Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mr. Mackey

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:{{la|1=Mr. Mackey}} – (View AfDView log | edits since nomination)

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Non-notable character, fails GNG. Almost all of the sources are primary, and the ones that aren't are of questionable reliability and/or do not demonstrate significant coverage. A WP:BEFORE search did not yield results. Madeleine (talk) 21:22, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 22:04, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Television and Comics and animation. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 23:14, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

• Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.

  1. {{cite book |last=Halsall |first=Alison |editor-last=Weinstock |editor-first=Jeffrey Andrew |date=2008 |chapter=Bigger Longer & Uncut: South Park and the Carnivalesque |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H7OEFij0QkgC&pg=PA23 |title=Taking South Park Seriously |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H7OEFij0QkgC |location=Albany |publisher=SUNY Press |via=Google Books |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=H7OEFij0QkgC&pg=PA35 35]–[https://books.google.com/books?id=H7OEFij0QkgC&pg=PA36 36] |isbn=978-0-7914-7565-2 |doi=10.2307/jj.18253053.6 |jstor=jj.18253053.6 |accessdate=2025-05-25 }}

     The book notes: "No better example demonstrates Parker and Stone's concern with the scatological than Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo, the talking piece of shit who "comes out of the toilet once a year to give presents to all the little boys and girls who have fiber in their diets." Mr. Hankey is excrement incarnate: He jumps out of the toilet and leaves a brown mark, a smear, a stain, on every surface he touches as a reminder to the viewer of the inherent dirtiness of the human body no matter how much we try to aestheticize it.* Mr. Hankey's stains systematically mess up the cleanliness of the social order. ... What makes Mr. Hankey such a complicated piece of shit, however, is the fact that he is also a parody of one of the most widely recognized icons of American popular culture, Mickey Mouse, complete with plump brown body, gloved hands and large, happy eyes. Both are lovable, kind, and spout inanities. Consider Mr. Hankey's nonsensical expression to Kyle: "Gosh, Kyle, you smell like flowers." Parker and Stone pervert this world-renowned cultural icon by suggesting that he is nothing more than a piece of shit; further, their codification of Mr. Hankey as a "Christmas Poo" characterizes Christmas, ... as shit. ... As a brown smear, Mr. Hankey operates repeatedly as a force of disruption. Significantly, in the "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo" episode, Hankey helps to thwart the sanitization of the Christian holiday that the mayor and inhabitants of South Park are promoting, especially in their nondenominational and therefore inoffensive holiday pageant designed by Philip Glass. In the episode "A Very Crappy Christmas," Mr. Hankey's noted absence from the town leaves the inhabitants with no Christmas spirit; again, then, the absence of this piece of holiday shit disrupts the "regular" commercialism that Parker and Stone use to characterize the Christmas season."

     The book notes in a footnote: "The difficulty that this character offers also lies in the fact that, like Mickey Mouse, Mr. Hankey is a minstrel figure, a figure who is conventionally a member of a and of entertainers with blackened faces, performing songs and music ostensibly of African-American origin."

  2. {{cite book |last=Thompson |first=Dave |date=2014 |title=South Park FAQ: All That's Left to Know About The Who, What, Where, When of America's Favorite Mountain Town |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JtCGDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1875 |location=Milwaukee, Wisconsin |publisher=Applause Theatre and Cinema Books |via=Google Books |isbn=978-1-4803-5064-9 |accessdate=2025-05-25 }}

     The book notes: "School counselor and occasional teacher Mr. Mackey is widely regarded as one of the most levelheaded members of the South Park Elementary faculty, rarely flustered, seldom enraged, and prone to reinforce his every point with a casual, friendly exclamation of "mkay?" However, he is also prey to occasional misunderstandings and miscalculations, such as the time a sample of marijuana he was utilizing in a drug education class was stolen. He was subsequently fired, and, having also lost his apartment, he briefly became a drug user himself. During this period he married a fellow addict; the pair then honeymooned in India, before Mackey alone was rescued by the A Team. Disturbingly, although the marriage was consummated, Mackey was so high at the time he had no memory of the event."

