ExcitingAds! South Park Blockbusters https://www.salon.com/topic/south_park South Park Blockbusters! Sun, 28 Dec 2025 18:55:09 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 <![CDATA[The Kennedy Center culture war just got very online]]> https://www.salon.com/2025/12/28/the-kennedy-center-culture-war-just-got-very-online/ Sun, 28 Dec 2025 20:30:51 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2025/12/28/the-kennedy-center-culture-war-just-got-very-online/ President Donald Trump continue pushing to reshape the Kennedy Center, including an attempt at renaming and touting Trump-branded upgrades. Now, a writer from the long-running animated adult comedy show “South Park” has stepped in with a quieter but pointed move: buying up domain names tied to the Trump-associated version of the arts institution.

According to Variety, the writer purchased multiple web domains referencing the “Trump Kennedy Center,” preempting what many observers assumed would become part of a broader branding effort. The move comes amid Trump’s recent public fascination with leaving his mark (and name) on the cultural landmark, including a Truth Social post boasting about “marble armrests” he described as “unlike anything ever done or seen before.”

One domain (trumpkennedycenter.org) leads to a satirical landing page, underscoring the ironic twist of the acquisition. Visitors to the site are greeted with playful messaging that lampoons the president’s recent efforts to brand the cultural institution, turning what was intended as a symbol of prestige into a public punchline — all without anyone breaking or circumventing the law.

The domain purchases themselves are legal and relatively inexpensive, but they highlight how quickly political branding battles now spill into the digital space. While Trump allies focus on symbolic gestures like names, materials and aesthetics, critics have questioned whether such efforts reflect a deeper interest in arts funding or governance.

The involvement of a “South Park” writer adds an extra layer of irony. The long-running animated series has built its reputation on skewering American politics and cultural excess and has been quite blunt in its satire of the current administration. While the domain purchase appears to be a private action rather than an official campaign, the association underscores how the Kennedy Center dispute has become fodder for satire almost by default.

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The episode also illustrates how culture-war skirmishes increasingly play out online, where control over names and domains can matter as much as official decisions. Several lawsuits are in process to challenge the legality of altering the landmark’s name. For now, at least, the Trump-linked Kennedy Center exists more in web addresses and social media posts than in official policy.

Whether the further domains will be used, redirected or simply held remains unclear. What is clear is that even the fight over a performing arts institution now includes a digital land grab, and the punchline arrived before the branding rollout did.

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]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” and the high price of free speech]]> https://www.salon.com/2025/08/17/south-park-and-the-high-price-of-free-speech/ Sun, 17 Aug 2025 16:00:48 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2025/08/17/south-park-and-the-high-price-of-free-speech/ It’s been amply established that “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are maestros of phallic humor. No subject is too lofty for a joke related to male genitalia, even if the punchline amounts to little more than a penis’ presence.

What makes these moments count isn’t the exposure but who’s getting pantsed. In 2023’s “South Park (Not Suitable for Children),” Stan Marsh’s father Randy makes balls-out OnlyFans videos as part of a plot satirizing influencer culture. Rewinding to 2016, its “Wieners Out” episode is named for an incel movement that “Butters” Stotch launches by Winnie-the-Poohing it at school.

All this glee misses the real measuring contest that’s going on, which is about who has enough wealth and will to fend off this administration’s efforts to muzzle criticism.

But it took CBS ousting Stephen Colbert and its parent company Paramount’s $16 million payoff to settle Donald Trump’s ludicrous $20 billion lawsuit to inspire what might be Parker and Stone’s equivalent to Michelangelo’s David, sans fig leaf. “Sermon on the ‘Mount,” the long-awaited 27th season premiere of “South Park,” reproaches the religious right’s interference in public education; MAGA voters’ gullibility; Paramount’s cave-in to Trump over its “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview; and Trump’s unconfirmed claim that the company promised him millions of dollars in public service announcements.

(Comedy Central) “South Park”

Nevertheless, “South Park” ensured that the part nobody will soon forget is the show’s renderings of Trump’s “teeny tiny” manhood. The president’s staff wilts in a series of ridiculous portraits hanging on the White House’s walls. It limply dangles between his legs as he slides into the sheets next to a very turned-off Satan, who dumped Saddam Hussein only to fall for someone who sounds and acts exactly like him. When Trump shows off supposed evidence of his arousal, the Prince of Darkness rolls his eyes and says, “I can’t even see anything; it’s so small.”

Saving the pièce de resistance for last, “Sermon” closes with a deepfake of an obese, pasty Trump collapsing in the desert as his micropeen, festooned with googly eyes, rises to bleat, “I’m Donald J. Trump, and I endorse this message.”

The White House responded by claiming the show “hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.” That was before Comedy Central shared its ratings. The premiere drew nearly 5.9 million viewers on Paramount+ and Comedy Central, and was the No. 1 telecast on cable on July 23. The second episode, which debuted Aug. 6, pulled in 6.2 million viewers on Comedy Central and Paramount+ in its first three days. Now more than ev– um, recently, “South Park” is a can’t-miss show.

Praise poured forth from entertainment journalists of every stripe, with some highlighting satire’s importance in fighting fascism. The “small penis rule,” explained in layman’s terms in a 1998 New York Times story, floated into conversation again. This questionable strategy suggests that giving a character a small penis might shield creators from being sued by the people they might be based on, since claiming that such a depiction is slanderous requires the would-be plaintiff to confirm that he possesses the world’s smallest trouser dowser.

All this glee misses the real measuring contest that’s going on, which is about who has enough wealth and will to fend off this administration’s efforts to muzzle criticism.

Hours before the premiere’s debut, Paramount Global locked down a five-year extension of its overall deal with Parker and Stone’s Park County and South Park Digital Studios, for a reported $1.5 billion, according to the Los Angeles Times. The agreement includes 50 new episodes that will be exclusive to Comedy Central and Paramount+ and grants both the right to stream the previous 26 seasons.

(Comedy Central) “South Park”

As The Wrap explains, this follows a 2019 streaming rights deal with WarnerMedia (which became Warner Bros. Discovery) worth a reported $500 million, which, according to Bloomberg, expired in June. Then, a $900 million deal in 2021 gave ViacomCBS (Paramount’s former incarnation) 14 specials exclusive to Paramount+ while renewing “South Park” for multiple seasons.

Since Parker and Stone signed a deal in 2007 securing a 50-50 split with Comedy Central on all digital revenue, they reap half of the money generated by all these streaming deals. Park County and Paramount Global run South Park Digital Studios as a joint venture.

In summary, the “South Park” creators have very deep pockets and a nearly three-decade track record of not respecting any Cartman-esque claims to authori-tah. If the notoriously thin-skinned Trump sends his lawyers against them, he may be chagrinned to find that what he’s really threatened this politically agnostic duo with (and, vicariously, everyone who can’t stand this president) is a very good time.

It isn’t wrong to celebrate the show’s skewering of a president hellbent on diminishing our First Amendment rights. When Trump is turning the military on blue cities to stifle protest and suing major news organizations over coverage he doesn’t like, watching his “South Park” incarnation flapping his shortcoming in the wind confirms theories about his dictatorial behavior.

Neither cable nor any streaming service falls under the FCC’s purview, which keeps “South Park” out of its reach and grants Parker and Stone more latitude than their broadcast peers.

Instead, we might take note of how high the price of unfettered free speech has become. Trump’s lawsuits against major media outlets, including social media giants Facebook and X, have gained him tens of millions in settlement cash. For ABC’s parent company Disney and CBS’ Paramount Global, forking over $15 million and $16 million, respectively, to make their legal headaches disappear quickly was worth more than defending their journalists’ integrity in court.

Paramount Global’s recently finalized merger with Skydance Media required approval by the Federal Communications Commission, which is currently headed by Trump appointee Brendan Carr. Trump knew this when he sued CBS. The payout, then, was viewed by many – including the Writers Guild of America and Colbert – as the equivalent of “a big fat bribe.”

Neither cable nor any streaming service falls under the FCC’s jurisdiction, which keeps “South Park” out of its reach and grants Parker and Stone more latitude than their broadcast peers. In fact, they are among the few media figures who can afford to go toe-to-toe with Trump in court – and may even relish the opportunity to subject him to a different kind of indecent exposure.

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Another is Rupert Murdoch — against whom Trump filed a defamation lawsuit along with the Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch owns —and reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo. Safdar and Palazzolo share a byline on the Journal’s July 17 scoop alleging that Trump sent a “bawdy” birthday greeting to Jeffrey Epstein that included a drawing of a naked woman, with his signature serving as the woman’s pubic hair.

Trump insists the letter is a fake and probably thought Murdoch would kill the story, claiming as much in a Truth Social post. A reasonable interpretation of why he didn’t is that Murdoch saw no reason to prevent reporters from his most legitimate American media outlet from leading the charge on a scandal that has dominated the news cycle for weeks.

Murdoch’s net worth is estimated by Forbes to be somewhere between $23 and $24 billion, which, as we saw with Fox’s $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems in 2023, is gigantic enough to belch up a substantial bag without choking on it.  While that also means he wouldn’t miss anything in the range of the $10 million X paid to settle with Trump and the $25 million payout that Meta forked over, Murdoch is also proud and demonstrably petty. If you’re in for that much, why not fork over a few million more to take Trump to court and compel the administration to hand over documentation clarifying the extent of Trump’s ties to Epstein?

Yes indeed, wealth will buy you plenty of free speech. Murdoch’s cable news propaganda machine has proven that for years. As for what a lack of funding costs our democracy, take a look at what’s happening to Trump, Fox News, and Elon Musk’s common adversary, Media Matters for America.

In May, Trump’s Federal Trade Commission initiated a probe into the progressive research organization to determine whether Media Matters had illegally worked with other groups to negatively impact X’s advertising revenue.

Media Matters described the FTC action to Status newsletter founder Oliver Darcy as a political hit job. A month later, Media Matters filed a civil complaint against the FTC, accusing it of launching a “government campaign of retaliation.”

(Comedy Central) “South Park”

“Now the Federal Trade Commission seeks to punish Media Matters for its journalism and speech in exposing matters of substantial public concern — including how X.com has enabled and profited from extremist content that proliferated after Elon Musk took over the platform formerly known as Twitter,” the complaint reads. “The campaign of retribution against Media Matters must stop.”

This follows a string of lawsuits Musk’s attorneys launched against Media Matters in the wake of a November 2023 report about ads appearing on X next to antisemitic and pro-Nazi content.

Advertisers fled shortly thereafter, although Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory that same month didn’t help his case. Neither did it stop him from waging lawfare against the organization, including encouraging investigations into Media Matters by the Republican attorneys general of Texas and Missouri. A Federal Court blocked the Texas investigation, citing First Amendment rights infringement. The Missouri attorney general’s office dropped its investigation.

A July 25 New York Times article enumerates these details. It also says that defending against Musk’s lawsuits as well as investigations by those states’ attorneys general and the FTC have saddled Media Matters with $15 million in legal fees.

Meanwhile, to place that burden in context, Parker and Stone spent $40 million to renovate Casa Bonita, a kitschy Mexican restaurant in the Denver area, because they could.

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None of this means Trump won’t try Paramount’s new owner David Ellison’s tolerance for frivolous lawsuits or, more to the point, what he may try to stop Parker and Stone from saying or doing on Comedy Central and Paramount+ in the future.

But the reality is that Paramount+ needs “South Park” more than Parker and Stone need Paramount+, and Ellison knows it. “South Park” generates a lot of revenue and is one of the most attractive assets that Paramount+ has in its library.

In an Aug. 7 press appearance, Ellison had nothing but praise for “South Park,” telling CNN, “Matt and Trey are incredibly talented. They are equal opportunity offenders and always have been.” Ellison then claimed he hadn’t yet seen the second episode of the new season, which ups the Trump mockery by showing Vice President JD Vance asking his boss if he should lube up his hellish paramour.

The reality is that Paramount+ needs “South Park” more than Parker and Stone need Paramount+, and Ellison knows it.

Although it’s too early to tell whether Diminutive Don will be a frequent Season 27 guest star, Trump’s “teeny tiny” also shows up in that episode, which is titled — snort — “Got a Nut.”  However, the president’s teacup hog takes second billing to the show’s depiction of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s Mar-A-Lago face, seen constantly trying to escape her skull. The “South Park” version of Noem also shoots dogs as a hobby, including one all-American superhero’s best friend.

Noem’s response to this parody was to call Parker and Stone “lazy” for “[making] fun of women for how they look. Only the liberals and the extremists do that,” she said. “South Park”’s official X account reacted by posting the episode’s Paramount+ exclusive ending credits scene, wherein its animated Noem is seen entering a pet store, followed by the sound of gunfire and canine yelps.

What’s she going to do, sue? Millions would love to see her try.

A new episode of “South Park” premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 20 on Comedy Central and streams the next day on Paramount+.

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]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” gives FCC chair Brendan Carr toxoplasmosis in return episode]]> https://www.salon.com/2025/09/25/south-park-gives-fcc-chair-brendan-carr-toxoplasmosis-in-return-episode/ Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:34:03 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2025/09/25/south-park-gives-fcc-chair-brendan-carr-toxoplasmosis-in-return-episode/ “South Park” returned Wednesday with “Conflict of Interest,” the fifth episode of Season 27, following a one-week delay. The episode, originally scheduled to air Sept. 17 on Comedy Central, was postponed just hours before broadcast. “Apparently, when you do everything at the last minute, sometimes you don’t get it done,” said co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone in a statement posted to Instagram regarding the skipped week. “This one’s on us. We didn’t get it done in time.”

The delay was unusual for the long-running series, which produces episodes week by week. Some speculated Comedy Central postponed the episode out of caution after conservative pundit Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10. The network had previously pulled a repeat of Season 27’s second episode, “Got a Nut,” which parodies Kirk. (“Got a Nut” remains available to stream on Paramount+.) Stone dismissed concerns of censorship, saying, “No one pulled the episode, no one censored us, and you know we’d say so if true.”

Related

Comedy Central pulls rerun of “South Park” episode following Kirk’s death

“Conflict of Interest” takes aim at FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who recently pressured ABC to take Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air. The episode places Carr in a string of slapstick misadventures involving President Donald Trump, who is trying to abort a child he is having with Satan. Carr falls down stairs, eats a poisoned meal and contracts toxoplasmosis, which the show jokes could threaten his “freedom of speech.” In one scene, the JD Vance character directly references Carr’s real-world warning to ABC: “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

“South Park” is expected to return to its bi-weekly schedule, with new episodes airing every other Wednesday from Oct. 15 through Dec. 10.

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]]> <![CDATA[Comedy Central pulls rerun of “South Park” episode following Kirk’s death]]> https://www.salon.com/2025/09/11/comedy-central-pulls-rerun-of-kirk-episode-following-conservative-activists-death/ Thu, 11 Sep 2025 22:11:36 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2025/09/11/comedy-central-pulls-rerun-of-kirk-episode-following-conservative-activists-death/ South Park has spent decades reveling in its own poor taste, but the people who bankroll the show have their limits. Comedy Central pulled a rerun of a recent episode mocking Charlie Kirk that was meant to air hours after Kirk’s death.

The episode, titled “Got A Nut,” follows the character Eric Cartman as he becomes a “master debater.” He takes on Kirk’s style of speaking, grin and hairstyle while hosting campus debates. His virality leads to him earning an award named for Kirk.

Cartman, as Kirk, explained his content creation process in the episode, saying he could take down “unprepared” college girls and “edit out all the ones that actually argue back well.” Kirk took the ribbing in stride, calling it a “badge of honor” to be lampooned by the long-running cartoon.

“They’re going to obviously make fun of me… but I think it’s kind of funny and it kind of goes to show the cultural impact and the resonance that our movement has been able to achieve,” he said. “We as conservatives should be able to take a joke; we shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously.”

Related

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, what lies ahead could be terrible

Kirk was killed during a debate event on the campus of Utah Valley University on Wednesday. His shooter is still at large. Shortly after the news broke that Kirk had died, online conservatives argued that the satire of the Turning Point USA founder played a part in his death.

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“Comedy has consequences,” a Turning Point USA staffer said in a post to Telegram, per the New York Post. “Charlie was targeted in the culture before he was targeted in real life.”

“South Park certainly fomented the hatred necessary to get Kirk assassinated,” wrote Kevin Post, a member of MAGA country singer Aaron Lewis’ backing band, on X.

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]]> <![CDATA[Vote or die? In its “Pandemic Special,” “South Park” presents a mixed message on the election]]> https://www.salon.com/2020/10/01/south-park-pandemic-special-review-voting/ Thu, 01 Oct 2020 23:18:50 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2020/10/01/south-park-pandemic-special-review-voting/ In October 2004 Salon published a conversation between “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Heather Havrilesky, the site’s TV critic at that time. Parker and Stone were promoting “Team America: World Police” but the exchange that garnered most attention was the article’s kicker.

Well, in parting, do you have a special message for all those undecided voters out there?

Stone: Stay home.

Parker: Don’t vote!

Stone: And it’s no big deal. If you don’t want to vote, you don’t have to. F**k that vote or die s**t. I hate that.

Sixteen years later “South Park” is making election-related headlines with another kicker, this one near the close of “The Pandemic Special.”  At the end of an hour in which quarantine tensions exploded into riots, government-sanctioned police murders and a pangolin kidnapping, the townsfolk find a reason to come together . . . and for a moment it looks like Trey Parker, who wrote and directed the special, is about to bestow a mote of optimism upon us, a line indicating some belief that sanity will eventually prevail.

“Now we have hope,” says a scientist who is researching a vaccine using the pangolin’s DNA. He holds the strange animal in his arms as he addresses the crowd. “We’ve learned that we might never get back to our old lives. But by working together, we might just find a new way to –”

That’s when his speech is cut off by an orange-faced Mr. Garrison stepping up and roasting the scientist, pangolin and hope with a flamethrower. Then the animated series’ Donald Trump stand-in breaks the fourth wall to glibly tell viewers, “Don’t forget to get out and vote, everybody! Big election coming up.”

