I never really tolerated this take on the show. And how many often accused Matt and Trey of being libertarians or even downright bigots even though they’re trying to make a socialist statement on civilisation or the topic of the week like gay marriage and treatment of disability in media and how people could potentially be faking it for exploitation both of which were actually very well done and progressive especially the tourettes example.
Also they’ve ruthless mocked Trump in a story arc not only once but twice. And their latest season is so aggressively ruthless and savage, It feels like they’re doing more for the liberal No Kings uprising than The current democratic party leaders who are all talk and no substance.
I’m not saying I don’t fully disagree with people’s disdain for the show (primarily the trans community. I can see why they hate South Park’s guts) but to consider it a permanent stain on basic human decency and a horrid influence for milennials is honestly pretty hair splitting if you’d ask me.
Am I missing something here within these folks? is punching sideways/mocking everyone equally really any worst than complete douchebags straight up punching down for the sake of pissing off the unfortunate because they find it hilarious (Looking at you Tony Hinchcliffe, and Babylon Bee)? Are the South Park guys really to blame for shaping an entire demographic into not caring about any Global Disputes with Current Affairs? Or did the boundaries pushing and subtle satire simply got lost in people who either grewed up into the very thing they were mocking or viewed it as a cesspool of nihlist Slop?
One one hand, South Park has expertly satirized current events for its entire existence, and the writing is genius.
On the other hand, it pretty much gave all the worst school children in the 2000’s permission the scream “fag” and “jew” all the time because they didn’t understand that Cartman isn’t supposed to be a role model.
The Colbert Effect
Miss me with that modern satanic panic bullshit lmfao
People are bad at media literacy?
There was an odd period of time in America where a large portion of the population got their political information and social awareness from the Comedy Central television network.
The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and South Park.
People often had a better sense of humor about things back then though
I’m not even trying to make a stupid joke, it’s true
Having a sense of humor makes you less of an insufferable annoyance when talking about topics that are heavy
Please return me to 2006. I hate everything and would like to go back. (lol)
To think that a comedy show that aired for 5 hours per year (22 minutes (without ads) per episode, 13 times a season) ruined a generation is daft as fuck.
Fred Durst did more damage to Gen X.
\,,/(^_^)\,,/It’s probably the conservatives who claim South Park ruined a generation. My ex came from a conservative culture and she doesn’t like South Park. Obviously, adult, crude and dark humour won’t jive well with conservatives who are taught a certain way. If I had remained in my home country, I could grow up not liking South Park as I was pretty conservative.
Punching everyone equally gives the appearance that everyone deserves to be punched. Just another form of “both sides” bullshit.
Folks are rightfully calling out the anti trans stuff and anti gay stuff, and the climate change stuff. But one that really sticks with me the most is when they punched down on alcoholics.
Basically they implied alcoholics should be able to enjoy a tiny bit of alcohol here or there, and called out alcoholics who completely abstain as being undiciplined losers.
As someone with outrageous amounts of alcoholism on both sides of my family, it doesn’t sit well with me at all.
Plus, Matt and Trey are Republicans, so fuck them.
they’re trying to make a socialist statement
They’re not though. Their politics aren’t socialist, or progressive, or anything.
Their comedy is about shock and being uncomfortable. Whether the topic for the week is political, social or interpersonal the show will have a take that is designed to shock and make people uncomfortable, because there’s laughs in being uncomfortable.
Claiming southpark is socialist is like claiming your fever dream was more Dengist than Trotskyite. That’s just not how it works.
Do you watch it? I definitely think sometimes they are making valid and salient points and sometimes those points touch on things at least adjacent to socialism.
Okay but you do see how that is absolutely not making a socialist statement, yeah?
Do you see how you didn’t read?
No. I read it.
#puritytest
They do satire, i.e., “isn’t it weird that…” Or “isn’t society hypocritical for…”
Sometimes they aim at one thing, sometimes another. Sometimes warranted, sometimes not, imo…
I feel like I very much doubt the showmakers would claim the title “socialist” in their worldview
Hence “adjacent”. This is quite clearly criticism of at least one key aspect of capitalism:
… do you think that everyone who made a criticism of capitalism is thrn socialist?
