Quick Thoughts: Rewatching South Park

🎵I'm goin' down to South Park / Gonna have myself a time🎵

Thanks to HBO Max, I’ve been doing a South Park rewatch.

My history with the show goes as follows: as a goody-two shoes kid, when I heard/saw people describe South Park episodes online, in the hallways at school, or in entertainment magazines I thought it sounded interesting but I was too chicken to watch it. It was TV-MA, TV-MA I tell you! What if my parents caught me?

So I would piece together plots of various episodes in my head from what I’ve read on Tumblr or TV Tropes, which I read religiously in Middle School. But then one day I finally sat down to watch it, and I became hooked. My “South Park phrase” lasted from about 7th to 8th grade. However, when I became a teenager, I begun to view it as “cruel” or “mean-spirited.” Plus, in the online circles I frequented, people started to claim that it was harmful for promoting 1. bigotry towards marginalized groups and 2. a nihilistic attitude that everything sucks, man, so there’s no need to get caught in hippie-dippie claptrack like “caring about the well-being of other people.” Once in awhile I would catch an episode on Comedy Central while channel surfing, but for the most part I was done with South Park.

That is, until recently. And while doing my rewatch I’ve realized that said criticism of the show misses the mark. A lot.

In my opinion, Seasons 4-6 are the sweet spot. It was when the series was finally figuring out its niche as social commentary and what to do with its characters, while at the same time still keeping the charming Monty Python-esque silliness of the earlier seasons. A lot of the episodes in that era were also surprisingly wholesome: for example, the episode “Chef Goes Nanners,” where Chef protests the town’s equivalent of the Confederate flag, ends with an genuinely heartwarming pro-“colorblindness” message, which is pretty interesting to watch in retrospect.

I’m not a person of color (well, depending on how you classify Sicilianos) so for that reason I hesitate more to pipe up as Little Miss Heterodox when it comes to race discourse than I do, say, discussions about gender or wahmen. However, I do have an inkling that the general ethos of the “post-racial”, “let’s celebrate our differences” 1990s and early 2000s had it right: the best way to approach bigotry is to have people get to know one another and have mutual respect for eachother as human beings as opposed to paying hundreds of dollars for HR managers in Brooklyn to have you undergo white guilt Maoist struggle sessions.

This is what the establishment fears

Also, on a related note, I think Chef is becoming one of my favorite characters (RIP Isaac Hayes).

And a lot of the episodes nowadays come off as downright quaint, such as the 2001 episode “It Hits the Fan,” where the entire town is amazed because a TV show…. used the word “shit” uncensored (oh, my stars!) The same episode also briefly mentions how in the South Park universe, the Canadian comedy duo Terrence and Philips made history as the first men to kiss each other on TV. Believe it or not, the same kind of public displays of gay and lesbian affection that are now featured in Citibank ads used to be considered scandalous.

Furthermore, it’s weird to reflect on the peak Trump Derangement Syndrome years where people criticized South Park for promoting the message that “nothing really matters and caring about things is dumb” when in reality it’s much more sincere than a lot media nowadays. Many describe it as a show that “makes fun of all sides” which although is true, they also forget that it tries to empathize with all sides, too. The “I’ve learned something today” speech that the characters, usually Kyle or Stan, deliver at the end of the episode usually consists of them approaching the main social issue of the episode with the message that “shifting the Overton Window too far on this side is wrong, while shifting the Overton Window too far on that side is also wrong, let’s find the middle ground.” In fact, many irony-poisoned viewers nowadays might view this part of the show as lame because it’s too sincere, not too apathetic.

One episode that gets taken out of context a lot- not necessarily in a negative way- is Season 11 Episode 1 “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson”. In this episode, Randy becomes the town pariah after gleefully blurting out the N word (and yes, he uses the hard R) on Wheel of Fortune. There’s a good chance you’ve seen that clip from the episode on meme pages or in “South Park Funny/Offensive/No Chill Moments That Live Rent Free In My Head (Try Not to Laugh) #34671” YouTube compilations. Most of the comments on those videos are something along the lines of “lmfao, there’s NO way they could make this episode today with all these sensitive snowflakes getting upset over a word” (well, people don’t really say “snowflakes” anymore but you know what I mean). Which, yes, to be fair, if it aired today there would probably be more people complaining that you shouldn’t use that word in ANY context. In the age of algorithms fired up and ready to delete comments that just so happen to include a no-no word, and people angrily sharing clips and headlines with no regards to the full story, context seems to matter less and less these days.

Posting this headline as a especially egregious example of journos cynically taking advantage of a context-less world- the article is actually about how Latinos and Middle Easterns will potentially now have more options to choose from on the US Census. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how someone could misinterpret this in bad faith.

But back to South Park. Once you get past the shock humor, “Apologies To Jesse Jackson” is actually a very well-written and compassionate take on the thorny topic of slurs. Trey and Matt took an incredible risk, and it paid off. After spending the episode trying to understand how Tolkien (née Token) feels about Randy’s gaff, Stan realizes that he will never “get” what it’s like to hear a slur directed at a group he doesn’t belong to. It’s a complicated message but it’s done organically, and doesn’t feel like Trey and Matt are getting preachy or self-flagellating.

There are times where Matt and Trey have missed the mark. One of this was the episode “Cartman’s Silly Hate Crime 2000”, where the duo argues against the concept of hate crimes, because, to quote Kyle and Tolkien Black, “motivation for a crime shouldn't affect the sentencing”, and we should have “the same laws and the same punishments for the same crimes”. I know I sound all “well askually 🤓👆”, but that’s not how the Justice system works- premeditated murder, for instance, holds a greater sentence than murder that was motivated by the heat of the moment.

Of course, I’m not saying that a 20-minute cartoon should be responsible for saving the world. Funny is funny, and I don’t believe that comedy has to “have a point” or a moral obligation to “punch up not down”. If it makes you chuckle, it’s accomplished its job. I like Family Guy (I know “DAE think Family Guy used to be better pre-cancellation?” isn’t exactly a groundbreaking take, but the first three seasons are especially great), which doesn’t usually have “a point” besides the occasional awkwardly handled Aesop like “gay is okay, I guess” or “sure, abortion should be the woman’s choice, whatever.” Another Comedy Central cartoon, Drawn Together, is pure 2000s Vulgar Wave tastelessness- and there are still parts of it that cracks me up.

To wrap it up, South Park? Pretty good. The 1999 movie Bigger, Longer, and Uncut especially rules, watch it if you get the chance.