In other words, contra Schwartz¡¯s complaint that ¡°a generation of boys¡± had ¡°internalized¡± South Park¡¯s reactionary, mockery-as-virtue ethos, South Park externalized a long-extant but little-acknowledged tendency with American culture, and particularly within American conservative political culture. It is the old ¡°I got mine¡± ethic that views with contemptuous suspicion any person or group that comes along and asks for a share of the rights, privileges, and material advantages that those who already have them simply know that they deserve based on their own skills and innate merit. All these jockeying newcomers, well, they¡¯re clearly running some kind of scam.

This does not contradict Schwartz in the least. Their messages are perfectly consistent.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:59 AM on April 7, 2020 [13 favorites]

Couldn't get more that a few paragraphs into this, based on the author's unsupported rejection of the hypothesis that South Park has had a large influence.

South Park wasn't alone is the sort of toxic, fuck-your-liberal-feelings humor that Schwartz critiqued. Certainly there were antecedents, like the Answer Me! zine. There has long been a strain of what the original bOINGbOING crew called unhappy mutants, people whose participation in culture seems mostly generated by bullying self-pity and contempt.

But I can't think of a single piece of media that had the reach or influence of South Park, and, by extension, Comedy Central, which seemed to have an unspoken mission statement to highlight that sort of thing (The Man Show, Crank Yankers, Bill Maher, Craig Kilborne, Ben Stein, Friar's Club Roasts, ad nauseum). It's impossible not to see Cartman's face in the millions in impersonators on Reddit and the chan boards, and while superficially Cartman was treated like a villain, there is no question the show actually saw him as a sort of holy truth teller, a puncturer of liberal myths, somebody who could get away with speaking the unspeakable because at least he was being honest in a sea of so much bullshit.

I liked the show when it was first on, because it was funny. I liked a lot of the other shows.

I also liked a lot of crap when I was a child that I outgrew. At its core, the show was rotten, and to pretend that rot was a mirror, rather than a poison, is nonsense.
posted by maxsparber at 11:10 AM on April 7, 2020 [86 favorites]

I'm a big South Park fan and before touching on the fact it somehow has been a huge, or in the past has been, a huge attraction for the neo-cons of the Andrew Sullivan types (is he even still around?), the show is genius and the talent is evident in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's other works such as "Book of Mormon." Unlike, say, The Simpsons that clung to their season 3-6 formula even though we are in 30 seasons, the latest season wasn't even about South Park. It was a send off on Netflix and the unoriginality of streaming services bring cheap nostalgia driven spin-offs.

But to say that South Park is conservative would be viewing it in a very, very narrow lens. They made a big mistake on global warming, I think honestly largely driven on horrendous Day After Tomorrow. They later corrected themselves. Similarly, the concept of Cartman claiming to be trans to get his own bathroom was a blunt take on an issue that does not need to be an issue: simply have single use bathrooms and you've solved the issue.

Similarly, their take on Whole Foods/gentrification was unabashedly liberal. Completely ignoring the existing residents with high-end establishments and a false feeling of social integration.

The show has been on for so long and has changed its format so many times that we could easily pick apart cringe worthy moments or episodes that, to put it nicely, did not age well. What they have done is show that a lot of issues are complex and a certain demographic of society, with Randy as the stand-in, blindly want things like Whole Foods not because they care about whatever social good may come out of Whole Foods but because it is a status symbol.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't view South Park necessarily as a show pushing a political agenda but mocking contemporary culture, as it always has been. It often does have a conservative slant, but doesn't go so far as to say that it is right and in fact makes the characters look like hicks in the end and suggesting that the media bubble that exists on the coast also doesn't always resonate with the rest of America. Their biggest fault, and not that it is the goal of the show, is that they don't have answers and just seem to mock -- with the possible exception of "just ignore Trump," and I'm sure there are other examples but few and far between.

It's impossible not to see Cartman's face in the millions in impersonators on Reddit and the chan boards, and while superficially Cartman was treated like a villain, there is no question the show actually saw him as a sort of holy truth teller, a puncturer of liberal myths, somebody who could get away with speaking the unspeakable because at least he was being honest in a sea of so much bullshit.

I haven't seen this, but I would believe it. The show never makes Cartman the truth teller but an almost incarnate evil who abuses the system to get what he wants and in the end always fails.
posted by geoff. at 11:33 AM on April 7, 2020 [12 favorites]

The show never makes Cartman the truth teller but an almost incarnate evil who abuses the system to get what he wants and in the end always fails.

