A new episode of South Park, “Safe Space,” is an amusing spoof on the notion of “safe spaces”, involving body shaming of a Boy of Size. Click on the screenshot to see the 21-minute show (note: it’s on Hulu and may not be visible outside the U.S., and you’ll have to watch some ads. ). There’s also a sub-plot involving Whole Foods, hungry children, and “charity shaming” which is even funnier. Be sure to watch the original eponymous song at 12:00.
The treatment is more subtle than I would have imagined, but I don’t watch the show regularly. Although it seems to come down on the side of the villain Reality, it also shows some sympathy for the offended. And its treatment of social media is right on the mark.
I still watch it regularly. Its hit and miss; you get some incisive social commentary but often its very heavy handed or overwhelmed by the sheer amount of lowbrow humor in the show.
Still, the writers have regularly said they don’t write to what they think the audience will find funny, they write what they think is funny. More power to them. I prefer a show that gives me a 50/50 chance of disappointment or laugh out loud pointed social humor, vs. a vanilla sitcom consisting of situational humor and canned laugh tracks. Be daring, fail often, but give us occasionally good commentary, and I’m happy.
Agreed. Some things are funny and some just low brow. I think this because the creators don’t have or don’t listen to others so pretty much don’t have a sober second opinion of their choices.
I can’t believe I had that much opinion about a cartoon.
You say low-brow like its a bad thing
I like lowbrow, but like most things in life, too much of it ceases to be good (which, if you read my post, is what I was complaining about; the quantity, not the presence).
One of the few that have watched it since the beginning – maybe 😉
I can accept the fact that sometimes it misses ‘the funny’ it brings up valid issues, often on the side I agree with. IMO this was a good one which made valid points.
The link gives ‘not in the UK or N.Ireland’, but the web gives many options for us this side of the pond 😉
I hadn’t watched a single episode ever until one day just a few years ago. I was visiting a friend and was waiting for him to get ready to go out for the evening.
While waiting I sat on the couch and watched TV with his young teen kids. They were watching South Park. It was the Scientology episode. I had had no idea. I laughed my ass off.
I am glad you found it funny, hope you didn’t have much trouble finding and reattaching your ass before going out…
I have only watched four episodes and they were fantastic. I scanned through others but got I sense that they (Trey and Matt) could really come down harder on religion as their platform is build to satirize those types of communities. I will have to have a go at this one too as I would just about pull my teeth out if I had to endure top ranked school experience that included safe-spaces.
got I sense that they (Trey and Matt) could really come down harder on religion as their platform is build to satirize those types of communities
The sense? Its blatant. “Oh, Joseph Smith saw the Angel Moroni, dum dum dum de dum…” And Issac Hayes (voice of Chef) left the show years ago because he was upset about how they trashed scientology.
Argh! That was me. WordPress, you vex me!
I thought the episode mocking scientology was hilarious, but I am a Person of Very Low Brow Indeed.
My favorite episode is the one that mocks Prius drivers, with the “cloud of smug” from George Clooney’s speech.
I only like low brow humor when it is really high brow humor under cover. The Monty Pythons did that all the time.
Really? Have you seen their rendition of God?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/InfernoSilver/Abominations/South%20Park/WP-blessed.jpg
Their stance on religion is hit or miss, but they have trashed atheism pretty thoroughly on the show before. There was an episode from a few years ago in which they took the cheapest, most egregiously unfair shot at Richard Dawkins I’ve ever seen, and we’ve all seen plenty of people take a run at Dawkins before. I sometimes think that South Park gets credit for being bold, when what they actually do is lampoon anyone that takes a firm public stance on anything. It takes a lot more guts in contemporary comedy to actually do material that has a point, than it is to be equal opportunity offenders.
Just my 2 cents anyway.
“equal opportunity offenders” – this is the bittersweet consequence of trying to remain fair in comedy.
Religion has no redeeming value and is universally deserving of the darkest satire. Granted atheists are humans and capable of serious flaws, but secularism, like nature, is what it is. A grain of salt is as atheist as any other grain of salt. There is nothing worth satirizing.
