I didn’t grow up with South Park. Aside from my parents being super-strict about content, the show was on way past my bedtime. Even once I was old enough to be awake when it syndicated, its attempts at shock and toilet humour bored me when they didn’t freak me out. (Keep in mind that belching and farting on TV used to offend me on a personal level.) All that it needed was soft-core porn, and it’d have met my criteria for “perverse television I’d never want to see”.
What bugs me as an adult about it, however, is much more-egregious. It’s something many of its fans have picked up on in recent years too. It’s also easy to suggest that Matt Stone and Trey Parker have become “cynical coots”, but I’d argue that it’s baked into the show’s DNA: apathy. And an extreme version of it as well.
One of the episodes has Mr. Garrison, the gay homeroom teacher who shouts ableist slurs at his students, transitioning into a woman. This isn’t a bad idea in theory: trans individuals are underrepresented in media, and having the show tackle it could lead to a discussion about being trans. Yet while a show with sensitivity would actually address “coming out”, the pros and cons of gender reassignment surgery and whether or not transitioning actually makes your life better, South Park uses it for a tired joke about how “gender reassignment surgery doesn’t change who you’re born as”. This episode also has Mr. Garrison’s testicles being used as kneecap replacements for Kyle’s “athlete reassignment surgery”, because “what else would they be used for?”.
I’m tempted to call out Stone and Parker for this, but such has become their modus operandi. Essentially, they don’t care. They don’t care, and “neither should everyone else”. And this idea of being apathetic, which is baked into how the show’s written, is rarely challenged. It’s the status quo.
I’m not suggesting censorship. Stone and Parker are entitled to their First Amendment rights, as is any other American. Telling them they “can’t do something” has also never stopped them from doing it, as shown with Episode 201, in which they openly mocked depicting Mohammed. But what usually gets lost in the debate about Freedom of Speech is that of Freedom of Consequences. Ignoring how the right to say something doesn’t equal the right to be heard, with that comes accountability.
There’s also something incredibly-dishonest about having the awful, shocking viewpoint as “right” all the time. Being awful to prove a point is fine, but South Park’s characters rarely suffer consequences for their bad behaviour. Like Wall Street executives who break the law, they rarely receive backlash beyond a slap on the wrist. It’s also not like the “characters do bad because they’re bad people” trope hasn’t been done better in other shows, so it’s doubly-perplexing why Stone and Parker continue pushing boundaries without having anything truly thoughtful to say.
And I don’t even think the show’s all that funny. It’d be one problem if South Park kept its amoral veneer, yet had barrels of laughs to spare. But outside of occasional chuckles, the show frequently resorts to shock and scatological humour for laughs. And unlike the Shrek films, this humour rarely justifies itself. It feels empty, hence me not being invested.
Yes: I’m being whiney. I’m being overly-sensitive. I’m “missing the joke”. But even outside of not being the target audience for South Park, I have to wonder if its fans even understand what it’s conveying. I’m sure many do, and this isn’t meant to blanket all of them, but the apathy the series nurtures and condones is scary. The world needs compassion and stance-taking, especially now.
Also, like with all media, the above issues weren’t started by, nor are solely owned by, the existence of South Park. They’d exist regardless, and media can’t make you do anything. But, as with Fox News, South Park encourages and reinforces toxic behaviours that’d otherwise be perpetuated in subtle ways. It’s a gateway drug for a damaging mindset, essentially.
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