Is South Park getting weird...er?

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crimson5pheonix

It took 6 months to read my title.
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MarsAtlas said:
No, they've said as much that they make fun of people who get offended (which I'm sure is why they've gone after extreme PC culture in the current season). The people who they like to offend the most are the people that expect them to be moral crusaders. No, they're totally okay with offending people. That's why they say they'll offend anyone.
 

Josh123914

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Nov 17, 2009
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MarsAtlas said:
Josh123914 said:
Maybe it's hard to poke fun at something that's totally world-ending
They did four episodes on it and wanted to do a movie about it. I think they know how to poke fun at it.
Not in the way you want them to.

and something most of the target demographic is unanimous on?
Gallup, 2005 [http://www.gallup.com/poll/1615/environment.aspx] and its practically a three-way split with 31/29/35 as the margin of error puts them in the same range of each other. I'd hardly call it "unanimous". Hell, its 2015 and the "generally exaggerated" category grew from 31% to 42%.
And how many of those people watch South Park?
When was the big event wherein the Prominent Creationist set out the manifesto for how and why Climate Change exists? For a charicature to work, South Park needs a celebrity. Without that, they just have a mean-spirited strawman, which is not funny.
This is really simple. When 2 sides are in conflict in South Park, they have rather blatant flaws which the main characters can point out and soapbox over. They aren't going to golden mean an issue with a clear victor.
If its a clear victor then why has it been so lopsided then?
Because, as said in the interview linked above, Climate Change has been done a million times, and making fun of somebody like Al Gore (who was fading into irrelevance before he came out swinging with AIT) is way more fun for them.
What South Park does regarding this issue is to put a check on well-meaning people. They may be on the right side of the issue, but their actions only harm their whole side's position. Where other media don't pick up the slack, South Park usually steps in, which isn't difficult since it only takes them a couple days to make an episode.
Frankly I don't even understand what you're trying to say here.
Sometimes even the side you are on has flaws, and that is forgotten about when fighting a worse opposition. South Park has the platform to signal boost these flaws and get people talking about it.
So why haven't they discussed climate change denial then? Its partially rooted in valid notions, like that the economy would be put at risk by taking environmentally-friendly measures and that environmentally-friendly changes would lead to a negative change in our standards of living. It becomes denialism when they feel like they can't recognize the validity of climate change because it gives the opposition more ground, exactly what you're talking about. Why haven't they addressed climate change denial on these grounds even just once if they've addressed climate change alarmism so many times on these grounds?
Because it's fun. Plain and simple. The general undercurrent of Climate Change denialism is difficult to take on accurately because the reasoning from the masses varies, and no major scientists take the notion seriously. If it isn't funny, or they don't have somewhat recent material to work with, they won't do the episode.
People didn't know that Caitlyn's driving led to somebody's death before transitioning. A lot more people know about it know, and if you think South Park bringing it up after the media circus ignored that makes the creators transphobic assholes, that's your pejorative, not mine.
Why does it matter if somebody died in a car accident which she was involved in where there's nobody to blame? Why does it matter? What point is there to be made in pinning responsibility for a tragedy in which they held no culpability? Its a blatant attack on somebody's character for something outside of their control. It'd be like if Stone or Parker got a car without knowing it had faulty brakes, parked it, it ran over somebody and then people start calling them murderers. Its desperately clinging on anything they can use to attack a person that they already dislike and not look like a gigantic asshole. Stone and Parker are too afraid to say "trannies are nasty" and they can't come up with any character flaws in her aside from that so they decide to turn a tragedy into a homicide and brand them as a murderer. She literally commits vehicular homocide twice in one episode. They're calling her a murderer because its the only thing they can use, at least from their perspective that is.
Are we even watching the same show? Have you watched the first two episodes of just this season? If you have, you'll know why the creators have issues with Jenner. Not even Jenner, just PC culture in general.
Everyone already knows Global warming is a problem. You don't need somebody to stand up in "2 Days Before The Day After Tomorrow" because the humor stems from idiots misunderstanding Climate Change to be something much more immediate and violent.
But we're not talking about the threat of climate change, we're talking about the threat of climate change denialists. We can deal with climate change if people in power don't obstruct solutions. What do they do? They obstruct solutions non-stop. Its not climate change that is the threat, its climate change denialists that are the thread and they are powerful. We've got the entire coal and oil industry, two of the wealthiest industries on the planet, completely invested in climate change denialism. Its been a decade since that episode air, ten years, and very little has been done in the United States to deal with climate change. Ten years of potential progress regarding a long-term issue almost completely wasted due to obstructionists. If nothing changes for the better in a span of ten years regarding a problem on the global scale thats something more deserving of being addressed than any alarmism that was shut down even by climate change proponents ever did.
Well, when it becomes front page news again, Stone and Parker will talk about it again. They are not John Oliver. They're primary goal isn't to bring important news to the public, but to lampoon the idiotic elements of the stuff that is already being talked about. How can you not know this? Characters in the show never investigate anything, they have info reach them from friends, or TV, and then the plot begins. It's a very basic narrative opening that would tell you that South Park by and large doesn't do investigative work without a good reason.
Yeah I agree, but that doesn't somehow prove that the creators don't believe in Climate Change.
They've never shown anything but disdain for anybody who even brings it up. They've dedicated multiple episodes to ridiculing it and tried make a movie ridiculing the notion of climate change. Ten years have passed and they've never so much as a single time made a jab at climate change denialists.

