South Park has been advocating an ideology, including many morals, from day one of the shows. It may be a mixed message, it may be contradictory, but a lot of SP comedy hinges on pointing out the absurdities in our societies.
Comedy has always been a place you'd look if you want to see someone speak truth to power, for millennia too, and South Park has always done that.
South Park is 100% right. We need to back them in their fight against a murderous totalitarian dictatorship holding millions of people in concentration camps.
We might like the cheap goods coming from China, but remember they come from people who are forced to work at 7 days a week 14 hours a day for nearly no pay.
Boycott the NBA and Blizzard and anyone else who won't start standing up for democracy.
Well, one of the developments of the last six months has been to put a lot of pinpricks in the idea that China is an inevitably rising world superpower that will inevitably supplant the US in the near future. I wouldn't say that's off the table entirely, but it's looking a lot more evitable.
It had considerable part in setting back efforts to deal with climate change.
They did a mea culpa, but still, I can't tell you how annoyed I was in college with the amount of people who would challenge the idea of climate change just because they watched a South Park episode.
The message of South Park is to point at people with any conviction and say “ha! Look at these idiots with an ideology. The only correct way is to be edgy and make fun of everything”
"It seems to be a hangover of the Medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the educated, to think that everybody must "believe" something or other, that if one is not a theist one must be a dogmatic atheist, and if one does not think capitalism is perfect, one must believe fervently in socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in "X", one must alternatively have blind faith in not X or reverse of X. My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assume certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered typically dead under current medical standards where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended." Robert Anton Wilson
You completely misunderstand what they do. The art form is political satire, which is just another way of saying "Look at these idiots, we need to stop this".
Comedy has always been a place you'd look if you want to see someone speak truth to power, for millennia too, and South Park has always done that.
No, not always. They sometimes do that. Calling vegetarians pussies [0] is not speaking truth to power. It's punching down. South Park's approach is more the "try to piss off everyone" approach, which while funny, is a bad way to find your moral compass.
“Punching down” itself is a concept they would, and should, make fun of. That term is just a way of framing speech that you disagree with in order to censor it for being anti-virtuous.
Calling the term "punching down" just a way to frame speech that one disagrees with in order to censor it just sounds like a way for you to censor people who criticize you for punching down.
“Punching down” itself is a concept they would, and should, make fun of.
Well, it's been well established that they would make fun of anything. I'm not arguing that. You tell the writers what they should be doing though.
That term is just a way of framing speech that you disagree with in order to censor it for being anti-virtuous.
No it's not. You're making a lot of false assumptions about what I said based on zero evidence. If you don't understand what I'm saying, that's one thing, but don't put words in my mouth.
No need to take anything South Park does personally; they do a great job of making fun of just about everyone ("Team America" perhaps being a prime example).
The "vegetarians are weak" meme will slowly die as more amateur and professional athletes (including MMA champions, Olympians, and even the guy who coined "You hit like a vegetarian") jump on the plant-based wagon:
I don't know why you think I'm taking anything personally. I'm certainly not a vegetarian. That was the first example of South Park punching down I thought of.
Like I said, South Park does make fun of everyone. That's explicitly not always speaking truth to power, like the parent poster is claiming. And I agree with the grandparent post that we shouldn't look to South Park as a moral compass.
I don't know that I agree with your sentiment. Irreverent comedians who have achieved significant success and not really accountable to anyone are perfectly positioned to "tell it like it is" and may be the best individuals to do so. I'm glad our society embraces and can cultivate such individuals especially in this time of cancel culture.
Exactly how many irreverent comedians who achieved significant success and are not really accountable to anyone, telling it like it is, have been cancelled by the cancel culture?
Cosby, TJ Miller, Louis CK, Jeffrey Tambor, James Franco, ...? A good list of people who did morally reprehensible things of varying degrees, from illegal to merely opening their employers to civil liability, and in my mind, they should be "cancelled." Maybe you can argue some of these, I don't think so.
Azis Ansari? I don't know how tranchant his "speaking truth to power" has ever been, but he did a Netflix special this year, and I would need pretty compelling evidence to believe that's your smoking gun. I predict he'll be just fine in a few more years.
