Its not so indiscriminate. Its just that theyre edgy libertarians and radical centrists. Its less about blanket making fun of everyone including themselves and that theyre smugly declaring “both sides bad” on most things.
The viewer must be able to laugh at themselves, or at least be able to tolerate writers who are deliberately pushing people’s buttons. Sometimes there’s a good point hiding in the bullshit.
Or, just skip the show entirely. It’s great that their turnaround time is only six days(!), so they can address surprisingly current issues, but the show is past its prime anyway.
I love South Park, but damn, the Mr Garrison trans episodes are just, ahhhhhhhhhggggggggggg.
Ultimately the South Park moral comes down to change is bad. Let’s keep the status quo.
And that’s what I find offensive. To be fair, The Simpsons does the same thing, as does Family Guy
As does most society critical content that makes it to television.
I’m neurodivergent, and I laugh in many instances South Park made fun of neudivergent and mentally disabled people. I’m Latin American, South Park made fun of latin americans so many times. I’m progressive, South Park made fun of progressives so many times. I’m atheist, same thing. I’m bisexual, same thing, I could go on.
The problem with the Mr Garrison episodes is that, they are so viscerally transphobic, it is very obviously made in such bad faith.
Of course they are not the worse thing depicted in South Park, but yeah, a show with the objective to be as offensive as possible gotta hit somewhere in a very personal point eventually.
I think those “both sides” shows have to go out of their way to find things to make fun of in certain circumstances. So they feel forced to charicature or misrepresent those groups in order to make any proper humor. On the audience side people who buck the status quo are held under the same scrutiny as people who are rapidly climbing the discrimination pipeline.
Matt and Trey are the sort of shitpost wizards who’d be the coolest guys on some dead forum if they didn’t happen to work for Paramount. They were doing the same transgressive edgelord nonsense fueling the best worst Flash animations on Newgrounds. They just did it on television.
It’s important to recognize how things catch on when people are told “no.” Busybodies insist video games are for children, so you get shocking excessive gore like Mortal Kombat. American distributors insist cartoons are for children, so you get a Christmas musical about a turd. Parents hound their kids about dial-up porn, so you get Rule 34. Suppress something widely-desired, and hey guess what, it doesn’t just go away. Those kids grow up and do whatever they want.
They were in the industry the whole time. They didn’t just show up with a 16mm test print and leave with Isaac Hayes’ phone number. Orgazmo came out nearly the same day as South Park’s premiere.