Oh, and another episode they made a jab against climate change that I just remembered, Goobacks, from 2004. They literally call a guy who brings up the possibility of climate change a "fucking retard". [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oUqXdG7Xi4]
Oh this is too funny. There is no way you actually watched that episode.
10 years have passed, and Climate Change isn't front page news. Deal with it. Goobacks is satirizing illegal immigrants, but once again they avoided using any nationality by making the immigrants future humans who are a mix of every ethnicity.

That link you provided is evidence of your own misunderstanding. Those people in the meeting are there to be laughed at and made fun of, because they are dumb hicks brainstorming ways to get rid of the immigrants. The global warming suggestion was done to kill the Goobacks off, not a serious plea to stop Climate Change.

And the plan the hicks eventually go with is to have a massive gay orgy outside in order to stop having kids, and thus ensure there wouldn't be any Goobacks from the future to emigrate back in time. You would know this if you watched the whole episode.
Ooh, namedropping Gamergate, I like it.
But no, you have somehow gotten the story backwards. Chef's voice actor told them months beforehand not to diss his religion, and this made them do some digging.
Yes, he just spontaneously asked them to not do an episode on scientology. Just spontaneously. No way it would've been spurred on by already-existing plans to address it. No, it was just a random outburst unrelated to anything at all.

C'mon...
Stop jumping to conclusions.

Tom Cruise has told follow workmates not to diss Scientology, the woman who voices Bart Simpson has warned the Simpsons writers not to ridicule her religion after she converted. Working with somebody for an extended period of time will get you information such as this. You know this is true, which is why you framed your statement with sarcasm that they had this whole episode lined up before they had any reason to, and the Chef VA was victimized and couldn't have possibly played a role in its conception.
They have made their opinions known in the past, particularly being devout Libertarians and Anti-Religion.
Wasn't the whole message of All About Mormons, what is considered one of their best episodes ever, about the positive qualities of faith? Haven't they done other episodes addressing that, like the one where Cartman becomes a preacher because all the kids are afraid of going to hell?
This is what they mean by equal offenders. I should have worded that last bit differently because Anti-religion doesn't really put it into words.
They lampoon religions when necessary, but at the same time consider atheists to be "fucking annoying", because many felt betrayed after the Mormon episode. They showed rather succinctly that Mormons have a religion that is clearly fabricated, but the Mormons shown seem to be an all round happy and positive bunch (certainly happier than the rest of the town), so live and let live. The message I saw there is that Kyle and Stan didn't want Kenny to convert because its a religion built on a lie, but after he sees how happy the Mormons all are, can you really blame Kenny for wanting to be a part of it?
 

Redryhno

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Josh123914 said:
Wasn't the whole message of All About Mormons, what is considered one of their best episodes ever, about the positive qualities of faith? Haven't they done other episodes addressing that, like the one where Cartman becomes a preacher because all the kids are afraid of going to hell?
This is what they mean by equal offenders. I should have worded that last bit differently because Anti-religion doesn't really put it into words.
They lampoon religions when necessary, but at the same time consider atheists to be "fucking annoying", because many felt betrayed after the Mormon episode. They showed rather succinctly that Mormons have a religion that is clearly fabricated, but the Mormons shown seem to be an all round happy and positive bunch (certainly happier than the rest of the town), so live and let live. The message I saw there is that Kyle and Stan didn't want Kenny to convert because its a religion built on a lie, but after he sees how happy the Mormons all are, can you really blame Kenny for wanting to be a part of it?[/quote]