Superficially, yes. At its core, though, he's a delightful little stinker. If the show had a real critique of Cartman, instead of delighting in his behavior, they would have legitimately killed him off years ago.
posted by maxsparber at 11:41 AM on April 7, 2020 [11 favorites]

I stopped watching, thinking or fretting about the fucking racist idiocy of South Park in 2001. I honestly didn¡¯t even know it was still on. And I¡¯m a little shocked there are adults who can watch it without being driven into a coma from the sheer predictability of its formula.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 11:44 AM on April 7, 2020 [6 favorites]

I was in undergrad when the show came out and enjoyed the first 2 seasons but just stopped watching after that. Nothing intentional it was just that there was other stuff to watch or do. I could see the show being much more influential, and damaging, if I had started watching when I was say 14-15 instead of 19-20, which is why maybe I feel the claims of its influence to be outsized because it didn't have much of an influence to the people I was hanging out with and no one really talked about it after that.

From what I remember, the show mocked and was more interested in scoring points than providing solutions, which was different than the Simpsons, the show I was watching when I was a more impressionable young teenager, where they did manage to solve the problem of the week, even if it was an admittedly lousy solution.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:47 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

I've thought a lot about the first time I saw South Park. I had been excited to see it because before the internet made it easy to transfer video, I had only just heard about their "Spirit of Christmas" short, and that was because I was an animation nerd. When I saw the show--the one about the anal probe--I laughed so hard that my stomach ached when I got up off the dorm floor. And a couple of years later, when I made a long trip out of the way to see the movie with my friends, we all laughed ourselves sick. I can't believe I thought "Kyle's Mom Is a Bitch" was ever that funny.

I've had occasion to think about it a lot because of its ongoing poisonous influence. I should have realized when I was younger that just because young people weren't supposed to watch it didn't mean that they wouldn't do so and take the worst possible lessons from it.

(I cannot reconcile this with the fact that I like Book of Mormon more than I should. And that song about jackin' it in San Diego? Why didn't they just go into theater?)
posted by Countess Elena at 11:52 AM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]

Couldn't get more that a few paragraphs into this

I couldn't get past the headline. Frankly I find the use of the phrase 'end of the world' in the current context neither funny nor acceptable. I appreciate that those who haven't yet had a friend or relative hospitalised on a ventilator (or worse) may not feel so strongly.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:57 AM on April 7, 2020 [8 favorites]

I love South Park. It always makes me laugh. Often at myself.
posted by philip-random at 12:07 PM on April 7, 2020

Similarly, the concept of Cartman claiming to be trans to get his own bathroom was a blunt take on an issue that does not need to be an issue: simply have single use bathrooms and you've solved the issue.

While being 100% up front that I am not trans and I do not speak for trans people on MeFi, I would like to simply state that your understanding that single-person bathrooms "solves" the issue is incredibly naive and fails to understand how the issue of bathroom access intersects with how many trans people understand themselves (which conservatives basically disregard and say isn't real).

"Single use bathrooms solves this" is a tacit acceptance of the regressive idea that a trans woman isn't a woman or a trans man isn't a man.
posted by tocts at 12:27 PM on April 7, 2020 [36 favorites]

On a different note:

The show never makes Cartman the truth teller but an almost incarnate evil who abuses the system to get what he wants and in the end always fails.

In theory that may be true, but in practice it isn't. In theory, you can make a strong argument that the movie Fight Club is about toxic masculinity and how it harms men and those around them. In practice, Fight Club makes toxic masculinity look so cool while trying to make its point that the default takeaway for men is to view Tyler Durden as an aspirational figure, not the leader of what is functionally a death cult.

When the majority of people take the exact opposite message of what a piece of art purports to be intending, intent stops mattering. South Park is far too in love with Cartman for people to actually come away seeing him as the bad guy vs. the cool mean guy who should be emulated.
posted by tocts at 12:34 PM on April 7, 2020 [40 favorites]

When the majority of people take the exact opposite message of what a piece of art purports to be intending, intent stops mattering. South Park is far too in love with Cartman for people to actually come away seeing him as the bad guy vs. the cool mean guy who should be emulated.
posted by tocts at 12:34 PM on April 7 [+] [!]

I guess the lesson here is that as an ethical show writer, you need to view every script through the lens of "what would the very stupidest among us take away from this episode?" otherwise you end up with people emulating Cartman!?
posted by some loser at 12:42 PM on April 7, 2020 [10 favorites]

They hate assholes with loud pipes, and that's good enough for me.
posted by Beholder at 12:55 PM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

I haven't watched the show for a long time, and I really only saw a few episodes.

There were some funny jokes!