Kevin Hart? Maybe. Again, not much of a politically-motivated comedian, but getting removed as Oscar (?) host was damaging. Nonetheless, it looks like he had 5 movies/specials in 2019 and has work scheduled for 2020. Besides the car crash, I think he'll be alright.
Dan Harmon (like James Gunn) was a political hit job and didn't go anywhere.
Am I missing anyone?
Outside of e.g. #metoo, some people didn't like Dave Chappelle's recent Netflix special. I'm not a fan of him "punching down" at trans people myself, but, I don't think it's anything he hasn't said before. Nonetheless it was trending in the top five for most of last month, I think he is, and will continue to be, doing fine.
I just don't see where people attribute all this power to "cancel culture." Chik-fil-A, Nike, ..., all doing just fine despite on-going boycotts from "cancel culture."
Roseanne Barr. Had her ABC show cancelled over a tweet, yet ABC-owned ESPN hired Keith Olbermann. Multiple examples of someone posting vile stuff on a blog or twitter and being unscathed (Joy Reid is one quick example,) but Roseanne gets canceled because she happens to support Trump.
Another example is Shane Gillis — cancelled because of something he said, not any specific action. Getting cancelled for sexually abusing people is one thing, getting cancelled because of “offensive” speech is the real problem. Roseanne and Gillis and Hart got cancelled for words. CK, Franken, Spacey — they were ousted for actions. That isn’t really part of cancel culture. Driving someone out of business because of vile and criminal actions is much different than firing a comedian because of a joke.
If I were a comedian that make vile jokes about Obama and his daughters, I’d be cancelled. If I made vile jokes about Trump and his kids, I’d get a Netflix special.
> Roseanne gets canceled because she happens to support Trump
This is false. The show got cancelled because of tweets by Barr that were seen as racist.[1] She was already known as a Trump supporter for 2 years before her show was revived[2][3] so that could not possibly have been a factor in her firing.
Words vs action have nothing to do with what I was saying, and I don't see where you've made a convincing case that they should be separated.
As for Barr and Gillis, both ABC and NBC acted immediately to get rid of them when it looked like they would hurt their bottom line. Is that "cancel culture" to you?
> If I made vile jokes about Trump and his kids, I’d get a Netflix special.
Which kids? Who is out there making fun of Bannon, or are you saying Eric/Don Jr/Ivanka/[that other one] are off limits?
I'm not aware of anyone targeting any under age Presidential children..........
Oh except when Malia was being called out for drinking under age, I guess. Or, here's former Presidential candidate John McCain making a joke about Chelsea Clinton (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/02/women.j...). So I guess if you make a joke about Trump's kids, you get a Netflix special; make a joke about a Democrat President's kid, run for President?
> but Roseanne gets canceled because she happens to support Trump.
That's not the comment she got canceled for. She was being horribly racist. Trump support is less the issue than it is extra gasoline between his racist comments and her horrible comment.
> If I made vile jokes about Trump and his kids, I’d get a Netflix special.
Barr, Gillis and Hart were fired from one job because they alienated a large enough swath of their employers' customers and advertisers that they thought it would be bad for business. That's capitalism.
Furthermore, they're all still working, so I don't see how cancelled is the right word here.
Words don't exist in a vacuum. They have meanings that people interpret to varying degrees of importance. Dismissing what he did as just "something he said" as opposed to meaning or intent, is not cancellation - it's society's backlash toward intolerable racist speech.
You might want to investigate the meaning and intent then. He was mocking dumb old white dudes. Everybody just saw the slur and lost their mind, totally missing this fact. It’s fine to not think that the joke landed, but it’s silly to be offended by it. And yes, it was literally cancelation.
You’re not up to speed on that term if you think it has anything to do with people’s right to complain. And it has nothing to do with Cosby or football, at all. And there we go with that silly “punching down” term again.
My favorite thing about South Park is when it satires the over-corrective tendency of American society. When the adults get up in arms about a supposed crisis, inevitably making things worse in the process, and the kids are the only ones acting rationally.
We live in a time where Dennis Rodman is an essential diplomatic asset for dealing with a nuclear nation state. We do indeed live in interesting times.
If that's how you really feel then I don't think you watch very much South Park. No other show has so consistently skewered culture, or preached at viewers, for so long as South Park
uhhh.... I think they've done a better job of speaking truth to power than pretty much anybody and have shown they are quite comfortable making fun of themselves. Seems pretty moral...
