South Park

Imaginationland is my least favorite trilogy movie because the terrorist plot just made things way too confusing. I like the message and I like the Woodland Critters returning, though. Plus Butters insight is always good. It's just that the Coon and Friends arc and Black Friday arc are way more enjoyable for me (the latter is one of my all-time favorites).

They were worried about upsetting actual terrorists making threats against them over 200 and 201 showing Mohammed.

A New York based terrorist group, no less.

Edited by Redmess on Feb 7th 2021 at 7:50:49 PM

I thought it was Comedy Central that was worried about the threats for those episodes, not Matt and Trey.

Yeah it qas comedy central who was worried. Matt and trey fully intended to have it in

Come to think about it, they never had any positive Muslim portrayal. Outside of one family in that 24 parody, they’ve all been portrayed as terrorists. I mean, every show is guilty of this but they’re more likely to give out complex Christians and Jews than they are Muslims. So there is a slight bias.

It's pretty rare they feature non-white characters that aren't stereotypical jokes. When they do, the joke usually is that they aren't stereotypical.

It does beg the question: as funny as their foreigner stereotypes are, why do we laugh when South Park does it yet condemn people like Adam Sandler for doing them? That Asian guy Rob Schneider plays in Eight Crazy Nights is basically Tuong Lu Kim. Is it because we’re biased?

Yes it turns out he’s a white guy with a mental disorder but that’s a retcon that’s basically been forgotten aside from one mention.

Edited by HBarnill on Feb 7th 2021 at 6:44:05 AM

People claim South Park uses stereotypes in order to mock them. (Even the YMMV page claims that.) Maybe that's true for some episodes. However, a lot of these stereotypes just...exist. Like, what does Tuong Lu Kim say about Chinese stereotypes besides "they exist" and "this is racist"? Most of the humor comes from his accent making things sound like curse words.

One of the few instances I can remember where a stereotype gag really worked was "The Entity" because Cousin Kyle being a whole mess of Jewish stereotypes was a reflection of Kyle's own anxieties about his ethnic identity. (Maybe the Author Avatar aspect helps with the authenticity there?) It reminds me a lot of American Born Chinese which had a similar premise in one of its subplots. There's a few cases where stereotypes are used to reflect white American ignorance too, and that's also slightly better, though most of the fandom doesn't really pick up on it and just echoes the racism as the entire joke.

I doubt it’s Author Avatar since he’s never really identified with it, religiously nor culturally. In the commentary for that episode, he claimed that stereotypes exist because they are true.

Edited by HBarnill on Feb 7th 2021 at 7:33:04 AM

Eh, it varies from episode to episode how much Kyle identifies with it as well. But the fact that it's more of an in-joke than just straight-up punching down just lends it more authenticity. It's still...not great, but at least there's a point to the Stop Being Stereotypical trope from a character development standpoint, at least.

Y’know, as much as we criticize the show for its stance on racism, LGBT issues, and what have you, and justifiably so, I do believe they handle feminism really good for the most part. They falter occasionally (Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset has really aged poorly after what we’ve learned about Paris Hilton and making false equivalence with “men oppression” with female oppression during the 20th season, even if it was satirical), but they do understand how scary it is being a woman in America. Episodes like “The Hobbit”, “Eat, Pray, Queef”, “Magic Bush”, “Sexual Healing”, “Bebe’s Boobs”, and Heidi’s subplot during the 21st season (misguided self-victimizing on her part aside) have really aged well and handle sexism much better than shows that deal with these issues on a daily basis. They should get some praise for that.

Edited by HBarnill on Feb 11th 2021 at 5:59:45 AM

I have mixed feelings on some of those episodes because it sometimes feels like they go just off target enough to imply the problem isn't women being unsafe as a result of these behaviors, but that women will become flighty/cruel/selfish/stupid/etc. "Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society" is the main example because obviously Bebe is sympathetic, but the message given is that embracing her big boobs will make her weak or stupid because men will do everything for her. It doesn't offend me or anything, it's small potatoes and pretty much satire, but I hesitate to call it feminist or anything. (It often comes across like Trey hasn't really gotten over his relationship issues and that resentment still pops up in the show every now and then.)

Most of the other episodes I'm fine with, though. I love "Eat Pray Queef" as a girl with a nasty sense of humor, and "Doubling Down" is one of my favorite episodes of all time because of how it depicts the nuances of emotional abuse (and the analogy it sets up with the presidency is...a bit flawed, but very interesting and insightful).

Edited by mightymewtron on Feb 11th 2021 at 1:17:26 PM

I kinda get what they were going at with their president analogy:

I find it funny that Kyle Schwartz is an impression of an impression. (Specifically, Trey Parker doing an impression of Tony Curtis doing an impression of Carey Grant)

Heidi? Oh yeah. That plotline totally dropped from the face of the planet in this show.

Nope, just ignore all that in favour of MORE RANDY. And it's probably not a coincidence that that also involves a lot of weed.

I really expected this to be a marketing stunt to actually sell South Park brand weed. It's been too long without any announcement of such a thing for that to be true, but it would make more sense than just...IDK, trolling the audience.

There's a lot of cool characters SP kind of forgot about quickly. Heidi got her own arc at least. I don't think we've ever seen Rebecca Cotswolds again. (I suspect it's because she's one of the last characters Mary Kay Bergman voiced and they don't want to overwrite her legacy.)

Trolling the audience makes sense since they seem to be getting sick of their own show. They are certainly in a weird mood about their work these days.

Yeah, but it doesn't work because some South Park fans will just eat anything up. I saw people praising "Christmas Snow" as brilliant and hilarious just because Jesus and Santa did coke, when the whole point of the episode was that it was a metaphor for how Trey and Matt were half-assing it. You can find that hilarious, sure, but at least acknowledge the point of the episode.

Time to hold my breath for the next few weeks.

Episode description spoilers: Garrison's coming back, possibly returning to being their teacher. The "hilarious militant group" they're referring to in the description is presumably Q. The show has a pretty decent track record when discussing conspiracy theories and cult-like behavior, but a mixed record when it comes to deconstructing the mentality of the alt-right, so I'm unsure what's gonna happen here. I just hope they do their research.

I'm wondering if the schedule is better or worse for them creatively. The weekly schedule is a grind and a half, but I still remember them discussing making Team America: World Police and how it was difficult for them to rationalize that their jokes were still funny after seeing the same ones through months of takes, which made the experience a thoroughly miserable one for them (and swore them off making any more puppet movies). Is having two months to work on a special good so they're not rushing it out, or bad because they won't find the material fresh and thus harder to work on?

Edited by Beatman1 on Feb 19th 2021 at 2:43:52 PM

Thats presuming they were working on the episode the whole time

The Book of Mormon was a single effort that required a lot more months of work, and that came out fantastically in my opinion. Hopefully this also means they have more time to do research on the issues (especially when they're as contentious as the vaccine and Q), as that tends to be the fatal flaw of their short production time.

Don't make the jokes funny to begin with? Works for some movies!

Edited by mightymewtron on Feb 19th 2021 at 7:25:56 AM

Yeah, it must be hard making a comedy where you are sick of the jokes by the time you're finishing it all up. How do movie directors deal with that?

A large number of directors have admitted to having the same issue but just with the overall artistic vision, like David Fincher.

I know for me personally I love the concept phase but being in the trenches of the actual production is so difficult because you have no idea if it will come together at the end.