But it seemed to be trying hard to make me feel like a Very Clever Boy Indeed for joining in mockery of sincerity or enthusiasm. But maybe I was predisposed to see that, having watched young VCBI's wearing Southpark tees mock their peers at every school I ever worked in.

I grant that a show with a run this long probably isn't a one-trick pony and maybe it has other qualities that have influenced viewers in more positive ways.
posted by Caxton1476 at 1:03 PM on April 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

South Park is like that guy in the office who claims to be an "equal opportunity racist because I hate everybody". Like his occasional punching up and speaking his version of "truth to power" excuses his excessive amounts of punching down.

Early South Park is basically a libertarian shtick. A view of the world where white males have had the world on easy mode since it began and deliberately ignoring that simple fact. It tries to profess cynicism as wisdom and it's no wonder a young white males are drawn to it like moths to a lightbulb. Hell, I was at one point because that's what young white males with no view of the world outside their own asshole think like. Conservatism has this stream of giving simple but bad/wrong answers to difficult questions based upon natural hierarchies. Who really wants to do actual work when we can just accept the way things are? Yes I may be on top but that's just how the cookie crumbles. On the plus side, it actually preached some semblance of tolerance. It put mirrors up to white people every so often to point out how shit we actually are.

At least in the later stuff, Matt and Trey have seemed to have realized that, yeah, maybe liberals and progressives, and other people were right in a lot of respects. Maybe because they can add 2 and 2 together, maybe because as they've expanded their social circles beyond Comedy Central they've gained friends that basically have pointed out how things actually work. Don't get me wrong, they have a looooooooong way to go. Their trans stuff circa 2019 is still god awful. But at least they're starting to take the blinders off and start take their heads out of their own assholes.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 1:06 PM on April 7, 2020 [17 favorites]

like meeting a time traveler and realizing that he is you.

Ooooooh man, speaking of. That's not Killer Bees Home Invasion level, but that was a good skit.
posted by alex_skazat at 2:02 PM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

I don't view South Park necessarily as a show pushing a political agenda

This is the mirror-image version of the statement "I don't like politics." Actually, you find the politics of the show to be so perfectly tailored for you that the show ceases to seem political to you. I'd bet money that you're a comfortably-off Gen-X/older Millennial cis straight techie white dude: none of which are political labels, but ask me how I know.

You know what South Park gave us? It gave us Cartman for president. Day after day we watch this guy fuck something up so completely that it blows our minds, and tomorrow, it's a brand new episode again. Who cares that he always "loses" and everybody knows exactly how much he sucks? He gets to go back to his wacky genocidal hijinks all over again as if nothing ever happened, because nobody removes him from where he is and puts him in a sanitarium. There are never any consequences.

THAT is the political reach of South Park.
posted by MiraK at 3:26 PM on April 7, 2020 [68 favorites]

I guess the lesson here is that as an ethical show writer, you need to view every script through the lens of "what would the very stupidest among us take away from this episode?" otherwise you end up with people emulating Cartman!?

No, the point is that if you're intending for a certain character to play the voice of evil (and not just a devil's advocate), don't also make him charismatic, and don't let him escape consequences for his conduct.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:50 PM on April 7, 2020 [9 favorites]

The show never makes Cartman the truth teller but an almost incarnate evil who abuses the system to get what he wants and in the end always fails.

Animation has a long and glorious history of "incarnate evil" characters who become the most popular... from the obnoxious Donald Duck eclipsing the nice Mickey Mouse to Yogi Bear's raison d'¨ºtre being stealing food from humans to the general awfulness of Ren of Ren & Stimpy... but Cartman's evil was the single most consistent element on South Park, and therefore he became the star.

MiraK's comparison of Cartman to Trumpman is the most astute observation I've seen in this thread, and the so-called 'reality TV' category has always been dependent on a Reprehensible But Charismatic Villain character either as a winner or finalist in the 'competition' or as a judge. If they were American citizens, Simon Cowell or Gordon Ramsey would've risen to the White House before TheDonald.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:57 PM on April 7, 2020 [6 favorites]

Is there a long German word for expressing personal dislike for something by making implausible assertions about the extent of its influence?
posted by AdamCSnider at 4:08 PM on April 7, 2020 [6 favorites]

METAFILTER: a long German word for expressing personal dislike for something by making implausible assertions about the extent of its influence
posted by philip-random at 4:11 PM on April 7, 2020 [12 favorites]

Metafilter is not all about that, but it is one of the things we do well.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:14 PM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

They hate assholes with loud pipes, and that's good enough for me.

