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.
Futurama.
The one where Bender becomes a woman bot to participate in the robot Olympics, I’m guessing? That one was kind of rough watching with modern sensibilities last time I recall, especially with all these recent trans people in sports debates. Also the one where they go to the planet where they switch genders. Is there any others I’m forgetting?
There’s also the one where Bender is a pro wrestler, and becomes a cross-dressing heel. And there are recurring gags and side characters like the trans prostitutes. Overall, the show is fairly progressive, but some of those gags were problematic.
Futurama
Shout outs to Lily Simpson for showcasing just how bad these shows really are.
I didn’t know either
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IT Crowd
I though you said you were from Iran.
But seriously I don’t think that episode was harmful.
Douglas is just a general asshole.
The character is an asshole AND that episode is transphobic. More telling is the creator (Graham Linehan) who is a vocal TERF. I don’t really want to pollute this space with his toxicity, but search if you’re curious.
More telling is the creator (Graham Linehan) who is a vocal TERF.
well sad to see/hear. But I’m still not convinced that the episode in its entirety is transphobic.
Can you tell me what’s transphobic about it?
When I first saw it I would have thought it was trans-supporting, other than the detail that (IIRC) the trans woman was played by a cisgender woman.
The entire point of it is that the only thing that is stopping Douglas from being genuinely, incredibly happy, becoming a better person and living an actually fulfilling life in the end is his inability to accept a historical detail that had made absolutely no difference to his relationship. And, since Douglas might be the worst person in the world, we see him destroy that because of his own weird machismo values. Just when we think he’s completely changed as a character, his shittiness on this one thing, emblematic of his incredibly toxic masculinity, comes crashing down on him. This is, darkly, funny. We are abruptly reminded that Douglas is an actual monster, to the point of fist-fighting with the person he loves. “Character is briefly happy but previous behaviour and/or shittiness of their character ruins it for themselves” is like at like 30% of Linehan’s sitcom plotlines.
If there’s something I missed - and it’s been a few years, and thoroughly agree that Linehan’s subsequent behaviour justifies examining his previous work for ulterior motives - I would like to know it. Genuinely.