“The Pandemic Special” marks the 308th “South Park” episode and is its first to run an hour, and between that and its debut in a season when many veteran series are figuring out when, how and if to go back into production automatically guaranteed it would attract an audience.

The episode also is a one-off. Comedy Central hasn’t announced a premiere date for the 24th season, and in the final moments of the special Stan Marsh’s father Randy announces to his wife Sharon that the entire depressing experience has made him consider only making “specials” from now on.

That off-handed line might tell us something about what “South Park” will look like for the foreseeable future, or it might mean nothing. Mr. Garrison’s act of violence, though, is the out-of-left-field shocker generating many a day-after headlines. That’s understandable.

The reliable ideology that forms the spine of “South Park” is that Parker and his co-creator Matt Stone aren’t on anyone’s side – politically, culturally or socially. We used to describe the show as an equal opportunity offender, and maybe that’s true in a sense. Where that label falls apart is in the show’s recurring proof that it actually has a moral center of sorts.

Equal opportunity offenders don’t tend to care about anyone or anything. Not so here. “The Pandemic Special” won’t be remembered as the finest hour of “South Park,” and I say this not as a pun but in acknowledgment that with Comedy Central running through its catalogue, you’re more likely to turn on back-to-back repeat episodes that are sharper, more coherent and outrageous than Wednesday night’s entry.

At the same time, it’s also very much evidence that the show’s producers feel as stuck in the mire as everyone else – and they do care. Parker and his team deserve credit for using the hour as a catch-all to poke fun at the absurdity of living our lives through Zoom screens, the bizarre direction that the mask debate has taken, and the vile absurdity of pouring enough funds into our police departments to enable them to afford military-grade equipment while teachers are left to choose between employment and their safety.

The overall message of this episode isn’t one of the “South Park” team feeling above it all to the point of comfortably rolling their eyes at madness gripping America. Instead it reflects a kind of frazzled incredulity and disillusionment about where we find ourselves.

The alternate title to “The Pandemic Special” easily could have been “How in the hell did we get here?” except for the fact that “South Park” already knows the answer; Parker and his producers have  chronicled our descent across multiple seasons and lined it up neatly in the 19th and 20th seasons’ serialized arcs.

Even so, the attraction to decoding what Mr. Garrison’s statement about voting is understandable and a little odd in equal measure considering what else the episode had to say.

If the “South Park” team speaks through its creators, “The Pandemic Special” is both a self-deprecating work as well as a sympathetic one. “These are very serious times, and nobody wants or cares about your special right now!” Sharon Marsh spits after Randy announces his new product in an over-the-top promotion.

As the town’s main wrongheaded opportunist and gentleman pot farmer, Randy employs poorly thought-out schemes and spouts platitudes and virtues in the name of drumming up sales for his pot business, Tegridy Farms.

Rarely does Randy find an event, joyful or tragic, that he can’t spin into some type of special. His new strain is where the episode’s title come from and is a manifestation of corporate greed, tragedy profiteering, and empty signaling from brands. (We also find out that he played a key role in kicking off the pandemic that involves bestiality and a mind-altering substance-fueled bender with Mickey Mouse.)

Following that bit, “South Park” jogs through the land of everything that’s sucking right now: Zoom calls. The horror of dealing with wall-climbing children afflicted with cabin fever. Public institutions forcing workers back on the job despite failing to enact adequate safety measures. In the episode’s A-plot, Stan, Kenny, Kyle and Cartman all return to school, only to find that their old teachers have quit and been replaced by the town’s cops, who are in need of jobs after being defunded.

“I don’t want any unnecessary death,” the chief of police tells his officers before they enter the classrooms. Of course, the moment a fight breaks out between two white kids, the teacher cop whips out his gun, takes aim and fires . . . at Token, one of the few Black kids in South Park.

Soon after the police force realizes they’re not equipped to teach elementary school children math, so they transform the place into a prison.

We expected the eventual rampage the town’s police would be called in to quell, although the usage of Mötley Crüe’s aggro anthem “Kickstart My Heart” was a nice touch. (Honestly, the song’s lyrics rhyme “kickin’ ass” with . . . “kickin’ ass.” It’s no “America, F*ck Yeah,” but it’s close!)

But as on the nose as this subplot is, Mr. Garrison’s fiery executive action leaves a bit more open to debate. Lots of people wonder what that turn indicates about whether Parker (and perhaps Stone) have changed their minds about the necessity of voting. Another way to consider the scene is in terms of what they’re saying about the integrity of our democratic process, which isn’t terribly uplifting.

“South Park” loves to lampoon politicians and celebrities, but it reserves a special zest for lampooning the easily manipulated machinery that props up government and politics. Season 23’s finale, “Christmas Special,” skewers the righteous celebration of legalized marijuana by having Randy get the town hooked on his new product, “Christmas Snow,” a special strain of cocaine-encrusted cannabis.

When the Mayor frets that Randy will get them all put in jail for selling an illegal substance, he tells her not to worry and steams through the process – getting people to sign petitions, making his case before governing body after governing body until, bam, it’s the law of the land. Now everybody can get tweaked, and Tegridy Farms can keep making money hand over fist.

The speed from which the taboo flips from vilified and illegal to legal is ludicrous, but in “South Park” such absurdity has always been normal. So when the show’s version of Trump roasts a scientist alive in the street, it’s just another day in that cartoon Denver town.

Parker and Stone have been describing presidential elections in simple binary terms since 2004 when a character explained that  “nearly every election since the beginning of time has been between some douche and some turd.” Every presidential election cycle resurrects this idea, pitting Giant Turd against Big Fat Douche, except with new faces each time. This election is no different in that respect.

But I also think Parker’s message isn’t revealing anything about his or Stone’s politics as much as hint that he doesn’t have much faith that we’re going to vote our way out of this. In short bursts of accelerant and fire Mr. Garrison roasts hope and hard logic into a crisp; in the next scene Randy stares out over his crop as the hills beyond burn unabated.

For the entire episode he’s watched businesses once taken for granted close and seen the Grim Reaper nearby; now Tegridy Farms has shut down, and the hooded figure lurks on the periphery of his property line . . . riding a tricycle. Randy’s greed has finally gotten the better of him, and now (to paraphrase another rock lyric) the whole world is stupid and contagious.

“I can’t take these shutdowns anymore and I’m scared of what it’s doing to me,” Stan says at one point, going on to confess that he just wants his life back. “The truth is I just want to have fun again.”

Don’t we all . . . but this “special” doesn’t necessarily leave us with the belief that can happen any time soon.

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]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” skewers Trump, Paramount in season premiere]]> https://www.salon.com/2025/07/24/south-park-skewers-trump-paramount-in-season-premiere/ Thu, 24 Jul 2025 19:26:14 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2025/07/24/south-park-skewers-trump-paramount-in-season-premiere/ After a two-year break, “South Park” returned Wednesday night with an episode that took aim at Donald Trump and Paramount.

Just one day before the episode aired, Paramount Global, which owns Comedy Central and CBS, announced a five-year, $1.5 billion deal with series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The ink had barely dried when Parker and Stone brutally mocked the company that signed the check.

In the episode, Trump sues the town of South Park for $5 billion after they criticize his presidency. Similar to Paramount and ABC, the townspeople eventually settle for $3.5 million and are forced to create “pro-Trump messaging.” The ad they cut is a sequence of Trump wandering naked through the desert, his “teeny-tiny” penis the subject of repeated ridicule.

In addition to the shocking ad, the season premiere included scenes of Trump in bed with Satan. Parker and Stone had used a similar storyline to mock former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Related

The cruel joke of CBS ousting Stephen Colbert

The episode’s parallels with real-world media storylines were clear. After settling with Trump for $16 million over claims CBS News deceptively edited a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris, Paramount faced backlash for allegedly capitulating to the president’s demands. Days after Stephen Colbert criticized the settlement on “The Late Show,” CBS canceled his program. The network has claimed the move was a purely financial decision.

Throughout the episode, Trump is presented as someone whose sole recourse to criticism is the threat of a lawsuit. This trigger-happy litigiousness is lampooned in a satirical “60 Minutes” segment in which CBS-style anchors nervously report on protests against “the president, who is a great man.” The show also makes references to Trump’s tariffs, his effort to defund NPR and the ongoing controversy around the so-called “Epstein files.”

The Trump White House fired back following the episode.

“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end — for years they have come after South Park for what they labeled as ‘offense’ [sic] content, but suddenly they are praising the show,” White House Spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Rolling Stone. “This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”

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]]> <![CDATA[“Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” and the fight to preserve America’s most unlikely restaurants]]> https://www.salon.com/2024/09/16/casa-bonita-mi-amor-and-the-fight-to-preserve-americas-most-unlikely-restaurants/ Mon, 16 Sep 2024 16:01:03 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2024/09/16/casa-bonita-mi-amor-and-the-fight-to-preserve-americas-most-unlikely-restaurants/ Casa Bonita, the legendary Denver-area restaurant and entertainment complex, is perhaps one of America’s most surreal dining experiences. Its pink adobe façade rises unexpectedly over a nondescript shopping plaza, while inside visitors are greeted by a sensory overload: 30-foot waterfalls, neon light-adorned palm trees, wandering mariachis and the faint aroma of fried food and nostalgia. It's like someone took Elvis Presley’s 1963 “Fun in Acapulco” and smashed it together with a Chuck E. Cheese — just with more cliff diving and fewer animatronic nightmares.

In 2003, a whole nation of Americans living outside of Colorado discovered the wonder of Casa Bonita thanks to a seventh season-episode of “South Park,” which is best described as a subversive love letter to the restaurant. The plot revolves around Eric Cartman’s singular, increasingly desperate desire to experience the splendor (and sopapillas) of Casa Bonita, which in this universe operates as a shrine to the kind of spectacle that only exists when nostalgia meets capitalism and refuses to yield to taste.

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But as is often the case from “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the episode’s sharp-edged satire is laced with deep sentimentality, rendering Casa Bonita almost mythical, a place so ludicrous in its artifice that it becomes a cultural touchstone. Through Cartman’s over-the-top scheming —  like trapping a fellow kid underground while faking an apocalyptic meteor strike just to make it to dinner —we’re reminded of the way certain spaces, no matter how kitsch or questionable, become essential to our personal narratives. 

Perhaps that’s why it wasn’t a complete surprise when Parker and Stone themselves decided to buy the real Casa Bonita “with an eye on returning it to its early 1970s glory” after the old owners closed the restaurant in 2020 during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, later filing for bankruptcy in 2021. The pair anticipated it would take between $6 and $8 million to make their dreams a reality. 

It ended up taking $40 million. 

“CASA BONITA MI AMOR!,” a new documentary from filmmaker Arthur Bradford that’s out now in theaters, follows Parker and Stone through the chaotic, costly and often surprisingly sincere renovation effort. The film stands on its own as a compelling watch, particularly for those with the “Casa Bonita” episode of South Park still echoing in their memory, two decades on, or for devotees of restaurant makeover shows. There’s an undeniable charm in seeing Parker, alongside chef Dana Rodriguez — brought on to rescue Casa Bonita from its reputation of freezer-burned enchiladas — travel to Oaxaca to handpick décor or reimagine the restaurant’s animatronics. 

But "CASA BONITA MI AMOR!" also situates itself within a growing subgenre of documentaries—like “I Like Killing Flies,” “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” “Deli Man,” and “City of Gold”—that seek to showcase, and in this case, perhaps even preserve, the remaining singular dining experiences in a food landscape increasingly swallowed by homogenization. Together, these documentaries share a common thread: the recognition that human-run establishments, with all their quirks, represent something irreplaceable. They’re cultural landmarks, social gathering spots and testaments to individuality in a world where corporate chains and faceless ghost kitchens continue gaining ground. 

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The rise of ghost kitchens, delivery-only operations often backed by venture capital, has accelerated post-COVID, making it easier than ever to order food from seemingly local “restaurants” that don’t physically exist. In his final essay for The New York Times as the paper’s food critic, Pete Wells lamented this shift, pointing out the growing dehumanization of the dining experience. 

“In my first few years on the job, I thought of restaurants as one of the few places left where our experiences were completely human,” Wells wrote. “We might work silently in our cubicles, rearranging and transmitting zeros and ones. We might walk around with speakers in our ears that played digital music files chosen by an algorithm. We might buy our books and sweaters and toothpaste with a click and wait until they showed up at our door. We might flirt, fight and make up by text.” 

"This is precisely why documentaries centered on singular, idiosyncratic restaurants resonate so deeply, offering a glimpse of what’s being lost in the march toward homogenization."

“But when we went out to eat, we were people again,” Wells continued. 

Wells wasn’t just mourning the loss of physical restaurants; he was mourning the erosion of the relationships that once defined dining. Where we used to know the name of the chef or the local owner, more often now, we click through delivery apps with no sense of who’s cooking or where our money is going. 

Even the giants of fast food, like McDonald’s and Wendy’s, are succumbing to an ever-growing uniformity, with dining rooms disappearing and cashiers replaced by touchscreens and pick-up-only storefronts. In this shift, the soul of dining—the communal, human experience it fosters—feels increasingly elusive. This is precisely why documentaries centered on singular, idiosyncratic restaurants resonate so deeply, offering a glimpse of what’s being lost in the march toward homogenization.

In “I Like Killing Flies,” (released in 2004, a year after the debut of the  “Casa Bonita”episode of “South Park”) we follow the gruff, yet brilliant Kenny Shopsin, whose New York City diner became an institution despite his curmudgeonly nature and associated rules: all customers must eat, parties of four or more are unwelcome, and if you annoy Shopsin, you’re out the door. “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” offers a mesmerizing portrait of Jiro Ono, an uncompromising sushi master who pursues perfection from a kitchen in the basement of an office building adjacent to the Ginza Metro subway station in Tokyo. 

“Deli Man,” from 2015, offers a poignant look at the vanishing world of Jewish delicatessens, each truly unique in their own ways, while “City of Gold” explores the late food critic Jonathan Gold’s love affair with the diverse culinary landscape of Los Angeles, celebrating the immigrant-run spots that give the city its flavor.

In this context, “CASA BONITA MI AMOR!” isn’t just a tale of two famous television-makers restoring a kitschy restaurant. Like other media that encourages viewers to consider what we lose when we trade in our local haunts for faceless convenience, it’s a tribute and a rallying cry. It’s also an invitation: To celebrate the humanity of the singular dining experiences we have left. 

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]]> <![CDATA[“Super Size Me” at 20: How America’s obesity conversation has evolved and stalled]]> https://www.salon.com/2024/05/29/super-size-me-at-20-how-americas-obesity-conversation-has-evolved-and-stalled/ Wed, 29 May 2024 18:45:03 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2024/05/29/super-size-me-at-20-how-americas-obesity-conversation-has-evolved-and-stalled/ In the late documentarian Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 film “Super Size Me,” it’s clear that he’s casting McDonald’s as the villain from the moment a choir of kids begin enthusiastically singing the “Fast Food Song,” a novelty tune-turned playground standard by the Fast Food Rockers, a three-member band who met at a British fast-food convention in the early aughts. 

You know how it goes. 

Between slightly cheeky lyrics like “I think of you and lick my lips, you've got the taste that I can't resist” and “you’re chunky and hunky, I'm coming back for more” is the ear-worm of a chorus: McDonald's, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut. McDonald's, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut. 

It’s an intentional choice, having kids shout out the lyrics instead of just hitting “play” on the track. A key argument in Spurlock’s documentary — which infamously saw him consuming McDonald’s for three meals a day for a month while tracking the mental and physical health effects — is that fast-food companies knowingly unleashed menu items with highly addictive qualities and substandard nutrition on a generation of Americans who didn’t fully understand the impacts consuming those meals would have on their bodies. 

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That includes members of what health professionals at the time of the film’s release had taken to calling the “Happy Meal generation,” the cohort of children who had grown up having fast-food marketed specifically to them with promises of fun and flair. That’s actually one of the reasons Spurlock embarked on filming; in 2003, the parents of two adolescent girls sued McDonald’s, alleging the company’s “making and selling their products [were] deceptive and that this deception has caused the minors who have consumed McDonalds' products to injure their health by becoming obese.” 

Yet running parallel to this argument in “Super Size Me,” which came out 20 years ago this month, is a palpable level of disgust. 

This is largely leveled at McDonald’s and their food (I think of a scene early in Spurlock’s journey when he decides to deconstruct a flabby Filet-O-Fish that had obviously been under the heat lamp for too long, complete with a yellowing smear of tartar sauce). However, peppered throughout the 98-minute documentary are also ample shots of overweight Americans — specifically their stomachs and backsides. 

Every time the camera zoomed in on a thigh dimpled with cellulite or revealed a waistline extending past one’s belt, there was a clear, if unstated, implication: The same food that elicited that level of disgust from Spurlock contributed to bodies that were also worthy of disgust or disdain. This was clearly reflected in a lot of the coverage of the McDonald’s lawsuit, in which the girls at the center of the litigation were frequently referred to as “McFatties,” including by the New York Post. 

Keep in mind, “Super Size Me” was released during the advent of what would soon become the peak “weight loss TV” era, during which wellness adjacent-personalities like Jillian Michaels of “The Biggest Loser” could scream at contestants struggling with their weight and it would be written off as entertainment. This paved the way for MTV’s 2006 documentary “Fat Camp” and litany of similar projects: “You Are What You Eat,” “Three Fat Brides, One Thin Dress,” “Extreme Weight Loss” and “My 600-Lb. Life.” 

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Underpinning both the documentary and the subsequent glut of weight-focused television was the question of who was to blame for the rising rates of American obesity, which former Surgeon General of the United States David Satcher declared an epidemic in 2000. In his introduction to “Super Size Me,” Spurlock even asks the question: “Where does personal responsibility stop and corporate responsibility begin?” 

While the merits of the documentary itself have since been debated and refuted (Spurlock refused to share his food log for the experiment, and later revealed he was heavily drinking at the time which could have skewed the health results) the question of how personal responsibility plays into obesity has only grown more complicated, thanks both to the advent of the Health At Every Size movement and blockbuster weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. 

