People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
I think the only unifying theme to South Park is that everything can be funny.
I would say that generally the characters with the least power are treated in the most sympathetic way, though, and those with the most power are painted with the worst brush.
They do have a sense of good and evil, but also acknowledge that evil is often given free reign because good people have a hard time organizing and gaining consensus as to what needs to be done about it.
I think some of the episodes have put light on things that need it. Scientology spring to mind.
Tourette Syndrome is another one.
The one thing they do is skewer pomp and pretension. They are the guys at a dinner party who say "everybody poops so why can't we talk about it?" Or will ask the minister about his sex life if he asks about their relationship to God.
It can be genuinely stupid and annoying sometimes because it's a blunt instrument. They assume that everything is fine and that anyone passionate about a cause is a misguided idiot.
Honestly, this.
No one is above reproach and they stay on the pulse.
However, I find the humor dated. It’s like if Jim Carrey did 30 sequels to Ace Ventura.
The Ace Ventura one is particularly apt because the one group they still punched down on a lot was trans people...
Ok, so when trying to explain it. You will mute me.. Great start of the convo ;-)
Gotta love those people.
“Anyone trying to use the obvious rational argument will be blocked!”
"if someone disagrees im muting them" is the cry of someone i dont need to hear anything from
The entitled American (and I’m an American myself). My country has fostered mentalities and behaviors that I can’t stand. We act like the planet owes us everything. Obviously not everyone is like this, but America has a unique brand of entitlement that I’ve witnessed pour out of both right-wingers and even the most leftist people. I witnessed a local well-known white pro-Palestine activist refuse to participate in a march for the black community because police were present. They didn’t stop to think “this is lead by and represents them—I should stay to support their actions.”
No one is safe from being an entitled asshole and it’s healthy to have a reality check sometimes. Not everything is about America.
Oh damn I'm not one to defend the USA, but in this case I have to say, it's not just you. I feel we absolutely live in the age of entitlement, as in, that is the biggest problem right now, and might even destroy us.
You have these far right movements going on everywhere, and they literally consist of people who, when presented with scientific facts, insist that they are entitled to have their opinion that says otherwise. And politically correct people can feel pushed to agree that, yes, they are entitled to their opinion.
But while that whole group is either that entitlement or selective ignorance, it absolutely exists on the left, too, like you said. I've run into LGBT+? folks that go "it's not your time to talk, it's your time to listen" in a comment thread. I'll gladly talk WITH people in a respectful way, but if you just want to talk AT me... No, you're not entitled to me being an audience for some kinda narcissist savior fantasy.
The red pill bugs, who feel entitled to women's bodies. The female counterparts, who feel entitled to men paying for everything. The parents who feel entitled to everybody accomodating their kids. The customers who feel entitled to mistreat service workers. The people who say "I deserve" where others say "I earned".
Entitlement, man. Work on not being entitled, and you're already a saint among sinners.
It's even worse on websites where OPs can delete comments arbitrarily
Too many people seem to think that portraying something is the same thing as supporting it, completely missing the point of satire. They lack the media literacy to realize that critiques can be conveyed through characters and stories in a nuanced way.
South Park parodies a lot of things, sometimes by showing something simply as what it is. Some characters are meant to be disliked. For example, when Cartman is a douchebag, but he's not meant to be a "good guy" to model yourself after. He's a caricature of a self-centered bigot, and in being that, is used to lampoon others like him.
The show has had some bad takes. The whole "ManBearPig" scenario comes to mind. Thankfully, the creators came around to admitting they were very, very wrong in that case. In my opinion, such bad episodes are rare, with most providing cultural commentary in a way that turns them into time capsules reflecting various moments in our world.
With that said, it's okay to not like it. Not every show is going to appeal to everybody, especially a show that makes it a point to poke fun at almost everyone. Though one group they don't make fun of is disabled people - they show disabled characters as normal people, getting into their own hijinks the way all the other kids do. Instead, the creators make fun of those who'd rather infantilize disabled people and hide them away, like way back when Timmy was introduced and was in a band. Le Petite Tourette explained Tourette's Syndrome honestly, with Cartman's abuse of the situation being standard Cartman behavior (that backfired on him beautifully.)
Shutting people out who see the nuance is a naive take. I wouldn't go out of my way to sell the show to such people, but if they can't see that the show has far more hits than misses, well, they're the ones missing out.
It’s fine if OOP hates South Park. It’s a divisive show. However, dark humor is indeed a valuable thing. Yes, sometimes assholes call sexism, racism, homophobia (etc) “dark humor” in an attempt to excuse what they know is wrong, but that doesn’t mean that the concept of dark humor is flawed.
Dark humor is often used to mock and/or point out hypocrisy. Sometimes it deliberately makes us uncomfortable. We should always reflect on ourselves and our culture as a whole. That’s a vital part of becoming a better person.
If OOP chose to “mute” me for expressing that opinion, I don’t think I’d be missing much.
The inherent problem with any satire labeled as "dark" is that people generally lack the ability to determine it as a satirical work of art.
In general I think it's a valuable form of art. However, if you don't hammer the point that you are actively mocking your target of satire and disavow the audience who are mistakenly attracted to it, then I think it can do more harm than good.
I think this is where I am on the fence with it when it comes to some comedians who claim they are engaging in dark works of satire, but are comfortable with having a large portion of their audience being right winged chuds who don't understand its satire.
This transgresses pretty much all works of satire. A good example being the 40k franchise, which started out as a satirical commentary against fascism, specifically against Thatcherism. Eventually they had a large contingency of people who are unironically fans of the Empire. Though they have recently taken steps to mitigate this, they did spend decades making money from these types of people.
