Thanks to the popularity of a jaundiced, four-fingered family named the Simpsons, the 90s saw a flood of adult animation aimed at a new generation of disaffected twentysomethings caught between the Saturday morning cartoons that babysat them through their sugar-cereal childhoods and the MTV programming that weaponised flashy colours and slam-editing to hold an increasingly distracted audience hostage.
The likes of Daria and Beavis and Butt-head took apathy and disenchantment to new heights; South Park offended everyone without prejudice. Ren and Stimpy brought stoners to Nickelodeon, while Fox fortified its animation domination by launching both Family Guy and Futurama in 1999.
Despite lasting for 13 seasons and offering a sublime skewering of sociopolitical life, Mike Judge’s King of the Hill has somewhat slipped off the radar since its initial run. Debuting in 1997, the same year as South Park, King of the Hill offered a softer touch and a wider scope than its contemporaries.
With the burnt coffee expanses of its Texan locale, some truly accurate rendering of the backwaters and trailer parks of redneck America, and the laconic drawl of its characters, the pace is – at first – confusing for a cartoon. There is little slapstick, no real exaggeration in the animation style, and an outsized importance on the sale of propane and propane accessories.
Central to the show’s draw is its patriarch, Hank Hill (voiced by Judge), a proud assistant manager at Strickland Propane, a seemingly dull role that Hank infuses with every ounce of the passion he once showed for high school football.
Hank is a straight shooter with an unshakable moral core, a short back and sides, and a strident belief in US exceptionalism. He supports the troops, values community spirit and hard work, and watches with a disapproving eye as his son – the chubby, ungraceful Bobby (voiced by Pamela Adlon) – indulges in any pursuit he deems “feminine”, including theatre and propcomedy.
Like any man with unexamined principles, Hank can be rigid to a fault. His close-mindedness is often played for laughs and the values he holds dear are eroding in ways he can’t quite articulate. As the show’s co-creator Greg Daniels said in 1997, as it was debuting: “He’s upset about how America is changing, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.”
At the turn of the century King of the Hill’s portrayal of a frustrated man left behind by the changing times was quaint. In 2023 it seems downright prophetic.
This year, as government watchdogs issued a scathing report of the Capitol Hill insurrection, Hulu announced it would be rebooting King of the Hill. If the show had continued to run throughout the Trump presidency, you can bet your last propane tank that Hank’s best friend and neighbour, Dale Gribble – the funniest and most troubling character on the show – would have been leading said riots.
Gribble is the perfect representative of the subset that has become more and more vocal since the demise of King of the Hill and the rise of the far-right: a paranoid gun-nut, touting anti-government conspiracy theories to anyone who will listen.
He is a licensed bounty hunter, runs a pest control business that operates as a thin metaphor of his bleak worldview and is proud president of a gun club. He spouted wild ramblings of fake news decades before Trump did and the only time he bends on his distrust of the US government is when he lets a JFK conspiracy take him down a pro-government rabbit hole too complicated to summarise here. In short, Dale Gribble was the face of alt-right America before such a thing even existed.
King of the Hill’s final episode aired in 2010; by then it had long stopped airing in Australia. But while there are dated references throughout, the show has aged considerably better than all of its peers, save for a handful of truly great Simpsons seasons.
Hank may even prove to be a wise voice in these times. Those who believe everything is changing too quickly could do a lot worse than to turn to Hank as an example: a proud man, long set in his ways, who makes his way respectfully through a world he no longer fully understands.
King of the Hill is available to stream on Disney+. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