Hell, there's been numerous episodes that have ended up in Heaven and Hell, and pretty much every one of them has had God say he's a Buddist that lets Mormons in because they're pretty much the only ones that haven't gone batshit insane on everyone else, also he likes paper children arts and crafts. Hell's full of pretty much everyone else. Satan's gay and is honestly one of the more sympathetic characters in the series. Anyone that starts trying to say that they're anything approaching far right wing really has no idea what they're talking about. I haven't watched SP since I was in middle school, and what i"m hearing now is that this sounds like a good time to start watching again if for no other reason to see how their season long arc plays out...
 

crimson5pheonix

It took 6 months to read my title.
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MarsAtlas said:
crimson5pheonix said:
No, they've said as much that they make fun of people who get offended
You mean the deliberate targeting of a group of people for a specific reason? Because that would be completely antithetical to the "no target off limits" approach they say they're doing. "No targets off limits" is supposed to mean "we'll target anybody for any reason" but since they don't target indiscriminately it reads more as "if we targeted something that offended you we didn't really mean what we said".

Saying they'll offend anyone doesn't mean they don't mean to offend people. Saying they like to pick on certain people doesn't mean there are people they don't offend. Your statements do not make sense.
 

crimson5pheonix

It took 6 months to read my title.
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MarsAtlas said:
crimson5pheonix said:
Saying they'll offend anyone doesn't mean they don't mean to offend people. Saying they like to pick on certain people doesn't mean there are people they don't offend. Your statements do not make sense.
When somebody says "equal opportunity offender", which has a meaning used in other phrases like "no holds barred comedy", they mean to imply that they'll strike anybody. Matt Stone and Trey Parker won't strike anybody. They strike people who they think are deserving of it and they gravitate towards liberals because there's a greater market for it. They say they're not being discriminatory on whom they target yet they do. Thats the problem here, that contradiction. Not "they didn't pan these guys I don't like" or "they were mean to somebody I like" or anything like that. They and many of their fans claim that they do something that they simply don't do. The worst part is that they make that claim in an effort to save face, that they're not targeting certain people in particular or even that they may not mean what they say even though they devoted an entire episode to it. They know that its not true, they must know it because they brainstorm and revise and edit before they put something to print.
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I don't follow the logic. At all. They say they don't care who they offend and proceed to not care who they offend. Thus they are cowards. So far the only connecting thread I'm given is that you can tell this is true because they make jokes.
 

crimson5pheonix

It took 6 months to read my title.
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MarsAtlas said:
crimson5pheonix said:
I don't follow the logic. At all. They say they don't care who they offend and proceed to not care who they offend. Thus they are cowards. So far the only connecting thread I'm given is that you can tell this is true because they make jokes.
No, they do pick who they target. They do it because they're human beings who have values. The only way a person with values would target anybody (and I do mean anybody since that is their claim) would be if they simply sold-out their values for something like money. Now this is just personal speculation but they don't strike me as sell-outs. I know that they have values and I don't believe that they're sellouts so that leaves me to conclude that their "equal opportunity offender" statement (or whatever phrase it was they use, many mean the same thing) is false. They themselves may not realize its false, but it is false nonetheless. Since when other people usually use that phrase its their way of saying "if you were offended I didn't mean to, please stay and give me more money" without appearing so desperate so I'm, somewhat cynically, concluding that Matt Stone and Trey Parker are probably using it the same way. Its PR fluff that attempts to sound nice to everybody, and damn ingenius PR fluff at that. When something the comedian did bothers you its meant to come off as "nothing personal, we didn't mean it" and when they haven't bothered you its meant to come off as "I'm not holding back, I'm not afraid to tread new ground that you haven't heard before". Microsoft should've hired whoever came up with the phrase to do their PR for the Xbox One rather than Don "Ruiner of Companies" Mattrick.
See, what makes you think they don't mean it? What they're saying is that they won't go easy just because you're offended. If they didn't mean to offend, they wouldn't repeatedly offend people. So I don't know where that line of thinking comes from. And I still haven't figured out how "we'll offend anyone" translates to "be a sociopath". They're not saying that they're going on a campaign to offend everyone forever, they're saying that "I'm offended" isn't going to get them to stop making fun of you.
 

Odbarc

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I like the new principal. He adds to the stories where the old one didn't do much.

Why was Butters in that head-cage all episode?
 

Ihateregistering1

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Odbarc said:
I like the new principal. He adds to the stories where the old one didn't do much.

Why was Butters in that head-cage all episode?
You may have missed the "Safe Space" episode (which you definitely need to watch it's great). In it, Butters tries to commit suicide but just winds up badly injuring himself, hence him wearing the headcage.