I'm finding it hard to find the words that best express how much childhood trauma was brought back by that damnable episode, the turning point in my realization that that show was not for me.

Is there a long German word for expressing personal dislike for something by making implausible assertions about the extent of its influence?

MannB?rSchwein.

(In order to not leave it at a cryptic bon mot, I should say that this show's influence on the global warming debate at the level of Internet discussions was extraordinary for a decade or longer. Spend some time on reddit and just keep a counter of every time someone says "it's just like that recent episode of South Park" justifying this or that bigotry. Most recently it was something about Macho Man Randy Savage being trans? I only know about it because of their damned influence on the culture.)
posted by traveler_ at 4:14 PM on April 7, 2020 [7 favorites]

I gave up on South Park after the episode "Bloody Mary"; it wasn't the religious content that offended me (although that's what got the lion's share of the attention), it was the show being so wrongheaded about alcoholism and AA. (In fact, I saw that episode in a bar, and even in the throes of my disease, I could tell how wrongheaded it was.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:58 PM on April 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

I go with TFA. Matt & Trey are talented & can be pretty funny, no denying that, but their tart wine has devolved from vinegar into piss.
posted by ovvl at 5:18 PM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

South Park has been transphobic at least since 2006, which is the first and last time I watched the show. I remember an episode where, in classic South Park form, Matt and Trey take the racist route to transphobia, something about Kyle wanting to play basketball? And therefore since he "identifies" as a basketball player, he undergoes a procedure that ... turns him black.

IIRC there was something about a dolphin too, as in, someone identifying as a dolphin and undergoing a medical procedure to become a dolphin. Ha! Ha! So loveable and wacky!
posted by MiraK at 5:35 PM on April 7, 2020 [5 favorites]

I cannot believe it's 20freakin20 and I'm listening to people blame a cartoon conceived by churlish twentysomethings for the state of the world. I feel like I'm back in junior high being told that Simpsons t-shirts were forbidden because Bart Simpson is a bad role model who's causing us students to misbehave.

Things Parker & Stone did NOT invent, and should not be blamed for:
--Ableism
--Racism
--Crypto-fascism
--Charismatic evil characters

Things Parker & Stone DID invent, and should get credit for:
-- Book of Mormon
-- An episode that is still the best critique of/engagement with Scientology that any show, live action or not, has ever done
-- A magical talking poo that comes to your house on Christmas
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:02 PM on April 7, 2020 [10 favorites]

it was the show being so wrongheaded about alcoholism and AA.

To be fair, they're atheists, and as an atheist, while I think their attitude towards alcoholism in that episode needed a lot of growth, we're reaching the same conclusions a lot of atheists do: constantly telling yourself that you have no control and you have to give control to a "higher power" doesn't seem like a straightforward way to deal with an addiction. Especially for someone who has already rejected "higher powers" as being farcical.

There is plenty of evidence-based research that supports the idea that taking some level of self-responsibility for your addictions goes farther in reducing relapses than simply telling yourself you have no control. (When you get up to seek our more drugs/alcohol, you're making a conscious choice, no one is forcing your hand, etc.)

Nevermind the whole "AA was created by a guy who was whacked out on LSD and thought he was talking to God and God told him how to solve his alcoholism" which sounds a lot more like all the research we have that supports the idea that use of hallucinogens can have massively positive mental health outcomes. He made a massively positive change to his life after, and he tried to help others, but I strongly suspect there's better ways than AA, South Park notwithstanding.

I have no problem with AA myself, but as an atheist, if I had a problem with drugs or alcohol, you'd be struggling to have me go to AA/NA, as opposed to going to a counselor and doing some evidence-based therapy, since I know a big part of it expects me to put my own beliefs at the door because it assumes everyone believes in something.

(And no let's not get into a derail of "that's not what a higher power means." Explaining this seems like a derail enough.)
posted by deadaluspark at 6:19 PM on April 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

city show
posted by inpHilltr8r at 6:59 PM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

Things Parker & Stone did NOT invent, and should not be blamed for:
--Ableism
--Racism
--Crypto-fascism
--Charismatic evil characters

Um, you can be blamed for being racist and ableist even if you didn't invent racism? What even.

I haven't thought very much about South Park since the early to mid-2000s/Bush era because it seems so thoroughly a cultural artifact of that period, a period when the "Everyone's a little bit racist" song from Avenue Q was considered brave, incisive truth-telling. Incidentally, I was in middle school during that period and 12-year old white boys sure loved that show. I don't understand what mental gymnastics people can lead people to believing it's not racist and transphobic? Have you watched it? Especially the transphobia, Jesus Christ.