This has introduced a critical moment for the contemporary discussion around obesity, as everyone from Oprah Winfrey to “South Park” has weighed in with a take — and it also offers an opportunity to reflect ow our attitudes towards obesity have, and haven’t, changed in the two decades since the initial release of “Super Size Me.” 

For instance, in her live broadcast with Weight Watchers earlier this month called “Making The Shift: A New Way to Think About Weight,” Winfrey urged viewers to do away with the shame surrounding one’s weight. She shared a story of how Joan Rivers “challenged” her to lose 15 pounds during an interview in 1985, a story she also recounted in her cookbook “Food, Health and Happiness,” which was released earlier this year.

"As we reconcile the shame stories we have all experienced, I’m on a mission to keep this conversation going and help us better understand the complexity of weight health."

“Joan sat behind Johnny’s big wooden desk, telling me that she didn’t want to hear my excuses and that I shouldn’t have let this happen,” Winfrey wrote. “The audience laughed nervously as she wagged her flawlessly manicured finger at me, pointed out that I was still 'a single girl,' and challenged me to come back 15 pounds lighter next time she hosted. And the whole time I just sat there smiling breezily, wanting nothing more than to crawl under my chair.”

The livestream came off Oprah’s public admission that she had used medication to help maintain her weight at a healthy level. 

“As we reconcile the shame stories we have all experienced, I’m on a mission to keep this conversation going and help us better understand the complexity of weight health and how we can use the science and what we know now to enhance our lives,” Winfrey said. 

Exactly two weeks later, “South Park” released a special double-part episode called “South Park: The End of Obesity” on Paramount+. In it, as Salon Senior Editor Hanh Nguyen wrote, the entire town of South Park is attempting to get their hands on weight loss drugs, with varying results. 

“As with everything ‘South Park,’ anyone and everyone is fair game for satire,” Nguyen wrote. “There's the American healthcare system, which proves too Byzantine for the boys to navigate when trying to obtain medical help for their friend Cartman. Meanwhile many of South Park's adult residents seem to have gamed the system or received the drugs illegally, and are now holding weight loss parties where crop tops appear mandatory. A few like Stan's mom Sharon, however, are out of luck. Her insurance won't cover the drugs since she doesn't have diabetes, so she instead has turned to an alternative.” 

The alternative is simply getting a prescription for Lizzo, a reference to the singer behind body positive hits like “Juice” and “My Skin.” Lizzo has been a vocal proponent of the Health At Every Size (HAES) movement, which centers on the belief that healthy habits, like eating well and exercise, should be done to enhance wellness rather than to simply lose weight. In a fake advertisement for the product, an announcer promises that “"Lizzo makes you feel good about your weight, and it costs 90% less than Ozempic . . . In case studies, 70% of patients on Lizzo no longer care how much they weigh.” 

Sharon eventually offers her own first-person testimonial after trying Lizzo: “I've lowered my standards and my expectations. I don't give two s**ts!"

The idea that the HAES movement encourages complacency or glorifies obesity is a common argument among its detractors, including Jillian Michaels of “The Biggest Loser” and early-2000’s weight loss television fame. In 2020, she actually challenged the assertion that Lizzo should be celebrated for encouraging her fans to love their bodies as they are. 

“Why are we celebrating her [Lizzo’s] body? Why does it matter?” Michaels said during a segment on BuzzFeed News’s AM2DM show. “Why aren’t we celebrating her music? ‘Cause it isn’t going to be awesome if she gets diabetes.” 

Michaels later posted a longer comment on social media, writing: “As I’ve stated repeatedly, we are all beautiful, worthy, and equally deserving. I also feel strongly that we love ourselves enough to acknowledge there are serious health consequences that come with obesity — heart disease, diabetes, cancer to name only a few. I would never wish these for ANYONE and I would hope we prioritize our health because we LOVE ourselves and our bodies.” 

However, as indicated by the renewed cultural emphasis on weight and weight loss, American culture is still struggling with what exactly prioritizing one's health actually looks like just as much as they did two decades ago.

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]]> <![CDATA[“I showed you all”: Lizzo gratified “South Park” presents her body positivity as weight loss answer]]> https://www.salon.com/2024/05/26/lizzo-south-park-end-of-obesity/ Sun, 26 May 2024 18:13:16 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2024/05/26/lizzo-south-park-end-of-obesity/ "Guys, my worst fears have been realized. I've been referenced by a 'South Park' episode. I'm so scared. I'm gonna blind duet to it right now."

Thus begins Lizzo's TikTok post, which she also shared on Instagram, on Saturday, in which she watches the "South Park" clip from the "End of Obesity" episode that was released Friday, May 24 on Paramount+. In the special, all of South Park is trying to get their hands on weight loss drugs, with varying results. 

As with everything "South Park," anyone and everyone is fair game for satire. There's the American healthcare system, which proves too Byzantine for the boys to navigate when trying to obtain medical help for their friend Cartman. Meanwhile many of South Park's adult residents seem to have gamed the system or received the drugs illegally, and are now holding weight loss parties where crop tops appear mandatory. A few like Stan's mom Sharon, however, are out of luck. Her insurance won't cover the drugs since she doesn't have diabetes, so she instead has turned to an alternative.

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"Now there's a whole new obesity drug for those of us who can't afford Ozempic and Mounjaro," Sharon tells Kyle's mom Sheila. "I controlled all of my cravings to be thinner with Lizzo."

Cue the fake commercial, as Lizzo reacts live, eyes wide with a hand over her mouth. The ad reveals Lizzo to be an appetite suppressor, packaged in a red and white box. "This is a prescription used along with listening to her songs and watching her music videos to become happy with how you look," reads the fine print.

An announcer says, "Lizzo makes you feel good about your weight, and it costs 90% less than Ozempic . . . In case studies, 70% of patients on Lizzo no longer care how much they weigh."

Meanwhile, this information is interspersed with Sharon's own first-person testimonials. "I've lowered my standards and my expectations," she squeals whilst buying art and riding in bumper cars. "I don't give two s**ts!"

The body positivity isn't the only message though. It appears that the "South Park" creators also had something to say about the artist's music.

"Lizzo helps you eat everything you want and keep physical activity to a minimum," continues the ad. "Some patients report constipation while listening to Lizzo. Stop listening to Lizzo if you're experiencing suicidal thoughts. Serious side effects may include pancreatitis, hypothermia, s**tting out of your ears."

Lizzo, however, appeared unfazed by that criticism, instead taking the more positive aspects of the messaging to heart.

"That's crazy. I just feel like, damn, I'm really that b***h," she says in her post. "I really showed the world how to love yourself and not give a f**k to the point where these men in Colorado know who the f**k I am and put it on their cartoon that's been around for 25 years. I'm really that b***h and showed y'all how to not give a f**k and I'm gonna keep on showing you how not to give a f**k. Oh, oh, oh, Lizzooooo, b***h!

While Lizzo is known for her body positivity, last year she was sued by former backup dancers who alleged that she fostered a toxic work environment that engaged in racial harassment, religious harassment, disability discrimination and fat-shaming.

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]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” versions of Harry and Meghan are roasted for oxymoronic “Worldwide Privacy Tour”]]> https://www.salon.com/2023/02/16/south-park-harry-meghan/ Thu, 16 Feb 2023 21:48:46 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2023/02/16/south-park-harry-meghan/ Prince Harry and Meghan Markle aren’t feeling the love, not just from the British royal family, but stateside this time,

On Wednesday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were ruthlessly roasted in a new “South Park” episode, titled “The Worldwide Privacy Tour.” The Comedy Central animated series refrained from explicitly naming both Harry and Meghan and instead, mocked thinly veiled versions of Harry’s bombshell memoir “Spare” and the Netflix docuseries “Harry & Meghan.”

The episode spotlights the fictional Prince of Canada and his wife, who travel to the town of South Park in an attempt to seek privacy from the media. Their efforts include promoting the Prince’s book “Waaagh” — a clear parody of “Spare” — and publicly holding up protest signs that read, “We want our privacy!” and “Stop looking at us!”

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In one scene, a “Good Morning Canada” host questions the Prince of Canada’s hypocrisy for exposing his family in a not-so-private manner and slams the Prince’s wife for wanting privacy while enjoying a celebrity lifestyle:

“Isn’t it true sir, that your questionable wife has her own TV show and hangs out with celebrities and does fashion magazines?” the host asks, seemingly referring to Meghan’s own prominence in Hollywood. “Well, I just think that some people might say that your Instagram-loving b***h wife actually doesn’t want her privacy.”

The Prince of Canada then angrily replies, “How dare you, sir! My Instagram-loving b***h wife has always wanted her privacy! And you know what else? To hell with Canada. We are leaving. We’ll go find some quiet place where we can be normal people.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Eric Cartman says, “We don’t care about some dumb prince and his stupid wife.” His buddy Kyle Broflovski adds, “I’m sick of hearing about them! I can’t get away from them! They’re everywhere in my f**king face!”

The Prince is also described as, “Royal prince, millionaire, world traveler, victim,” while his wife is described as “Sorority girl, actress, influencer, and victim” during a “branding manager” meeting.  

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The brutal episode follows a series of inflammatory comments attacking Harry and Meghan’s recent projects. During the release of the Netflix series, contentious TV personality Jeremy Clarkson penned an essay for The Sun, which has seen been taken down, in which he detailed his hatred for Meghan. Even worse, he expressed his hope for her to be publicly shamed similar to the infamous scene in “Game of Thrones” in which Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) is made to walk through the town naked, with her hair chopped off as Septa Unella (Hannah Waddingham) accompanies her, ringing a bell and intoning “Shame!” as onlookers jeer.

“At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her,” Clarkson wrote.

Outspoken shock jock Howard Stern also criticized the docuseries, saying, “It’s been painful. I don’t — I wouldn’t stay with it, but my wife wants to watch it, so, you know, we have shows we watch, but they come off like such whiny b***hes. I gotta tell you man, I just don’t get it.”

Watch a preview of the episode, via YouTube:

 

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]]> <![CDATA[The “South ParQ Vaccination Special” fails to be funny – but maybe that’s the point]]> https://www.salon.com/2021/03/11/south-parq-vaccination-special-review-comedy-central/ Fri, 12 Mar 2021 00:28:50 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2021/03/11/south-parq-vaccination-special-review-comedy-central/ One day we’re going to look back upon all this and laugh. Seriously though . . . no. No we won’t. Provided enough of us recall the broader details of this pandemic year, very few will find anything funny about it. A more likely scenario takes the shape of choosing to forget and move forward, having learned nothing. Not all of us can or will; bearing the weight of 500,000 deaths does that to a country; or perhaps it’s better to say, it should.

But if there’s anything we should recognize on this one-year anniversary of the global pandemic, it’s that many aspects of America society remain fundamentally broken. A glorious summer may be a real possibility. Returning to a previous state of “normal” probably is not.

That about sums up the general message of the “South ParQ Vaccination Special,” the hour-long companion to last fall’s “Pandemic Special” and the only new episode of the series we’ve seen in the 15 months since the 23rd season’s finale in 2019. Referring to it as a companion is an assumption, I’ll admit. Although Matt Stone and Trey Parker previously oversaw serialized seasons of the animated series, they returned to one-offs after the 2016 election.

A few changes had to remain consistent including the election of the show’s Donald Trump stand-in Mr. Garrison to the nation’s highest office. That’s something the creators probably weren’t expecting and had to follow through the 21st, 22nd and 23rd seasons. Having him roast a scientist alive at the end of “The Pandemic Special” before cheerfully reminding the audience to vote was a brutally humorous shocker. In light of Wednesday night’s new hour it also doubles as a plea.

Last fall Parker, who wrote and directed that hour and “Vaccination Special,” may not have predicted how extensive QAnon’s infection would spread or even how quickly pharmaceutical companies would develop effective vaccines.

But when Stan said, “I can’t take these shutdowns anymore and I’m scared of what it’s doing to me,” we should have paid closer attention. Maybe the “South Park” guys didn’t have a clue as to how the pandemic would reshape their two-dimensional world back then. They do now.

“South ParQ Vaccination Special” begins with relatable absurdity and ends with an imperfect reset of the show’s world that rebuilds a wall between it and our society’s very real madness. Everything in-between, like life itself right now, feels irregular.

The opening scene restyles the town’s local Walgreens as an exclusive club complete with velvet rope and bouncer, with elderly patrons designated as V.I.P.s.

Once vaccinated the town’s old folks go full “Cocoon” – they’re revitalized and mischievous, taking over bars and burning rubber on motorcycles.

While this is taking place, at South Park Elementary Cartman worries that the forced separation of quarantine has threatened to break up the “bro-ship” he has with Stan, Kyle and Kenny, inspiring him to pull a prank on a teacher in the hopes of lifting everyone’s spirits.

Since he never thinks about anyone but himself, Cartman doesn’t get why the teacher responds by ranting about risking her life only to be mistreated and walks off the job. This further endangers said “bro-ship,” so Cartman redirects his tendency toward opportunism into organizing the boys to steal enough vaccine to inoculate the school’s teaching staff.

This is the scenario to which a post-White House Mr. Garrison returns flanked by Mr. Service, a Secret Service agent sporting a thong instead of trousers.

Most of South Park hates him, including the administrators at South Park Elementary, who refuse to hand his old job back to him. But then he stumbles across a family of supporters, the Whites, who also organize the town’s QAnon faction.

From there Parker weaves his usual web of pandemonium only to tear it apart at the climax. Classrooms empty out after the cult organizes a private teaching service, “Tutornon,” that indoctrinates most of the children into a youth sect called Lil’ ‘Q’ties.

The boys succeed in their mission only to be set upon by hordes of people who also want the vaccine – and even Kyle, who is usually sensible, can’t resist attempting to steal some for his parents. All of it collapses into a battle royale in front of the school at the same time that Mr. Garrison and Mr. White discover that in the world of “South Park,” one part of the QAnon conspiracy is true: There really are Hollywood elites controlling their world. Their names? Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Not every “South Park” episode succeeds in its aim. Some of them aren’t particularly funny. The “South ParQ Vaccination Special” is an odd entry, though, because reminds us that sometimes hilarity is beside the point. Sometimes we need to see the obvious and disturbing parallels between actual examples of human behavior and the facile reasoning that informs cartoon characters’ decisions.

The “Vaccination” one-off proves the near impossibility of satirizing a reality that has become a living parody to such a degree as to make one-upping it nearly pointless, and in case you haven’t noticed, this is the world we’re living in right now.

We really do have teachers and parents preaching QAnon conspiratorial nonsense to kids, or attempting to pass off the big lie about November’s election results as fact. We really do have wealthy people going to impossible lengths to obtain a vaccine meant to protect members of vulnerable populations, including working class folks who don’t have the luxury of staying at home.

In both cases the reasoning is similar to Butters’ excuse: “I just wanted to believe in something that got me out of the house.”

Usually “South Park” refracts the image of who we are back to us in a way that skewers our smug sense of righteousness, snickering at religion, politics and all manner of sacred cows while usually validating some part of our beliefs. The land of flawed logic is their playground. And yet, what is there to laugh at in our current state of affairs? An alarming number of people are so hungry to return an inept and dangerous man to power that they refuse to believe facts regardless of who is presenting them.

A dangerous band of terrorist cultists attacked the capitol. People died there, on top of the half a million people dead of COVID-19. Yet half of our political leadership, along with their followers, wants us to move on. Sadly, we have, as Wednesday’s special depicts by having the town gather for a character’s funeral only to ditch the mourning midway through the eulogy, kick over chairs and start partying.

There is no “going back to normal” in our reality. “South Park,” though, is subject to the whims of its makers, which it shows by zapping Mr. Garrison, Mr. White and Mr. Service into an arctic void. In a flash Mr. Service turns into Mr. Hat, and Mr. White – railing at the unseen forces controlling everything – endures a series of ridiculous transformations, including mixing up his body parts and putting him in a shapeless dress, before turning him into a gigantic talking phallus. The perspective shifts, showing Mr. Garrison, and us, how this world works, that at any time the people making it can add layers or remove them. So Mr. Garrison strikes a deal with his invisible, omnipotent puppeteers – everybody in town gets shots, and he gets his old job back. The lesson he’s learned, he explains, is to always be sure to be on the same side as the people with the most power.

It’s as if the last five years of madness never happened.

Stan, Kyle Cartman and Kenny won’t forget it. As the special ends, their “bro-ship” is fractured, and they agree to share custody of Kenny using the standard 2-2-3 schedule familiar to children of divorce.

“South Park” has depicted existential crises several times through its 23 seasons and somehow manages to keep going. These pandemic quarantine-created specials are evidence of its dedication to rolling with the times, however that manifests.

Although Comedy Central hasn’t set a premiere for its next 10-episode season, it’s been renewed through 2022 and the channel is more or less keeping the lights on by heavily stripping repeats throughout the week.

Between this and access to the full library of past seasons on HBO Max, it’s very easy to escape to ye olden pre-pandemic times when the show inflated the vulgarity of our culture-wide egocentrism in ways that made us roar.

But if the “Pandemic” and “Vaccination” specials aren’t the most entertaining entries in the “South Park” library, that’s because they refuse to discount the ways in which this past year on top of the four that preceded it have changed the boys, and us, and Parker – and presumably Stone. By admitting to this, they can also do something those of us living in a three-dimensional living, breathing reality can’t do. They can rebuild the divide between the world and their cartoon, and write a story in which its star characters find ways to air their grievances and get past them.

They can even decide to simply and eventually agree to move on and return to the way things have always been, reminding us that while “South Park” isn’t really America, it is a true mirror of who we really are. One day soon we’ll be eager to belly laugh at what it shows us. Just not now.

The “South ParQ Vaccination Special” is available to stream for free online.

The post The “South ParQ Vaccination Special” fails to be funny – but maybe that’s the point appeared first on Salon.com.

]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” nails the postelection mood: “This isn’t how it was supposed to happen!”]]> https://www.salon.com/2016/11/10/south-park-nails-the-post-election-mood-this-is-not-how-it-was-supposed-to-happen/ Thu, 10 Nov 2016 20:40:00 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2016/11/10/south-park-nails-the-post-election-mood-this-is-not-how-it-was-supposed-to-happen/ Add this year’s “South Park” postelection episode to the growing list of ways last night’s unexpected events shifted our country’s cultural narrative.

