Why South Park Struck a Nerve

The Atlantic

5 days ago

Over the course of its nearly 30-year run, South Park has deployed toilet humor, ruthless political commentary, and profane asides to eviscerate wide swaths of people. No one is spared—celebrities, religious groups, foreign governments, and a variety of ethnicities have all been fair game. The series gained instant notoriety upon its 1997 debut thanks to this approach, and it hasn't let up since. But when South Park, which airs on Comedy Central,returned last week following an extensive hiatus, it was to a political moment that some satirists have found harder to work with.
In the past, President Donald Trump's second term would have been an obvious target for South Park, low-hanging fruit to tackle in a flashy, long-awaited premiere; the show has mocked the surreality of contemporary politics before. (A 2016 episode depicts a local elementary-school teacher, Mr. Garrison, triumphing in an election over Hillary Clinton; he soon adopts a Trump-style blond comb-over.) Yet in a Vanity Fair interview last year, the show's co-creator Matt Stone said that reflecting previous presidential elections had been a 'mind scramble' for him and his co-creator, Trey Parker, and they didn't care to tackle the specter of the 2024 campaign in South Park 's then-forthcoming season. 'I don't know what more we could possibly say about Trump,' Parker said.
Parker and Stone's solution to the quandary of Trump-era satire, it seems, is to use the president as something of a Trojan horse for mocking another subject entirely—and a way to dramatically up the stakes while doing so. Trump is not a bull's-eye in the episode, titled 'Sermon on the 'Mount,' despite numerous shocking jokes that might suggest as much: an AI-generated video of Trump's genitalia addressing the camera, and a recurring gag involving the president cozying up in bed with a grumpy Satan, prodding the devil into coitus. Rather, he is a high-profile conduit for the show's true target: Paramount, Comedy Central's parent company.
Paramount's investment in South Park is clear: The same week that the outrageous premiere aired, the company paid Parker and Stone a reported $1.5 billion for 50 new episodes and the streaming rights to the show. But the expensive deal also came days after Paramount canceled the popular Late Show With Stephen Colbert for what the company claimed were financial reasons. The timing fueled speculation about the company's motivations; two weeks prior, Paramount had agreed to settle a lawsuit with Trump for $16 million over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris last fall. As some reports have pointed out, both the settlement and the Late Show cancellation—which Colbert referred to on air as 'a big fat bribe'—came amid Paramount's bid for federal approval of its merger with the media company Skydance.
These details fueled 'Sermon on the 'Mount,' which in a dense 22 minutes mashes up industry-focused satire with jokes about people's growing trust of AI and the cultural decline of 'woke' terminology. South Park reimagines the Paramount events as a community issue; in the episode, Trump sues the titular town for $5 billion, after local parents disagree with his administration's bringing religion into schools. While publicly protesting, the townspeople are joined by Jesus himself, who reveals through clenched teeth that even he's embroiled in a lawsuit against Trump. He urges them to hold their complaints, lest they face serious consequences: 'You really wanna end up like Colbert?' he hisses.
The scene is a thinly veiled, relentless prodding at Paramount's allegiances, as well as the chilling effect Trump's actions have created. This approach stretches across the bulk of the episode. Further twisting the knife is a parody of 60 Minutes that portrays its journalists as constantly hedging to avoid displeasing the president: The segment opens with a ticking bomb, in lieu of a clock, as a voice-over shakily announces, 'This is 60 Minutes. Oh, boy. Oh, shit.' An anchor then nervously introduces a report of South Park's protest against the president, who, he is quick to add, 'is a great man; we know he's probably watching.'
South Park isn't breaking new ground in criticizing its parent company. The sitcom 30 Rock featured frequent jokes-slash-metacommentary about NBC throughout its seven seasons, including about the network's own late-night-host drama; The Simpsons has ridiculed Fox constantly over the years. Even Barbie, for all its pink-colored wholesomeness, embedded jabs about Mattel; the movie's creative team publicly spoke of their successful bid to get certain gags into the box-office-dominating film, and a Mattel executive later heralded the jokes at the company's expense.
But what feels, frankly, so punk rock about Parker and Stone's approach is how big of a swing they took in biting the billionaire hands that are feeding them. By making Trump a vehicle for addressing the close-to-home Paramount drama, South Park 's creators did something canny: They transformed a politically layered scenario—one involving the show's parent company and America's leadership at the highest level—into a storyline that was both pointed and accessible to a wide audience. Instead of focusing on entertainment-industry satire, Parker and Stone feature Trump heavily—and, in a first, use his actual face over a tiny animated body. The bluntly provocative characterization, which went viral, helped the episode reach some viewers that otherwise may not have been as attuned to Paramount's recent decisions. As such, Parker and Stone managed to attract attention from audiences across party lines. Those who were ticked off by the president and delighted in his portrayal cheered the episode, while the White House issued a statement writing off the show as a 'desperate attempt for attention.'
In an ironic twist, the town of South Park follows in Paramount's footsteps toward the episode's end. Jesus persuades the town's parents to settle with Trump, warning that 'if someone has the power of the presidency and also has the power to sue and take bribes, then he can do anything to anyone.' The townspeople's attorney then talks Trump down from $5 billion to $3.5 million—'That's not so bad!' coos one parent. The mayor concurs: 'We'll just have to cut some funding for our schools and hospitals and roads, and that should be that!' In so closely linking Paramount's actions with Trump's bullying tactics, the episode manages to not just poke at the network's decision to settle in lieu of defending its properties in court. It also suggests that there's still potent satire to be wrung from the contemporary political maelstrom—and that South Park is willing to push the buttons of more than one powerful institution while doing so.