Kristi Noem, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio show and slammed “South Park” as “so lazy” and “petty” after she became the Comedy Central series’ latest target.
“It never ends, but it’s so lazy to constantly make fun of women for how they look,” Noem told Beck about the episode, while also acknowledging she did not watch it because she was “going over budget numbers and stuff.”
“It’s always the liberals and the extremists who do that,” Noem added. “If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly they can’t, they just pick something petty like that.”
just… I love that they are pretending that the SP team are some how secret liberals.
They’ve always been edgy contrarians. And with the national media so fully, apologetically, slavishly in the bag for this administration, all you can do as a contrarian is take shots at the President.
I think the other side of the episode - Cartman losing his shit because he’s not the biggest online racist anymore - says it all. These guys want to be the ones producing the cringe transphobic episodes and climate change denialism and weirdly sexualized takes on undocumented immigration.
To quote Matt Stone
They don’t want this. They want to be mocking people who drive electric cars and use bidets. Thank goodness tiny dick jokes and “that bitch is fugly” jokes are still on the table or they wouldn’t have a show left.
Maybe, but Cartman has kinda always been portrayed as evil and an ass. He’s generally the butt of the joke, not the moral guide of the series.
Kyle and Stan are usually the mouthpieces for Trey and Matt. In the classic formula, Kyle would walk out at the end of the episode and say, “You know, I’ve learned something…” and then just tell you the moral of the story.
South Park used to be the boogeyman that parents would point to as “ruining kids.” I think there’s some truth to that. It can ruin your kid if they have absolutely no media literacy and just watch it because they think Cartman’s funny (but if they already were on Cartman’s side, who ruined who?)
There are plenty of viewers like that (see: the “South Park is woke now” crowd), and Cartman has been pretty much just a piece of shit since day 1.
I’m optimistic about this character arc for Cartman, because they’re basically just making it as undeniable as possible that he revels in being a piece of shit. If Cartman sees everyone becoming like him as a bad thing, that will be more effective messaging toward the people that only watch for Cartman.
You’d think that forcing a kid to unknowingly eat his parents’ remains, then licking his tears; smiling at a video of the 3rd reich (which was supposed to make him learn that nazism was bad) and dressing as hitler; yelling “FUCK JESUS!” in front a christian crowd just because he lost a bet, there would already be loads of undeniable proof of how much Cartman’s a piece of shit (lovable as a character, terrible as a real human)
You’d think so, but Cartman never thinks he’s a piece of shit for that.
Him basically saying, “Hey, these guys are dickheads, that’s my thing,” specifically calling people that imitiate him out as trash, is a little more on the nose imo.
Again, I’m talking about targeting an audience with no media literacy. The ones that think South Park is funny because Cartman is funny.
You’re correct to call them edgy contrarians. To claim that they just want to make fun of people who drive electric cars also misses the point and falls in line with the same thing that ICE Barbie said just from a left wing point of view.
In their 28 years of making movies, tv shows, and plays they have mocked: every religion, evangelicals, climate change(which they have apologized for), the US military, Alec Baldwin, Rosie O’Donnell, electric car owners, people who are overly PC, rednecks who blame immigrants for the loss of their jobs, gay people, trans people, corporations like Walmart and Amazon, George Bush, Dick Cheney, boarder control, Jewish people, Japanese people, Norwegians, the British, Oprah, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, OJ Simpson, Jean Bennet Ramsey’s parents, Charlie Manson, and countless others. This is just what I could come up with in a couple of minutes.
So basically everyone and every ideology has been made fun of by them at some point. As you said, edgy contrarians.
It’s almost like they’re saying “don’t be an ideologue”.
They just so relentlessly pick at everyone and everything, that in every camp you’ll have people claiming that Trey and Stone belong to the rival camp. I’ve seen folks place them all over the left-right wing spectrum.