OK, South Park has gone too far now.

Cafe Society
121

You know, I’m used to watching South Park episodes that are clearly written from an ideological point-of-view that is totally alien and often offensive to me(eg; Christopher Reeve is a ghoulish baby killer, and stem cell research is horribly, horribly wrong/ Wal*mart is the natural and proper result of consumer preference/Starbucks’ market domination comes down to their superior product/etc.) but usually I don’t mind too much, because they manage to be funny anyway.

That, though, was something else again. Twenty-three of the most hateful minutes of television I’ve ever seen, and totally unmitigated by ha-ha of any sort.

Blech.

122

Thank you—I’ve disagreed with their viewpoints plenty, but the only point they seemed to be making (and using Dr. Stanley Biber to make it, an extra slap in the face!) was, “transsexuals = whites who think they’re black = people who think they’re dolphins.” They actually used the terms “freak” and “not really a woman, just a surgically mutilated man.”

Their message was pretty damn clear, and they are free to hold those views—the sad thing is, a lot of people hold these views (in the real world, probably, most people), and this show only reinforces them. I’m thinking of all the transgendered kids who saw that and just gave up.

123

Well Larry, you and other who like you might want to theorize on my has-gotten-exactly-three-posts, and each one stating that the show is “even handed” or stuff like it. thread in Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share, in which I put forth the idea that it is not just even handed satire at all, but sometimes rips into a subject the writters hate, with extreme predjudice:

I hear all the time about “The Liberal Media”, but how about in entertainment
Not: the title isn’t very good, but I could not fit the words " I am a bleeding heart liberal, by the way." into the title.

124

Diogenes, you Cynic, you. I grant you that Cartman does it the most consistently and blatantly. But other characters have taken shots at Kyle for being Jewish or allowed Cartman to do it without comment (Critter Christmas episode). It’s happened enough that it’s par for the course. Even Stan once told Kyle that Santa was going to kill him for being Jewish, and lots of silliness was going on during “Jewbilee.”

Eve. Well, transsexuals (who opt for surgery) = whites who think they’re black (and opt for surgery) = people who think they’re dolphins (and again, opt for surgery) are all the same if you look at it strictly from the viewpoint of cosmetic reconstruction being some sort of a miraculous cure-all instead of an intrusive procedure with very real limits. I understand transsexuals are rare and undergo extensive psyche profiles before the operation is approved. Mr. Garrison is just too fucked up to qualify. Kyle and his father have their own issues, but Negroectomies and dolphinectomies are thankfully just fiction.

UrbanChic already said this: Mr. Garrison is just a mutiliated man. Not all transsexuals. Just Garrison! Eve, as hateful toward women Garrison has shown himself to be over the last decade (“I’ll never trust anything that bleeds four days every month and won’t die!”), surely you’re not saying THIS CHARACTER will be any happier being one?

Call me unfeeling, and frgive my untutored opinion, but any transgendered kid who saw THIS bit of 20 minute fluff and decides to give up probably doesn’t need the surgery.

125

Thanks for the apology; it’s much appreciated. I don’t think of what you said as racist, really – more spacist, I suppose, would be the term. Now that we’ve done with Midwestern stereotypes, may I offer you some lovely Jell-o with fruit in it? :stuck_out_tongue:

Mrs. Furthur

126

Hmm…

Most of the people here have good points. I find myself seeing both the “it’s just entertainment” side and the “it’s hateful” side. However I see myself still on the idea that the show was hateful. I now from on and off viewing that Mr. Garrison is a freak. However, I don’t recall seeing any sympathetic characters. Why? Perhaps because, just this once the writters didn’t feel like skewering both sides evenly, they felt like saying that transsexuals are yucky.

They are free to have a show with no opposing point of view, a sentiment I often see mocked by right-wingers who don’t like left-wing views in entertainment, but I am free to right letters complaining. I am also free to watch the Ally McBeal plotline that focused on the Transsexual character who was dating Fish (a guy by that name, not a real fish), read online fanfiction by such writer as Bek D. Corbin and readtrans comic strips. . Oh, and to eat this container of jello with fruit in. Thanks, Mrs. Furthur.

127

I didn’t mean “give up on surgery,” I meant “give up on life.” Most of us were just a hair’s-breadth away as kids.

128

Scott_plaid. If you watch closely, you’ll notice that South Park often doesn’t skewer both sides. I felt they were saying cosmetic surgery is yucky, Mr. Garrison is fucked up, Kyle is deluded and Kyle’s dad is a pushy Cetacean.

Eve, while I’ve been depressed, I’ve never been suicidal. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone despairing to the point of self-obliteration over a smartass cable cartoon. If I seemed insensitive or dismissive, assume I’m behind the learning curve. Appreciate your patience.

129

But why do you look at it from that viewpoint?

130

:eek:

I 've been trying to say that fortwo threads, and post 29, 38, 87 and 123, and now you tell me it like I didn’t realize it.

Arghhhssassaas!

Are you trying to tease me? :mad:

No, really I am :mad: .Can’t you tell from the comical looking mad smiley?

131

Scott_plaid. Oh, I was initially only responding to your last point, that the show thinks transsexuals were yucky – then I went back and added that sentence about South Park rarely being even-handed in its satire, forgetting you already said so a bunch of times. Aren’t I just completely attentive today?

Marley23. That’s my interpretation of Stone and Parker’s satirical point of view, although it’s close to my own. Why? I’m generally distrustful of the claims advocates make of the benefits of cosmetic surgery and the whole “EXTREME MAKEOVER” surgical phenomenon. From what little I understanding of transsexuals I have, I think some young gay men and women may be just as confused about possible transgender issues as they are about their sexuality. I think we’re rapidly approaching a culture point where some people may regard gender identity may be just one more form of fluid body ornamentation along with piercing, liposuction, various breast implants and various reductions, tucks, nips and enlargements. Outlandish? Yeah. But then, I subscribe to ASIMOV’s.

