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In the season that just ended, South Park revolved around a sweeping mockery of political correctness. Faced with the anger, injustice and disillusionment of the United States in 2015, it tried to use comedy to discredit fanaticism and defend rudeness, like the American version of Charlie Hebdo.
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In the new season of South Park's "Sponsored Content" episode, the PC principal (with the prospective Kyle) is in the scene.
If "South Park" were an individual, it should be old enough to vote, though it probably won't go. From 1997 to the present, this filthy cartoon drama has been a one-stop shop for anti-partisan political satire and divine blasphemy.
Few comedies have been able to maintain a first-class level for so long. (Sorry, Homer.) At the beginning of the season, the show's 19th season, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone seem to wonder if this spirit of angering others at all costs is obsolete. "I'm like an old antique," said one character who appears regularly. "Sometimes I think it's annoying to not leave."
This man was a white man who ran a restaurant, considered himself Chinese, and spoke an Extremely Stereotyped Asian accent. The unprovoked lament seems to suggest that perhaps this drama in its twilight years has become somewhat inadequate.
This fall, however, South Park used a grander series of stories to declare that to capture an era of violence, violent comedy was needed.
The season, which ended on Wednesday, revolves around a sweeping mockery of political correctness. A new principal, who joins South Park, Colorado, has the apt name of "PC Principal" (P.C. Principal, P.C. And a bunch of like-minded brothers and sisters with him, all emotional and convinced of political correctness, "that is, your favorites are beer, fitness, and the feeling of passionately defending a marginalized group under an oppressive system!" They fight "microaggression" with "macroaggression," and anyone who doesn't think transgender reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner is "beautiful and brave" is intimidated by them, young and old.
A scene from the safe space episode of the latest season of South Park.
However, this season also targets Donald Trump. Donald J. Trump, a figure who has gone viral for hating all PCs, said triumphantly this week that his plan to ban the entry of Muslims "may not be politically correct." Mr. Garrison, a character who has been in the show for some time, began to work hard to enter the White House, and he adopted a position of exclusion of Canadians (that is, the group that was repeatedly established as the great evil in South Park, a grudge that can be traced back to the 1999 song and dance version of "Blame Canada"), which sounds very familiar. Canada, in turn, chose its own Trump-like personality, with disastrous consequences. "We're having fun," one Canadian said bitterly. "Who would have thought he would actually become president?"
In reality, Canada elects the Prime Minister. But South Park never cared about these political details, it cared more about using comedy to discredit fanaticism and defend rudeness, like the American version of Charlie Hebdo. It is ahead of the curve in the assertion of the prophet Muhammad's portrayal, appearing as early as an episode in 2001 (although several attempts since then have been suppressed by Comedy Central).
At this moment, our culture seems to be lit up with an Eric Cartman-shaped bat signal, and South Park is coming. You may have seen the news coming from college campuses — safe space, trigger warning — that america today is driven by an unprecedented radical leftward tilt. You may have seen reports of the Republican primary — the border wall, the refugee panic — that it was more resistant to progress than ever. The country is deeply polarized, and the quasi-liberal South Park prefers to oscillate between these two poles.
South Park used to be very anti-continuity — scripts were often written a few days before airing — killing Kenny McCormick every week. After turning to a story with a continuous plot this season, Parker and Stone embark on some more complex arguments: they admit, for example, that a culture that feels offended at times does sometimes stem from rough treatment. In an episode on police violence, South Park police are considered necessary to maintain stability, but at the same time, many of them join the force so that they can beat up minorities indiscriminately.
While Previous South Park has focused on a single issue, south park has chosen to outline some grand unified theory — though not coherent — in the face of 2015 American anger, injustice, and disillusionment.
As the PC wars burned, the town of South Park was gentrifying: it welcomed the first Whole Foods and built the Sodosopa (South Park Downtown South) district, a hipster-filled place where impoverished McCormick's homes were surrounded by newly built condominiums. The townspeople rejoiced, but it did not take long for them to find that they could not afford the rarity, self-sufficiency, and refinement of life. Beneath its new vassal-like exterior, the town is permeated with a familiar resent (for the privileged, for immigrants, for the elite) and (about terrorism, for crime, about economic downturns).
In South Park's worldview, these create a kind of self-pitying narcissism that expands into politics and spreads elsewhere. In the darkest episode of the season, Safe Space, townspeople designate a child to filter all negative comments on social media to keep their self-esteem free from all "humiliation."
In order to filter out the hatred of the entire Internet, the boy is almost killed under heavy pressure, and an allegorical character called "Reality" appears, wearing the cloak of the silent film era villain and beard, who comes to scold the residents of South Park, and he summarizes the season's Jonathan Swift moral torture with a speech: "Unfortunately, this world is not a giant liberal arts college campus!" We ate too much. We thought life should be so pampered. There should be an occasional feeling of not going to go. ”
His words prompted the inhabitants to act: they brought reality to the town square and hanged it.
It's not a clever arrangement, and its discourse doesn't always fall to the chase; a section about deceptive online advertising is suddenly inserted into the plot at the end of the season. (The season finale may be more time-sensitive.) A week ago, a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, the episode promises to tell the story of "South Park people with guns in their hands and don't panic"; in a teaser video, Cartman has a gun-to-head confrontation with his mom before going to bed. ）
The PC principal and his friends in the play are both white men, which avoids the reality that many times it is white men who put "political correctness" hats on the heads of women and minorities, that is, those who are really discriminated against. Anticipating that someone would hold on to it, Parker and Stone had Cartman say to his classmate Kyle with a perverse sense of self-knowledge, "We're two privileged white straight men who like to make fun of things we'll never have to face." ”
Compared to some of the other current comedy masterpieces that deal with identity issues, such as Black-ish and Master Of None, the show, as a work of two white men, does have an advantage that no one else has. But in a way, their problems are the same: in an atmosphere of tension, they prescribe increased, not decreased, dialogue, even if it left people restless.
This article is written by JAMES PONIEWOZIK
Translation: Ayew
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