Letters to the Editor
achilleselbow
Published Letters: 294 Editor's Choice: 17
-
On South Park
[Read the article: Can Stephen Colbert save America?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Granted the political edge of the show may not be quite as sharp as the Daily Show/Colbert Report's edge, the show is easily as smart and satirical as those two. Often that satire is pointed elsewhere.
I'm going to jump in and disagree here. Unlike the usual South Park-haters (and probably many posters here), I fall exactly in its intended demographic (it started when I was finishing junior high), so I have no problem with how vulgar/juvenile/etc it is. The problem is that, at least as far as its political element is concerned, it's just neither clever nor original. If you watch enough episodes, you realize that its whole angle is the typical uninformed blue-collar mindset according to which:
1. Our culture is completely overrun with P.C. fascism and this is a bigger problem than racism.
2. "Atheism is a religion" and just as dogmatic as Christianity (repeated in just about every other episode as if they are the first ones to come up with this brilliant idea).
3. Conservatives may be wrong about some things like censorship and getting us into poorly thought out wars, but liberals are all crazy effeminate hippies, I mean just look at them.
4. People who care about the environment are just so silly (see above).
To me, they fall into the same pandering-to-both sides category as Jay Leno, except they put it under the guise of "we offend everyone". It's the same kind of Fox News idea of objectivity defined as "balance," where it's a virtue to make fun of both sides equally, even if you can't really find something substantive to disagree about with one of them (because they're actually right). For an example, see the Iraq War episode (conclusion: Hey, we need pro-war people to defend the country from terrorists and anti-war people to make us look like a caring democracy). Other times, they can't actually find anything about the left to critique so they just make something up and run with it for a whole episode (example: Hybrid cars cause a build-up of 'smug' in the atmosphere!) Not to mention that the way in which this is done is usually nothing more than to render all the liberal opinions in an exaggerated voice like a third grader repeating everything you say after you. Having found one of these angles of attack, they proceed to bluntly beat you over the head with it for the whole episode; 90% of the time this is done by taking some classic movie plot and exaggerating it to its breaking point.
Obviously, I've watched a lot of South Park, and I've learned to basically tune out their pathetic attempts at political commentary. Episodes like "Chinpokomon" are much funnier. About the only time they made a semi-coherent point that I agreed with was the hate crime episode, but then again, this is the type of blue-collar 'libertarian' thinking that assumes all liberals just LOVE affirmative action and hate crime laws (spoiler: many of us don't, but think it's a pretty trivial point to switch sides over)
Family Guy, on the other hand, doesn't belong anywhere near the same category, as it's about 10 times more clever. For some reason, a lot of people don't realize this because they also have some cheap gimmicks like the whole Stewie-being-evil thing that the frat guys watch it for. But aside from that, there are a ton of references, incisive social observations, and realistic uses of conversational awkwardness, all of which go by so quickly that you'll probably miss half of them by laughing. When Stewie says to Meg "somewhere in an attic, there's a picture of you getting prettier," how many people even understood the reference? And unlike South Park, they just move on, rather than pounding on the same point for a whole episode. When South Park for some reason decided to make fun of Angelina Jolie for the transparent reason that she's a liberal and we all know how annoying that is), they spent a whole episode on her fictional pubic lice. Family Guy's attacks on celebrities are funnier because they are quickly executed and far less transparent. For example: "Chris, first of all it's called a loo, and second, everyone here just uses Elizabeth Hurley" (end of joke, whereas South Park would parlay this idea into a 30-minute episode).
As regards politics, I pretty much agree with Family Guy on all points. They can hardly be accused of belonging to the hysterical P.C. left with their unapologetic use of racial humor and making fun of gay culture, but when the issues come up, they make no qualms about being in support of gay marriage and against the war (Brian's Kucinich bumper sticker is also a clue).
Of course South Park would make fun of Family Guy - they are like Peter Griffin at a production of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" wishing someone would throw a pie in order to bring the entertainment to a level he can understand.
Ok, I'm done ranting.
-
@ Prof. Andmaryann
[Read the article: Can Stephen Colbert save America?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I can't stand watching people embarrass themselves like this. You clearly just scrolled through my post looking for something to get riled about. I want you to do the following:
1. Go to my original post
http://letters.salon.com/books/review/2008/04/05/late_night/permalink/94e289c7348be38d91d1831edd1f7d92.html
2. Read it.
3. Realize that the sentence you were taking issue with ("atheism is a religion") was a PARAPHRASE of an oft-repeated opinion in South Park that I DISAGREE with.
4. Hang your head in shame.
Other than that, I pretty much agree with all the points you made.