Caught off guard like the rest of us, Trey Parker, Matt Stone and the show’s producers furiously scrambled to alter the episode, which was titled “The Very First Gentleman” until a few hours prior to broadcast. Fortunately, the “South Park” team is used to taking each week’s production schedule right down to the wire in order to accommodate 11th–hour culture shocks such as Donald Trump’s victory.

The result, “Oh Jeez,” feels a little less cathartic and joyful than past postelection “South Park” installments. Then again, many of us are still waiting for our psychic wounds to scab over. What’s more significant is that it’s also the first postelection episode that had to fit into a serialized arc, assigned a higher level of difficulty to an alteration already being navigated on the fly.

In 2008 “South Park” greeted President Barack Obama’s first term with a parody of “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Entrapment.” His re-election in 2012 inspired an adventure that places Eric Cartman in a conspiracy to steal votes that somehow involved the Chinese government, which was really just an excuse to make a groaner of a punch line out of the popular takeout dish General Tso’s Chicken.

These were simpler seasons composed of one-off episodes, made in times that we can accurately call less complicated that of our world today.

This time around a viewer may have been wondering what Parker, who wrote “Oh Jeez,” would have to say about the electoral seizure that tensed up the entire nation on Tuesday night. He didn’t make viewers wait long. (Spoilers ahead, folks. You’ve been warned.)

The episode opens with Stan’s dad Randy Marsh storming into the town’s election night party at the South Park Community Center, marching past his gobsmacked neighbors to gape at the results on the TV screen.

Quickly the scene’s perspective changes to show Randy facing the viewer. “What have you done? You MANIACS!” he screams at the community center’s TV screen — but really, it is at us. In the background, a man shoots himself in the head. Randy then adds in a quieter voice clouded with disbelief, “This isn’t how it was supposed to happen!”

This occurs several times during the episode, which is a kind, politically agnostic gesture to the aching, bewildered fan tuning in to “South Park” for reliable solace. Kudos to the show’s team for figuring out how to extend such comfort while expanding the season’s narrative story arcs.

The current season has been lampooning trolling, our increasingly acrimonious gender divide and a protest movement that has swept Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman into the fray. All the while the presidential election is hovering in the background, with the ludicrous Mr. Garrison standing in for Trump (known here as Giant Douche), leaving Hillary Clinton to assume the role of Turd Sandwich.

“South Park” traditionally uses the Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich as metaphors for the impossible choice viewers have to make in virtually every election season, and repulsive as the suggested imagery is, the terms almost always fit.  (“Nearly every election since the beginning of time has been between some douche and some turd,” a character explains in 2004. “They’re the only people who suck up enough to make it that far in politics!”)

Parker and Stone feel our pain, that much is clear. And as they have done after every presidential election since 2004, they also have effectively used the freedom animation affords them to slap around Democrats and Republicans in equal measure as mirthfully as possible.

Tuesday’s unexpected outcome doesn’t seem to throw off the seasonal arc that much anyway, since Bill Clinton and his surprise guest — Bill Cosby! — show up anyway to perform a soft-shoe routine and ask South Park’s boys to join Bill Clinton’s Gentlemen’s Club. (Har har.)

But as cartoon Bill explains later, he isn’t being chivalrous for nothing. “You see, hell have no fury like a woman scorned,” he warns, adding that Hillary “and all the other women in the world are about to get payback. . . . Women are sick of our shit, son.”

Damn straight. In “South Park’s” fantasy world, the female payback begins by luring undercover troll Gerald Broflovski into a nerdy James Bond-style mission (a nod to previous election episodes) and blooms into a glorious rick-rolling that’s perfectly retro.

Two-dimensional Hillary may just be getting started, but this season’s most dangerous threat has never been either candidate or voter stupidity, sexism or cyberbullying.

“South Park” has accurately diagnosed our nation’s troubles as an unrealistic clinging to nostalgia, a yearning for a mythologized past that has numbed us to reason and is stymieing progress. In the arc, nostalgia infiltrates America in the form of Member Berries, a fictional fruit that dulls the senses.

But their narcotic effects are now even more virulent and capable of spreading via projectile vomit, which is delivered first by Caitlyn Jenner, Mr. Garrison’s choice for vice president. The town and the nation are perilously close to becoming easily manipulated sleepwalkers, beginning with all the Marshes but Stan.

“We’ve learned that women can be anything,” a blissed-out Stan observes. “Except for president.”

A closer mirror to reality is Mr. Garrison’s candidacy; he has been running on a platform that eerily resembles his real-world counterpart. “All of my efforts [over] the past week have paid off,” he yells confidently from his victory podium “And now, let’s begin . . . FUCKING THEM ALL TO DEATH!”

You know what? Just go watch the thing.

“Oh Jeez” won’t go down as the season’s best episode, and that’s fine. Considering everything that has come to pass before it aired Wednesday night, all it needed to do was get us over the hump, and its juvenile jokes, pop culture homages and instances or two of justice being served fulfill that mission. Above all, Parker and Stone have also shown an unprecedented level of empathy to the audience, calming a few of our anxieties.

“I can’t imagine how you’re feeling right now,” Stan tells his girlfriend Wendy — and viewers — at one point. “I know that the election didn’t go the way you’d hoped. What I want to say is, I’m sorry. . . . And I just want you to know that I’m here for you.”

Thank God for that.

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]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” takes on Hollywood’s pandering to Chinese censorship with sharp words, weak jokes]]> https://www.salon.com/2019/10/03/south-park-takes-on-hollywoods-pandering-to-chinese-censorship-with-sharp-words-weak-jokes/ Thu, 03 Oct 2019 13:23:22 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2019/10/03/south-park-takes-on-hollywoods-pandering-to-chinese-censorship-with-sharp-words-weak-jokes/ The “South Park” episode “Band in China” makes a pretty strong argument about the danger that Chinese censorship poses to American artistic freedom. It works quite well as an editorial; the problem is that it isn’t particularly funny. And that’s a shame, because “South Park” often reaches its comical high points when it has righteous outrage in its heart.

If “Band in China” manages to raise awareness about China’s increasing control over American art, then I suppose its impact will be salutary. Then again, because it isn’t especially funny or memorable, the odds are that it will fade into obscurity and not do much good or ill of any kind.

“Band in China” starts with Randy Marsh (Trey Parker) deciding to go to China after realizing that he can get rich by selling the marijuana from his Tegridy Farms to the 1.4 billion people who live there. He is promptly arrested when he lands, of course, but the episode doesn’t spend too much time lingering on his inevitably bleak stay in a Chinese prison. Its focus is on how other American businesses like Google, the NBA and Disney (especially Disney) have the same idea as Randy — to make billions by opening themselves up to the lucrative Chinese marketplace — and are willing to bend themselves to the demands of the Chinese government in order to do so.

The B plot reinforces this point (a refreshing departure from last week’s episode “Mexican Joker,” which had two storylines that were basically unrelated to each other). When Stan (Parker), Butters (Matt Stone), Jimmy (Parker) and Kenny (Stone) form a successful death metal band, they are recruited by a Hollywood agent who wants to turn their story into a biopic. Their excitement turns to dismay, however, as they learn about the lengthy list of topics they are forbidden to cover because the Chinese government would disapprove of them: The Dalai Lama, organ transplants (referencing accusations that China is harvesting organs from Uighur Muslims and the Falun Gong), homosexuality (Chinese censors have long targeted pro-gay rights material) and Winnie the Pooh.

That last thread receives the most attention, with Parker and Stone clearly getting a kick out of the fact that last year’s film “Christopher Robin” was banned from the country after memes circulated saying that President Xi Jinping looks like Winnie the Pooh. While I won’t delve into spoilers, the episode climaxes with one character currying favor with the Chinese government by addressing their dislike of Winnie the Pooh in the deliberately graphic and shocking fashion that has become a hallmark of the “South Park” brand of comedy. The problem is that the joke, like so many others in the episode, simply doesn’t land.

Humor is a subjective thing, of course, and it’s difficult to quantify exactly why certain material works and other does not. The most brilliant “South Park” moments have occurred when the series creators find inspired ways to make their larger points about society: A group of religious Christians unwittingly chanting Nazi slogans while supporting “The Passion of the Christ” in 2004’s “The Passion of the Jew,” the ludicrous scripture of Scientology being matter-of-factly explained and animated in 2005’s “Trapped in the Closet,” a smug global warming denier casually altering his rationalizations for opposing climate activism (as manifested by the character Manbearpig) before meeting a grisly fate in 2018’s “Time To Get Cereal.” These moments were effective not only because “South Park” had valid points to make, but because the show came up with a creative and memorably humorous way of making it.

This isn’t to say that “Band in China” doesn’t find ways of illustrating how hard American corporations will pander to China. Iconic Disney characters — from The Beast and Buzz Lightyear to Kylo Ren and Thor and Captain Marvel — are all seen trying to gain access to China’s markets. At one point Stan is working on the screenplay for his band’s biopic while a Chinese censor is literally looking over his shoulder. Characters make blunt proclamations about the harsh reality of the entertainment industry’s desire to do business in China, from Randy saying that “you have to lower your ideals of freedom if you want to suck on the warm teat of China” to Stan declaring that “anyone who would betray their ideals just to make money in China isn’t worth a lick of spit.” The episode even takes a potshot at liberals when a character explains that the PC Babies (an in-show band meant to satirize political correctness), despite seemingly complaining about everything, doesn’t object to Chinese control of American art. The end result is an episode that feels more like a lecture from Parker and Stone to their entertainment industry brethren than an attempt at making ordinary Americans laugh and think at the same time.

The post “South Park” takes on Hollywood’s pandering to Chinese censorship with sharp words, weak jokes appeared first on Salon.com.

]]> <![CDATA[Lindy West reclaims the “witch hunt”: On comedy, feminism and why terrible men think they’re victims]]> https://www.salon.com/2019/11/09/lindy-west-is-a-witch-and-shes-hunting-terrible-men/ Sat, 09 Nov 2019 18:00:46 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2019/11/09/lindy-west-is-a-witch-and-shes-hunting-terrible-men/ According to author Lindy West, this present moment is America’s witching. Angry about Donald Trump and other terrible men claiming to be victims of “witch hunts,” West wrote the immediately iconic New York Times op-ed claiming, “Sure, if you insist, it’s a witch hunt. I’m a witch, and I’m hunting you.”

She has now turned that piece into a full-length book titled “The Witches Are Coming.” It’s a genuinely uproarious collection of essays about feminism, politics, climate change and whether or not Adam Sandler is actually funny. I plowed through the book in the span of a day and then had a chance to interview West in person at Salon’s studio, where we talked about feminist comedy, women’s likeability, and how “Trading Places” holds up really well except for that one time it doesn’t.

You can watch our full interview here, or read on for the transcript, which has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

The title of your book, “The Witches Are Coming,” is based on an essay you wrote in the New York Times where you said, “Yes, I’m a witch, and I’m hunting you.” And it’s about how all these crappy white guys, and especially Donald Trump, keep claiming that they’re being targeted by witch hunts, which were actually a thing that targeted women, who were killed by it. Why do you think that metaphor has so much power in the minds of white men who feel persecuted?

That’s such a great question. It seems like the favorite rhetorical flourish of this current administration to be relentlessly aggressive, and oppressive, and just horrendous in a million newly creative ways, and then at the same time just extravagantly play the victim.

We’ve seen this on the internet for years and years and years. This is what men’s rights activists do, and it’s a really effective rhetorical tactic when the person in charge says, “I’m actually being victimized. I’m not victimizing other people. I’m actually the victim.” That’s a really comfortable place for a lot of people to live. You know what I mean? Because the alternative is that we’re all complicit in a really, really toxic, dangerous, deadly system.

It’s much more compelling to not be on the defensive and not be like, “No, no, no, I didn’t do that,” but to be actually the aggrieved party, and then demand relief and apology from the world.

And part of this bigger trend, I think, of the right wing co-opting social justice language to justify a lot of their behaviors. That’s really, really toxic, and I think needs to be called out and not just taken at face value, which people tend to do. I think people tend to be trusting, and so accept the rhetoric that’s fed to them, and even if it smells a little off.

And I think that it’s just part of our jobs as writers and journalists and people who are engaged in this discourse or whatever you want to call it to not entertain that kind of propaganda as reality. You know what I mean? Don’t give it that oxygen. You have to be chopping off the heads metaphorically, every day, constantly, because it’s relentless.

It’s interesting to me because, like you said, the Donald Trump victim trip is something that we’ve seen on the internet for more than a decade now. And all these angry men that feel like they’re being persecuted, that they’re the victims of sexism, that they’re the victims of racism. Do you think that that sense of persecution is sincere, or do you think they’re just making it up?

That’s a good question. I think some of them are making it up very cynically and deliberately, and then there are a lot of people who genuine . . .

Life is hard. There are a lot of young, white men who feel aggrieved, and who feel like their lives are difficult and unfair, and that’s probably true that their lives are difficult and unfair in a million ways. They’re just not difficult and unfair because they’re white or because they’re men.

And I think when you feed this propaganda to those people who maybe don’t have the background in thinking about systemic inequality in the systems in which we live, it’s so appealing. It must feel like such a relief to find a tangible reason that explains why your life sucks and takes away the responsibility of this feeling of being blamed for other people’s persecution.

Men hate to hear that they’re being bad, and I get it. I think that it’s not necessarily an evil impulse to react with horror and defensiveness to being told that you’re a beneficiary of racism or sexism. You know what I mean?

The people who are pushing the narrative and really shaping and driving it, they know what they’re doing. They know. I think that Donald Trump is not a smart person, but he knows that this is not a witch hunt. He knows that he’s bad, you know what I mean? He knows what he did. He knows. He knows.

But angry 19-year-old boys who loved Donald Trump because “he tells it like it is” or whatever, I don’t know that everyone knows. I don’t know. What do you think? That’s a question I would ask you. Do they know? Some do. Some don’t. Don’t you think?

Yeah, I think so. I’m just always kind of curious. And I wanted to ask you about trolls without asking you about trolls.

Yeah, totally.

Let’s talk about women and likability, because you write in this book a lot about the question of women’s likability, which is an issue that has been haunting us, I think, since Hillary Clinton lost because she wasn’t “likable” enough. And you write in the book that when it comes to women anyway, “likability is a con and we’re all falling for it.” Why do you say that?

It’s really complicated, right? Because obviously I want people to like me just as a person. It’s easy to be like, “reject likability,” but what does that mean?

I don’t know, because I clearly try to make things that people like and want to give me money for.

But I do think that there’s this directive for women especially to chase this idea of likability, which is socially constructed to include being nice and being helpful and being a caregiver and all of these things that don’t necessarily benefit us.

It’s respectability politics really. It’s the same construction where it’s like, “Well, if you were just like this, if you’re just more like this, if you were nicer, if you were more helpful, if you phrased it differently, if you weren’t so aggressive, if you weren’t so angry, then you would have everything that you want. And then we would all be on your side, and everyone would want to help you, and X, Y, Z.”

That’s not real. There isn’t an actual finish line where you can get there, and that’s why it’s a con. Again, it’s the same also as conventional beauty. You’re never going to get to perfection. That’s not real. And what you’re supposed to do is spend your whole life wasting money trying to buy this idea of perfection that doesn’t exist.

So I don’t know what the answer is, and it’s interesting with beauty too. You can’t say that beauty is not real because a tree is beautiful, a sunset is beautiful. You know what I mean? There’s something there, and once you start to go down that road then your brain flips out, because then it’s like, well, what are clothes? Do I like anything? Is anything real?

Someone fully called me out and was like, “You said that we shouldn’t chase likability, but in this other interview, you said that your goal with the TV show was to make a really likable fat character because people don’t like fat people.” And I was like, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know the answer.

You contain multitudes.

Well, the answer is that we have to live in the system that we live in, so you can live in it and try to change it at the same time. And I think resetting and restructuring what the conditions of likability are is at least something we can do. You know what I mean? Because right now, the parameters of likability that I’m talking about in this book are parameters that are the traditional, old fashioned way to be likable, which is again to be a nice, pretty, little quiet caregiver. And I don’t think that serves us particularly well.

It’s interesting to me because Elizabeth Warren will have lines hours long of people wanting to take pictures with her, and yet we hear that she’s not “likable” enough. I think, yeah, it feels like it’s a trap.

Yeah, totally.

And yet somehow people keep falling for it. AI know there’s not a solution to it. But I guess the question I would ask you then is is there ever going to be a point where women can just get past it?

I don’t know. I hope so. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I think just in the last 10 years since I’ve been writing about feminism, and thinking about feminism all the time, and having this weird job that I have, it feels like the world around me has loosened in so many ways already, which is really encouraging.

And I think my kids, who are 16 and 18, have grown up with this innate understanding of gender, and beauty, and the politics of of being a woman in the world that I didn’t grow up with, where those ideas didn’t exist yet. Those are radical ideas that have since been mainstreamed through the long, hard work of a lot of people.

And that’s really encouraging to me. My kids are not scared to call themselves feminists, and when I was their age, you were not supposed to, and you would get made fun of, and be ostracized. Or I don’t think it occurred to me as a 16-year-old to be like, “I’m a feminist,” and my daughters are like …

They steal all my tote bags. You know what I mean? Any kind of feminist propaganda that I’m given, they steal.

In my opinion, the reason that Trump happened is because you could feel some progress having real momentum over the last five, 10 years, and that was terrifying to a lot of people. And so, yeah, I guess I do have hope that if we can’t completely extricate ourselves from this idea of likability, this one particular model of likability, we can at least grab it and change it and remake it in a way that is healthier.

And that brings me to another huge theme in your book, which is pop culture and making it better. And you have this TV show based on your first book “Shrill,” and it’s a fairly explicit goal of that show to model more diversity, different ideas of what womanhood can be, different ways of telling women’s stories. It’s also a comedy, so I think you hear a lot of people say that that kind of feminism is incompatible with comedy. What was your experience of that in actually trying to create something that’s funny and feminist at the same time?