The fact that you really liked it and it was important to you doesn't change that. This reminds me so much of the debates around the Apu character on the Simpsons. That character is unquestionably a dreadful racist caricature that caused a lot of pain for a lot of people. Just because you like a show and it gives you warm fuzzy feelings because it's part of your youth doesn't change that fact. Things can be good in some ways and bad in others. People can make the Book of Mormon and still be or have been racist and transphobic.
posted by armadillo1224 at 8:09 PM on April 7, 2020 [31 favorites]

Things Parker & Stone did NOT invent, and should not be blamed for:

"I can be a bigot and that's fine as long as I didn't invent it" is a hot take indeed.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 9:26 PM on April 7, 2020 [38 favorites]

And no let's not get into a derail of "that's not what a higher power means."

Except that, well, it isn't. If you don't want to get into it, then you have the option of not getting into the subject in general, just as Stone and Parker had that option when they did the episode. Just as they have the option with every episode where they do a half-assed or shitty take on any given subject.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:06 PM on April 7, 2020 [5 favorites]

South Park and Fight Club and a whole bunch of other 90s/2000s media led me to believe that if you're going to write an anti-hero, you'd better be damned sure you know what you're getting yourself into.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:19 AM on April 8, 2020 [7 favorites]

South Park and Fight Club and a whole bunch of other 90s/2000s media led me to believe that if you're going to write an anti-hero, you'd better be damned sure you know what you're getting yourself into.

See also Breaking Bad and Rick and Morty.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:37 AM on April 8, 2020 [14 favorites]

I was young when it started, but I could never get through more than a few seconds without recoiling in horror and disgust.

The fact that the show has had any significant influence on our society makes me very sad.
posted by goinWhereTheClimateSuitsMyClothes at 4:49 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Perhaps the thing most I love about Fight Club, and the better parts of South Park, is that they are so good that people who should politically despite them, can't, but end up rationalizing their love in gloriously wrong-headed ways.

No better example than statements such as "Fight Club is a critique of toxic masculinity," despite one of the key themes of the movie is that the social pressure on men to be, or appear, non-"toxic" is a vector of emasculation particularly deserving of rebellion.

While Tyler Durden must be acknowledged to be the hero, and not anti-hero, of Fight Club, it's plain that Cartman is not the "hero" of Southpark. He's a charismatic villain -- one of the most central tropes of all literature. Parker and Stone had the particular genius to say "while the charismatic villain should always lose, why don't we make him friends with the good guys?" That opened up something very real inside the hyper-unreality of the plots: villains in reality don't think they're villains and are just as likely to have friends and family who love them as heroes.
posted by MattD at 5:31 AM on April 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

But if making the villain the friend of the protagonist means that we all befriend the villain, then that's not teaching us the lesson we need, is it, MattD?
posted by ambrosen at 6:00 AM on April 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

"Villains don't think they're villains" and "villains, have friends and family who love them, in some cases despite knowing that they're villains" are the lessons. Not all lessons are comforting.
posted by MattD at 6:20 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

No one is learning those lessons.
posted by ambrosen at 6:40 AM on April 8, 2020 [7 favorites]

No better example than statements such as "Fight Club is a critique of toxic masculinity," despite one of the key themes of the movie is that the social pressure on men to be, or appear, non-"toxic" is a vector of emasculation particularly deserving of rebellion.

I mean, not to get into too big a derail about Fight Club, but, uh, no. The entire arc of the Narrator is that he becomes so embittered by perceived threats to his masculinity that he invents an alter ego and becomes the leader of what is basically a terrorist cell so that he can revel in ultra-masculinity while avoiding real life and real emotional relationships with women. The ending of the movie is him literally blowing the brains out of that alter ego, having realized that even if Tyler had some good points about some of the smaller aspects of how modern life treats men, his grand plan was not what the Narrator wants because it is a fundamentally broken vision of how to live as a man.
posted by tocts at 6:49 AM on April 8, 2020 [7 favorites]

South Park and Fight Club and a whole bunch of other 90s/2000s media led me to believe that if you're going to write an anti-hero, you'd better be damned sure you know what you're getting yourself into.

Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions did an excellent video on what antiheroes are (turns out it's a lot more complicated than one might think), and she reserved her ire in particular for what she disdainfully referred to as "90's 'antiheroes'", calling them Jerk Sues who warp the narrative of their stories around them, which is why they are so horrible.

And that helps to explain what the problem with South Park is - characters like Cartman are routinely written in a way where the narrative bends to them, not the other way around,which in turn creates the feeling that the negative actions of these characters are positively highlighted because of this narrative bending.

