this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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South Park is not a show to watch if you don't have skin of iron.
They go out of their way to offend as many people as possible, but I think they do so in a way that's indiscriminate. They even try to offend themselves.
I love South Park, but damn, the Mr Garrison trans episodes are just, ahhhhhhhhhggggggggggg.
So you are laughing when they make fun of others and only getting upset when they make fun of people like you.
Ultimately the South Park moral comes down to change is bad. Let's keep the status quo.
And that's what I find offensive. To be fair, The Simpsons does the same thing, as does Family Guy
As does most society critical content that makes it to television.
South Park doesn't have any morals. If you have been offended then you've been trolled successfully.
Then I may have been successfully trolled.
Still, the status quo message is consistent through the whole series and is a frequent theme for Kyle's speech at the end of an episode. It's also a strong theme of Team America. I can't speak their other Matt and Trey's other works.
I'm neurodivergent, and I laugh in many instances South Park made fun of neudivergent and mentally disabled people. I'm Latin American, South Park made fun of latin americans so many times. I'm progressive, South Park made fun of progressives so many times. I'm atheist, same thing. I'm bisexual, same thing, I could go on.
The problem with the Mr Garrison episodes is that, they are so viscerally transphobic, it is very obviously made in such bad faith.
Of course they are not the worse thing depicted in South Park, but yeah, a show with the objective to be as offensive as possible gotta hit somewhere in a very personal point eventually.
I don't think anyone should take Mr. Garrison's arc to heart. They did kinda point out in an earlier episode that Mr. Garrison isn't what he thinks he is. He's not gay, trans or anything else in that direction.
He's messed up. And that's all he is and all he's supposed to be. At least that's my take-away from the show.
Sadly, that's not enough, just as Jaws did damage to shark conservation and The Silence of the Lambs did damage to Trans acceptance, even though it's super clear Buffalo Bill is not conventionally trans but his own special kind of crazy.
Then again, our love for police procedurals and serial killer mysteries does damage to mental health awareness and police brutality awareness. Also judicial overreach. (Lots of false convictions.)
For sure. I was mostly hoping that people don't feel like the show makes a personal comparison to them.
The masses, on the other hand, require disturbingly little to push them over the edge. As you pointed out with Jaws and Silence. Hell, the amount of people that can't distinguish between actor and character is astounding.
This in and of itself is part of the problem: It's a common terf talking point. Trans people don't exist they just have a mental health problem.
As is tradition.
I think those "both sides" shows have to go out of their way to find things to make fun of in certain circumstances. So they feel forced to charicature or misrepresent those groups in order to make any proper humor. On the audience side people who buck the status quo are held under the same scrutiny as people who are rapidly climbing the discrimination pipeline.
If you have to go out of your way to find (or invent) a joke, you haven't found the right angle on it. Satire is qualitatively different to bullying.
Shows like South Park are at their most funny when the contrivances are kept to a minimum, or are so absurd that they're obviously farcical. The best satire is when they're teasing their target *and* their target's detractors at the same time.
There are so many other takes they could have made. (I'd give examples, but I'm too prudish to say 'em.)