I’m fat. OBESE. Currently tipping 315 pounds. But eight weeks ago I was 330 pounds and through a self-imposed regiment of low-fat, low-calorie, low-salt, low-sugar breadless vegetarian fare, I’ve managed to shed some weight. Liopsution was available to me as a weight loss opton on my health plan, but when i got right down to it, I wasn’t sure if cutting me open and sucking out the fat was a good idea. I put this weight on the hard way, bite by bite over the last 20 years – I need to take it off the same way. Not to fully equate obesity with transgender identity but many people feel the same solution is appropriate for both – surgery. I’m not sure that’s true. South Park appealed to me for having a similar POV.

132

Askia, those situations aren’t even close to comparable. Sorry. I applaud your decision to get in shape the hard way, but there’s no equivalency. You’re not a psychologist and neither am I, but at least I know what I don’t know here (and I’ve made the effort to listen to some transgendered people explaining themselves). The problems are only superficially similar and so are the solutions.

133

No harm done. Not permently, at least. It feel like I have been bearied in a flood of “they are even handed”, though, from other posters." Oh, well.

Have you seen the thread,Why the vitriol and hatefulness toward fat people? There are some good points being made, but I haven’t seen you there.

134

One thing that troubles me about South Park is the tendency of many of its fans to assume that enjoyment of South Park is a litmus test for the presence of a good sense of humor.

I don’t get very upset when someone tells me that he doesn’t find Monty Python’s Flying Circus to be funny. I think it is screamingly, brilliantly funny, but if someone doesn’t have a taste for crunchy frog and rat tart, that does not automatically mean that the non-Pythonite is a humorless wretch.

South Park fans, on the other hand, often get all bent out of shape if I don’t share their amusement. If I had a nickel for every time a South Park fan has told me that I just don’t “get it,” or that I am some sort of stick-in-the-mud prude, or that I flat out don’t have a sense of humor… well, if I had that many nickels, I could buy myself a boatload of Chocolate Salty Balls, you betcha.

Regarding South Park, yeah, I “get it.” I just don’t want it.

135

Wow, what an interesting thread.

I watched the episode, and thought the pretty clear message was that people need to learn to live with who and what they are. That we can carve ourselves up and pretend to be something else, but in the end, it’s a facade. That those who do so are delusional, which may be sad, but does not change the fact that they are delusional in attempting to escape from reality. That sometimes you have to play the cards that are dealt to you, no matter how you think you feel inside.

It’s their right. It’s an opinion. Others may not agree with it, but as usual, I’m willing to be that this board is a little heavily skewed versus the general population in its viewpoint on the issue. Which doesn’t matter; I’m sure most will feel comfortable in their intellectual superiority versus others on the issue.

136

I doubt what you say is true. It supports my point: I can’t say I’ve listened to transsexuals explain themselves as you have, Marley23, but I’ve been around enough to know that Mr. Garrison is many things, but a true transgendered woman trapped in a man’s body prolly ain’t one of the options. I see his desires as not true transgender ones but cosmetic ones – and on the more meritless, flaky end of the spectrum, too.

137

I doubt what you say is true. It supports my point: I can’t say I’ve listened to transsexuals explain themselves as you have, Marley23, but I’ve been around enough to know that Mr. Garrison is many things, but a true transgendered woman trapped in a man’s body prolly ain’t one of the options. I see his desires as not true transgender ones but cosmetic ones – and on the more meritless, flaky end of the spectrum, too.

138

Double posted. Plus my first sentence should have a “don’t” in there.

139

Well, sure.

The problem is, first, that it’s an opinion that’s basically pulled out of their collective ass. No one who is reasonably informed about the issue is going to see things in such black-and-white terms. Second, the way their opinion is communicated is outrageously, spectacularly hurtful to real, live people.

There’s an analogy here with the episode which featured JonBenet Ramsey’s parents. Sure, their opinion is that it’s a dead certainty that these people murdered their daughter and got away with it. There’s no harm in that. Everybody’s got a God-given right to be a smug, ignorant prick.

A line is crossed, though, when all the best evidence is ignored, and they use their bully pulpit to flatly declare that the Ramsey’s are not, as they would have us believe, good people who have endured a horrible tragedy and would dearly like to know what happened to their daughter, or at the very least pick up the pieces and get on with their lives, but rather a couple of monsters who sexually abused their little girl, killed her, and have been gleefully profiting by their crime all this time.

Still, in that episode, I’m happy to let that slide, with only a little discomfort. Sure, they’re ridiculously strident about putting forth their gut-feeling as a self-evident truth, given that it’s clear that they haven’t actually examined the facts of the case. But the offense is only against two people. (Well, three, if you include Gary Condit, against whom there simply isn’t any evidence, which isn’t as bad as having a body of exculpatory evidence, and four if you… …uh, never mind.) Also, the episode, in spite of its wrong-headedness, is damned funny. You watch it, (if you’ve got a sick sense of humour, which I do, thank god,) and you’re liable to react, “Those guys aren’t very bright, but they’re funny. Damn.” Yeah, I’m willing to look the other way when it comes to emotional harm and damage-to-reputation done to two innocent people, if I get a couple of yucks out of it otherwise. I’m selfish that way.

This episode, on the other hand, shat on millions of people, and wasn’t funny at all.

140

Yep, that was their hateful, misinformed, backwards-looking message, alright, and, sadly, an awful lot of people still think this way. As far as my “intellectual superiority”–if you mean I know hell of a lot more about transsexualism than you, do, then, yeah, I sure am intellectually superior.