  3. {{cite book |last1=Fisher |first1=Roy |last2=Harris |first2=Ann |last3=Jarvis |first3=Christine |date=2008 |title=Education in Popular Culture: Telling Tales on Teachers and Learners |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HoY4Y1mUSMIC&pg=PA48 |location=London |publisher=Routledge |via=Google Books |page=48 |isbn=978-0-415-33241-5 |accessdate=2025-05-25 }}

     The book notes: "South Park's school counsellor, Mr Mackey, is another sad misfit who fails the children. He too merely carries out orders. The children are sent to him to be 'cured' of their swearing. He doesn't counsel, but lectures them on their bad behaviour, then entertains them with a totally inappropriate song, 'It's Easy MKay?', that parodies the 'Just Say No' anti-drugs campaign, revealing an equally unsubtle and ill-informed approach to a social problem. The ineffectual nature of his interventions is encapsulated by the fact that after joining in a rousing chorus of the song, the children go straight back to see the film that introduced them to the language in the first place. The film and the series offer a painful critique of approaches to education that focus on superficial rather than deep learning and which are undemocratic and complacent about wider social and political debates."

  4. {{cite book |last=Peters |first=Mark |date=2007 |title=Yada, Yada, Doh! 111 Television Words That Made the Leap from the Screen to Society |url=https://archive.org/details/yadayadadoh111te0000pete/page/95/ |location=Oak Park, Illinois |publisher=Marion Street Press |via=Internet Archive |page=95 |isbn=978-1-933338-31-6 |accessdate=2025-05-25 }}

     The book notes: "TV Origin: M'kay is best known as the catchphrase of Mr. Mackey, the guidance counselor on South Park. His first episode was “Mr. Hankey,The Christmas Poo” (written by Trey Parker, Dec. 17, 1997), and the word was first used as Mackey confronted a very confused Kyle, whose singing, Santa-hat-clad friend Mr. Hankey is only perceived as a garden-variety piece of crap by the rest of the world. Mr. Mackey says: “Now, uh, Kyle, as your school counselor, I want to try and help you confront your problem, m’kay?” In an introduction to the episode, Trey Parker says Mr. Mackey was based on one of his counselors from junior high."

  There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Mr. Mackey to pass Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".

  Cunard (talk) 10:31, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

:*Striking the first source per below. I think the remaining sources are enough for Mr. Mackey to meet Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline. Deletion is not best approach when there are alternatives to deletion like merging to List of South Park characters#Mr. Mackey. Cunard (talk) 09:56, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

• Keep, per Cunard above. /Julle (talk) 13:01, 25 May 2025 (UTC)
• Delete Redirect due to trivial sources. Please note @Cunard that your first source above is not about Mr. Mackey whatsoever. Geschichte (talk) 08:37, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

• Keep, per Cunard. Very interested to hear why none of these sources turned up in the BEFORE the nominator said they had done. BoomboxTestarossa (talk) 18:50, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

:

• Comment. I still don't understand why you think the sources are good enough for a standalone Wikipedia article. The first two sources do not help the article pass MOS:FICTIONAL, which states that: "Articles about fiction, like all Wikipedia articles, should use the real world as their primary frame of reference. As such, the subject should be described from the perspective of the real world". The sources are written from an in-universe perspective. The third source states that someone in the real world picked up the catchphrase "m'kay?", but again I don't see why this warrants a Wikipedia page for the character. Geschichte (talk) 07:54, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
• Keep Found two more books that contain some critical analysis focused on the character, as a vehicle for social commentary on disability rights and sexual education respectively. See [https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Deconstructing%20South%20Park/YF6TMQf385gC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Mr.+Mackey+south+park&pg=PA40&printsec=frontcover Deconstructing South Park: Critical Examinations of Animated Transgression by Brian Cogan] and [https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Taking_South_Park_Seriously/AJbNJm2W1UgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Mr.+Mackey+south+park&pg=PA63&printsec=frontcover Taking South Park Seriously by Jeffrey Weinstock]. The analysis only spans a few pages within the ~hundreds of pages of each book, but I think it is enough to constitute WP:SIGCOV, especially when combined with Cunard's other sources. Flip^andFlopped ㋡ 16:51, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
• Keep Based on the significant coverage of Mr. Mackey, I assert that it satisfies WP:GNG criteria for demonstrating notability. CresiaBilli (talk) 11:21, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
• Keep. Flipandflopped's second source is solid, while Cunard's 3 seems okay. I can't see the Gbooks preview of F&F's first source but assuming it's anything like the second this should be enough to pass the GNG. I don't think most TV characters get this kind of well-written literary analysis. Toadspike [Talk] 17:32, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

{{clear}}

:The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.