Trey and Matt waste time on their mission of equal opportunity offense, especially with regard to secularism. Its like making fun of the relationship between Shannon’s information theory and quantum states of the universe.
that episode was a classic, mashup of Dawkins/Buck Rogers/Cartman going to the future in order to escape waiting time for new Nintendo Wii.
Whoever thinks they were unfair to Dawkins/atheists, you miss the entire point of that episode. They made fun of ideologies and groupthink, regardless if religious or secular.
the atheists groups from the future were fighting each other over the names of their organizations, Athiest Alliance vs Atheist League (vs Sea Otters!)
People will always find a groupthink cause to fight about.
That’s not the episode I was talking about. It was an episode about Mr Garrison’s sex change operation and he had an affair with Dawkins. It was petty and personal and cheap as hell and what is a better example of groupthink than the herd mentality of reflexively attacking atheists for daring to atheists in public.
Attacking the strong isn’t like attacking the weak, like Atheists it just comes off as petty.
What does that mean?
Apologies for hanging around a dead thread – I log onto WEIT every 24 hours or so and then spend an hour writing comments. Then I’m off for another twenty-four(twenty-three really) hours.
I think I elided those two Dawkins episodes in my mind when I replied in a post lower down. I do remember the episode you’re referring to. It was pretty nasty, pretty pointless, but I seem to remember Dawkins responded pretty well. I think he laughed it off and basically said he preferred The Simpsons(I’m going to assume he hasn’t watched any of the last decade and a half’s episodes).
They are equal opportunity offenders though, which covers up for some of the bullshit political positions they occasionally seem to be taking up. And they’re generally sodding hilarious, which always helps – the South Park Radiohead episode has one of the most terrifyingly funny endings I’ve ever seen, in film or on TV.
Haven’t seen one in a long time, despite my proximity to South Park. This one was really, really funny, though.
This entire season of South Park involves the Principal PC character and every episode so far has attacked the PC paradigm we see growing out of control on university campuses.
I have loved this show since the beginning. Even the episode where they made fun of atheists and Richard Dawkins was funny. And as a Canadian, no one makes fun of Canada funnier than South Park! Looking forward to more from Principal PC.
I never saw the Dawkins episode but from what I’ve heard it sounded like lazy strawmandering – implying that Dawkins, along with atheists generally, wants to turn the whole world into a monotone, rationalist hell, where emotions and imagination are outlawed…you know, the usual tedious calumny atheists get hit with when they hypothesise that a secular world would be an improvement over what we’ve got now.
Maybe the episode was more nuanced and reasonable than that but the immediate, reactive caricaturing of any outspoken atheist, never mind Dawkins, as some kind of totalitarian fascist-for-rationalism, whose ideas will turn us all into soulless drones, is such a tediously ubiquitous rhetorical tactic I assumed that Parker and Stone were banging a very familiar drum.
The episode could’ve been hilarious at the same time of course – it probably was too, Parker and Stone are geniuses of comedy. They’ve nailed that scabrous, cynical humour that I love and they did Team America, one of the funniest films ever made(with the greatest sex scene of all time), along with other, unheralded stuff like Baseketball which my sisters and I hurt ourselves laughing at when we happened upon it on Channel 4 one evening…
Anyway, I suppose it’s unfair of me to draw conclusions about an episode I haven’t seen, so I might go and give it a look.
Nope, your guess was completely wrong about the content. You were right that the episode was not nuanced or reasonable (few South Parks would fit those categories). But the “moral of the story” in the atheist-bashing episodes (it was a two-parter) was that if theism fell out of favor and atheism rose to prominence, we’d just see violent conflicts between factions of atheists instead of violent conflicts between sects of theists. IOW a reworking of the People’s Front of Judea/Judean People’s Front joke.
“if theism fell out of favor and atheism rose to prominence, we’d just see violent conflicts between factions of atheists”
Nah, that would never happen.
(A+, FreethoughtBlogs, elevatorgate, 10 zillion other skirmishes…)
cr
My reaction exactly. It’s been happening in spades for quite a while!
It wasn’t a guess about the content, it was what I’d read in summary from a particular website(I have no idea which). Apparently they got it wrong.
Thanks though.