It’s just such an erroneous, meaningless thing to say that comedy and feminism are incompatible. It just doesn’t make any sense. To the point where I don’t even know how to answer that question. This was a room full of really funny, smart people building a story together about things that matter to us, and things that happened in our lives. Obviously there’s an inherent political through line in this show, but our first goal was to make a piece of entertainment, to make a funny television show that tells a story.

People who say that that feminism and comedy are mutually exclusive don’t understand anything about feminism or comedy, I would say. Anyone can write a funny joke about their life. The idea that to be funny, a joke has to have rape in it or something, it’s a very bizarre way to understand a joke, and means that you haven’t been paying attention to a huge, vast swath of the comedy that’s been being made for generations. What are you talking about?

Well, it’s interesting because a lot of this book — and I was a little surprised by it, but it was cool because you’re a big comedy fan — you’re re-examining some of the comedy of the ’90s that we grew up on, like Adam Sandler movies and “South Park,” and asking the very blunt question, are they funny? So you go back and and look at this stuff, and I guess I want to ask, are they funny?

Well, I’m of course slightly trolling, but you know what? Yeah, they are. Sometimes. Parts of them are funny, and that’s always been the point. It’s like, OK, me as a feminist comedy fan, I don’t want to destroy comedy.

I want to be able to have the comedy without the comedy destroying me. You know what I mean?

You’re undermining your own work by filling it with really damaging stereotypes. You’re excluding huge, huge parts of your audience, and that used to work because we had this paradigm in place that you weren’t allowed to critique comedy because then you were just a moral scold who didn’t get jokes.

And so I spent decades laughing at jokes about how horrible men’s wives are, which was such a classic staple. I remember as being a kid and being like, “Why are they all married?” I just remember being like, “Man, men hate wives so much. They hate them. They hate them. Why don’t they get divorced? You don’t have to have a wife.” Whatever. I just remember being baffled by how universally every comedian wanted to kill their wife.

The point is that like there is stuff to love in those pieces of art, and then there’s this insistence on just poisoning all of it. You know what I mean? And it’s really complicated because of course a lot of stuff used to be normal, and used to be fine, and it’s not really fair or productive to be like “Adam Sandler is an evil, bad man because the gender roles are a little regressive in ‘Little Nicky'” or whatever. That would be me being a caricature of myself, and I’m not a caricature of myself. I am my regular self.

We decided to re-watch “Trading Places” at my house a couple of weeks ago, and that movie holds up super well.

Holds up!

Right up until Dan Aykroyd puts on black face.

Sure. I know. And I don’t want to touch this. I don’t want to touch that one. That’s a tricky one. I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s not my business. Eddie Murphy said it was OK. I don’t know. It’s not good. It’s not good. It’s bad. Nope. That’s not someone else’s essay to write. I’m not think-piecing on that one at all.

The book is very full of very understandable anger over Trump, and all the crappy men, and the internet trolls, and the Hollywood directors that have turned this country into a toilet. And hopefully he’ll be gone sometime next year.

I’d like to thank him for hanging in there through the pub date of this book because it would’ve been … I’m just kidding. I would have been fine if he was gone already.

But I want to ask, what do we do with all these people once he’s gone?

Yeah, they’re all still there, and they’re still very bad. And I wrote about that in the book. When we thought that Hillary was going to win, I had an op-ed in the tank being like, “Hey, Republicans don’t get to pivot off of Trump and be like, ‘We never liked him. We’re the good Republicans.’ They were always bad. Remember how much we hated them five minutes ago before this demon came on the scene? He’s the same as them.”

And that’s actually, I think, what the “South Park” chapter ended up being about.

There is no ethical version of conservatism. There isn’t. Sorry. There’s no ethical version of we should hoard wealth, and let people die on the street, and slash social programs because it’s not fair when the government takes 10% of your Halloween candy away or whatever. Whatever metaphor they use to indoctrinate the children.

But I think maybe fortunately/unfortunately, the Republican party has fully gone in, obviously. They went all in on Trump. They decided this was their guy, and they were going to just gamble on it, and make it happen. And hopefully that will taint them forever, and they will crumble and die.

I’m not some genius. I’m just a lady with opinions. I don’t know how to sort of prognosticate what comes next, or what replaces them if they do fall, or what we do.

But I hope that Trump is a taint that follows every single one of these pieces of trash till their deaths, because it is inexcusable by any metric. It is unconscionable in every way.

I don’t know. Whatever you think of Hillary or whatever, we were already … Day before finals, second semester, senior year, we did not have time to waste. We needed to get down to business, and then now we have wasted four years not just wasting time but moving backwards in time, letting the planet boil, letting brown people around the world bear the brunt of climate disaster. It’s inexcusable. And if we manage to pull ourselves back from the brink of apocalypse, and history continues to be written, I hope that they are remembered as the trash demons that they are.

You write in this book about your high school age daughter’s activism, and it reminded me so much of the climate strikes, and Greta Thunberg, and all these kids just coming out. And I just want to ask, why are kids so great?

I don’t know. I’m so proud of them. It’s not fair to ask them to be great. It’s so unfair. I got to just be a dumb kid. You know what I mean? We would drive around and eat sandwiches. I don’t know. It’s not fair.

My older daughter learned about hostile architecture, like benches with spikes on them so that homeless people can’t sleep, and so she has made a thousand vinyl stickers that are like, “Seattle doesn’t care about homeless people. This bench was designed to deny homeless people a place to rest. If you support this bench, you’re a monster.” Whatever. It’s more eloquent than that, but she’s just on a rampage, vandalizing the city for justice.

She shouldn’t have to spend her time doing that, you know what I mean? Hey, what if, oh, I don’t know, the two richest people in the world live in Seattle. What if we didn’t have 4,000 people sleeping on the street so that my daughter didn’t have to run around putting stickers on everything, yelling at Amazon employees?

How do you feel about the word “feminism?”

It’s interesting because I feel like, for a while, it was so empowering to say it as much as possible. And then of course things shift and move, and our conversations about gender have shifted and moved, and being female doesn’t occupy the same role that it used to.

And I literally hadn’t thought about this, but I do find myself like using the word “feminist” less, because I think also it feels narrow in this way. It just feels like I want a bigger tent to describe myself and what I actually care about. You know what I mean?

Obviously, I still want to be a fat activist, or of course I’m still a feminist, but it’s so easy to just narrow your focus to things that impact you directly, and I think a thing that absolutely needs to happen is everyone opening outward and thinking about race, and justice, and poverty, and of course gender, and of course accessibility, and body size, and all of these things.

Yeah, this is all on the fly because I hadn’t really thought about this, that “feminist” as a term has felt lately less radical to me than it used to. Do you know what I mean?

 Maybe that’s partially because it’s become mainstream.

Yeah. Which is good. Which is good. But it’s like, okay, so we got there. There’s so much more to do. Maybe that’s what I’m feeling. You know what I mean? Like it’s very white feminist to be like, “Yeah, I got a tote bag that says ‘feminist’ on it.” It’s like, OK, well, we got to keep going.

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]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” banned in China after new episode lampoons government censorship: report]]> https://www.salon.com/2019/10/07/south-park-banned-in-china-after-new-episode-lampoons-government-censorship-report/ Mon, 07 Oct 2019 20:20:42 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2019/10/07/south-park-banned-in-china-after-new-episode-lampoons-government-censorship-report/ It appears as though last week’s “South Park” episode “Band in China” has caused that show to be actually banned in the Asian country.

Chinese government censors have scrubbed every episode, clip and even reference to the popular Comedy Central show from streaming services, social media and fan pages, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The site found that threads and sub-threads related to “South Park” on Baidu’s Tieba, previously China’s largest online discussions platform, have been rendered nonfunctional. The show is also not mentioned in billions of posts on Weibo, the country’s Twitter-like social media service, and all links to the show on the streaming service Youku are now dead.

It is likely that Comedy Central anticipated this response, given how the episode lampooned China’s habit of censoring Western media properties that do not conform with the political agenda of its authoritarian government. The episode drew particular attention to the government’s censorship of Winnie the Pooh after memes went viral in China comparing the physical appearance of the fictional teddy bear to that of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone responded to the ban with a sarcastic apology ridiculing the Chinese government.

“Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts,” Parker and Stone wrote in a statement. “We, too, love money more than freedom and democracy. Xi doesn’t look like Winnie the Poo [sic] at all. Tune into our 300th episode the Wednesday at 10 p.m. Long live the great Communist Party of China. May the autumn’s sorghum harvest be bountiful. We good now, China?”

In the episode in question, South Park resident Randy Marsh visitsChina to try to sell marijuana from his Tegridy Farms. While there, he learns that in order to be granted access to China’s lucrative marketplace, he has to compromise his own values along with various Marvel superheroes, Disney characters, NBA players and Star Wars icons.

In the episode’s B plot, Randy’s son Stan forms a successful death metal band and faces pressure to compromise his values in order for his biopic to be distributed to a Chinese audience. The episode also shows Mickey the Mouse appearing in China to berate various Disney-owned properties for not being sufficiently cooperative with the Chinese government. Stan has a Chinese censor look over his shoulder while he works on a script, prompting the character to remark, “Now I know how Hollywood writers feel.”

This is not the first time that “South Park” has stirred up censorship-related controversy. In 2010, they released an episode which attempted to physically depict the Prophet Muhammad, who some Muslims do not believe should be illustrated, in spite of the threat of violence from a radical group in New York named Revolution Muslim. The Prophet Muhammad was censored with a black box, and according to the “South Park Studios” website, “after we delivered the show, and prior to broadcast, Comedy Central placed numerous additional audio bleeps throughout the episode.”

Click here to read Salon’s review of “Band in China.”

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]]> <![CDATA[These 5 shows bring liberals and conservatives together]]> https://www.salon.com/2019/07/04/these-5-shows-bring-liberals-and-conservatives-together_partner/ Thu, 04 Jul 2019 22:59:28 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2019/07/04/these-5-shows-bring-liberals-and-conservatives-together_partner/ There’s been a lot of concern about how conservatives and liberals consume their news from sources that merely confirm their preexisting beliefs. The result, supposedly, has been a disintegration of a shared reality and a fracturing of the nation’s political life.

But does this trend extend to the shows we choose to watch on TV to relax and unwind?

Since 2007, the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California has been tracking how Americans’ favorite TV shows are connected to their attitudes on a host of hot-button political issues.

In each of these studies — including our most recent one — we found that people with different political beliefs seem to be drawn to different types of TV entertainment.

But in the most recent study, there was also a distinct overlap: certain shows that appealed to everyone across the political spectrum. These programs, we found, tend to have a quality that, at the very least, hints at some shared values in a polarizing age.

Preferences of ‘Blues,’ ‘Purples’ and ‘Reds’

For the study, we surveyed more than 3,000 people using a national sample designed to represent the U.S. population.

Respondents were asked about their entertainment preferences, viewing behaviors and their feelings about specific television shows. They were also asked about their happiness, political beliefs, voting history and personal traits.

Using a statistical clustering analysis, we identified three ideological groups in the United States that share common attitudes and values, regardless of voting history or political party preferences.

  1. Blues, who have liberal attitudes toward abortion, the environment, guns, marriage and immigration, make up 47% of the population. This group has the most women and the largest number of African Americans. They’re also the least satisfied with their lives.
  2. Purples, a swing group comprising 18% of the population, hold positions across the political spectrum. This group has the largest share of Asians and Hispanics, and those in it are the most religious and the most satisfied with their lives.
  3. Reds make up 35% of the country and hold conservative views on most issues. They’re sympathetic toward the police and skeptical about affirmative action, immigrants and Islam. Reds have the highest proportion of senior citizens.

Each group demonstrated its own particular taste in media and entertainment.

Blues like many more TV shows than Reds and are open to viewing foreign films and TV series, as well as content that doesn’t reflect their values. Many Blues enjoy watching “Modern Family,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “The Simpsons,” “South Park” and “Law & Order: SVU.”

Purples are the most voracious TV viewers and enjoy more about the viewing experience than other groups. They appreciate the educational value of TV programming and are the most likely to say they take action based on what they learn about politics and social issues from fictional movies and TV shows. Their favorite shows include “The Voice” and “Dancing with the Stars,” but they also like “Saturday Night Live” — a favorite among Blues as well — and “Duck Dynasty,” which is preferred by Reds.

Reds say they seldom watch entertainment TV, but when they do, many claim they watch for an adrenaline boost. They prefer the Hallmark, History and Ion channels far more than others, while their favorite show is “NCIS.”

The shows that bring everyone together

And yet there was some significant overlap.

Five shows that all three ideological groups watched include “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” “Bones,” “Criminal Minds,” “MythBusters” and “Pawn Stars.” Four of these shows were well-liked, but “Pawn Stars” was actually one of the least-liked shows in our sample of 50. (We concluded that “Pawn Stars” had the dubious distinction of being the most hate-watched show in America.)

But what about those four shows that everyone seems to like? What common elements might they share?

My suspicion, one that we’ll explore in the next iteration of this study, is that all four of these shows — and even “Pawn Stars,” to an extent — value truth.

“Bones” and “Criminal Minds” are classic police procedurals: whodunits that follow a string of clues to arrive at a fact-based conclusion. “MythBusters” is entirely about the delights of scientific skepticism and the quest for truth. And I would argue that the clips seen on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” remain appealing after all these years precisely because they’re so raw and unscripted; we all delight in real human foibles, the stuff that we think we couldn’t make up if we tried. Even in “Pawn Stars,” customers discover the true market value of their treasured items.

In a cultural moment defined by moral panic around fake news and alternative facts, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the neutral ground Americans of all political stripes have chosen is storytelling devoted to finding the bad guy, debunking the myth and exposing how silly humans can really be.

Johanna Blakley, Managing Director, The Norman Lear Center, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

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]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” vs. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: Not quite a takedown in season finale]]> https://www.salon.com/2018/12/13/south-park-vs-amazons-jeff-bezos-not-quite-a-takedown-in-season-finale/ Thu, 13 Dec 2018 20:00:03 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2018/12/13/south-park-vs-amazons-jeff-bezos-not-quite-a-takedown-in-season-finale/ After 22 seasons, “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have established a pretty reliable formula for their satire: They look at a few subjects that are trending in pop culture, politics or society in general at a given moment, find a humorous angle for them and then cram as many as they think can fit into their stories. The upshot here is that, because it only takes them a few days to produce an episode, they can create plots and gags which are topical and fresh. The danger, though, is that when they try to do too much in a single half-hour teleplay, they wind up creating an unfocused muddle rather than incisive satire.

Unfortunately the Season 22 finale, “Bike Parade,” falls into the latter category.

It continues where the previous episode, “Unfulfilled,” left off. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has taken over South Park by forcing nearly all of its inhabitants to simultaneously work for and purchase their consumer goods from his company. The disgruntled Amazon workers strike under the leadership of a socialist protester named Josh who, due to a workplace injury, has now literally become an Amazon box filled with organs. Because the South Park boys want to win an upcoming bike parade, Stan (Parker), Kyle (Stone), Kenny (Stone) and Cartman (Parker) help Bezos by sending former mall workers (spoofing the Morlocks from “The Time Machine”) into the warehouse as scabs so they can get their products sooner. At the same time Stan’s father Randy (Parker) is taking his marijuana business to the next level by using eScooters to bring baggies of pot directly to his customers.

Parker and Stone juggle too many plot threads at once to really do anything interesting with them, resulting in just a couple of laugh-out-loud moments throughout the episode: when Bezos kills Josh by tricking a bunch of children into thinking he’s a Christmas present (it wasn’t the gory death that amused me so much as the subtly evil way Bezos chuckled to himself after the innocent kid who “won” what was inside the Marxist box got splattered with human organs), and when Randy Marsh’s weed gets the whole town high and inspires them to unite against Bezos and deliver an impassioned speech against the malevolent billionaire — who immediately figures out that they’re stoned because they’re facing in the wrong direction.

Yet for every mildly effective joke, there are countless missed opportunities. It was established in the previous episode that the South Park boys were going to use immigration as a theme for their bicycles in the Bike Parade, which was a ripe opportunity for satire or at least some kind of edgy comedy. Instead the South Park creators did basically nothing with the idea aside from putting flags on the bikes so that viewers could try to figure out what countries they were from (the show confirms that one is the Philippines and the other two seemed to be from Mexico and either Egypt or Iraq). Similarly the themes of Bezos being a sinister humanoid and the town being gripped by class warfare were only briefly mentioned this time around, leaving the story arc that had been set up in the previous episode feel unfinished, somewhat diminishing the earlier story in the process.

In lieu of fleshing out these themes, Parker and Stone opted to throw in references to other plot threads that they had established earlier in the season. When Santa Claus comes to save the town from Amazon, he is disgusted to learn that they exiled Mr. Hanky in an earlier story after he told inappropriate jokes online (he also used the c-word and did so without being censored by a bleep). His decision to abandon them could have been funny or even poignant if it had been a major story point instead of a throwaway gag. The PC babies (illegitimate children of PC Principal and Strong Woman) also reappear here to cry at random things that upset their delicate sensibilities, but because this is only done sporadically, the joke has no build up and later punchlines involving them don’t really land.

That theme of finding things offensive is, overall, only semi-realized in this story. When one of the South Park boys decides to quit the bike parade because he is converted to Josh’s Marxism, the others attempt to vindictively get the event cancelled by pretending that something about it offends them. Once again, this could have been a funny idea and even a sharply satirical one, but Parker and Stone never flesh it out. The idea of pretending that they’re offended is mentioned and half-heartedly executed before the plot moves on to another theme. In a similar vein, Cartman reacts to the news of one of the boys defecting by saying he’s going to shoot up a school. This could have been a clever tie-in to the running joke about school shootings that has existed throughout Season 22, but aside from that one line, nothing comes of it.

It really is a shame because the episode’s biggest payoff — namely, that Randy’s marijuana winds up saving the day because people are simply happier and kinder when they’re high — could have been hilarious. So too with the fact that Randy’s company is called “Tegridy” which, because it sounds like “integrity,” could have been a nice jab at Bezos being defeated by a human virtue that eludes his real-life counterpart. But for these types of jokes to work — whether in “South Park” or any other sitcom episode — they have to be fleshed out and built up during the story’s running time. While it can be a good idea to refer to earlier episodes, it is important to decide early on whether they are going to be brief callbacks or fully realized and well-structured jokes. Regardless of which one you choose, though, they can never be so omnipresent that they force you to lose focus on the main story you’re trying to tell.

