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"Basically, for every stance they’ve gotten right—like this past season when they refused to back down to China—there’s another one that’s aged like a bowl of C
by ksdale 6y ago
"Basically, for every stance they’ve gotten right—like this past season when they refused to back down to China—there’s another one that’s aged like a bowl of Cheesy Poofs left out in the rain."
It's never felt to me like South Park was trying to be right about anything. I think of them more as a court jester, they play a role where they mock everything, all the time. The mocking is the point. Getting it right is irrelevant (my take, anyway).
When you mock everything, though, you will naturally convince a lot of people that everything is equally worth mocking (which may necessitate, say, readdressing climate change).
- Trasmatta 6y agoYeah, I think this is right on. And I feel like there's some value in that -- pointing out the hypocrisies and flaws in even the best causes can be useful. Nothing should be above criticism. There are some negative side effects of leaning too hard into that though, I think, like you mentioned in your last paragraph.
- Tiltowait-- 6y agoSlaying sacred cows is all fun and games and everyone loves South Park for it. Right up until the point at which your own sacred cows are slaughtered. Then suddenly it's not funny any more. Blaspheming the sacred has long been grounds for jesters to be fired or beheaded, even though that is the jester's role in society. It's still funny, you just don't like being ridiculed. Which is proof positive that your sacred cows must be ridiculed as much as possible.
- Dylan16807 6y agoThat seems really reductive. Not all campaigns of slaying sacred cows are the same, and there are a lot of ways it can be biased, some of them bad. > just don't like being ridiculed. Which is proof positive that your sacred cows must be ridiculed "You're being defensive, therefore you're wrong." That's nothing more than an insulting fallacy, where the person saying it gets to feel morally superior and always right. There's no possible response, either they admit defeat or they 'prove you right'.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Tiltowait-- 6y ago>Not all campaigns of slaying sacred cows are the same Yeah. Your sacred cows are not OK to ridicule, but when it's The Other, definitely their sacred cows should be ridiculed, and it's hilarious. But what happens when you get classified in the Outgroup? Suddenly the shoe's on the other foot and you don't like it one bit. Maybe tolerance and understanding towards The Other is the answer. Whether The Other is communists or people who live in middle America.
- Dylan16807 6y agoAgain, you're just being insulting. "If you object, then you MUST be motivated by it being 'your cow' and NEVER correct" is a very stupid thing to say. Stop being so smug and think it through! If one person goes after cows ABCDEF, and the other person goes after cows ACCCDC, there's a significant difference between the two. Someone complaining about the latter is not automatically wrong, unjustifiably mad that their cows got slayed.
- nmfisher 6y agoI’ve always taken that to be the implicit lesson - that there should be no such thing as a sacred cow. Every opinion must be open for discussion, debate and yes, even ridicule.
- dehrmann 6y agoLike the time they did Scientology and Isaac Hayes quit?
- sharadov 6y agoBut isn't that what comedy is all about - you make fun of everything, the truly great ones, Chapelle comes to mind, expose naked truths and come off with blinding insights.
- WJW 6y agoYou can't be too great at it though, or you get beheaded. You have to carefully limit the societal critiques and "blinding insights" to something acceptable enough for your audience.
- _jal 6y agoThe ritual "I've learned something today..." bit is usually funny and meta, but there's clearly a consistent worldview behind the sentiments in the sum up. They aren't very subtle about it.
- fenwick67 6y agoI wrote a paper about this in college but South Park does both. There are times where they are just poking turds at things and people they find funny, and there are times they try and be more poignant.
- rhcom2 6y agoI think many adolescent men don't get that though.
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- rebuilder 6y agoAnd yet, they went out of their way to show they changed their minds about Al Gore's climate change agenda. A jester doesn't do that.
- avs733 6y agoThe inside joke of most Shakespearean plays was the the jester was the smartest person in the room, often because of the ability to take a perspective of external observation and self-awareness. Learning and change is part of intelligence...honestly the biggest part. Of course the jester would change their mind, and poke fun at themselves as they do, which South Park did. Not to mention I never really thought of it as poking fun at climate change as much as Al Gore's self-centered approach to climate change.
- runawaybottle 6y agoWell it sounds like the Jester acted like the Greek Chorus. I guess that’s what good satire is, that fourth wall being broken by a character, or the chorus explaining the current state of affairs.
- avs733 6y agoto put it back in the context of the article...I have (personally, and there is certainly elements of my own projection in here) always interpreted Matt and Trey's perspective as 'we need to change grow and improve as a society but stop doing it in the the most self important and reactionary way possible. I place them as left-leaning libertarians in part based on their 'hate liberals even more'. They believe in people not performance. I look at the episodes post Obama being elected as the height of satire of both sides and quite profoundly insightful for what came next.