It did not strawman Dawkins as I recall.
It made a reasonable representation of his view on evolution & religion.
There is a time-travel subplot (Buck Rogers parody) where in the future everyone is atheist, people have become dogmatic and zealous about atheism — in particular fighting wars about meaningless things like the official name of the atheist movement, or some such.
The point is that even if Richard convinces the world to become atheist, most people will have an irrational understanding of it, and will still be dogmatic without gods.
“The point is that even if Richard convinces the world to become atheist, most people will have an irrational understanding of it, and will still be dogmatic without gods.”
That’s my reading.
Thanks for that – I should’ve just gone and watched the episode.
I have to say, Parker and Stone are maybe the greatest comedy writers of the last couple of decades – the brilliance of the stuff they come up with makes me very jealous :).
I can’t think of anything they’ve turned their hand to that hasn’t made me hurt from laughing.
You see Chuck, there are 3 kinds of people in life.. Dicks Pussies and Assholes..
BTW, don’t miss their first two movies: “Orgazmo” and “Cannibal: the Musical”. The latter is especially amazing, being produced by a bunch of college kids, essentially on a spring break lark — with particular attention to historical accuracy. (there’s also a friend of a friend of mine who really likes to build snowmen to cheer the expedition up – an excellent sax player, too).
I think I recorded a late-night Channel 4 screening of Cannibal: The Musical ages ago and watched about the first ten minutes before switching off(I cannot stand musicals). I’ll definitely root around see if I can find it. Although I think it’s on VHS…
I love everything they’ve done – South Park, South Park The Movie, Team America, Baseketball(underrated), The Book Of Mormon…I haven’t yet seen the latter but a friend of the family sent a transcript of it and, again, I was doubled up. That was just from reading the lines on a page. Geniuses.
Cannibal: The Musical can be an acquired taste (in a manner of speaking), esp. because of the musical format (and that it IS a first attempt), but there are plenty of extremely silly things to make it worthwhile. The Indian chief is played by a famous sushi chef trumpeter in Boulder, and the entire expedition is based on a true story, sometimes using the historical locations. (the courthouse in Sahwatch, which only gave them terrible acoustics, since no one cares it is the actual courthouse Alferd Packer was tried in). A few of the cast went on to make Orgazmo, too. (Dian Bachar). Other people that know the Boulder area & Colorado in general will recognize a few places.
I watched the show and it had some funny moments, but I don’t think it addressed the concerns we’ve been voicing regarding the concept of “safe spaces” intruding into academics — speakers being dis-invited, viewpoints being silenced, classrooms and professors being censored, etc. Instead, it focused on the cesspool of nasty, cruel personal attacks arbitrarily thrown around on social media, and labeled that “Reality.”
Bull. No, those are different issues. So I didn’t think the satire was to the point or effective.
“Instead, it focused on the cesspool of nasty, cruel personal attacks arbitrarily thrown around on social media, and labeled that “Reality.”
Funny but I had a bit different take on that. I felt they focused on the fact that reality rather than being cruel and nasty simply wasn’t filled with people who were going to compliment you on things that were unworthy of compliments. I mean is it really cruel and nasty to not tell cartman he’s “ripped”?
Yes, the script was careful to show that the people being ridiculed had foolishly invited the taunts by overdoing something — a plump kid in his underwear specifically asking people if he was “ripped” — but we all know that that sort of exaggerated situation isn’t the norm, and simple but blunt truth-telling isn’t what’s been concerning people. I thought the show not only trivialized a real problem, but avoided the whole serious topic of suppressing academic dissent which we’ve been discussing on the website.
The connection between a speech by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and someone calling a teenage girl a “fat, stupid c*nt” is a tenuous one at best.
“I thought the show not only trivialized a real problem, but avoided the whole serious topic . . .”
This has been my chief complaint bout the all the credit South Park has gotten over the years for being bold and insightful.
“simple but blunt truth-telling isn’t what’s been concerning people.”
Kinda have to disagree here. Simple blunt truth telling about the nature of Islam being called racism. Simple blunt truth telling about certain claims of feminism (70% wage gap for example) being called sexism. These mischaracterizations are a problem in their own right, like “simple but blunt truth-telling” about Cartman being called “nasty, cruel personal attacks”, and fat shaming.