The unfortunate result of this "requirement" for creators to clarify their position such that everyone consuming the work understands that it's satire, is the complete and utter loss of subtlety. Because now you're just dumbing down your work to the level of the slowest kid in the classroom who, as the last decade has proven, is in fact very slow indeed. It would be one thing if bigots were known for their intellect and media comprehension skills, but alas...
Somebody's got some sand in their vagina.
My take is that SP is a show about how everyone is capable of being hypocritical, petty and inflammatory. It touches on uncomfortable subjects because those are what bring people to show the aforementioned traits.
I don't think "dark humor" is the point, it's just there to keep the viewer engaged so they can see social issues from another angle and reconsider their views.
Yeah, it's been a while since they graduated from sophomoric jokes into using their show to convey real messages about the world we live in. The satire is exquisite. My partner, who comes from a very different culture, typically doesn't enjoy USA style comedy. She loves SP, though.
South Park isn't exactly homophobic, it seems to treat homosexual and transexual characters such as Ms. Garrison with more respect than the rest of the cast, tbh.
The jokes kind of stem from this idea that if something is different than the expectation then that makes it funny, including societal expectations like omission of poop or sexuality: like when Tad Mikowski gets distracted by "start the reactor" from the movie Total Recall.
Oh no, please don't mute me, you mirthless twat.
Humour of color
Ftfy
It’s pretty dated. It had its moment, but it’s legacy entertainment at this point.
Incorrect. I think south park is funnier now than I did as a teenager. Even the old episodes.
What I know about South Park:
Doesn't seem like my cup of tea tbh.
Not encouraging you to watch it, but this...
The show may have also contributed to 'both sides same' idiocy
Is kind of hilarious. I'm going to assume this is because of douche vs turd (aired 2004). It does mock both parties, but do you honestly think that the democrats never put out a bad candidate? Do you even remember who ran for dems in 2004 without looking it up? Don't you think it's an actual problem that most of the time a lot of people don't actually like the candidates?
There is a deep problem in American politics, so a comedy show makes fun of it. And you turn around and blame the show for causing the problem. To be honest it is absolutely no surprise that your country is going to shit.
And just to clarify:
When Obama won, most adult characters that people like were celebrating for days. Like continuously.
When Trump ran the first time, they mocked him by replacing him with an awful existing character who ran on the platform of literally fucking all immigrants to death and had no idea what he was doing. Hilary was just... kind of shit. It's incredibly obvious: one is awful, the other is uninspiring. Like real life where she actually managed to lose.
And in the most recent season they went harder against Trump than they ever have about a politician. He spent most of it cheating on his wife with literal Satan and trying to abort the baby with the help of Peter Theil.
In contrast, they didn't even mock Biden as far as I recall?
Sorry to say you've been misled by someone who has another reason to dislike the show (or more likely, who also hasn't watched the show)
To be fair, trump did lose the popular vote by 2% his first term. He also said he cheated the second time, I believe him.
Sure, but, if I recall, Gore was mocked for being afraid of man-bear-pig, their stand-in for Climate Change, but later man-bear-pig showed up started killing people, which is the show's mea culpa.
Two of the hallmarks of both sides media is they never admit they were wrong and they invariably serve their power structure while pretending to be independent thinkers. Examples of this are the entire foreign policy establishment that cheerled the obviously disastrous Iraq war (while anyone against the obviously disastrous Iraq war was drummed out for not being serious), and Ezra Klein's recent turnaround on Israel due to "new facts" from 60 years ago that he just learned (coinciding with a massive drop in Israel's popularity and masterminding an obviously disastrous Iran war).
South Park admits they were wrong and they absolutely go up against power structures, so I throwing them in the "both sides" propaganda apparatus bucket is just wrong.
You don't know very much, then. You have no idea if it's your cup of tea... And that's OK too, lotsa media out there. Can't watch it all.
Wow, an outdated oversimplification and two "may haves" to sum up a show with almost 340 episodes (plus 2 full, plot-heavy video games and a feature film) over the last 3 decades.
Seems like your 'cup of tea' would be better described as a Dixie cup of lukewarm tap water with a single, uncut lemon seed. All those other flavors like Chai, Oolong, or Earl Grey? Nah, those are WAYYY too spicy and scawy! Heaven forbid you go out and ask an actual fan--or Hell, anyone who's seen even one episode--instead of lightly skimming the Controversies section of their Wikipedia page
How dare you like something I don't like?
Dark humour aside, what the aim really is, is to hold up a mirror to issues the mass populous takes for granted, after slow drip erosion of societally accepted rights. It's a fight back against the mass media and thier ilk, beating you about the head with "these people are bad because...." so you go along with hunting them down, but really they've found a convenient way to remove YOUR rights, or distract you into not noticing something egregious they've done. We become desensitised to things, and south park rips that bandage off fast and painfully, by design. They show you the things you have become desensitised to, in massively parodied, over the top, over exaggerated version, so you see through your former brain washing or desensitisation. If you don't pay attention, you don't notice the messages always pointing out how egregious the thing actually is. I would suggest, if you have that opinion, you've never actually really watched south park.
And really none of us should talk from a bias, we should employ critical thinking and inform ourselves fully, before making definitive statements. So, go watch... I'll bet you change your mind.
Dark humor
Either everything is funny or nothing is
ITT:
(It's okay to like a show. Cartman's voice just gives me a headache, you guys.)
Because adults are just grown children, sometimes. Like, seriously, age says nothing about maturity, just hypothetical, lived experience.