I’ve always had a high opinion of South Park, probably because I see very few episodes and they seem to be the good ones (the one where the kid eats his parents, the ninja episode, and the Critter Christmas).
But I saw this episode and it was completely unfunny. Not because it went to extremes. Making a kid eat his parents is pretty extreme. This episode sucked because it was insultingly stupid.
Hail Ants provided (unwittingly) a good illustration of this stupidity.
Transgendered individual rights are bullshit? The stereotype of blacks being good at basketball and jews not is 99% true?
And yet, mind numbingly stupid as they are, Hail Ants conclusions are the natural conclusions to be drawn from the episode. The episode was meant to propagate these false stereotypes. It was meant to spread misinformation, and as we have seen it was successful. And since it came from South Park, people like Hail Ants will not only believe the stereotypes, but they will think they are believing something cool, when really it is just the status quo.
On the other hand I think you’ve kinda hinted at the real situation here, which is that some people just don’t think the show is funny. If it makes you laugh, it’s not going to offend you, and if it fails to amuse, it’s not hard to find South Park offensive. SP rarely makes me laugh, but it doesn’t offend me either. I just think it’s gross for the sake of gross and kind of stupid, definitely overrated as satire. None of which is to say that there was nothing offensive about this episode. Usually I just think it’s crass, but this is pretty far gone.
On the other hand, if I have any hands left, I don’t think you can have it both ways. Either the show is a witty satire and whatever may have you, or it’s just a cartoon and it’s stupid to talk about things like characterization. It could fall somewhere in between, but nobody seems to be arguing that it’s anywhere in between.
The episode doesn’t say anything, implied or otherwise, against transgendered rights. If you’re going to pick a bone about the show at least get your facts straight. Saying it’s unfunny is legitimate, even if I don’t agree. The only thing a sex change, a race and height change and a species change have in common is that they’re all cosmetic procedures.
The dumbest accusation made by more than once in this thread – and I’m sorry, but this is a stupid, DUMB wrong claim – is that tall, inner city blacks dominating basketball the last 40 odd years after supplanting shorter, inner city Jews is somehow a stereotype.
Billy Crytsal no doubt feels like a tall black man on the inside. And Spike Lee, too!
Marley23. HEY. Whachoo talkin’ 'bout, “about as good?” Why you old backhanded complimentary unclefucker… I aine smiling! I’m not!
I said, four or five posts back, the satire is a hit or miss thing. I guarantee I wasn’t laughing that hard at Timmy and Jimmy joining the “Crips.” Or how they maligned poor 'ol Fat Abbot.
Askia, the problem isn’t with statistical data, but that implication that there is something genetically “different” with blacks, that them to dominate or “Jews” not to. Every six months or so, this board starts a thread questioning what’s so different genetically between Blacks and everyone else, that allows blacks to dominate certain sports. Usually a link reminding people that 40 years ago, people were asking the same thing about the “Jews”, ends it. So I found it ironic, that SP would feature a Jewish boy, changing to a Black boy in order to play a sport that his “people” already proven an ability to play. It WOULD have been great satire, if most people were aware of that fact…most people aren’t. So it becomes another easy stereotype joke.
The problem with the show was that it fell back heavily on “old school” stereotypes, while not dismantling them, but IMO reinforcing them. When I was kid, Gays were perceived as people whose sole desire was to be a member of the opposite sex. They were “mimicking” what they couldn’t really become. Then came the ability for a sex change and people were able to physically change themselves. I don’t think anyone understood what transgendered meant back then. So you had Gay people who were so confused about their sexually, that they underwent procedures that they had no business doing and damaged themselves.
Like Mr. Garrent.
SP was right on the money with Mr. Garrison’s characterization, that’s something HIS character would do. The problem is that many, many people don’t understand the difference between Mr. Garrison and a person like Eve. By using the easy stereotype of the self-hating Homosexual, the Black is the superior athlete and not explaining it; they blunted whatever message they were trying to say. Like you didn’t see the penile implant joke coming…easy.
Was the show about comestic surgery? Couldn’t it have been about peer-pressure, about shaping oneself body and soul to societies values or the value of authority figures? Mr. Garrent changes because he hates being Gay, but is still attracted to men. Kyle changes because he’s a Jew and Jews can’t play basketball, Kyle’s father changes because the Doctor convinces him he’s a dolphin.
