill, who hates the UN and sneeringly refers to the ex Secretary General as "Boutros-Boutros Ghali-Ghali" - sometimes Bill's narrative reads like a far-right militia grouping tract - or is this just the very clever Mike Judge sending up middle-class fears of working-class political beliefs? Such is the success of the show that the Fox Network, which broadcasts it, is now treating it in the same prime-time fashion as its other two big hits - The X-Files and The Simpsons. Much has been made of the wave of adult-oriented animation now washing over the pop culture landscape. If The Flintstones marked the first phase of television animation, then The Simpsons, Beavis And Butt-Head and King Of The Hill represent the second, more savvy, more financially rewarding wave. The film version of Beavis And Butt-Head was the surprise summer hit, taking in almost £100 million at the box office while revenues from the licensing, merchandising and syndication of The Simpsons is expected to top the $1-billion mark before long. Surprisingly enough, animators themselves feel that the drawing is the least of it - it's actually all in the writing. "People make the mistake of thinking that the reason The Simpsons and King Of The Hill are successful is because they are animated, it's not so," says Simpsons animator Mike Scully. "As basic family characters, The Simpsons and The Hills are more developed and emotionally real than most live-action characters." Proof of this comes from the news that the ratings for Friends are plummeting faster than you can say fake angst. "There are so many animated series where the writing seems an afterthought," says animator Jim Reardon. "When I was in art school the first thing they told us was that a great story will carry any animation, good or bad. But even the best animation can't carry a bad story." No coincidence that the world of animation is now attracting the best television writers - just look at the work Jonathan Katz has done on Dr Katz. Also consider that if you're surfing channels, animation is visually assaulting and with the amount of channel choice available nowadays, that may just give one programme the edge over another.
The only thing holding animation back now (and there are plans for an all-animation channel in the US) is the cost. Because it's labour-intensive and most of the programmes are hand-drawn or mixed in with computer animation, an episode of King Of The Hill costs more to produce than an episode of Friends. The advantage is you don't have to pay the actors, or put up with their excessive wage demands/showbiz tantrums. Once a very closely knit community, the animators, now that they are in such demand, are becoming as business-oriented as they come. With talk of a brewing rivalry between The Simpsons and King Of The Hill, we're looking at a Blur vs. Oasis situation. Whose side are you on?
