{"id":305216,"date":"2025-10-15T11:27:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T11:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/305216\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T11:27:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T11:27:16","slug":"south-park-has-always-delighted-in-poking-the-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/305216\/","title":{"rendered":"‘South Park’ has always delighted in poking the bear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You are surely familiar with the story of the \u201cThe Emperor\u2019s New Clothes<\/a>,\u201d in which a vain ruler, who has been spending the state\u2019s money on fancy duds, is convinced by a couple of con men that the nonexistent suit they sell him is fantastically beautiful, but invisible to dopes and fools; not wanting to be thought a dope or a fool, he claims to see it, and all his sycophantic ministers pretend to see it. And when the king goes out on parade, all the people keep their mouths shut \u2014 though he is obviously naked \u2014 until a small boy, unimpressed by royalty and clearly no fool, calls out, \u201cThe emperor has no clothes.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are halfway through the 27th season of \u201cSouth Park,\u201d with the sixth episode, out of 10, airing tonight. But the season was newsworthy even before its premiere: Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who delight in busting naked emperors, had signed a five-year, $1.5-billion contract with Paramount for global streaming rights and 50 new episodes. It came just as Paramount, which had an $8.4-billion merger with Skydance under FCC review, settled a $16-million nuisance lawsuit<\/a> from President Trump over a \u201c60 Minutes\u201d segment and, coincidentally or not, canceled Stephen Colbert\u2019s<\/a> \u201cLate Night.\u201d<\/p>\n

For some consumers of topical pop culture, the question of what Parker and Stone would or would not do was top of mind in this moment of \u201canticipatory obedience,\u201d corporate kowtowing and domestic militarization, with a president whose interpretation of Teddy Roosevelt\u2019s \u201cbully pulpit\u201d is \u201cbe a bully.\u201d It was answered immediately by the season\u2019s opening episode, \u201cSermon on the Mount,\u201d in which Jesus has become the guidance counselor at South Park Elementary, unwillingly.<\/p>\n

\"An <\/p>\n

PC Principal and Jesus in \u201cSouth Park\u2019s\u201d Season 27 premiere, \u201cSermon on the Mount.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Comedy Central)<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to come back and be in the school,\u201d he says through clenched teeth to the townspeople, who are being sued by Trump, for $5 million. \u201cBut I had to because it was part of a lawsuit and the agreement with Paramount. You guys saw what happened to CBS? Well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount. You really want to end up like Colbert? You guys got to stop being stupid. Just shut up or we\u2019re going to get canceled, you idiots \u2026 The guy can do whatever he wants now that someone backed down. If someone has the power of the presidency and also the power to sue and take bribes then he can do anything to anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

There will be no shutting up, of course, or backing down.<\/p>\n

\u201cSatire,\u201d said George S. Kaufman, \u201cis what closes on Saturday night\u201d \u2014 meaning the night after a play opened. But sometimes it runs decades, earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As a comic device, a philosophical tactic and a social weapon, it has been around for a long time, going back at least back to Aristophanes\u2019 \u201cLysistrata\u201d and including the 1729 \u201cA Modest Proposal,\u201d in which Jonathan Swift suggests that the Irish poor might improve their financial situation by selling their children to the rich for food. There\u2019s also Voltaire\u2019s \u201cCandide\u201d; Charlie Chaplin\u2019s capitalist critique, \u201cMonsieur Verdoux\u201d; Walt Kelly\u2019s comic strip, \u201cPogo,\u201d with its animalizations of Joseph McCarthy and Spiro Agnew; humorists Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer and Beyond the Fringe; Mad magazine<\/a>, the Onion, and on and on.<\/p>\n

Satire takes a stance \u2014 an elevated, informed, clear-eyed position. (If it\u2019s any good.) Random insults and childish sarcasm don\u2019t qualify. \u201cSouth Park\u201d is not immune from childishness, to put it mildly, and there is an element of \u201cworst thought, best thought\u201d in its humor; Parker and Stone are all in on scatology and dumb puns. Yet the show is not easy to dismiss \u2014 even when you might be at odds with their point of view, the show so clearly engages the real world, you might well consider it. That there have been longer breaks than originally scheduled between some episodes, which are made as close to real time as possible, might be because there are too many current events; the pace is exhausting, the mind boggles. But it also suggests they\u2019re taking care to step right \u2014 not in order to avoid trouble because self-censorship is not a curse that seems to have ever afflicted them \u2014 but to fine-tune their case. Or perhaps they\u2019re just taking longer lunches.<\/p>\n

