South Park Cleanup

Honestly the page could probably be consolidated into a single entry that summarizes the show's tendency to state the moral (even when it's a Spoof Aesop) very bluntly at the end of an episode, and to use idiots as Anti Role Models to make it very clear what the writers do not want the audience to do.

Yeah "Kick a Ginger Day" turned legitimately fans of South Park against the show, due to idiotic teenagers at the time of the airing taking it seriously and actually harassing redheads at their school and serves as one of the few jokes Matt and Trey legit regret making. Compare this to another controversial episode "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" which got acclaim with the black community for it's legitimate take on racism and how hurtful the n word can be.

It's not so much that teenagers took it seriously, as that it fired up already existing prejudices against redheads.

Reposting from this att query

On YMMV.South Park Joining The Panderverse, Wadatahmydamie removed a block of text which I will write in bold.

With the edit reason of: "Removed grossly misleading editorializing - it came across like an attempt to poison the well against criticism of Matt and Trey, who have a long history of attacking marginalized communities in the name of 'satire.'"

As a fan of the show, I'm not sure how to handle this. But having watched the episode, I can say that the episode does indeed mock both sides equally. Wadatchmydamie, I feel, is troping with a lot of bias against the show. But then again, South Park is controversial after all.

Should I restore it? Send them a notifier? Do nothing? Were they actually right? I'm not sure.

I mostly wanted to ask to prevent a possible edit war in the future.

You should consult the administrivia page on edit warring here. You already opened an ATT thread, so you should probably wait what they say there first.

Hrm.

So, on one hand, the removed text was really needless apologetic and white-washy.

On the other, the entry doesn't really make sense. Why is the fandom here misaimed? Granted, even with that text it was unclear. Even with the full context of the deleted text I'm really not sure what the entry is calling misaimed, or even if it is. The full context might even be more confusing because if the creators are taking both sides, then a fandom can't really be "misaimed" then since they are ostensibly on their side to some extent.

Like, it doesn't matter if they're "reguary" on anyone's side, the entry doesn't say whose side they are or not on, thus making it kinda useless.

Edited by Larkmarn on Oct 30th 2023 at 11:07:48 AM

Oh, my bad, this is the cleanup page, then it's probably the right place to ask.

The original entry simply said the following (emphasis mine):

• Despite mocking both sides of the debate on diverse media equally, viewers on both sides claim that the special is entirely on their side.

So I was pointing out what prompted viewers to make those claims, and how the episode was viewed as "glorifying" anti-diversity (there was even a whole video about it breaking it down), along with viewers getting the wrong idea that they would make a direct Shout-Out to a Disney movie in the works/the fact that no Shout-Out was made really means anything (in terms of bias).

What did you think was "apologetic" about the removed text? I wasn't theorizing that Matt and Trey take that approach, if that's what you mean, or glorifying it. I'm sorry if I wasn't careful with genuine falsehoods in my phrasing, but I assumed this was the outlook most South Park-watching tropers had (I've even seen things like "most of their comedy is about upsetting people" and "Trey and Matt 'despise kids', neither of which are true; I never intended to replicate those feelings).

That original entry, while vague, is much better as it actually addresses the example.

I'm incredibly wary (and frankly, sick of) the whole "makes fun of both sides equally" thing. It's a conservative position that I'm tired of in general. Let me put it this way. Say there's 50 people. 40 of them are pro-red. 10 of them are pro-blue. I kill 20 people, 10 pro-red, 10 pro-blue. Am I being equal? I'm targeting them equally. This is why the whole "mocking both sides equally" thing isn't actually equal.

The thing about mocking both sides of a debate "equally" is it's only equal when both sides are morally and numerically equal. I make 10 jokes about trans people and 10 jokes about cis people, I'm disproportionately targeting trans people, aren't I? It's a bit of Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics.

That's a bit off-topic and ranty, it's more for background than anything else.

Like I said, the biggest issue with the entry as-written is that it fails to established what the misaimed fandom is, as well as what the "aimed" fandom would be.

Lower-case "c" conservative, not as in "right wing" but in terms of "pro-status quo." It's essentially an argument in favor of inaction or apathy.

Edited by Larkmarn on Oct 30th 2023 at 4:41:46 AM

Is it? I've seen that argument plenty around here, and we are not exactly a conservative crowd.

I thought the aimed fandom of the episode was clear: The Enlightened Centrists ("laughing at both sides) or just centrists who lean towards a certain side (center-left and center-right).

Both the extreme right and the extreme left mistakenely believe the show is 100% on their side, when Matt and Trey aimed to target both of them.

The episode ends with basically a compromise.

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Oct 30th 2023 at 5:48:46 PM

It could be, but the writeup absolutely makes no attempt to say that.

Super_Weegee restored the first sentence of of the entry.

I agree with that restoration. The "mocking both sides equally" wording and the idea they never took a side was controversial, but objectively they did mock both sides of the issue.

I too agree with keeping the restoration. I'll also add that while they do mock both sides, the special also makes sure to bring up the valid points from both sides too (the decline in writing quality and multiverse fatigue/lazy writing from Kyle and Stan, and how Kathleen's push for genuine diversity and inclusion isn't one that's necessarily a bad thing), leading to the compromise/reconciliation between Kathleen and Eric at the end.

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Oct 31st 2023 at 12:26:33 AM

What about the rest of the entry? Should I cut down on anything/make it clearer in general?

Yeah, this intro is fine. The one that was cut was the what I had issue with, as it genuinely obfuscated the trope for the sake of painting the creators in a good light.

Honestly, I find the "largely stems from..." bit to be... confusing more than anything else, especially since it seems like it would be contradictory to the thesis that both sides found the episode to be on their side.