South Park Cultural Legacy?

Zardnaar

Zardnaar

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So South Park has been on for 23 years this year. I first watched it 1998 iirc.

It's also been claimed SP is responsible for a generation of Trolls.

They have mocked everyone and boiled politics down to giant douche vs turd sandwich.

It's quite offensive but that's it's appeal. I stopped watching around season 10 but have recently watched the ones on Netflix.

At the time my future wife and her friends knew more about it because TV reception in small town NZ didn't get the channel it screened in.

Cartman was very popular in 1998/99 or so.

Thoughts?
 
The problem with later seasons is that Matt Stone and Trey Parker are old now and the show seems more and more out of touch with contemporary events.

The pointless references to Red Dead Redemption 2 in the last season was so cringy and desperate. It's really sad.
 
Bugfatty300 said:
The problem with later seasons is that Matt Stone and Trey Parker are old now and the show seems more and more out of touch with contemporary events.

The pointless references to Red Dead Redemption 2 in the last season was so cringy and desperate. It's really sad.
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I think they lost touch far less than other long lived animated series such as the Simpsons or Family Guy. That said, it's not nearly as great as it used to be. But they continue mocking Americans' sensibilities, and God bless them for that.
 
When it comes to trans issues alone, the show is incredibly disengenuous and gross.

It's legacy is giving ammunition to generations of bigots and enabling continued transphobia.

Equating SRS to mutilation is transphobic, calling transwomen "men" is transphobic, presenting transwomen as hulking, steroidal freaks to gawk at and insisting they do so to gain benefits over cis females even though hrt actually LOWERS testosterone and raises estrogen, causing muscle loss, decrease in bone density and strength loss is transphobic.

Nevermind the hateful depictions of trans characters that would be straight out of a terf-text book to attack an entire community of people they have very little desire to genuinely get to know; in South Park if you are trans or even non binary you are a freak, a sexual deviant and a pervert, you are a predator. Their views on Gay and bi people aren't much better; openly pandering to the most homophobic stereotypes possible.

They are the epitome of white straight cis, middle class men who find the existence of anyone that differs from them to be worthy of mocking and ridicule, they punch down on a target weaker then themselves and laugh like schoolboys, because that's their mindset; it's all a joke until they get called out or its a topic they care about enough to present anything other then a trolling, detached opinion.
 
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I'm not a fan of South Park. They have some absolutely outstanding episodes, but a lot of the episodes feel more mean and focused on punching down than anything else.
 
They've been trying to get themselves cancelled for a long time now......
 
Hilarious show that's taken irreverence to untold heights.

Some parts of its legacy that have been with us for some time now: the underpants gnomes, the Chewbacca defense, skewering (and then defending) Mormonism, skewering (and absolutely not defending) Scientology, hilariously mocking gamer culture in the WoW episode, and the phenomenon of "South Park Republicans."

A handful of episodes have not aged well. For example, the various global warming episodes. Funny as they may be, they now look very short-sighted and juvenile. I think Stone and Parker have even expressed regret over their Al Gore Man Bear Pig episodes.
 
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Ajidica said:
I'm not a fan of South Park. They have some absolutely outstanding episodes, but a lot of the episodes feel more mean and focused on punching down than anything else.
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I'm other words, it's outstanding when they mock conservatives and Republicans for their idiocy, but when they mock liberals/progressives for theirs it's punching down and mean :p
 
luiz said:
I'm other words, it's outstanding when they mock conservatives and Republicans for their idiocy, but when they mock liberals/progressives for theirs it's punching down and mean :p
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Punching down is attacking groups already disempowered and disenfranchized.

Conservatives and Republicans aren't either of those.
 
I have fond memories watching alien probes going up people's buttholes while somebody got plastic surgery so they could be a dolphin and all the other weird stuff they do on that show. Some good laughs were had and I will always remember this show for all of the good laughs it led to. At the time no show was really going out of its way to offend everybody, so I thought that was interesting. And as far as I know this show was made in America, I thought, and what better way to embrace freedom than by ignoring all social norms and perceived socioeconomic and/or gender roles or any expectations society has set out for us?

I don't watch these days, but I just don't watch tv really. So I can't comment on the new episodes that much, for the last 10 years or so. I have seen like maybe a dozen of new episodes in that period of time. It seemed less funny, but still funny. I remember not liking PC principal, but other than that it seemed like the same sort of show, with some characters with slightly different personalities. It all seems still like all the same fart jokes intertwined with american socio-political commentary, with an assorted international flavour thrown in.

