South Park

You might be thinking of “200/201”, which aired in 2010. We’re talking specifically after the 2016 election.

Precisely. Post-Trump SP is a different breed. It doesn't have the same cultural impact because of the way TV is changing.

Yeah. Like, streaming is becoming preferred over standard TV and it’s more popular for shows to have continuity in them.

I remember writing down a looooong post of bullet points of the most controversial opinions the show has presented as a way to start a discussion. The more I think about it, the more I understand:

The show hasn't changed; America has. Polls suggest that people are becoming more ethnically diverse than ever, and as a result, more liberal, progressive, etc. #MeToo, BlackLivesMatter, etc also had a change in the country. The show has blasted these movements as much as they blasted the counter-movements to those (I've always had the opinion that the show hasn't handled social issues, such as race, gender, and LGBT well).

I wouldn't consider South Park to be conservative but Matt & Trey have openly expressed that they mock the left more because to them, the punk rock thing to do is to do the opposite of what the industry tells you to be, and the entertainment industry tends to be left. The problem with that is that, once you go to that mindset, you accidentally throw logic out the window for the sake of wanting to be unique to the crowd or for jokes, as ManBearPig can attest to. Of course, they apologized for that but that's not the only example of them. Of course, the left shouldn't be invincible to mocking, I consider myself to be on the center, but even I know that trying to balance both perspectives at times can lead to false equivalencies, and that's not the point of satire.

That's not to say the show isn't funny anymore. Far from it: the show still remains one of the funniest on TV right now. It wouldn't be better if it just became extremely liberal. I guess my main point is that they really should do more research on certain issues if they want to talk about them or make fun of them. And if there is an issue that presents both sides being in the wrong, and they do happen, then by all means, do it. But in a post-Weinstein, post-Floyd, post-January-6 world, that's gonna be hard to do for an audience that seems to want progression more than anything else.

I think is also easy to mock US right because they often do or said some outrightious shit.

I will said is also values dissonance, South park peat ten years ago when being controversial and daring to said opinion even gross was something, in part for the smothering influence of Bush presidency. But today conservative will likey apriciate more being edgy, mock for the said of it and wnating to be ofensive as sign you are correct. Not to said more out their damn rockets as time pass.

So this make mocking the left a dificult prospect because you have to strike a balance between not sound lazy but also dont softball them.

"Because it's apt. "

Not, it is not.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this sentiment. There has always been a large movement of progressive causes. It just feels like that shift is increasing in size due to the increased polarization of politics, for various reasons. We may well be saying something different in twenty years.

Either way, the issue is Parker and Stone feel like men who aren't keeping up with the times. It's the equivalent of that one meme "old man yells at cloud" with them. If they don't get something, they don't try to understand it, they just mock it even if said mockery is hurtful or abusive.

Making fun of the "left" (a term I think is meaningless) is fine. There's a lot to mock. Mock anarchists, mock social democrats, mock people who call themselves communist but support the Chinese government. But sometimes it helps to *actually know what you're talking about* when lampooning something.

I'm going to avoid a derail and leave that topic to DM's or something else.

It's pretty easy to satirize activism but SP keeps missing the mark by choosing the same gags about "liberals are oversensitive" and "liberals are self-righteous."

I mean their conservative satire isn't much more nuanced but I do struggle to think of specific examples where they satirized conservatives and only conservatives, besides "Best Friends Forever" and the Trump!Garrison arc.

The fact that #Me Too! and BLM became trendy enough for corporations to use them to sell products the same way they did in the 60s shows how mainstream they've become. Heck, support for abortions and marijuana legalization is higher than it has been in decades.

The funny thing is: I've seen people compare South Park to Bill Maher. Their reason? They say both are smug, middle-aged white men convinced of their morals while "yelling at clouds" as you've said. I disagree. South Park is at least funny. More importantly, Matt & Trey don't care whether you agree with them while Maher gets visibly annoyed his points don't get met with clapter. When you make "freedom of expression" your main goal in your career, you don't get to be annoyed when someone doesn't share your beliefs.

Edited by HBarnill on Apr 26th 2022 at 10:35:00 AM

I think is easier to satire conservatives because they have becoming more and more caricatire as polarizating sink them (the same happen here in venezuela with chavismo).

For me the best to mock the left is their pretentiousness in a sort of "How can anyone chose anyone else beside me" and their tendecy to circular firing squads.