"Villains don't think they're villains" and "villains, have friends and family who love them, in some cases despite knowing that they're villains" are the lessons.

By bending the narrative around the villain, the lesson is lost, though. It's hard to say that a piece of media considers an individual a villain when it works to center the narrative around them.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:51 AM on April 8, 2020 [10 favorites]

"Villains don't think they're villains"

/r/thanosdidnothingwrong
posted by DreamerFi at 7:23 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Hello?? Have we all forgotten that episode about how there are respectable gay people and f*ggots? Where the thesis was "it's ok to be gay as long as you're quiet about it"?

I was in middle/high school when south park was really popular. So many of my peers just took it as gospel that the show was brave and correct. If you were a kid when this was popular, I think you have way different ideas about this shows influence and how it may have led us to our current moment. It may not have created Donald Trump, but it sure as hell primed us (or more specifically, white men) to accept "own the libs/system" type hot takes without thinking at all about what it actually means. And when you also grow up in an echo chamber with, say, Reddit validating every point of view presented there and perhaps leading you to feel very clever at pointing these things out, it's not so difficult to see a darker path.
posted by scruffy-looking nerfherder at 7:41 AM on April 8, 2020 [14 favorites]

Pulling together tocts' and NoxAeternum's comments: I've defended Fight Club in the past for similar reasons, but on reconsideration I think it fails to highlight Tyler's failures in an emotionally resonant way. That's because the whole narrative and all the interesting action twists around Tyler. When the narrator finally starts pushing back around Tyler it¡¯s not because the narrator learned a lesson about *why* Tyler is bad. No one remembers what lesson was learned about toxic masculinity, they just remember ¡°Tyler was cool.¡± It doesn¡¯t matter if the celebration of toxic masculinity was intentional or not, the end product is a celebration of toxic masculinity.

This comparison helps put into words what¡¯s wrong with Cartman. When you spend episode after episode making the villain the center of the show and there¡¯s essentially no payoff about what¡¯s wrong with him, he¡¯s not the villain anymore.
posted by Tehhund at 8:02 AM on April 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

/r/thanosdidnothingwrong

I remember when /r/gamersriseup was just an ironic circlejerk for the lulz that sometimes hit /r/all. It eventually had to be banned a month ago because people actually ate the onion and took it seriously. The sub just went off the fucking deep end.

I'm surprised that thanosdidnothingwrong hasn't fallen into that trap.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:42 AM on April 8, 2020

No one is learning those lessons.

no one?

The fact that the show has had any significant influence on our society makes me very sad.

on the other hand, having endured our society for almost forty years before the debut of South Park, I'm more inclined to rejoice the influence that it's had, however much bitter there may be in its complex flavor.

Hating on South Park feels like hating on punk rock. Much as I can understand the reasons many are laying out, I still can't find myself wishing it had never shown up. Every so often, so called society needs a serious skewering.

At its core, the show was rotten, and to pretend that rot was a mirror, rather than a poison, is nonsense.
[69 favorites +] [!]

It was a mirror that revealed a rot and dared us to laugh at it.
posted by philip-random at 9:10 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Every so often, so called society needs a serious skewering.

Punching down isn't skewering, and more often than not, the former is what Parker and Stone were interested in.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:16 AM on April 8, 2020 [8 favorites]

I challenge anyone to find a single episode of South Park that passes the Bechdel test.

The boys can have their moments of comedic genius, but at core they are Libertarian Red Pill assholes. It's funny* how many people came to see South Park as an institution because of its irreverence, but are bothered by irreverence toward the institution of South Park.

*it's not particularly funny.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:36 AM on April 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

irreverence toward the institution of South Park

there's a difference between irreverence and righteous dismissal. Calling something poison feels more like the latter, and it's that single comment noted just above (and all of its favorites) that compelled me to participate in this thread. It felt absurd.
posted by philip-random at 9:41 AM on April 8, 2020

there's a difference between irreverence and righteous dismissal. Calling something poison feels more like the latter, and it's that single comment noted just above (and all of its favorites) that compelled me to participate in this thread. It felt absurd.

Why does it feel absurd, though? People aren't just calling it poisonous - we've had a number of explainations throughout this thread about how both the worldview promulgated by Parker and Stone and the manner by which they do so are toxic and harm people, often times dispossessed groups unable to fight back. If you disagree, fine - but if your argument against theirs is "this is absurd" with nothing to back it up, it should not be surprising that there are few buyers. It should not be surprising that people dismiss that which hurts others, especially the already afflicted.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:42 AM on April 8, 2020 [8 favorites]

Why does it feel absurd, though? People aren't just calling it poisonous -

I'm not disputing that South Park has had an effect on the culture, and that some of it has perhaps been negative. I am disputing that it's outright poisonous. That's imposing a black and white reading that feels hyperbolic to me. And in my experience, hyperbole tends to hang out with absurdity.

