The demise of South Park
If this is your idea of cutting-edge satire then you are going to love the new season of South Park, which includes a number of scenes of Trump stripping off in his White House bedroom and trying to interest the devil in his minuscule appendage. But if I were Paramount+ and I'd just signed a $1.5 billion deal for the exclusive five-year rights to South Park, I think I'd be feeling a bit shortchanged by the première of the show's 27th season.
Sure, you could argue that South Park was always this way: the first episode (in 1997) was, after all, titled 'Cartman Gets An Anal Probe'. But though I yield to few in my fondness for crass, puerile, broad-brush humour – my second-favourite moment being the gross-out scene far too disgusting to explain, where Randy blames the mess on his computer screen as 'ectoplasm' from a passing 'spooky ghost' – I fear that the once fearlessly outrageous show has long since lost its game.
Obviously you're now wondering what my favourite moment is. This has to be the one where Randy is playing Wheel of Fortune and the category is 'People Who Annoy You'. After his letter guesses, the puzzle spells 'N_GGERS'. Unfortunately, Randy guesses the wrong answer. It is, of course, 'NAGGERS'.
In fairness, part of South Park's problem is that it has become the victim of changing mores. When it began, political correctness – later to mutate into the even more nauseating, domineering and absurd cult of 'woke' – was in its pomp. The environment for the kind of satire displayed in the classic 'Death Camp of Tolerance' episode ('People of all colours and creeds holding hands beneath a rainbow') was correspondingly target-rich.
But with the arrival of Trump's aggressive second term, those days are gone. Indeed, this is the running joke of season 27 so far, which begins with Cartman discovering that his favourite comedy show – National Public Radio (NPR), the one where you get to laugh at whiny liberals being liberal and whiny – has been terminated by presidential fiat. What is the point of being Cartman, he wonders, if no one finds his comments offensive any more? He puts on a T-shirt that says 'Woke is Dead' and plans to commit suicide in a pact with Butters – whether Butters likes it or not.
Even South Park Elementary School's aggressively woke headteacher PC Principal has begun drinking the Trump Kool Aid. Much to the children's horror, he announces in assembly that his initials now stand for 'Power Christian' – and as affirmation of his new-found faith, he has decided to invite Jesus into the school. Any children who won't allow Jesus to join them on their lunch table will be severely punished.
The Jesus scenes aren't interesting or funny. Having introduced the character mainly, I presume, to reaffirm its commitment to sacrilege, the episode can't quite decide what to do with him. Jesus just floats around the school with his beard, white robes and halo, being meek but not really saying much until the end where in a mystifying and ill-thought-through scene, he delivers a 'Sermon' to the South Park residents explaining that he's there under duress.
This is ridiculous. He's the actual Son of God. Literally nothing is beyond his capability. He is brave, intelligent, well read, wise, charismatic, articulate, adored by women, totally cool and utterly based. There's no way someone like that is going to get trapped against his will, for however convoluted a reason, in South Park Elementary.
Jesus presents a problem for satirists because, being flawless, he has no weak points that can be exaggerated for comedic effect. In the past, South Park has got round this by treating him as a superhero, deceptively mild but not to be messed with ('I'm packing,' he says in an early appearance, revealing the array of weaponry beneath his robes). Here it's as if the South Park team has lost its nerve: it dare not show Jesus being truly amazing because that might open them to the charge of being insufficiently irreverent.
And if that's the case, they are right to worry, for the whole episode is like one giant punch pulled. There are few surer signs that you've sold out to the Establishment than when your edgy comedy series with the crass jokes and badly animated characters earns you $300 million a year. Trump and the Trump administration won't be offended by this satirical-target-missing homage masquerading as critique: they will adore it.
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