At its best, “South Park” keeps its eyes on the prize and delivers memorable jokes with sharp satire. At its worst, Parker and Stone fail to balance out their numerous references and storylines and wind up creating a mildly satisfying comedy potpourri. It is to the series’ credit that, even at its worst, it still can produce more laughs than your average banal sitcom. That said, the qualitative contrast between their high points and their low ones — as seen in the contrast between this episode and its direct predecessor from last week — illustrates that sometimes their weaknesses overpower their strengths.

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]]> <![CDATA[Socialism coming to “South Park”? Mocking Amazon feels far from show’s libertarian roots]]> https://www.salon.com/2018/12/06/has-socialism-come-to-south-park-mocking-amazon-moves-show-away-from-libertarian-roots/ Thu, 06 Dec 2018 20:00:13 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2018/12/06/has-socialism-come-to-south-park-mocking-amazon-moves-show-away-from-libertarian-roots/ Last month, “South Park” released a two-part episode in which it traded its longstanding global warming denialism in favor of what amounted to a lengthy apology to former Vice President Al Gore. Last night, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone released the first part of what looks like another two-part story arc, and this one might undermine another of the show’s deep-rooted beliefs — namely, the virtues of free market capitalism.

The premise of “Unfulfilled” is superficially similar to the 2004 episode “Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes”: Whereas the earlier story showed how the town’s economic life was destroyed by the presence of a Walmart stand-in, this one shows how the arrival of an Amazon Fulfillment Center in the small Colorado community causes hundreds of townspeople to have to accept low-paying, exploitative jobs at the corporate behemoth’s warehouse. In the main plot, the Amazon workers go on strike after the unsafe working conditions result in an employee named Josh being mangled by the machines, which the company then blames on employee error. This outrages the Amazon workers, with the exception of Stephen Stotch (Parker), who remains loyal to the company despite suffering from his own intense fatigue due to being overworked.

The darkly funny twist here is that Josh doesn’t exactly die from his horrific injuries. Instead he spends the rest of the story as a literal Amazon box — one that cannot be opened lest his organs spill out, killing him — and preaches the virtues of socialism to a reporter who (understandably) is more curious about the exact nature of Josh’s new biological structure. Yet when the Josh/box talks about income inequality, class exploitation and the fact that Amazon has created unconscionable conditions for its workers, Parker and Stone depict him as being absolutely right. The theme of Amazon as exploitative employer was reinforced earlier in the story with a visually eloquent montage of the dreary, bleak and oppressive lives of workers like Stotch set to the coal-mining dirge “Sixteen Tons,” as well as in later gags that show Amazon controlling everything from the beers at a local bar to the social status of every member of the community (losing one’s Prime status is apparently a fate worse than death).

If the episode has any weakness, it’s that the secondary story is incredibly uninteresting. The South Park boys Stan (Parker), Kyle (Stone), Kenny (Stone) and Cartman (Parker) — as well as Butters (Stone) — are all planning on competing in a bicycle race, with their various schemes feeling like padding rather than a plot thread in which the writers feel any genuine investment. An off-hand reference to the four main characters deciding to ride with a theme of immigration, however, suggests that the next episode might be focused on that issue.

Yet when the episode has its sights set squarely on Amazon, it never misses. Most gratifying of all was the episode’s skewering of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who was treated with nauseating obsequiousness in a “Saturday Night Live” episode last month in which Steve Carell portrayed him as a hero of the anti-Donald Trump movement and Colin Jost proclaimed the communities that gained Amazon expansion offices had “won the lottery.” Parker and Stone fall to the other extreme when it comes to their depiction of Bezos: in “South Park” he is a pale, wide-eyed humanoid boasting a grotesquely oversized and veiny cranium with a butt on the occiput, who communicates through telepathy and makes creepy comments about wanting people to be “fulfilled.” It seems clear that Bezos is being set up as a villain — one who yearns to “return to Bezos and touch butts with my wife” — and, while it shouldn’t take courage to characterize the early 21st-century equivalent of a robber baron as a literal monster, the low bar established by “SNL” makes this depiction particularly scathing in contrast.

It’s all the more surprising considering that it comes from Parker and Stone, who in 2006 told a Reason magazine audience in Amsterdam that if any label could be applied to them, it was libertarian. This was demonstrated in past episodes that preached the virtues of large corporations (“Gnomes” from 1998), bemoaned the 2001 airline bailout as a crutch for lazy workers whose sloth meant their industry deserved to fail (“The Entity” from 2001) and depicted Ron Paul as the only reasonable Republican presidential candidate during the 2012 election (“Faith Hilling” from 2012). Although the pair have also been careful to not fasten that label to themselves — they clearly take pride in their iconoclasm — it is obvious that, at least in the past, the show has been inclined toward skepticism when it comes to denouncing large corporations and the underlying tenets of free-market capitalism.

Until we see the second part of “Unfulfilled” it will be unclear whether “South Park” has fully renounced that perspective in favor of a pro-labor standpoint, but it’s hard to imagine the show scribes of the late ’90s and early ’00s writing something as unequivocally anti-capitalist as the episode which aired last night. While in terms of humor this episode doesn’t rank among the series’ best — its memorable jokes are the ones about Josh being a box and Bezos being a freak — it still has enough laughs in it to be worth watching, and for longtime followers of the show, it marks enough of an evolution from their earlier ideology to be intrinsically interesting. If Parker and Stone can do something worthwhile with the bicycle race subplot and increase the laugh quotient next week, “Unfulfilled” has the potential to become a highlight in “South Park” history.

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]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” blames climate change on Grandpa’s selfishness and it’s barely a metaphor at this point]]> https://www.salon.com/2018/11/15/south-park-climate-change-manbearpig/ Thu, 15 Nov 2018 16:00:43 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2018/11/15/south-park-climate-change-manbearpig/ If last week’s “South Park” episode was a giant apology to Al Gore for mocking his warnings about global warming, Wednesday night’s episode continued that theme by ridiculing everyone else who refuses to be “cereal” about the existential planetary threat.

Considering that this is an issue which involves much more than Gore’s individual feelings and ambitions, it was a necessary approach — and a comically effective one.

Picking up where the previous story left off, “Nobody Got Cereal?” covers how Stan (Trey Parker), Kyle (Matt Stone), Kenny (Stone) and Cartman (Parker) attempt to clear their names after two of them are falsely accused of perpetrating a school shooting (Kenny and Cartman) and the other two are believed to be helping them escape (Stan and Kyle). The real villain, of course, is ManBearPig, the grotesque human/ursine/porcine hybrid that mauls hapless townsfolk who continue to deny its existence because doing so is so darn inconvenient. As they attempt to alert everyone about the threat, they learn that it was summoned into existence by Stan’s grandfather (Parker) and other elderly townsfolk, who struck a deal with the demonic creature in which it would let them own lots of cool stuff (gas inefficient cars, boutique ice cream) in exchange for returning and murdering millions at some distant future date.

Now the elderly are upset — not because ManBearPig is hurting innocent people but because they assumed they’d be dead before they might have to deal with the consequences of their bargain.

Before getting into the political and social commentary in this episode, it is worth mentioning that a lot of its most effective jokes have nothing to do with global warming. The townspeople’s obsession with the new video game “Red Dead Redemption 2” continues to be a running storyline, and while it felt a tad grating in the first episode, it is taken to such an extreme in this one that it evolves from being amusing to downright chuckle-worthy at times. There is also something gratifying about seeing one of the series’ longest running gags — this one about Satan (Parker) being a rather decent guy, all things considered — brought to a climax where he engages in an absurdly epic fight with ManBearPig. He gets his clock cleaned and dies, of course (though it remains to be seen whether his death, like that of Ned in the previous episode, will be permanent), but seeing angel wings poof out behind him and a halo appear over his head as he ascends to heaven was a nifty sight gag. He is OK with dying for humanity, you see, because as one character puts it, humanity has been following his advice a lot lately. It’s the least he can do.

Yet the most cutting jokes here are the ones about people continuing to deny global warming, with ManBearPig serving as a stand-in. Occasionally Parker and Stone throw a sop to their past as global warming deniers (they insist that some of Al Gore’s predictions were wrong), but for the most part their jabs are at the skeptics. At a town meeting near the start of the episode, a leading citizen has a slideshow that bluntly asks whether the citizens should start to worry. One man points out that ManBearPig has already killed both of his children and destroyed his house, but he still isn’t sure. Later, as “Should We Start to Worry?” premieres as a TV show about ManBearPig, characters find increasingly verbose ways of expressing the same thought: as ManBearPig goes on bloody and horrifying rampages, maybe it’s time to consider the conceptual possibility of worrying about him.

Even a reporter, in the name of being “unbiased,” discusses that the townsfolk are seriously contemplating worrying about him, but insists that we must be fair to the other side which believes that all of this hullabaloo is just for political gain. Before he can finish his bipartisan analysis, ManBearPig arrives and eats him alive.

What makes this joke so effective is that it could actually work about issues other than global warming. The point that Parker and Stone seem to be making, more broadly, is that when people become fiercely divided about a major political or social issue, the instinct is to assume that both sides must have a point. The notion that there are occasions when one side is flat-out right and the other is flat-out wrong goes against our instincts to try to shoot up the middle, and those tendencies are deadly when mistakes have been caused by our baser impulses (in the case of ManBearPig or global warming, greed) and correcting them requires one side (those who recognize science) to prevail over the other (science deniers).

The only real failure of the episode is its handling of the Al Gore subplot. After using the previous story to redeem his character for having been the target of jokes for twelve years, this one mostly uses him for sight gags in which it seems like his ghost is offering words of wisdom — but of course Gore isn’t dead, and so each time it is revealed that he is just using a projector or other technology to seem spooky and ethereal. Because these don’t amount to anything when it comes to the actual story, it feels like Parker and Stone were including Gore more out of a sense of obligation than because they had anything further to say about him. Their last episode was an apology to Gore and had a reason to include him, but this time around he was excess baggage.

That is a minor quibble, though, especially because of the ingenious way that the episode ends. With the South Park boys realizing that they have no choice but to renegotiate the elderly citizens’ contract with ManBearPig, we’re treated to the borderline brilliant sight gag of an evil, Hieronymus Bosch-ian monster — the one that has been ripping out people’s organs with his claws and teeth and leaving blood, gore and mayhem everywhere — dressed in a tidy business suit as he politely whispers reasonable counteroffers to his overly casual attorney. He’s willing to renegotiate, but now he wants the townspeople to give up soy sauce and “Red Dead Redemption 2.” They’re not willing to do it, so the boys settle for letting him murder children in “Third World” countries after a few years so long as they get to keep all of their cool stuff.

It’s an appropriately cynical ending for a series that is at its best when it highlights the worst in humanity. Since the very first season, “South Park” has been unapologetically misanthropic in its outlook, arguing that people are stupid, selfish cowards who will regularly turn down the opportunity to do the right thing in the name of petty instant gratification. It makes sense that they would see global warming denialism as yet another example of how this happens. Ironically enough, though, the fact that Parker and Stone were willing to make a two-part apology for previously being among those narrow-minded deniers demonstrates that there is still some hope for change.

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]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” apologizes to Al Gore and admits it was wrong about global warming]]> https://www.salon.com/2018/11/08/south-park-apologizes-to-al-gore-and-admits-it-was-wrong-about-global-warming/ Thu, 08 Nov 2018 15:29:49 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2018/11/08/south-park-apologizes-to-al-gore-and-admits-it-was-wrong-about-global-warming/ In the new “South Park” episode “Time To Get Cereal,” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone do something particularly brave — they admit that the premise of one of their most famous previous episodes was plumb wrong.

“Time To Get Cereal” is essentially a sequel to the 2006 “South Park” episode “ManBearPig,” which depicted former Vice President Al Gore as an attention-seeking loser who tried to convince the world of the existence of a fictional monster that was “half man, half bear and half pig” in order to feel better about losing the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000. The undeniable subtext, of course, was that man-made climate change — you know, the dire existential threat that the real Gore was warning everyone about — was a hoax, and that Gore himself was a joke.

Trust me, I’m not reading into this. “South Park” had previously mocked the idea of man-made climate change in the 2005 episode “Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow” and had taken smaller pot shots at the idea on subsequent occasions. And considering that Parker and Stone seem to take pride in being iconoclasts who will rip on the left and right with equal glee, one could have made the case that individuals who applaud them for ridiculing Republicans, Christian conservatives and corrupt politicians shouldn’t get upset when they took a swipe at a liberal target.

Except, of course, for the fact that man-made global warming isn’t some left-wing talking point. It is a scientific fact, one that needs to be acknowledged and addressed through intelligent policies to avoid worldwide catastrophe. Denying its reality, particularly when you are a popular comedy show with millions of viewers who interpret your satire as representing a deeper truth, was extremely irresponsible.

This is the point that Parker and Stone made about themselves in “Time To Get Cereal.” The A plot begins when Stan Marsh (Parker) sees Ned Gerblansky (also Parker) get brutally captured and mauled by ManBearPig (whether Ned’s seeming death is permanent remains to be seen). After realizing that this means Gore had been right all along about ManBearPig’s existence, Stan recruits the other South Park boys (Parker’s Eric Cartman and Stone’s Kyle Broflovski and Kenny McCormack) to find Gore and obtain his help in defeating the evil creature.

The catch, though, is that Gore wants them to apologize for making fun of him all those years ago — and if their apology is deemed insufficiently sincere (or “cereal,”), the former vice president will return to his newfound love of bowling.

The scenes of the boys interacting with Gore are very strong, although that has less to do with the story itself and more to do with what Parker and Stone are saying to their former target. It isn’t simply that they have the characters admit that they were wrong; by having them act exasperated and reluctant about needing to do so, as well as depicting Gore as evolving from humiliated hermit to exultant in his moral victory (the real-life Gore has kept a very low profile for years), they seem to depict what an actual conversation between themselves and Gore would look like. It’s a brave and creatively honest thing for them to do, one that serves as a believable mea culpa that is still executed in the funniest way possible. The montage of clips from Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign — as well as the South Park boys tacitly admitting that America would have been better off if he had prevailed in that election — is especially welcome.

The best scene in the episode, though, doesn’t include Gore at all. It occurs in a restaurant where an insufferably smug patron — one who we quickly realize is intended as a stand-in for man-made global warming deniers everywhere — lectures his wife about how ManBearPig couldn’t possibly be real. On cue, of course, ManBearPig enters the restaurant and starts killing all of the diners. Instead of admitting that the death and destruction he sees all around him proves that he was wrong, the man maintains his arrogant demeanor but now insists that this simply means it’s too late to admit that ManBearPig actually exists. And besides, there’s nothing to be done about it anyway, so why point out that he was wrong? And what about the Chinese? And of course . . . CHOMP!

For what it’s worth, the B plot in this episode also works particularly well as social commentary. It continues the running story arc from Season 22 of school shootings becoming so common that residents of South Park barely react to them anymore. This time a child’s death caused by ManBearPig is erroneously attributed to juvenile homicide, and because Cartman and Kenny fit the profile of school shooters (one being an obese sociopath, the other an impoverished loner), they need to prove that ManBearPig is real in order to clear their names.

Yet the standout theme in this episode is undeniably its creators’ apology for having denied man-made global warming in the past. It is not easy for anyone to admit they were wrong about an issue so massive, much less two comedians as high profile as Parker and Stone, and they deserve considerable credit for doing so.

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]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” takes aim at Kavanaugh, Roseanne and “The Simpsons” in “The Problem With a Poo”]]> https://www.salon.com/2018/10/11/south-park-takes-aim-at-kavanaugh-roseanne-and-the-simpsons-in-a-problem-with-a-poo/ Thu, 11 Oct 2018 11:39:41 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2018/10/11/south-park-takes-aim-at-kavanaugh-roseanne-and-the-simpsons-in-a-problem-with-a-poo/ If you compare the most recent episode of “South Park” with its immediate predecessor, you have a case study in the difference between good satire and bad satire. In good satire, there is a clear focus on the subject you’re ridiculing and the message you want to convey about it. While “South Park” achieved this last week with “A Boy and a Priest,” which took on the Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandal, it failed miserably in “The Problem with a Poo” because it didn’t really know what it had to say.

There are two subplots in “The Problem with a Poo,” each of which only tangentially connects with the other one. In Plot A, the talking piece of human feces known as Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo (Trey Parker) learns that the budget for his annual Christmas show has been cut in half. Out of anger, Mr. Hankey begins posting offensive “jokes” on Twitter that only worsen his situation, getting him fired and ultimately resulting in a mass call for him to be run out of town.

As this plot thread proceeds, various references are made to recent celebrity scandals: Mr. Hankey repeatedly blames his offensive jokes on Ambien, similar to comedian Roseanne Barr after her racist tweets about former presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett; he appears in a government hearing and sniffles like then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh while being interrogated by a parody of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; and when Kyle Broflovski (Matt Stone) decides to defend Mr. Hankey by explaining that “I want to stand by my friend,” he is warned by Eric Cartman (Parker) “Let’s see how that goes for you in 2018.”

All of these references could, in theory, add up to a larger point, but it’s unclear what argument (if any) the “South Park” writers were trying to make. Is it condemning Mr. Hankey for making offensive comments, or at least for refusing to take responsibility for his actions? Not likely, considering that Mr. Hankey’s tweets are played for laughs in the classic “South Park” style that revels in excessive vulgarity and deliberately offensive insults.

At the same time, the episode doesn’t necessarily side with Mr. Hankey either. After all, the character has never been depicted as sympathetic or particularly desirous of helping others (something the “South Park” boys comment on when Kyle implores them for help). His insistence that the Christmas show is important seems more motivated by a need to placate his ego than out of genuine feelings of holiday cheer. Finally (spoiler alert), when Mr. Hankey is run out of town by the “South Park” residents who predict that he’ll go to a place where racism is accepted, he relocates to Springfield, the setting of “The Simpsons” — a clear slap at the controversy over the show’s character Apu, as well as the only reference to the documentary “The Problem with Apu” which inspires this episode’s title.