Because that’s what you wrote.
Do you think every person that isn’t specifically saying the same things you is vehemently against you?
Because that’s what you wrote.
Not the person you’re replying to. There was the special about “navigating the American health care system”, that was very on point, but other than that, I can’t remember a lot “socialism” points across the show. Any examples?
https://nebula.tv/videos/lindsayellis-south-park
Stone and Parker are the embodiment of genX politics. That is the cynical mantra that people who believe in stuff are the real fools. And it doesn’t matter if you deny the Holocaust or advocate for green energy, in South Park you’ve committed the same sin.
Sure they make fun of Trump. But they also had an entire season devoted to frat-boy bullies and tyrants who advocated for inclusion, equity, and social justice. Because that’s a social problem in American and Matt & Tray simply have the courage to finally speak truth to power.
Oh, and meanwhile Global Warming is a hysterical myth that Al Gore invented.
This is pretty accurate but I would say it’s both their flaw and their strength. There’s a lot put on the shoulders of the show probably because it’s such a cultural force and has been around for a long time. They’re often lauded for their take downs and for how well they distilled absurdities in various beliefs and I actually think that praise was pretty well deserved. They can take anything, whatever it may be and find the angle where it is risible and stupid, and that works great for comedy and only becomes a problem when it’s expected to somehow be right in doing so or is to have a coherent philosophy that can be discerned from the years of output and that’s where it really starts to break down. When something like Southpark is around this long and people place so many expectations on it, when it has to mine the cultural milieux for something current and relevant week after week and still stick to it’s “ripping on everybody” schtick, the limits of the actual commentary and messaging start to become apparent. This leads to justified criticism like yours but at the end of the day it was only ever just a tv show and frankly what they do achieve is pretty impressive for the medium and for its longevity even when compared to where it hits the limits of both.
people who believe in stuff are the real fools
That’s a really good distillation of their ethos. I’m going to try to remember it.
For what it’s worth, they have officially said they were wrong about Climate Change.
And it only took how long? So brave of them to admit they were wrong long after public consensus shifted (never mind scientific consensus, which was already solid before that episode was even made).
And you’d rather they didn’t? Obviously it would have been better if they didn’t mock climate change in the first place, but if they then use their same platform to use the same influence to acknowledge their mistake, it’s much better than them just staying silent about it. It’s incredibly counterproductive to mock people who actually admit when they were wrong, even if they’re not as quick about it as you want them to be.
Oh, and meanwhile Global Warming is a hysterical myth that Al Gore invented.
They did air two apology episodes in that regard, though.
Stone and Parker are the embodiment of genX politics. That is the cynical mantra that people who believe in stuff are the real fools.
Even if that was their mantra (which I don’t think it is), it’s absurd to generalise that to all of Gen X, as if all of us have the same politics.
No to all of this.
believing in stuff makes you stupid about that stuff.
Those Frat boy Bullies and tyrants are all over lemmy and other social media. If you can’t see that, you’re one of them. There are also real incidents of abuse and harassment on college campuses where good people are getting fired and sued over harmless actions like not using gender neutral pronouns in their emails or some ridiculous crap. Bullying and harassing people into your ‘cause’ is should never be socially acceptable.
The reason so many folks are so insanely hostile over social justice is they believe in it, and they think violence is justified in it’s name. They don’t think it’s something to stand up for, they think it’s something to beat people down with, literally.
Are the people getting fired over not using gender neutral pronouns in the room with us
Where are you getting these stories about who is getting bullied on college campuses for these reasons?
That’s such a stupid take.
People who are “hostile” over social justice, are hostile against social injustice. Social injustice is violent, in many many ways.
Your take is basically “I don’t like these people, because they are violent against violence to try to fix it”. I’m sure that stagnating in violence is better than to try to fix it, huh.
