Tuesday 24 June 2014

Mrs Brown's Boys vs South Park

Mrs Browns Boys
When Moore Street market-trader Agnes Brown finds her livelihood under threat from a ruthless developer, she and her family embark on a campaign to save her stall, aided as only the Browns will be by a motley troop of blind trainee Ninjas, an alcoholic solicitor, and a barrister with Tourette's.

sounds a bit like

South Park
In the meantime, a Wall-Mart opens in South Park (where Starks Pond used to be) with much fanfare and everyone in town starts shopping there. Cartman is especially delighted that one can buy three copies of Timecop for $18 instead of just one for $9.98, though Kyle wonders why one would need three copies of the same movie. The popularity of Wall-Mart forces the local businesses to shut down, including Jim's Drugs, within minutes of Kyle's declaration that he will now take all his personal shopping there. Local residents, including Stan's father Randy, soon start to work at Wall-Mart for minimum wage and an extra 10% employee discount on store purchases which according to Randy, evens out the wage.

But I doubt that Mrs Brown will end up growing her business afterwards, taking over the rest of the market, building a giant store, which itself gets burnt down by the town's people to be replaced by another store.

5 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

It's the classic plot of many a Western film.

Sob, boo hoo etc.

Rich Tee said...

As MW says, a common plot type. Not always a shop, sometimes just a house or block of flats.

See *Batteries Not Included, Herbie Rides Again, the last Muppet movie and goodness knows how many more.

Mark Wadsworth said...

RT, thanks for those, I'll add them to the list.

BNI ends as follows:

"The story then rolls on to an undisclosed period some years later in the future, revealing that skyscraper developments have eventually been built, but this time flanking either side of the tiny apartment building, with Frank's café now doing a roaring trade as a result of the new employment brought into the area."

Or what we refer to as "agglomeration benefits".

Tim Almond said...

Mark/Rich Tee,

I kinda get the "evil person steals land", I just like how South Park understands that Wal-Mart is a result of people shopping there, and someone replacing a market trader with a supermarket is probably doing society a lot of good.

That said, I probably should do a series of posts on economics in movies (both good and bad).

Mark Wadsworth said...

TS, yes of course, well done South Park for being subversive and telling the truth about where people actually like to shop, despite the bleating.