Exactly. You can mock the left's pretentiousness and over-righteousness and misguided attempts to over correct injustice, but that doesn't seem to be the case at times.

In Cripple Fight, the main message is that, while firing someone for being gay is wrong, it's equally wrong to shame a company for firing since it's their choice and they need to learn to be accepting, which doesn't make sense since the club didn't want to fire Al in the first place but were pressured to do so. And firing someone for being gay is pretty worse than shaming them for doing that, it's not even comparable. That's like saying we shouldn't have the Civil Rights Act because America needs to learn how to not be racist. That's unrealistically optimistic. You don't have to be on either side of the issue to see how this falls flat. It's not a bad episode. I just think they really need to think more about it before wanting to make a point about it.

I look at something like Last Week Tonight. The show presents an issue, looks at it from a logical, emotional, and ethical POV, looks at how politicians from both sides have failed to do anything about it, presents them with a great deal amount of research, and still be funny without being overly preachy. Which is what satire is meant to do. They're completely different in work process but I feel that's why LWT has been that well-received so far.

Edited by HBarnill on Apr 26th 2022 at 10:49:15 AM

The issue with show that make fun of a lot of thing is that it dosent take too much to point out the thing they held sacred(that is, uncritable) and one of it is the whole individual right to chose that we see time and time again when they try to make an aseop(that is not a spoof one) in general.

I still don't buy that we're somehow in an era of politics becoming overwhelmingly more progressive in the mainstream when A: we still have politicians working against women's and LGBT rights, and B: we're only looking at it from *today's* perspective. In twenty years, I doubt we'll say the same thing.

It'd help to also not shoot the message. Yes, a lot of self-identified "leftists" are absolutely pretentious, self-righteous, and completely full of themselves. But that can easily go from "These people are assholes but there's a good cause behind it" to "These people and their cause suck". I don't think Parker and Stone always make that distinction.

Without any judgment, I doubt they even believe those causes that much in the first place. Now, like I said, the point of their Take Thats are more for contrarianism and jokes than out of true spite but, at their most sincere, they seem to have views that wouldn't seem too popular, which, again, whatever, they're entitled to that.

There's a new Sarah Z video that discusses the film Idiocracy. She's not a fan. Mostly because she believes the film portrays people as idiots rather than understanding why they're idiots and claims it's symptomatic of a huge issue with the Hollywood left when mocking conservatives. She doesn't mention South Park but there was a discussion about it on her thread about how the show would fit within the context of her topic compared to the media of the time Idiocracy was made in and arguably these days.

I posted how the show was different by not falling into the trap of portraying conservatives as dumb hicks. I mean, they do, but with an equal scorn for progressive hippies. If people want to satirize the latter, they usually go after white liberals who are revealed to be utter hypocrites with views that align with their so-called enemies (Get Out, Knives Out, Woke, etc. demonstrate this). South Park uses Randy to do the same thing but what they don't quite understand is that there are minorities who do share these beliefs and are shown to be much more sincere than their more privileged counterparts. Getting rid of Columbus Day and Confederate statues and wanting CRT taught in schools wasn't started by white liberals, as the show claims. When they view it in that lens, they unintentionally silence the minorities they're trying to be more sympathetic toward.

No one ever said politicians fully represent what the people want; just want they think they want if it gets them votes. I'm going by what the statistics and polls say. Heck, even in the South, there's a growing acceptance for the LGBT.

Edited by HBarnill on Apr 27th 2022 at 8:47:34 AM

Not to mention the only reason why a lot of those demogauges are in power is because of gerrymandering.

They still have plenty of supporters. Sure, there's plenty of progressive-minded people. There's also plenty of conservative, reactionary lunatics.

Here in Florida, Desantis is unpopular. He still has a large mass of supporters.

Edited by Diana1969 on Apr 28th 2022 at 4:50:57 AM

We are definitely more progressive than 25 years ago, when making jokes about trans people were still socially acceptable, as was being ambivalent about whether or not transsexuality (as it was then called) was even a thing.

This is incidentally what is now tripping people like Rowling up. It's not so much that they weren't progressive when they grew up, but rather that they never moved along with progressive thought over the years, and suddenly find that what was once acceptable even in progressive circles now suddenly makes them a bigot in those same circles.