The underlying problem here is a rampant one with American satire these days — namely, that many comedians mistake merely referencing pop culture or news items for actually commenting on them. There are certainly worse offenders than “South Park” in this regard (anyone familiar with the cinematic oeuvre of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, including films like “Date Movie” and “Epic Movie,” knows what I mean), but that doesn’t excuse the laziness of this episode. Simply referencing Roseanne Barr or Brett Kavanaugh is not the same thing as having a point to make about them.

Plot B is more focused than Plot A, although that doesn’t make it any funnier. The premise is simple: Vice Principal Strong Woman (April Stewart) is pregnant with quintuplets as a result of her affair with PC Principal (Parker) and both of them struggle to deal with it. Parker and Stone, who write the show as well as star in it, use this to make two jokes: First, that the two progressive characters can’t cope with being parents because doing so would force them to admit that they had a verboten interoffice romance; and second, that the babies which are eventually born are PC like their father and, as a result, cry at absolutely anything and everything that is even mildly offensive (a Speedy Gonzalez shirt, a Monica Lewinsky joke, absolutely nothing at all).

Unlike Plot A, Plot B does have a clear target in its sight and a point that it wants to make. The problem, however, is that none of those jokes actually land. It isn’t nearly as edgy or subversive to mock political correctness as the “South Park” scribes seem to believe (Comedy Central is full of comedians who have made their careers specializing in precisely that), and while that doesn’t make it impossible to mine new material from this particular ore, the jokes have to be original or at least clever to be effective. This “South Park” episode simply repeats the timeworn notion that political correctness makes people too sensitive, but it doesn’t have any fresh spin on that idea.

Contrast this with “A Boy and a Priest.” In that episode, both Plot A and Plot B revolve around the same theme. Father Maxi (Stone) is tired of being ridiculed during Sunday church ceremonies because of the Catholic Church’s sex scandals and struggles with shame over having known about the abuses and not doing more to stop them. Plot A involves his efforts to bond with Butters (Stone), the one person in the community who still has respect for the church, while Plot B involves the efforts of three decidedly creepy Catholic clergymen to cover up for Father Maxi after the townspeople grow restless over his decision to close the church and they wrongly assume that he has committed sex abuse.

Here Parker and Stone had a clear idea of the subject they wanted to ridicule (the Catholic Church) and what they wanted to say (that it can serve a legitimate spiritual function but needs to clamp down on the abuses of its members). Once again, this isn’t exactly a bold or controversial position, but “South Park” manages to make their episode work by presenting it in a surprisingly powerful way. When Father Maxi admits that he was aware of the sexual abuse in the church and did nothing to stop it, this is more than a reference to the controversial 2002 episode “Red Hot Catholic Love.” It is a way of acknowledging that the knowing bystanders are, in their own way, just as guilty as the active perpetrators.

As a result, when Plots A and B intersect in the end with Father Maxi gruesomely murdering the priests trying to cover up his non-existent crimes, Parker and Stone provide catharsis for the viewers (who want to see these despicable characters pay the price) even as they teach a deeper lesson (redemption is possible when you recognize your mistakes and work to fix them). By the end, when Father Maxi is back in church and forced to once more listen to the snarky jokes of his parishioners, he doesn’t seem to mind anymore; he realizes that perhaps, on some level, this is also a price he must pay for not having done more.

Given that “South Park” has been going for 22 seasons, it’s understandable that not every episode it produces will be a winner. Nevertheless, it’s disappointing that Parker and Stone couldn’t have done more with the rich material given to them by the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, which the commercials led audiences to believe were going to be the focus of the story. Since Kavanaugh is actually barely referenced, one could make a complaint about false advertising. But if “The Problem with a Poo” had been funny, that wouldn’t have mattered.

The post “South Park” takes aim at Kavanaugh, Roseanne and “The Simpsons” in “The Problem With a Poo” appeared first on Salon.com.

]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” airs child abuse episode, Catholic League president slams Trey Parker and Matt Stone]]> https://www.salon.com/2018/10/08/south-park-airs-child-abuse-episode-catholic-league-president-slams-trey-parker-and-matt-stone_partner/ Mon, 08 Oct 2018 11:30:07 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2018/10/08/south-park-airs-child-abuse-episode-catholic-league-president-slams-trey-parker-and-matt-stone_partner/ “South Park” is being targeted by Catholic League President Bill Donohue following the airing of “A Boy and a Priest,” the second episode of the show’s 22nd season. The installment aired October 3 on Comedy Central and addressed child molestation scandals within the Catholic Church. Donohue issued a memo on the Catholic League’s official website (via The Wrap) condemning creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

“The October 3rd episode of ‘South Park,’ titled ‘A Boy and a Priest,’ portrayed molesting priests as pedophiles. This is factually inaccurate: almost all the molesters–8 in 10–have been homosexuals,” Donohue’s statement reads. “Therefore, the cartoon-victim characters should have been depicted as adolescents, not kids. In Hollywood, the creators of ‘South Park,’ Trey Parker and Matt Stone, are seen as courageous. They are really cowards. It takes courage to tell the truth.”

Read more IndieWire: ‘South Park’ Review: Season 22 Premiere Mocks Americans’ Indifference to Gun Violence and ‘Dead Kids’

“A Boy and a Priest” centered around the friendship between Butters and Father Maxi, the local South Park priest who is being ridiculed by the townspeople over the Catholic Church’s history of sex abuse. Father Maxi’s relationship with Butters does his reputation no favors and prompts the Denver Archdiocese to send a cleanup crew of ordained church officials to South Park in order to remove any traces of child molestation.

“South Park” is often at the center of controversy given its reputation for tackling controversial subject matter. Parker and Stone previously took on Catholic Church sex abuse scandals in the 2002 episode “Red Hot Catholic Love.”

Read more IndieWire: ‘South Park’ Review: A Scathing Premiere Derides White Americans for Protecting White Supremacists

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]]> <![CDATA[Why “South Park” is perfectly armed to fight the alt-right]]> https://www.salon.com/2017/09/15/why-south-park-is-better-armed-than-anyone-to-fight-the-alt-right/ Fri, 15 Sep 2017 22:59:01 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2017/09/15/why-south-park-is-better-armed-than-anyone-to-fight-the-alt-right/ “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are harboring a dirty secret: Much of their audience, the 18- to 34-year-old demographic, overlaps with a certain young, male, white slice of President Donald Trump’s base. You know, the ones who troll liberals online and proudly rock MAGA hats in public.

It is perhaps the reality of this ugly Venn diagram that led Parker and Stone to announce that “South Park’s” 21st season, which debuted last Wednesday on Comedy Central, would avoid satirizing the president. In an interview with Bill Simmons, the cartoonists claimed that they had grown tired of mocking Trump, whom they compared to a monkey “running himself into the wall over and over.”

While Trump has been low-hanging fruit for comedians, a particularly nasty segment of the president’s base is no laughing matter. Known as the alt-right, these online trolls get a kick out of transgressing liberal sensibilities. They not only dabble in sexism and anti-Semitism; they have built an aesthetic based on white supremacy and claims of reverse racism. Founded and subsequently nurtured on 4chan and other anonymous online communities, the alt-right gleefully breaks modern-day taboos as a form of protest against normative ideals.

It is this counterculture that can often be found in “South Park” — especially in the earlier seasons. “South Park” created a cult following through an unabashed, irreverent humor that spared nothing and no one. Indeed, the show has even been labeled “racist” for its abuse of ethnic stereotypes. Hell, one of its few black characters is named Token.

The alt-right revels in what they see as an unapologetic contempt for all that others deem holy. In truth, the creators are far more nuanced and progressive than most give them credit for. Token, for instance, amplifies the fact that, yep, TV shows employ token, often one-dimensional characters of color in a practice that is often more a disservice to underrepresented groups than a benefit to them. Still, parker and Stone cannot deny that “South Park” has fans in the some of the darkest, most hateful corners of the internet.

When the duo said it would no longer parody Trump on their show, The_Donald subreddit, an online basket for the president’s “deplorables,” rejoiced over the news. “Fuck yea. Finally looking forward to a new season of South Park,” one Reddit user said. “Its only fun when the snowflakes get bashed [sic],” another user chimed in. “THEY LIVE! Matt Stone and Trey Parker are COMING BACK TO REALITY!,” an enthusiastic redditor proclaimed.

While this decision appeased Trump’s base, Parker and Stone absolutely did not preclude them from the scope of their ridicule.

In the season premiere on Wednesday, Parker and Stone set their sights on a big sector of Trump fans — the kind of white, blue-collar voters who blame everyone but themselves for their economic status. The episode, which Deadline called a “subtle takedown of white supremacists,” had two narratives: the town’s Confederate flag-waving rednecks protesting Amazon’s Alexa for taking their jobs, and Randy’s feud with the protestors for disrupting the set of his HGTV-inspired TV show, “White People Renovating Houses.”

Randy concocts a plan to replace all Alexas in town with the aggrieved white nationalists, thereby ending the Confederate-themed demonstrations. When one of the protestors refuses, calling the labor demeaning, Randy fumes, “Sorry you didn’t go to college so you have to take the jobs you can get. Coal mining and truck driving are not exactly jobs of the future. You’re stuck in another time.” The protestor runs off, yelling, “Muslims trying to kill us, black people rioting, Mexicans having babies – I say, ‘Kill ’em all!'”

The political satire was admittedly muddled, but it succeeded in crystallizing the absurdity of white, blue-collar entitlement. The target of the premiere was older Americans, those who have seen the new economy pass them by. Yet “South Park” has an unusual opportunity in future episodes to use its comedy to enlighten young, disenchanted white men who have embraced the alt-right ideology.

Parker and Stone did not create “South Park” to push a political agenda. The self-described libertarians are in it for the jokes. They also likely despise liberals as much as these new-age conservatives — a healthy, fair position. But because “South Park” spares nobody its scorn, Parker and Stone can — and perhaps should — do the country a solid and employ the alt-right’s tactless humor against them. As a Trojan horse, “South Park” can finally demonstrate to members of the alt-right just how pathetic and ultimately self-destructive their dead-end worldview is. They’re watching, after all.

Although the alt-right frequently bemoans the liberal bubble, they are just as guilty of confining themselves to their favorite channels. “South Park” has been a safe space for the alt-right since its inception. It would be only appropriate if the show turned around and devoured its own viewers.

The post Why “South Park” is perfectly armed to fight the alt-right appeared first on Salon.com.

]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” hits Tiki torch-wielding, Confederate flag-waving white nationalists]]> https://www.salon.com/2017/09/12/south-park-hits-tiki-torch-wielding-confederate-flag-waving-white-nationalists/ Tue, 12 Sep 2017 18:52:58 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2017/09/12/south-park-hits-tiki-torch-wielding-confederate-flag-waving-white-nationalists/ Yes, it’s time for another season of Comedy Central’s “South Park” — its 21st! — and thus time to watch creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone pull their subjects straight from the headlines and melt them under their withering gaze. The first episode for the season, which kicks off this Wednesday at 10 p.m., takes on — what else? — the Confederate battle flag-waving, tiki torch-sporting know-nothings of the white supremacist movement. You’re welcome.

For those familiar with the series, the premiere episode — “White People Building Houses” — takes the familiar “They terk ‘er jerbs” crowd and elides them with the pungent vitriol of the white nationalist movement that became both highly visible and tragically deadly in Charlottesville, Virginia, last month. While we don’t have a full synopsis of the episode — or even a full trailer — we do have a short description from Comedy Central that reads, “Protestors armed with tiki torches and confederate flags take to the streets of South Park. Randy comes to grips with what it means to be white in today’s society.” Solid.

Take a whiff below:

The verisimilitude is chilling, no?

Satirization of Confederate “Lost Cause” worship is actually not new territory for Parker and Stone. In the 2000 season 4 episode, “Chef Goes Nanners,” the boys and Chef fought to replace the old, honored town flag with a newer, more inclusive symbol. While not the Stars and Bars, the South Park flag did depict four white stickmen hanging a black one. Subtlety has never been a feature on “South Park.”

How very topical.

Let’s see how the boys and the town fares with the new resurgence of white nationalism when the show comes back this Wednesday at 10 p.m.

The post “South Park” hits Tiki torch-wielding, Confederate flag-waving white nationalists appeared first on Salon.com.

]]> <![CDATA[The creators of “South Park,” like so many other comedians, just don’t find President Trump funny anymore]]> https://www.salon.com/2017/02/03/the-creators-of-south-park-like-so-many-other-comedians-just-dont-find-president-trump-funny-anymore/ Sat, 04 Feb 2017 00:50:00 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2017/02/03/the-creators-of-south-park-like-so-many-other-comedians-just-dont-find-president-trump-funny-anymore/ “South Park” has been around to spoof the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. When it comes to Donald Trump, though, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone aren’t sure they can keep up.

“It’s really tricky now, because satire has kind of become reality. So it is really hard to make fun of, and we actually just had the last season of ‘South Park’ ended a month and a half ago. We were really trying to make fun of what was going on, but we couldn’t keep up,” Parker said on Australia’s “7:30” TV show.

“It was like what was actually happening was way funnier than anything we could come up with. So we just decided to back off and let them do their comedy and we’ll do ours.” Stone said, “People say to us all the time you know like, ‘Oh, you guys are getting all this good material.’ We’re happy about some of the stuff that’s happening. But I don’t know if that’s true. It doesn’t feel that way.”This isn’t the first time that the creators of “South Park” have had an uncharacteristically somber reaction to the Trump phenomenon, which they parodied on their show by using perennial character Herbert Garrison as a Trump stand-in. During an interview with Vulture in July, Stone explained that he felt there was an important difference between the show’s opposition to political correctness in comedy and the anti-PC arguments being used to justify Trump’s brazen campaign rhetoric.

“Comedians especially, that’s probably where we identify and have the most sympathy with anti-PC forces, is within comedy,” Stone told Vulture. “Not talking to people or trying to get elected. That’s a different standard. There’s shit that you shouldn’t say running for president that [character Eric] Cartman should totally be allowed to say within a satirical cartoon. When I see a politician or a Donald Trump say ‘political correctness,’ I’m like, ‘That’s not the same shit that we’re talking about in the writers’ room. There’s satire over here in cartoons, and you’re standing onstage in a suit and you want me to vote for you.’ Different standard, you know?”

Other comedians have expressed similar views on Trump since his election in November.

“I honestly don’t know how to talk about it,” Janeane Garofolo told Salon in January. “I don’t have jokes — you can’t parody it, because it’s self-parody. And it’s just so tense.” Later, she told an audience during one of her stand-up routines, “I don’t have jokes about it because if you’re a reasonable person who has any emotional intelligence or empathy of any kind, there’s a void. I’m bereft.”

Another comedian, Joe List, told Salon that he has been avoiding discussing Trump because “if you’re pro-Trump then that’s not somebody who I’m really interested in engaging with.” As put by Joe Harary, the manager at the comedy club The Stand, “Before the election there were a lot of jokes about Trump, and after the election it kind of fizzled out because they did so much of it.”

 

The post The creators of “South Park,” like so many other comedians, just don’t find President Trump funny anymore appeared first on Salon.com.

]]> <![CDATA[“South Park” still has teeth: 20 seasons in, the cartoon’s irreverent insights keep landing]]> https://www.salon.com/2016/09/14/south-park-still-has-teeth-20-seasons-in-the-cartoons-irreverent-insights-keep-landing/ Wed, 14 Sep 2016 23:34:00 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2016/09/14/south-park-still-has-teeth-20-seasons-in-the-cartoons-irreverent-insights-keep-landing/ My first reaction upon seeing one of the stills that Comedy Central released prior to “South Park’s” 20th-season premiere was, “Oh boy, here we go.” The picture in question shows Cartman, the show’s pudgy embodiment of selfishness, prejudice and cowardice, wearing a T-shirt that reads, “Token’s Life Matters.”

Said remark doesn’t mean I’m expecting tonight’s episode, titled “Member Berries,” to be worthless or outstanding. Truth be told, I expect to tune in at 10 p.m. with a combination of anticipation and maybe a slight touch of dread on behalf of Token, the only black boy at South Park Elementary. That also means “South Park” is still doing its job and doing it well.

Rarely do we have any idea of what any new episode of “South Park” is going to be about. The fact that Comedy Central released a couple of photos and two preview clips is a small miracle. But the previews indicate the Black Lives Matter movement is top of mind among the well-intentioned denizens of mostly white South Park, Colorado.

It will likely fall to Stan, Kyle and Kenny to sift through whatever ill-conceived stupidity is dreamed up by the town’s adults, including the promised plot point of an American icon rebooting the national anthem, informed by San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s protest.

A trailer released yesterday on YouTube included a segment of this new anthem, which is lacking the original’s poetry.

Consider its lyrics: “Colin Kaepernick is brave/ Cops are pigs, cops are pigs/ Wait, someone just took my stuff/ I need to call the cops./ Oh no, I just said cops are pigs/ Who’s gonna help me get my stuff?/ Why did I listen to Colin Kaepernick?/ He’s not even any good./ Oh, I just got my stuff back/ Cops are pigs again, cops are pigs/ Colin Kapernick’s a good backup.”

“South Park” has never favored subtlety, and it’s no secret that Parker and Stone vehemently detest any group’s attempt to impose specific behaviors and politics on the masses.

That viewpoint gelled in Season 19’s serialized arc, written and directed by Parker, which introduced a muscle-bound hyper-liberal bro named PC Principal, while also making points about the insidious creep of gentrification and exposing the snobbery of urban progressives. One gag involved Cartman’s mounting an all-out assault on the principal using pregnant Mexican women, Syrian child refugees and a very handsy Jared Fogel as his ground forces.

But that anthem segment cogently models the animated series’ successful method of attacking hot-button issues, pandering to no particular view but those of creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Its lyrics are aggressively unclear about being for or against Kaepernick’s protest. Instead they capture the sense of the dominant culture’s confusion surrounding what this modern civil rights push is about, how to be an ally and whether doing so means being anti-police. (By the way, it doesn’t.)