- coldtea 6y agoWell, Al Gore's "climate change agenda" was hypocritical corporate crap, even if (or especially if) you believe in human-induced climate change and the need to stop it... Same with the "new green deal" which is mostly "business as usual with a green facade".
- pugworthy 6y agoIt's not so much a matter of getting it right or getting it wrong. It's more a matter of "getting it", which often doesn't come without passage of time and some hindsight. As Parker himself says a bit further in the article,“We beat ourselves up pretty good. We could just do an entire season atoning. It’s been fucking 22 years. We’re pretty different people now.”
- runawaybottle 6y agoI disagree. They believe in what they are saying. They mad fun of Al Gore about Global warming and eventually apologized to him for being wrong: https://youtu.be/Y-dvejuss6s https://youtu.be/Y-dvejuss6s Al gore on the apology: https://youtu.be/sG-Cp1y0UO8 https://youtu.be/sG-Cp1y0UO8
- stormbrew 6y agoA court jester plays to the appeal of the court. The things they poke fun at are the things the court will tolerate being made fun of. So you're right. South Park is like a court jester. It makes fun of everything society deems acceptable to make fun of and gets away with some light ribbing at the expense of the "Middle American normal" that is its bread and butter. And they eat it up, thinking that the show poking light fun at them is the same as how the show treats actual minorites and other marginalized people (ie. very very very gross), and that makes it ok. The analogy is apt. It just doesn't say what you think it says.
- ksdale 6y agoI don't know a ton about jesters historically, but in Shakespeare and in contemporary fiction (Robin Hobb's Fitz and the Fool comes to mind), the jester is one of the few characters who says the things that aren't socially acceptable, and since it's a "joke," the criticism isn't cause for offense.
- brailsafe 6y agoI don't really agree with what you say, but I'd add that they did do an episode where the theme was the meta joke of whether or not society had deemed it acceptable to make HIV/cancer jokes yet, as well as 911 if memory serves. Everything in life can be joked about for one reason or another, I don't accept that there is anything out of bounds. Whether you personally find it funny is up to you, but making broader statements about this or that because a joke was made is a sign that probably you're unable to see outside of a fairly narrow field of view imo.
- namdnay 6y agoSomebody far more eloquent than I am summarized the problem with this attitude: https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/3tsd5o/comment/cx8xc4o https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/3tsd5o/comment... By poking fun at everyone who tries to do anything, you end up defending the status quo
- a1369209993 6y agoIf you're doing it right, you should be mocking the status quo just as often and twice as bitterly.
- Blackthorn 6y agoThis is why I've always felt very uneasy with South Park. They seemed to me to ridicule the act of giving a damn at all. That's not being a court jester, that's being an extremely lazy and apathetic cynic.
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- Shoreleave 6y agoThey do not poke fun at everyone who tries to do anything. They poke fun at self-important people who have latched onto progressive ideologies once they can gain something from it. They poke fun at crowd madness. They poke fun at hypocrites. The comment was a response to the perfect case in point: Caitlyn Jenner. The public face of trans women and 'Woman of the year', who didn't even believe in gay marriage. The average South Park episode has Cartman representing the extreme of some issue, and the issue is mocked. But there will also be a foil, possibly Butters or Stan, who represents the core of the issue, ignoring the hyperbole surrounding it. This character is the one who succeeds.
- brailsafe 6y agoFurther, I think a lot of the recipients of that mockery are those who aren't so much genuine in their liberal or otherwise intentions, but those who just want to be seen as right about whatever it is they're saying. Wanting to be seen as having been right, is worth mocking. That's something that was true in the 90s, and that's true today.
- canjobear 6y agoSouth Park is wonderful because it gives the finger to all people who judge media based on whether it gets things "right" or "wrong"
- tootie 6y agoJust saying you're satire is usually cover for being offensive. There's a simple formula for offensive humor to be acceptable and that's that is has to be funny. The more offensive, the funnier it has to be. South Park usually nails it. Not 100%.
- amscanne 6y agoI’ve seen this hot take before, and it always struck me as coming from someone that had seen very few episodes. About half the time episodes end with exposition to spell out the point for people that didn’t quite get it. The creators definitely take positions. Those positions just happened to be expressed through satire. The whole episode 201 debacle should highlight the fact that the creators have the courage of their convictions. Contrasted with someone like Seth MacFarlane, who just... doesn’t seem to understand the concept of a moral principle [1]. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=diW3OwMYdrk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=diW3OwMYdrk