Being progressive is like that chess game in Alice in Wonderland: you have to run along just to stay where you are, or you will be left behind.

"I still don't buy that we're somehow in an era of politics becoming overwhelmingly more progressive in the mainstream when A: we still have politicians working against women's and LGBT rights, and B: we're only looking at it from *today's* perspective. In twenty years, I doubt we'll say the same thing. "

In retrospective we have make advance, in part because while progrsiveness have a lot of work to do, is not longer four feminist in a corner shouting and expecting everyone to hear them, is already more or less mainstrain and even company pay atention.

We have made a lot of strides in progressive throughout the years and Republicans are seeking to undo those strides.

Even though people like Ron De Santis, Greg Abbott, Lindsay Graham, Josh Hawley, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are widely unpopular, they still manage to have a lot of people supporting them.

And by that same logic, something like South Park could have been progressive for its time. The whole "actually we're not getting more progressive because there's still people who fight against it" argument just sounds super nihilistic. We're not in a socialist utopia or anything but it is generally better than it was in the 1990s.

The main thing is that Parker and Stone are not necessarily trying to be the most comprehensive authority on a topic (which is a common problem with fans) and often focus more on the hypocrisy, hysteria and crisis profiteering than trying to offer a solution to a complex issue. Team America: World Police spent an equal amount of time between the people who glorify military intervention and the celebrity activism claiming to be the voice of the people. I was quite amused a bit ago watching "Smug Alert" and how it was more about the arrogant elitism of hybrid owners, but this was long before the environmental issues of hybrid and electric cars became apparent.

There was virtually no legalized gay marriage anywhere in the world 20 years ago. Is that not progress?

I think you are letting the bad things that still happen today overshadow the victories that we have won.

Correct. We have made progress since that time. I think South Park was actually one of the first shows to preach about accepting gay people.

The problem is that we have a party that seeks to oppress everyone that isn’t a Conservative, Christian, white, cishet, male.

Nihilism is a grotesque philosophy that I do not share. Needless to say, however, I find the idea that this is somehow the "most progressive generation" to be overblown. They'll say the same thing about the next generation and the one after that and what changes? New legislation that acts as a bandaid for deeply-ingrained societal issues?

As far as gains go, abortion rights are already being rolled back. Trans people are having their rights rolled back. That's not even getting into continued systemic abuses or, y'know, the whole "people will literally kill you for being a minority and they can get away with it" bullshit.

I think it's naive to act like this is a time of unheard of progressive positions being taken when the actual system itself could not give less of a flying fuck about it.

I don't believe in socialist utopia. But I ask, better for *who*? Trans people like me are more visible but we aren't exactly doing well. I'm scared to present in public because I think someone will try and hurt me.

People's attitudes have changed. There's more awareness of trans people, more awareness of police brutality, more awareness of how deeply fucked up the government is. That's good. But awareness can only go so far when the people in power actively want to *kill* us.

Edited by Diana1969 on Apr 29th 2022 at 1:11:06 AM

Yeah, you’re definitely correct here.

While yes the average civilians have made a lot of social progress, there are still a lot of people who are extremely bigoted and won’t accept any social progress. It’s to the point that even cishet people who support LGBTQIA+ people get called the “p-word” by bigots.

And that’s not even getting into the GOP who is becoming more fascist every day.

Edited by powerpuffbats on Apr 28th 2022 at 10:26:49 AM

I think you are confusing "we are the most progressive generation so far" with "we are the most progressive generation that will ever exist".

Yes, our generation is more progressive than the last one, by leaps and bounds in some places. In some respects, we really are the most progressive generation in modern history so far.

But of course we will be overtaken by the next (well, I sure hope so, at least). I've said it before, in 50 years we will be the old fogies stuck in the past, and we will be making the sort of progressive faux pas the likes of Rowling are making to our generation.

The progressives of today will be the moderates of tomorrow, and in extreme cases the conservatives of the day after tomorrow. Just ask second wave feminists. They went from being at the forefront of progressive feminism to being shunned as TERF/SWERF conservatives in a mere 50 years.

And we should not think ourselves immune to that, either. Some day there may well be a newly progressive idea that does not vibe with our own personal brand of progressiveness, and we may find ourselves on the wrong side of the march of history. That is, unless we keep an open mind and are prepared to be flexible in our thinking.

Like I said before, being progressive is running as fast as you can just to keep up.