Unveiling South Park: The Big Four

Unveiling South Park: Popularity and International

 Even with all of this having been said, South Park is still in the end both influential and aware of this influence on America. While the popularity of the show has somewhat declined significantly since its conception, Matt Stone attributes this drop off to previous news hype and the subsequent trimming of his audience to the “true” fan base, the show’s awareness is shown through the metafictional way of several characters speaking directly into the camera. But before the writer’s audience can be fully addressed, much less the deeper issues including the ramification of South Park’s influence particularly concerning the portrayal of the Middle East, it is pertinent to discuss why the show was chosen, a brief history, its construction, its continuing themes, and its eventual somewhat predictable form.

               South Park was chosen to be this essay’s subject of analysis because not only is the show edgy and popular, as already stipulated in the opening paragraphs, but because it is grounded in public perception. This latter trait is largely used to describe more traditionally analyzed media like The New York Times or Time but I would argue that South Park at times can be just as effective as print.[1] Cable television and increasingly the internet are used to deliver South Park episodes to a more global audience. South Park is and will continue to be written for consumption in the United States, but that hasn’t prevented nations like Australia, Canada and even Latin American and Russia to pick up the show. Cable television networks have smaller audience pools but they make up for this through specialization. South Park fans quote Cartman’s pronunciations of words like “authori-tie” and buy shirts by the millions each year. South Park may have become so successful in other countries, especially those speaking other languages than English, because of the show’s trademark of low-tech animation allows the character to be easily dubbed over. The international broadcasting of South Park isn’t completely smooth as one show in particular “Free Willyzx” featuring Vladmir Putin as greedy and weak caused the show to be censored in Russia.[2] Another part of South Park’s continued success lies in is its ability to adapt rapidly in order to make shows involving the latest hot topic. South Park’s SNL like work schedule, sometimes producing an entire from start to finish in one week, has enabled the show to be as timely as The Economist. For instance when the controversy over Terri Schiavo was all over the news in 2005, Matt Stone and Trey Parker were able to write, produce and even do the majority of voices in a week’s time for “Best Friends Forever,” a show dealing with euthanasia.[3] While periodicals deal with primarily the assimilation of facts, Stone and Parker unabashedly show their opinions of the debate as a whole.  This includes the writer’s portrayal of not only the events themselves but how they are portrayed in the media, private industry, public, and government. So in the aforementioned “Best Friends Forever” Stone and Parker focused not so much on euthanasia, as they interpreted this to be not the main issue, but instead the media coverage of Mrs. Schiavo’s death. As satirically shown through the death of Kenny, it could be easily recognized the disgust of Parker and Stone’s disgust of the media constantly showing the face of a dying women for political objectives.

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[1] Both of which have praised South Park.

[2] Season 9 Episode 13.

[3] Stone and Parker do the majority of voices in every South Park episode. The writers digitally raise the pitches of their voices three half tones to do the voices of the children (up two for women’s voices and up five for chimpmonks). Original air date: March 30, 2005. “Best Friends Forever” was Season 9 episode 4.

Unveiling South Park: Intro

       Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s revolutionary show of South Park defies authority, hypocrisy, the polarization of American politics and elitism. It’s cult-like and wide ranging young audience seems to come for the controversy and stay for the increasingly sophisticated bathroom humor. Memorialized by plush dolls and t-shirts, South Park’s characters, which are simultaneously both loved and loved to be hated, propelled Comedy Central into mainstream television. America soon became addicted to the show’s voice of black humor which exposed the ridiculousness of modern America which had been deafened by the ceaseless shouting politicians, looped tabloids, and 24hour television news cycle.

               South Park’s twenty-two minutes of relentless and often vulgar satirical punches on the topics of censorship, capitalism, roles of women and minorities to the commercialization of Christmas and euthanasia have led some to mistakenly interpret the show as a vessel for social or political change. And while it may be true that South Park’s decision to confront controversial issues directly may often spark political, societal, or cultural conversations, it would be erroneous to overstate the initiation of such needed discussions as somehow South Park’s goal oriented advocacy for change. Instead the true purpose of the show, which would essentially go onto spawn the network that carries the critically acclaimed programing The Daily Show and The Colbert Report,[1] remains to be unquestionably the primary objective of entertainment. The writers have joked they would like to leave the change to people like Obama and seem to be genuinely uncomfortable when they are questioned by “eggheads” where their political leanings lye much less their desires for modification of American consciousness. As Jon Stewart often says, “the purest form of comedy is grounded in truth,” Parker and Stone’s South Park seems to be deeply rooted in such a philosophy. Just as the “eggheads” may overthink the objective of South Park to be advocacy for political, social, or cultural change, cynics erroneously proclaim South Park’s primary goal to be that of profit. While this latter claim may be true at one level, Parker and Stone do work in capitalist America, the decision for the writers to be one of the first shows to archive and freely disseminate  all episodes and clips of South Park on the web seems to discredit profit as a primary motive of the show.[2]

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[1] South Park first aired in 1997 and by 1998 Comedy Central jumped from being disturbed in 9.1 million homes to over 50 million thanks to it being picked by more cable networks largely due to the show’s incredible popularity. It would be equally relevant to not that in South Park’s second year it had amassed eight of the top 10 most popular non-sports cable episodes on television (each episode hovering between 4 and 5.5 million viewers).  Johnson-Woods, Toni. 2006. Blame Canada!: South Park and Contemporary Culture. London: Continuum, p.6-8.

[2] I would like to first thank MLB for the use of the word “dissemination” without their expressed written consent. Legal streaming of Comedy Central became available in March of 2008 and the current website can be located at “SouthParkStudios.com.”