“avoided the whole serious topic of suppressing academic dissent which we’ve been discussing on the website.”
Yes would have been nice if they had gone into that more, but that’s a bit of a different issue.
Well, yes and no. I agree that over-sensitivity to “simple but blunt truth-telling” is the issue. But I see a big difference between attacks on political, social, philosophical, and religious ideas — and mean, personal, crude attacks on people.
We always make that distinction in order to explain why we’re not bigots or bullies. I don’t see how we can use an example like “calling someone ‘fat'” and still make the same excuse.
That would be an approximate 30% wage gap.
“That would be an approximate 30% wage gap.”
Yeah I should have been clearer. The claim that women only make 70% of what men make.
From the Cartman-character’s perspective, it probably feels hurtful when people say that. This is not necessarily true for everyone (many people have thicker skins), or all the time (most people will react irrationally to some criticism, but not all) but I think Cartman does represent a real sub-population of people who will feel almost any negative observation as a personal attack. Some folks seem to have a need to blame an external source for any shame or embarrassment they may feel, even if their own actions are the real source of those feelings.
I think a ‘cruel, nasty’ personification of reality nails it on the head when it comes to people like this; this is exactly what they feel is wrong with the world. They’re seeing self-caused problems as being personal attacks from some external, evil source. Usually the person who points out their flaw.
I really thought the show was funny, but I wonder what the proponents of safe spaces think of it. Some parts it were over the top so I can see them laughing at that, but the song for example is a pretty accurate skewering of the idea behind safe spaces. I suspect they would just think that was stupid, and not see why it’s funny.
Paul Shaw
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The site wouldn’t let me watch unless I turned off my ad blocker. In the immortal words of Cartman, “Screw you guys! I’m going home.”
Will have to watch it on cable instead.
[READS caption]
[Gets popcorn substitute which is edible]
Settles back to watch. This is going to be like watching someone having their nails pushed back in after they’ve been pulled out.
Boo, sux!
geo-banned.
However, PCCE wrote
While South Park really do apply the sporting club of the day to the delicate anatomy of their victims in a less than subtle way, their resident sadistic geniuses do make their implements out of very splintery materials, and add their own certain brand of itching powder. There are normally several levels of nasty parody in there.
A height of animation. I wonder what would happen if Wallace and Grommit ever went to South Park?
‘Boy of Size’.
Aargh! Is that for real or just South Park taking the piss?
What size? Fat? Thin? Average? (We all know it means ‘fat’, although literally it’s meaningless. Everything has a size.)
cr
(Cranky old – errm, chronologically enhanced – git)
I think its a parody – I’ve never heard that particular phrase. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t actually been used before to refer to overweight individuals.
The fact that its instantly understandable as you watch (its a running joke that Cartman is fat; this obviously refers to him being overweight) says to me that this is pretty much a “poe” – if it is satire, its practically indistinguishable from actual instances of PCness run rampant.
I didn’t particularly like this episode. Kenny lived.
That’s part for the course for Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I remember reading an interview where they talked about The Book of Mormon, which is absolutely hilarious, and they think that people need myth when push comes to shove. In other words, it is the Little People argument. I don’t necessarily see a problem with empathizing with people who hold these positions while at the same time promoting a world where these positions are reduced or eliminated. They certainly don’t have a filter even if they think some people who are offended have a need to cling to their views.
Classic Southpark – and great music. The Book of Mormon had great music, too, and did a great balancing act of brutally satirizing Mormon proselytizing while at the same time casting an almost tender sympathy on the individual people.
South Park really does get social media, both the good and the bad. The recent “You’re Not Yelping” episode comes to mind, as well as the hilariously ironic “#REHASH” from last season (in which Kyle, blowing dust off the television set, laments that families don’t sit around watching TV or playing video games anymore.)
South Park really does get social media, both the good and the bad. The recent “You’re Not Yelping” episode comes to mind, as well as the hilariously ironic “#REHASH” from last season (in which Kyle, blowing dust off the television set, laments that families don’t sit around watching TV or playing video games anymore.)