The show is vulgar, profane, provocative, taunting, violent and extreme, while at the same time being an exquisitely timed comedy with something like heart, a sentimentalism that isn\u2019t completely ironic. (Eric Cartman, the series\u2019 perennially angry, 10-year-old voice of bigotry, misogyny and anti-woke sentiments, is also a sad little boy in dinosaur pajamas.) Heartlessness can only be mocked from a position of compassion. Parker and Stone delight in poking bears and pushing buttons \u2014 the nakedness of their gleeful effrontery is kind of breathtaking \u2014 but one senses that their topical provocations are more than mere opportunism, that they have a compact with themselves, and their audience, to tell the truth \u2014 their truth anyway \u2014 with no concern for the blowback. Even among their fans, they offer something not for everybody.<\/p>\n

\"An <\/p>\n

Eric Cartman, the voice of bigotry and misogyny on \u201cSouth Park,\u201d is also a sad little boy.<\/p>\n

(Comedy Central)<\/p>\n

Because the creators expected Trump to drop out of the 2016 election, they substituted him for Mr. Garrison, a South Park Elementary teacher, and when Trump won, they just put Garrison in a wig and made him the president. (If you don\u2019t know this history, you\u2019ll be confused when the townspeople head to Garrison\u2019s house to protest Trump\u2019s policies.) This season, there\u2019s no confusion, with the president\u2019s own photo-animated head \u2014 they get a lot of comic expression out of it \u2014 on the sort of boxy bodies they use to portray Canadians. It\u2019s not coincidentally modeled on their earlier depiction of Saddam Hussein<\/a>, down to the voice and the \u201cRelax, guy!\u201d catchphrase \u2014 and who, like Trump this season, was also shown in bed with Satan. (\u201cYou remind me more and more of this other guy I used to date,\u201d says the Prince of Darkness. \u201cLike, a lot. Like, you guys are exactly alike.\u201d) The vice president is styled as Tattoo, from \u201cFantasy Island.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question of whether Trump is \u201cf\u2014 Satan,\u201d in which the f-word can be read as either a verb or an adjective, is a gag and a plot point. (The show runs with the verb; Satan is pregnant.) Typically, the joke is repeated frequently, as is the matter of Trump\u2019s penis, which is pictured, literally and often, as tiny, and Cartman\u2019s description of himself as a \u201cmasterdebating\u201d \u201cmasterdebator.\u201d (It works remarkably well.)<\/p>\n

Not everything is about the president. There are episodes about Labubu dolls and prediction markets. Guidance counselor Mr. Mackey is fired and ends up joining ICE (styled \u201cthe I-C-E\u201d), where he comes face to melting face with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. (\u201cOnly detain the brown ones \u2014 remember, if it\u2019s brown it goes down.\u201d) Stan\u2019s father, Randy Marsh, whose marijuana farm is in trouble after his Mexican workers are carted off, has what amounts to an emotional affair with ChatGPT in Episode 3. He devises a plan to turn his business into a tech company, which means microdosing ketamine \u2014 macrodosing, rather \u2014 and in order to get Trump to reclassify marijuana, sends Towelie, the sentient towel, to Washington to get in line with the kowtowers and bootlickers. (Tech CEOs Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg are pictured.) Kyle\u2019s mom, Sheila, who is Jewish, goes to Israel to give Netanyahu a piece of her mind. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is the slapstick serial victim of Trump\u2019s plots to make Satan miscarry.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t exactly nuanced political analysis, but goodness knows, these are not exactly nuanced times.<\/p>\n

Does satire change anything? Sway minds? There\u2019s no indication in the Hans Christian Andersen story that the naked emperor\u2019s exposure made him a better person or ruler. Disney\u2019s World War II Donald Duck cartoon \u201cDer Fuehrer\u2019s Face<\/a>\u201d isn\u2019t what stopped Hitler \u2014 it was bullets and bombs and bodies \u2014 but in some small way it may have helped the home front survive him. You can\u2019t shame the shameless, or awaken the conscience of a narcissist, but the idea that such japes might make the target\u2019s stomach hurt or his blood boil, may provide some small satisfaction. \u201cSouth Park\u201d won\u2019t change the world, sadly, but it might reassure a viewer that he isn\u2019t alone in his thoughts, that he isn\u2019t the crazy one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You are surely familiar with the story of the \u201cThe Emperor\u2019s New Clothes,\u201d in which a vain ruler,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":305217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[154729,154734,1582,276,154732,23590,2961,224,5337,27589,44561,154733,154731,15329,20818,1807,154730,4370,27590,277],"class_list":{"0":"post-305216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-27th-season","9":"tag-boxy-body","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-emperor","13":"tag-guy","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-losangeles","17":"tag-matt-stone","18":"tag-mind","19":"tag-mr-garrison","20":"tag-new-episode","21":"tag-paramount","22":"tag-parker","23":"tag-president-trump","24":"tag-satan","25":"tag-show","26":"tag-south-park","27":"tag-trump"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115377946584541937","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}