South Park

South Park: the saviour of US TV

Surfing channels dominated by Republican monstrosity I came across Cartman and co, still going strong after 15 seasons

Jonathan Jones
The Guardian


2DTV … a still from the South Park season 15 episode HumancentiPad. Photograph: Comedy Central

A few months ago I was in a hotel room checking out American television. It was mostly horrific and inane. The horror was embodied by Republican presidential contenders debating in front of a Tea Party audience on CNN. As they competed to be the most noxious and extreme, I watched in disbelief – which only deepened when I turned to Fox News and saw a reporter denounce a liberal economist in what can only be called McCarthyite language.

As for the inanity, that was probably best summed up by a patriotic series about American steel. America has more iron ore than anywhere else! And this was at the serious end of the spectrum, on the History Channel.

And then I turned to Comedy Central and saw an episode of South Park. It was like manna in the desert. The obscenely funny cartoon radiated intelligence and humanity. Its brightly coloured cut-out figures seemed so much more three-dimensional than some of the "real" people on other channels.

It had been years since I regularly watched this cartoon, set in a Colorado town where every taboo is regularly outraged. It used to be hilarious when it started in the 1990s. With delight I discovered it is still hilarious.

Sick of hearing me describe that one recent episode I saw in the US, someone gave me a box set of season 13 for Christmas. Season 13! Last year, season 15 aired on Comedy Central. Who could have foretold such immortality for Eric Cartman?

South Park endures but it does not stay the same. Cartman has become more monstrous over the years. His school friends now detest him. But the show does not observe any dramatic unities: one moment it plays at being a realistic comedy about kids (for adults), then it widens out to include piracy in east Africa or to launch an attack on bikers.

I wish I could go into more detail about the humour, but as it says at the start of every episode, South Park is not suitable for anyone. So I'll leave you with the image of Mickey Mouse as a corporate thug beating people up in an episode that also features ... no, that's not appropriate.

Look, it's funny – if you have no standards, which apparently I don't.

eddie wrote:The obscenely funny cartoon radiated intelligence and humanity.

Am I missing the irony here? Whenever I watched South Park I found it to be some bad taste cartoons
It is like praising someone's humanity because he/she talks about farts.
Not that I want to sound exquisite

Funny?

Vera Cruz wrote:Am I missing the irony here? Whenever I watched South Park I found it to be some bad taste cartoons
It is like praising someone's humanity because he/she talks about farts

You'll have to ask Twoody to defend South Park, not me. I seem to recall from ATUI that he's a big fan.

But he doesn't seem to come here much any more.

I think all my Steve Bell fart cartoons about the Lib Dems have frightened him off.

Everybody in Steve Bell's cartoons is so creepy...

Edit: I've just realized that when I quote one of the articles you post I should use quotations marks, if I don't it looks like I am arguing your point instead of the article's point

Edit2: I've just realized I can't use the verb "argue" properly

Vera Cruz wrote:
Everybody in Steve Bell's cartoons is so creepy...

Politicians are creepy people.

Sometimes I wonder why politicians want to be politicians since they're going to be seen as creepy people...

As the old saying goes: "Politics is showbiz for ugly people".