Will this show leave a lasting legacy? Maybe? The Simpsons will obviously always be remembered, for as long as people remember cartoons anyway.. Same maybe with Family Guy? South Park has lasted a while and broken some ground, whether you find the show funny or not. So it will probably be remembered in some capacity. Eventually it might just be remembered by hipsters from the future who are into retro 2d cartoons spoken in an outdated dialect of english.. But who really knows about these things..

What I will always remember is that one day while me and my friends were watching a new South Park episode, after we had watched so many episodes before that over the past couple months.. I said "Why don't they ever do any Polish jokes on this show?".. I remember thinking that they were making fun of all these different ethnic groups, and religions, and corporations, and this and that, but what about us Polish people? Isn't there even a popular category of jokes named after us? C'mon

So we're sitting there watching this episode and then there is the first ever Polish joke told on South Park. And it makes us laugh and go crazy.. .. .. it's a really stupid joke but IMO it's the most brilliant Polish joke ever. 98% of Polish jokes are just blonde jokes with "blonde" replaced with the P word. That's really lazy joke writing, and in fact a lot more insulting than the joke itself. If you want to properly insult the Polish nation, please spend some time writing your joke and making it funny. Like that one from South Park, which is really stupid, but it always makes me laugh now
 
I've gone back and forth on South Park. I loved it when I was a pre-teen for the juvenile humor and the show coincidentally shifted into a more serious tone as I got older. I appreciated a lot of the social commentary but at many points its been overwrought and ham fisted. The show seems to vacillate between uber-juvenile and uber-woke and it hasn't been working for me the last few seasons. I used to buy them on Amazon but now I refuse to pay for any new episodes.
 
Cloud_Strife said:
Punching down is attacking groups already disempowered and disenfranchized.

Conservatives and Republicans aren't either of those.
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I know what it's supposed to mean. Mocking PC culture is about as punching up as possible in the current witch-hunt climate.

But note that South Park continues to mock conservatives, racists, cops, etc. But they also mock the overblown sensibilities, and often plain idiocy, of American liberals/progressives.
 
I actually hadn't really watched it since I was in middle school, but a few weeks ago I was curious whether I'd still think it's funny. I googled best South Park episodes and over a few days, watched 10 or so episodes that consistently showed up on the lists, like "Scott Tenorman Must Die", the WoW episode, the Mormonism one, Casa Bonita, the Scientology one, and so on. I thought they were all hilarious. I also then deviated from the "greatest hits" and watched a few others, which were more hit and miss. For example, I watched one where the town's adults are all frantically trying to attract Whole Foods by gentrifying a portion of the city, which was excellent satire. However, one about vaccines was just dumb and out of touch. One of the old climate change ones was an annoying fetishization of irreverence for its own sake.

In contrast, a friend and I did a similar experiment with Family Guy. But after watching the two best episodes according to the internet, we agreed Family Guy sucks and watched no more.
 
South Park was a show that started off irreverant in a time where shows were less so, whixch gave it a niche, and unfortunately it devolved over time into shock for shock's sake, and it's increasingly rich conservative creators found their values represented in the show more and more.

luiz said:
I know what it's supposed to mean. Mocking PC culture is about as punching up as possible in the current witch-hunt climate.
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The conservative boogeyman of "PC culture" (if charitably taken as a real thing) doesn't typically come from a position of entrenched power, and thus criticising it is the opposite "punching up". If you're going to talk about power dynamics, please understand what the phrases mean before you do.
 
"PC Culture" is when people try to obfuscate their bigotry by claiming it's merely a "difference of opinion" and instead of being called out, they're accepted and enabled by the mainstream.

Examples include:

Transphobic views propogated by the media and culture; "Let's have a debate about whether transpeople are what they say they are, whether they're predators and whether they're inherently disordered or mentally ill because of my own personal beliefs but it's not bigotry"

Homophobic views propogated by the media and culture; "It's my sincere belief that gay people are inherently disordered or lesser because of my religion but it's not bigotry"

Racist views propogated by the media and culture; "I'm just asking questions about whether non-white people are inherently criminal and lesser, but it's not bigotry"
 
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