Tiring of South Park

[womzilla]

Last week (I'm slowly cacthing up on my friends' list), docbrite indicated an inability to watch South Park, and took a little glee in Isaac Hayes walking out on them.*

*Assuming he did, anyway. I can't be the only person in the world to have noticed how odd it is that Hayes chose to address the issue of whether someone else was making decisions in his name by having a spokesperson say that no one was making decisions in his name.

Poppy's disenchantment sprang from two sources: one, realizing how much the show had devolved into petty pop-culture put-downs, and the other realizing how much the show revolves simply around being hurtful--both of which I think are much more true than they used to be and are fair markers of the show's decline. I realized while watching last week's episode ("Smug Alert") on tape last night that my enjoyment of South Park is almost completely dependent upon whose ox is getting gored this week, and sometimes even that isn't enough. I loved the episode a couple of years back which mercilessly presented the true facts of the foundation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but the episode attacking the Scientologists was only Good in Parts. (I consider the Mormon Church to be a pathetic fraud, more sad than evil, but the Scientos are an international criminal conspiracy posing as a destructive cult to gain respectability.)

A big part of it is what has been called "South Park Conservativism", which is apparently the belief that, well, yes, right-wingers may variously want to re-enslave blacks, imprison gays, rape the environment, and let the poor die in the streets, but you know, liberals are really annoying because they oppose racism, so really they're at least as bad. Last week's episode perfectly encapsulates that. Hybrid cars are a great idea, but because Matt and Trey think their owners are smug, they should be destroyed? How does this improve the discourse? Add in the extended, repetitive, and lazy George Clooney joke (I originally wrote "jokes", but let's be honest) and it was a painful experience.

(And I don't even know who they thought they were parodying in last season's episode about Alcoholics Anonymous. I guess one too many recovering alcohol tried to thirteenth-step Trey.)

The ending of "Smug Alert" had a delightful turnaround which shows that they're still capable of writing very clever things, but it wasn't enough to overcome their own smugness, and I fear South Park--one of the high points of television--is finally running out of steam.

Comments

[drelmo.livejournal.com]

Public piety of any kind is a common target of punk. (Amusingly, that means Jesus was a punk.)

I would argue in the particular case of racism that Cartman stands as their statement that racism is a very bad thing. (And indeed of the fairly sophisticated statement that children don't have a lot of power over their situation, and in particular lack the power and experience, the tools, to deal appropriately with bad actors like Cartman.)

Admittedly, these days we get more episodes like the hippie festival and fewer episodes like the South Park flag, which is, I suppose, your point.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

In the South Park town flag episode, I thought they were presenting a thin and fact-challenged view of the antiracist position and as sympathetic as possible a view of the proracist position.

Or, think of it this way. In almost any dispute of substance, there are multiple levels of argument--instant, shallow reactions; thoughtful positions; caricatures of thoughtful positions; and others. The arguments put into the mouths of the "traditionalists" (i.e., the people who thought nothing was wrong with the fact that the South Park flag depicted whites lynching a black) were the thoughtful positions of actual people who support the display of the Confederate flag. The arguments put in the mouths of the opposition were either shallow reactions or caricatures of thoughtful positions.

If you present an argument only in terms of instant, shallow reactions, you're giving equal weight to the side which is wrong, which is bad enough. If you deliberately ignore thoughtful arguments on one side of a dispute, you're doing something worse.

And then there's the terrible episode last season where one of the supporting "liberals" just kept shouting "Little Eichmans!" as if somehow that actually represented how liberals thought about, well, anyone. Even Ward Churchill doesn't think corporate America is all neo-Nazis, and Ward Churchill represents almost no one.

On the other hand, in Team America, everything was caricatures, and often very funny ones; I don't think anyone could come away thinking Matt and Trey were endorsing anyone.

[drelmo.livejournal.com]

You're pretty convincing.

I do think that out on the left fringes of the Green Party and suchlike you're going to pretty readily find loony inflammatory statements, so it's not like they're making it up.

But it is also true that you find the opposite kind of loony inflammatory statements on the other end as well (and quite arguably closer to the mainstream), so omitting them is indeed prejudicial.