Kyle and his father wouldn’t have turned back if the surgeries had worked. They weren’t “happy” with themselves, they’re forced to live in their skins, because they have no choice. The only “happy” person was Mr. Garrent…
I have never been so insulted in all my life. I am not, nor have I ever been a…
Canadian.
I was simply posting from a public terminal, and when I started to type google into the address bar, it brought up the canandian google site. I am not one of those Tim Horton loving, head draw as being in two pieces, **real **beer loving mounties.
holmes. REALITY. Kyle is short, mmm-kay?. That’s why he didn’t make the all-black state team despite being the best player in his school. “Spud” Webb proves that attitude is wrong, but that was the coach’s call. DELUSION. Thanks to him conflating transgender issues with his own desires to be taller, he thinks he’s a tall black athlete. “I only want my outsides to match my insides.” That’s the gist of the satire. This attitude may work for the transgendered as a community but I have doubts all cosmetic surgery can affect the same changes for every person undergoing the procedure each time. The only black basketball stereotype I saw in the entire episode is Kyle suddenly being able to leap higher than the goal to make a two hand, hanging off the rim dunk on hs very first try. Heh. See how THAT ended up.
I may be grossly underestimating the human capacity for bigotry and stupidity here, but I honestly don’t think there’s much chance that any rational person could ever think the circumstances that led to Eve’s surgery (assuming she’s a post-op tranny) and Mr. Garrison’s were anything alike. i don’t know how many times different ways I can say this: Garrison’s a completely selfish delusional fuckwad. If there’s a fictional character that embodies the term, “unreliable narrator,” it’s him.
My 2 cents: I don’t have time to get into my whole diatribe so I’m simply going to say, there are people who make it their life’s mission to point out differences between people (sexual orientation, skin color, culture, religion, etc) and try to create a schism based on the stereotypes that have been drawn up. There are people who dedicate their lives to fighting the ignorance that stereotypes create. (and kudos to these folks) and then we have the people who’s purpose it is to entertain and they did entertain, and it was good. Thank og we still have the freedom to change the channel. Stereotypes suck in the grand scheme of things but goddammit they can be funny too. South Park is supposed to make us nervously laugh at how ridiculous we all are.
Askia did you read Hails Ants take on that episode? I must be missing some nuance in his interpretation, that you must be seeing.
Yeah, I realize Kyle is short…The coach called Kyle over, told him he had the skills, the heart, but was lacking “certain” skills, the camera panned to the taller black players, then back to Kyle and the coach; and the coach then said, “You can’t play because you’re a Jew.”
From that scene Hails Ants says that Like it or not the stereotype of blacks being good at basketball and jewish people not is statistacally about 99% true…
So yes you are grossly underestimating the human capacity for bigotry and stupidity…
Y’know, I don’t think South Park aspires to much except getting your attention, holding it, and making you laugh. The humor is cruel, disgusting, and just about anyone who’s been a victim or victimizer at some point in history can expect a harsh a satirical ass-kicking during the course of a typical SP season. It lives to offend, and if toilet humor isn’t your cup of tea, there’s little point in watching. It can and does achieve sublime social commentary from time to time, but those are the occasional pearls in an otherwise offal-coated swine-pen of unabashed gross-out humor and abusiveness. It makes us laugh because it’s painful, because human beings do have a vile streak in them that resonates with the SP ethos. For all but the most ignorant and obtuse, it’s a harmless outlet if one can stomach it. The vast majority of the audience understands this; those who can’t are beyond help anyway, and probably bought into the bigotry and sadism SP satirizes long before watching.
Oops. Speaking of a human capacity for stupidity… personal mortification and apologies, Eve. > Hepburn Voice < :: I’m such an old poo! ::
holmes. Yeah, but in the South Park universe everyone rags on Kyle for being Jewish. In real life, they’d say come back when he’s grown a bit and Kyle would worry about being tall, not needing a Negroetomy. Hence the satire.
Dio. I assume it’s like the use of “nigga” among blacks, “fag” among homosexuals or “bitch” among women. Just accept that some terms have a much worse connotation coming from someone outside the group and let it be.
Not everyone does that, only Cartman, and Cartman’s antisemitism is played in such a way as to ridicule Cartman, not Kyle. Kyle is played sympathetically as the long-suffering victim of an idiot schoolmate. When Cartman makes anti-Jewish remarks to Kyle, the joke is that Cartman is a moron and an asshole, not that Kyle is a jew.
