Representation, The Model Minority & Whiteness on King of the Hill

During its thirteen-season run from 1997-2009, King of the Hill was the second longest running animated series in U.S. television history (after The Simpsons). Co-created by Mike Judge of MTV’s Beavis and Butthead and Simpson’s writer Greg Daniels, the now-syndicated Emmy Award-winning show features white, suburban, lower middle class life in small town Texas. Central to the show, are nuanced explorations of class, gender, sexuality and race, and most specifically ‘whiteness’ in its southwestern rural form. Glenn Berger explains, “For most of the country, it’s a really cool, smart show about people they know. For New York and L.A., it’s like an anthropological study” (Werts 2001).

In an article written for the New York Times Magazine, Matt Bai (2005) urges “politicians and pundits” to watch King of the Hill as a way to “understand the values of conservative America,” noting that the “subtle and complex portrayal of small-town voters” has consistently drawn support from Middle America. Ethan Thompson (2009, p.3) describes the series as one that “engages cultural change as narrative content” and contends that the program focuses on character consistency and a “greater attention to regional detail as a route to realism” (ibid, p.7). The program operates without what Jonathan Gray (2006, p.50) terms “the amnesia of sitcom memory” with storylines (and injuries) often spanning multiple episodes. Furthermore, King of the Hill generally refrains from the deconstructive surrealism typical of The Simpsons, Family Guy or South Park. For example there are no aliens, no talking dogs, and no singing excrement. Although characters are crudely drawn and barely age, they are based on realistic human proportions and they often look more like ‘real’ people than many of the styl(iz)ed, sculpted and surgically-enhanced actors from live action television.

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