On the black and white tip, here's something that it seems South Park got very right as recently as 2015. It's The Atlantic, from over a year before Donald Trump was elected -- a piece entitled South Park Imagines the Trumpocalypse ... a review of "... the show¡¯s much-anticipated immigration episode [which] presents a dystopian future in which the billionaire businessman becomes the president of ¡­ Canada."

From the end of the piece:

Here, though, is the heart of the episode¡ªthe scene that distills all the satire into one political message. One of South Park¡¯s Canadian immigrants¡ªwho are also, it¡¯s becoming clear, Canadian refugees¡ªexplains over a dinner of poutine and pie how President Trump happened. And, by extension, how Canada met its dystopian fate.

Holding back tears, the well-dressed refugee recalls,

There were several candidates during the Canadian elections. One of them was this brash asshole who just spoke his mind. He didn¡¯t really offer any solutions, he just said outrageous things. We thought it was funny.

His wife sobs, hugging her young son.

He continues:

Nobody ever thought he¡¯d be president! It was a joke! We just let the joke go on for too long. He kept gaining momentum, and by the time we were all ready to say, ¡°Okay, let¡¯s get serious now, who should really be president?¡± he was already being sworn into office. We weren¡¯t paying attention! We weren¡¯t paying attention!

He breaks down, weeping. The whole family weeps. Everyone weeps.
posted by philip-random at 11:06 AM on April 8, 2020

He breaks down, weeping. The whole family weeps. Everyone weeps.
What is that supposed to represent? The 5 people who voted for Obama and then voted for Trump? The people who voted for him got exactly what they wanted. They aren't crying. South Park can't even imagine that people did things for reasons beyond the LULZ, even though they purport to satirize the raging jerk market every week.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:54 AM on April 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'm not disputing that South Park has had an effect on the culture, and that some of it has perhaps been negative. I am disputing that it's outright poisonous.

it's possible to say "this half-rotten apple tastes great!" but really it's just a rotten apple.
posted by Lyme Drop at 12:21 PM on April 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

or maybe it's not as binary as that
posted by philip-random at 12:32 PM on April 8, 2020

I'm not disputing that South Park has had an effect on the culture, and that some of it has perhaps been negative. I am disputing that it's outright poisonous. That's imposing a black and white reading that feels hyperbolic to me. And in my experience, hyperbole tends to hang out with absurdity.

This misses my point, which can be summed up simply in three words - show your work. Again, people aren't just saying that South Park is poisonous - they're explaining why that's the case, discussing how the show routinely attacks marginalized groups. Furthermore, the sort of argument that you are making - that such complaints are hyperbolic and binary, coming across as absurd - is one routinely used to dismiss the experiences and the complaints of dispossessed and marginalized groups without any consideration.

So if you want to sell the argument that people opposed to the worldview promulgated by South Park because of the harm it does are being absurd, you need to put in more work than "it feels hyperbolic" to make that sale, because your opposition has put that work in. And if you find that you don't have anything more that that, I recommend that instead of continuing to dismiss their arguments that you take the time to understand them - because you might just find out that they're not as absurd as you thought.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:40 PM on April 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

The 5 people who voted for Obama and then voted for Trump? The people who voted for him got exactly what they wanted. They aren't crying.

huh
posted by Apocryphon at 2:22 PM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

it's that single comment noted just above (and all of its favorites) that compelled me to participate in this thread.?

Please respect those of us who chose to disable favourite counts.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 2:45 PM on April 8, 2020

On Book of Mormon: saw it for the first time 2-3 years ago and it felt so dated. A plot based on jokes about Africa and AIDS (I know! so edgy and tongue in cheek!) wasn't that enjoyable.
posted by armacy at 4:00 PM on April 8, 2020

This misses my point, which can be summed up simply in three words - show your work.

I'm sorry. I don't have the time to respond to this as I feel you'd like.

