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.”