Casual fans may be used to Parker and Stone’s unapologetically hyperbolic approach to satirizing extremes by now, but the two have also earned a level of trust at this point that each half hour’s outlandish jumble of commentary and metaphoric gags will distill into a nugget of keen, oddly sensible insight.

This is why “South Park” still has teeth, if not edge, nearly two decades into its existence. Conservatives and liberals have claimed and rejected the show with equal vehemence, as have practitioners of just about every religion; it’s still banned in India.

But repeats, syndication and streaming services have made Comedy Central’s second-longest running series ubiquitous enough that those rejections don’t even register. Casual viewers enter each new visit to “South Park” hoping to be shocked, tickled and left speechless, and tonight should be no different. People holding onto any perceived slights tossed in their direction might as well not watch at all.

The post “South Park” still has teeth: 20 seasons in, the cartoon’s irreverent insights keep landing appeared first on Salon.com.

]]> <![CDATA[“Someone quit ‘South Park’ on Isaac Hayes’ behalf. We don’t know who”: 5 things we learned from THR’s “South Park” oral history]]> https://www.salon.com/2016/09/14/someone-quit-south-park-on-isaac-hayes-behalf-we-dont-know-who-5-things-we-learned-from-thrs-south-park-oral-history/ Wed, 14 Sep 2016 23:25:00 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2016/09/14/someone-quit-south-park-on-isaac-hayes-behalf-we-dont-know-who-5-things-we-learned-from-thrs-south-park-oral-history/ Comedy Central’s “South Park” begins its 20th season on Wednesday night. Ahead of the episode, The Hollywood Reporter interviewed creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker as well as several others with varying degrees of affiliation with the show over its 19 seasons.

Here are five things we learned:

1. Isaac Hayes — who voiced the character Chef until it was rumored he’d quit the show after taking exception to a Season 9 episode satirizing Scientology — didn’t actually leave on his own volition, according to his son, Isaac Hayes III.

“What happened was that in January 2006 my dad had a stroke and lost the ability to speak,” Hayes III clarified. “He really didn’t have that much comprehension, and he had to relearn to play the piano and a lot of different things. He was in no position to resign under his own knowledge. At the time, everybody around my father was involved in Scientology — his assistants, the core group of people. So someone quit ‘South Park’ on Isaac Hayes’ behalf. We don’t know who.”

2. The show’s pilot, “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe,” took “60 or 70 days” to complete. “Every day we would be in Celluloid Studios in Denver — it was a slow time there,” Stone said. “It was summer, so they just gave us the keys and we camped out there.”

3. The band Primus recorded the theme song. And then a reluctant lead singer Les Claypool had to rerecord his vocals because Comedy Central said it was “too slow and not peppy enough.”

“So they just sped it up and I redid my vocals,” Claypool explained. “I believe I was playing Red Rocks [in Morrison, Colo.] and they sent one of their old high school chums up with a handheld tape recorder, and I just did my vocals into that.”

4. Casa Bonita,  a Mexican restaurant heavily featured in a Season 7 episode of the same name,  is a real place.

“Four years ago, it came up for sale and we had 10 minutes of like, ‘We should buy it,’ because they do have a few things up there now where they’re like, this is the ‘South Park’ Casa Bonita,” Parker said. “There are people who go to Casa Bonita because of ‘South Park.'”

5. Until relatively recently, Coloradans were the most ardent “South Park” critics.

“For a long time, Coloradans were the people and reporters who did not like us,” Parker explained. “If you look back, reviews of the ‘South Park’ movie are almost 95 percent positive; the negatives were The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News.”

Read the full oral history of “South Park” on The Hollywood Reporter.

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]]> <![CDATA[Always brash, “South Park” gets brave: From kids with guns to the P.C. principal, this was their most compelling — and self-aware — season]]> https://www.salon.com/2015/12/10/always_brash_south_park_gets_brave_from_kids_with_guns_to_the_p_c_principal_this_was_their_most_compelling_and_self_aware_season/ Thu, 10 Dec 2015 18:45:00 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2015/12/10/always_brash_south_park_gets_brave_from_kids_with_guns_to_the_p_c_principal_this_was_their_most_compelling_and_self_aware_season/ In terms of the lifespan of the show, the most revolutionary aspect of “South Park”’s 19th season, which ended last night, is that it told just one story. “South Park,” the long-running adult cartoon on Comedy Central, is not typically a show that goes for serialization, but this past season has fit together in one long arc, albeit a rather embellished one. The show, currently helmed by co-creator Trey Parker, is infamous for its short turnaround time; episodes are often finished just days before air, theoretically so that the show can be as relevant as possible. Season 19 showcases a combination of approaches. An arc was planned in advance for the whole season; then certain topical subjects were threaded into individual episodes. In “Naughty Ninjas,” the kids unwittingly scare off homeless squatters by adopting costume and behavior that makes them look like ISIS; later, protestors that use the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter protestors, but are a collection of bougie white people, rally against police misconduct. (They all fail to recognize that the problem might be that a SWAT team was called in to deal with a fourth-grader talking too much during assembly.) In the season premiere, Cartman and Butters somehow find a bunch of Syrian refugee children and deploy them at their rivals; later, in “Safe Space,” a cavalcade of South Park residents (and… Demi Lovato?) wander through a destitute camp of starving children, leveraging the scene’s tragedy for their own selfish reasons.

Last night’s episode, “PC Principal,” is likely the most horrifically topical of the season, and it could have been written a year ago: Everyone in South Park gets a gun, from the kids in elementary school to the gray-haired city officials. It’s not even really part of the story, which is about Kyle’s plotting against this season’s PC Principal, a bro who loudly and aggressively pushes tolerance and compassion. “We have to get guns,” Kyle says to his friends, in the boys’ bathroom. “It’s the only way for us to be safe.” “Kyle,” Cartman responds, “even if we thought they could help protect us, how are we all going to get guns?” Cut to Kenny, Butters, Cartman, and Kyle each holding a firearm. Kenny’s got not just one, but two handguns; Butters is carrying something more shotgun in appearance. “Cool,” Cartman says, checking his sights. “We got guns.” “I already feel a lot safer,” Butters squeaks.

Because they are all under the age of 10, these deadly weapons do not immediately get used for their coup against oppressive bureaucracy. Instead, Cartman pulls a handgun on his mom when she tells him to go to bed. She’s hurt (emotionally), scolding him both for having a gun and for aiming one at her. But then from the pocket of her robe she pulls out her own firearm. Both parties, engaged in a stalemate, shout that they love each other and hastily retreat. Minutes later, when the kids are searching for the safest place in town, they immediately decide on the gun show; after all, when more people are armed, we’re all safer. The gun show turns out to be a gun version of the Westminster Kennel Club’s dog show. Instead of trotting around hounds and Labradors, the participants prance about with their “shotgun-rifle mix” or their “playful and lovely Australian semiautomatic,” tossing treats, submitting to examination from the judges, and bowing to polite golf claps.

But for every moment of brilliance that “South Park” demonstrates, it offers one of indefensible grossness, whether that’s the perplexing visual depiction of Caitlyn Jenner throughout this season (in stark contrast to the textual depiction of her, which is a lot smarter) or the minutes-long song at the end of “You’re Not Yelping” that shows in vivid detail restaurant workers smearing snot, feces, and semen on the food of disliked customers. The moments of zany genius the show accesses are weighed down almost immediately by the grotesque.

It is a combination that has made Trey Parker and co-creator Matt Stone millions and millions of dollars—the Hollywood Reporter notes that sales of “South Park” t-shirts alone made $30 million in the ‘90s. Even at its least incisive, “South Park” is perennially relevant, because of the enormous pull it still has with its largely young and male audience. (There is a kind of everlasting youth for dick jokes.) And the main reason “South Park” plays so well with that segment of the population is because “South Park” never, ever, gives any fucks. The one black student at the elementary school is dubbed “Token,” the female characters are either children, moms, or wearing thongs, and Parker and Stone have ridiculed Scientologists and depicted the Prophet Muhammad, among numerous other well-documented controversies. James Poniewozik at the New York Times called “South Park” a kind of Charlie Hebdo for American animation, and that’s a great way of framing the ethos of the show—privileged men who loudly claim to be equal-opportunity offenders and obviously aren’t anything of the kind. “South Park” is smart, but it has the ethos of the asshole.

Whether or not Parker and Stone are motivated by self-loathing or self-congratulation seems to be in the eye of the beholder; certainly, the wall of text that immediately precedes the show’s opening credits declares that “due to its content it should not be viewed by anyone.” But in this 19th season, the self-loathing—and maybe something on the other side of that, like self-awareness—are more palpable than ever. In addition to opting for serialization, “South Park” this season has appeared to ask more questions of itself than ever before—and though those questions are asked in characteristically loopy, vulgar, and inconclusive ways, the questions are still there, hanging in the air, brought up by the show itself. The season-long arc follows the hiring of a new principal for South Park Elementary—the aforementioned PC Principal—who brings with him a wave of change. The residents of South Park learn about social justice, sort of.

So, from the season 19 premiere onward, political correctness is positioned in the show in some surprising ways. I’ve read a couple of critics—specifically at TV Guide and the A.V. Club—argue that “South Park”’s intended goal with this politically correct bro scene is to offer a thinly veiled middle finger to the notion the “PC police.” I don’t agree; it reads as genuinely more fraught to my eyes. The primary destabilizing element is that the PC principal—and his fraternity of PC bros, which has to turn an omega on its side to look like a “c,” because there is no “c” in Greek—is technically, macho-ly, kind of cool. Not quite as devil-may-care as the show’s guiding force of trolling nihilism, sure. But not easily dismissed, either. The aesthetic of the show privileges the violent and outsize, both visually and sonically, with its color-blocked animation style and purposefully tinny voices. Which is to say, it privileges the masculine. In the mouths of any other characters, feminism would be a joke before it evaporated from the air. Here, in the mouths of these charming and somewhat doofy bros, it’s both a commentary on co-optation and on masculinity, with the added comedic benefit of a bunch of tough guys being really aggressively nice, because machismo.

Indeed, it’s one of the season’s great comedic coups, that 99 percent of the people who argue for sensitivity, safe spaces, and respect for underprivileged and marginalized experiences are almost exclusively fratty white bros, who put political correctness, working out, and “pussy-crushing” on about the same level of enjoyment. Similarly, one of the season’s bizarre moments of brilliance is that regulars Kyle and Cartman seem to occasionally get the limitations of their worldview. “We’re two privileged straight white boys who have their laughs about things we never had to deal with,” Cartman says at one point. It’s almost as if Parker and Stone are making some belated explanations for their own behavior.

The PC Principal’s appointment sparks a wave of liberal-ish change in South Park, including a heated discussion over illegal immigration—of Canadians, natch—and changing aspirations for the average citizen of the small Colorado town. Regular character Randy, among others, becomes obsessed with the idea of validating their hipness with the ultimate in bourgeois accessories: a Whole Foods. The campaign for the Whole Foods leads to a spate of urban gentrification, including one revitalized neighborhood now called Shi Tpa Town. The Whole Foods-centric comedy is reliably great throughout the season, and carries through to the final episode, when Whole Foods turns out to be an act of alien aggression against the survival of humanity (which, sure).

And again, though the season is dogged with frustrations that are not funny so much as cruel—of the four non-kid, non-mom women in the show, three are depicted exclusively in bondage-wear or lingerie, and the fourth is a grotesquely caricatured Caitlyn Jenner—there is a glimmer of something beyond purely despising human frailty. Whether it is the kids dressing as ninjas and inadvertently looking like ISIS, or advertisements preying on the Whole Foods-addled minds of the South Park residents to lull them into a false state of corporate security, the common thread of this season of “South Park” is less a fear of ideology and more a fear of the oversimplification, misunderstanding, and co-optation of ideology. The show has always prided itself on skewering idiocy and individuals, not groups and identities. This might be the first time that I actually believe that argument. After all, the season’s uber-villain turned out to be that bratty little girl who talked through PC Principal’s awareness assemblies. This, after Butters is nearly killed by the sheer volume of hate speech he has to wade through on the Internet.

I’m not sure, though; it’s entirely possible that this season 19 was just a weird experiment, and season 20 (which has already been greenlit by Comedy Central) will be a return to grosser form. “South Park” despises easy answers, and that in itself makes it a show that people come back to, nearly two decades after its debut. Still, I found myself surprisingly moved by the last lines of the finale. As the aliens take back their Whole Foods, Randy yells, “We built a better town. We didn’t need you to do that. And we’ll keep trying to make it better!” And as PC Principal declares a war against the aliens, but also, against hate speech—“we are at war, but the only way to win this war is to be as understanding, non-biased, and politically correct as possible”—Stan looks left and right at Kenny, Cartman, Butters, and Kyle. “This is going to be really hard.”

South Park Depicts Donald Trump Being Brutally Murdered

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]]> <![CDATA[“Heads up, Quentin Tarantino”: Fox News’ Bolling ominously warns “everyone thinks they don’t need a cop until they do”]]> https://www.salon.com/2015/11/13/heads_up_quentin_tarantino_fox_news_bolling_ominously_warns_everyone_thinks_they_dont_need_a_cop_until_they_do/ Fri, 13 Nov 2015 20:10:00 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2015/11/13/heads_up_quentin_tarantino_fox_news_bolling_ominously_warns_everyone_thinks_they_dont_need_a_cop_until_they_do/ Days after the head of the largest police union in the country issued a threat to filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, warning that “something is in the works” after the director dared to speak out against police brutality, Fox News Eric Bolling followed suit, reminding Tarantino that “everyone thinks they don’t need a cop until they do.”

Bolling, co-host of “The Five,” has repeatedly railed against Tarantino for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. Tarantino has recently come under conservative fire after speaking at an anti-police brutality protest last month.

“Remember the two guys who were executed over here in Brooklyn? In days after that, that protest. People, as Dana [Perino] points out, people look up to Quentin Tarantino,” Bolling asked during a recent show. “They look up to Hollywood actors and directors, and it feeds into that narrative. Cop violence is going up.”

On Thursday’s edition of “The Five,” Bolling, once again, had an opportunity to strike Tarantino, this time by praising another most unlikely Hollywood staple, South Park, for highlighting the dangers of criticizing the police. On Wednesday’s episode, the animated residents of South Park decide to oust cops in their town, otherwise known as “racist, trigger-happy assholes” but find themselves helplessly run amok without police protection.

The Fox News hosts loved South Park’s implicit endorsement of the so-called war on cops narrative and the chilling effect of anti-police brutality protest. “Sometimes you have to educate the ignorant through cartoon so they can understand,” co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle remarked, applauding the show.

“Nice job, guys. You nailed it! Everyone thinks they don’t need a cop until they do,” Bolling proclaimed, adding, “Heads up, Quentin Tarantino.”

Police unions across the country have already called for a boycott of Tarantino’s new film “The Hateful Eight,” but last week the head of the largest police union in the country upped the ante. “Tarantino has made a good living out of violence and surprise,” Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police told the Hollywood Reporter last week. “Our officers make a living trying to stop violence, but surprise is not out of the question.”

“Something is in the works, but the element of surprise is the most important element,” says Pasco. “Something could happen anytime between now and [the premiere]. And a lot of it is going to be driven by Tarantino, who is nothing if not predictable.”

Watch Bolling’s warning to Tarantino:

The post “Heads up, Quentin Tarantino”: Fox News’ Bolling ominously warns “everyone thinks they don’t need a cop until they do” appeared first on Salon.com.

]]> <![CDATA[Rand Paul’s conservative “derp”: Racism in Baltimore could be fixed if we lower taxes on businesses]]> https://www.salon.com/2015/06/10/rand_pauls_conservative_derp_racism_in_baltimore_could_be_fixed_if_we_lower_taxes_on_businesses/ Wed, 10 Jun 2015 18:47:00 +0000 https://www.salon.com/2015/06/10/rand_pauls_conservative_derp_racism_in_baltimore_could_be_fixed_if_we_lower_taxes_on_businesses/ In his column on Monday, the New York Times’ Paul Krugman denounced what he called a conservative penchant for “derp,” a term of art economists borrowed from “South Park” to refer to “people who keep saying the same thing no matter how much evidence accumulates that it’s completely wrong.”

Tuesday night, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) appeared at a fundraiser for the Baltimore County Republicans and, according to Rebecca Leber at the New Republic, demonstrated just how strongly the Republican field of presidential candidates has embraced “derpitude” as a guiding principle.

As expected, Paul walked back comments he made in the wake of the civil unrest that followed the death of Freddie Gray. Instead of railing against “thuggery and thievery” and joking about how he was “glad” his campaign wasn’t stopping in Charm City anytime soon, Paul told the largely white crowd that he “understand[s] where some of the anger [in the black community] is coming from.”

He went so far as to acknowledge his own privilege and the role it may have played in his initial comments about what happened in Ferguson and Baltimore. “I didn’t grow up poor — I grew up middle class, or upper middle class. This is me learning about how other people have to deal with life,” he said. “So the thing is until you walk in someone else’s shoes, we shouldn’t say that we can’t understand the anger in people.”

“The Democrats have utterly failed our inner cities, and utterly failed the poor,” Paul said. “Don’t let them tell us it wasn’t them. A lot of these policies came from Bill Clinton. In Ferguson, for every 100 black women, there are 60 black men. That’s because 40 are incarcerated. Am I saying they did nothing wrong and it’s all racism? No. What I am telling you is that white kids don’t get the same justice.”

But the siren song of his party’s “derp” proved irresistible, and so instead of confronting the city’s struggle with systemic racism — a struggle that was in no way ended by the election of black officials, as Paul and other conservatives argue — he proposed the same solution he would’ve proposed to any problem anywhere: “We lower the taxes on the business people so they hire more people.”

As Krugman said, “[f]ighting the derp can be hard, not least because it can upset friends who want to be reassured in their beliefs. But you should do it anyway: it’s your civic duty.” If that’s true, Paul’s failed to do his — and did so spectacularly.

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