Tell me that you’re a privileged brat without telling me that you’re a privileged brat.
You mean: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, comics, Dungeons and Dragons, video games, anime, South Park, etc.?
Because people have been stupid for a million years.
We’ve got quotes of Socrates bitching about the youth…
Yeah, but he also complained about writing which is very funny as we only know that he existed because other people wrote about him.
People who think South Park ruined anything or that the creators are politically shitty do not get it and probably haven’t watched much of it. Imo to think they are politically shitty, it takes being a purity tester type who is looking for secret evil everywhere. The type who is not satisfied with the evil people being honest about their beliefs, they know the truth: most people who claim to have leftist views are actually secretly evil conservatives. This is a type of person I will never get along with.
Like how they demonized climate change for nearly a decade. I got it crustal clear during the al gore episodes
What the fuck are you talking about? Easy block of a purity testing twat who doesn’t understand comedy or satire.
He’s talking about the fact that for over a decade south Park played a significant part in fueling climate change skepticism with Al Gore screaming “manbearpig guys I’m super cereal” only for the creators to later admit that yeah they were actually super wrong about climate change and it is a serious issue. That’s why they made manbearpig real and had it start killing people, but that doesn’t erase the influence that they’ve already had on people. It’d be like if they had a TV show calling aids fake and gay for the first few years of the aids crisis and then only changed their tune once it started affecting people they know.
Claiming that anyone who rightfully criticizes their handling of climate change as being a purity testing twat with no understanding of comedy or satire is disingenuous and makes it obvious that you don’t actually understand what you’re talking about
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South Park has always been viewed this way. As awful terrible and ‘ruining the children’.
It’s always seen this way by ignorant people who never watch the show. It’s still one of the most relevant and accurate satire comedies going on.
And it really makes folks uncomfortable, hence why they want to put it down.
IMO South Park just holds up a mirror to society (in probably 90% of their episodes, anyway). People who are comfortable / powerful in society won’t like looking at the ugliness in that mirror. People who understand how fucked up everything is will appreciate the value of the mirror.
I think a smaller amount of their material is just them griping about various pet peeves, which is fine. They are human and very creative, so of course some of those types of things will come out in their work, too.
And some of it is just to be funny, pure absurdist jokes and gags. In the sense of “the universe doesn’t care” types of things. Those land hard for me, but some people don’t find that kind of thing funny. The people who don’t find it funny aren’t wrong, they just have different tastes in humor.
I think you nailed it. You can take what you want from their episodes oftentimes, they are not trying to convince anyone of anything but how stupid some people and things are from at least one perspective. That’s it. When people act like they’re anti leftist or something like that, they’ve 100% missed what was being done.
Im an Xer and love the show. Its both high brow and extremely low brow and they rip everything and everyone including themselves.
As a fellow generation member who recalls downloading the original short over FTP - the idea that a TV show can ruin a generation is as laughable as the Satanic Panic.
Hope you’re hanging in there, it’s tough for us Xers.
As a fellow generation member who recalls downloading the original short over FTP - the idea that a TV show can ruin a generation is as laughable as the Satanic Panic.
I don’t think it’s impossible. Think about a TV show run by the tate brothers or something like that.
One show does not ruin a generation of people.
So are you saying fox news has had no measurable effect on people?
That’s a network, right? A gigantic, concerted effort to propagandize, not one show. And I didn’t comment at all about networks or concerted efforts to propagandize.
🤷♂️
Are you making shit up whole cloth?
come september unemployed for two years. happy closing in on retirement. Wait. thats not real either.
Software?
IT.
South Park has had some really good moments. The last season was especially fantastic.
But South Park has also had many equally terrible moments. They’ve been pretty awful on trans issues. The whole PC Principal arc really said a lot about who Matt and Trey are as people. And even if they eventually walked it back, the fact that they tried to deny climate change has to be brought up in conversations like this.
For the most part, I’d say the show has been at its best when it’s kids getting into hijinks and at its worst when Matt and Trey use the show as their mouthpiece.