And if my participation in this thread has dismissed "... the experiences and the complaints of dispossessed and marginalized groups without any consideration," I'm sorry for that as well. I'll endeavor to be more careful in future.
posted by philip-random at 5:28 PM on April 8, 2020

plenty of people have explained why south park is gross reactionaryism masquerading as enlightened centrism better than i could, but what i find fascinating is what an effective litmus test it is in pinpointing the general political thrust of individuals; it's hard not to recognize that more than one person voraciously defending the show in this thread are regulars in threads with general leftist thrusts playing the role of "wise person who knows better than you dumb libs how things work". if you enjoy this show and imagine that some part of you doesn't actually worship cartman, you're really fantastic at general self-deception. but then, that sort of person is south park's exact demo.
posted by rotten at 7:08 AM on April 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Seriously? So now if I'm a liberal and like South Park I'm unconsciously a right-wing libertarian person engaging in self-deception?

And that I guess goes for anything that 8chan or whoever takes a liking to? Fight Club - maybe they missed the message but I did like the movie and the book. Even Rick and Morty, which has pretty strong themes of don't be an asshole because it hurts you and everyone around you, has been taken over by those people. Does that make anyone who watches R&M an asshole?

People can like what they like without being secret fascists/racists/etc. We can discuss the effect of the show on society (which I think is actually more a reflection of society than driving attitudes itself) without assuming that people who like it are bad people. I mean, it's not like it's Nickleback or anything ;P
posted by LizBoBiz at 8:07 AM on April 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

To clarify, I still enjoy Fight Club and will probably watch it again sometime but it's definitely a case of "You can keep it, but keep it in context". So no, I don't think it makes you right-wing for liking it. I would be concerned if someone were to say that a movie that spends around 110 minutes worshiping a toxic masculine figure and then blandly offs him without really learning anything is unproblematic. But I don't think anyone here is trying to say that. The difference is putting it in context and understanding its flaws vs pretending nothing is wrong.

I have a harder time saying "keep it in context" for South Park though, because for years they've leaned really hard into mocking issues that are serious. I've watched a couple episodes from early seasons recently and enjoyed those, but pretty early on they crossed the line from zaniness or satire to punching down and as far as I can tell never really went back. Even as early as season 4 they get into some really cringey stuff, and then they just get further and further gone. It's hard to know just from episode descriptions if they are going to be punching down because it's so pervasive. So why would I watch later episodes when there's a pretty good chance they're going to ruin it by punching down? There's no enjoyment in that, no context that makes it okay.
posted by Tehhund at 9:11 AM on April 9, 2020 [4 favorites]

I seldom see Bacharach's work beyond the poems he posts on his blog, so it's nice to see that he's still stirring up dissent in the world. This title indeed has some problems, but on the plus side it reminds me that I should read The Bend of the World again. I'm sorry that he seems to have moved on from his more unforgiving and incisive work as [three-letter moniker], but I guess that's a common decay curve for insightful young radicals.

I found this passage near the end particularly insightful:

Conservatives like South Park because it keeps saying that things are fine, and that even when things are getting worse, they¡¯re as good as you ought to get. When all else fails, do nothing, and above all, do not complain.

How thoroughly has this attitude assimilated into, or been assimilated by, the American conservative movement? In response to the current epidemic, we have in effect seen the plot of any average episode of South Park play out. Our vainglorious Cartman president glibly declares that there is no problem; then, when the crisis becomes indisputable, he cries that he never said that and moans that he hasn¡¯t been given credit for being right all along. He manages to muster an almost hilariously incompetent response, precisely the sort of discredit to the idea that people and institutions can engage in collective efforts at all, let alone in the face of crisis. Now, not three weeks into that response, he has already grown tired of it and has publicly speculated that perhaps the best response is no response. Go back to Walmart. Go back to work. It is worse to worry than to die.

posted by Not A Thing at 9:52 AM on April 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I want to be clear, I know Parker and Stone's work pretty thoroughly. I literally have VHS copies of both Orgazmo and Cannibal! The Musical in my house. I have seen Book of Mormon. I remember when The Spirit of Christmas was this weird video you could get on, of all places, the internet (wow!). I watched a lot of South Park, way back.

However, like Tehhund, I can't really keep their work (but keep it in context) anymore. I think that ultimately, South Park has been bad for our culture. I think there's no easier way to prove it than just to point to how they treated Al Gore.

I'm not a huge fan of Gore's. However: Parker and Stone did incalculable damage to the discourse around climate change (which they halfassedly sorta tried to apologize for 12 years later) ... and for what? What did Gore do to deserve it?

I'll tell you what he did: he was earnest, and to Parker and Stone, earnestness is the most grievous of sins.

They have repeatedly shown that they care infinitely more about making fun of those who care about things than whether those things are worth caring about. That shitty outlook has had a hell of a long tail effect on our world.
posted by tocts at 6:44 PM on April 9, 2020 [15 favorites]