South Park

Notably absent from the blog have been the big adult animations.  Both The Simpsons and Family Guy have been among my most cherished viewing over the years, yet there’s no sign of them here.  While I’ll slag off telly I don’t like despite having seen not much of it (Gogglebox, The Apprentice), to do justice to the shows I love, I need to have seen everything, and that simply isn’t the case with those two American families.  But, fear not, today I finished off the twenty-third series of South Park and am now completely up to date with this most subversive of all the adult animations, making my way through two decades’ worth of toilet humour, biting satire, charming characterisation and laugh-out-loud comedy.  Finished off might not be truly accurate though, as certain episodes don’t seem to be available on any platform (season 5 episode 3, season 10 episodes 3 and 4, season 14 episodes 5 and 6).  But don’t worry, the other 305 instalments have all been devoured and now we can begin our journey through my relationship with South Park.

It’s 1997 and I am 12.  I’m still living at the parents’ because I am legally a child, but I do have my own room.  I don’t quite have my own telly though, but there’s an old black-and-white set that hangs around the upstairs.  Traditionally it gets wheeled out only if my sister or I are off school poorly and need something to entertain ourselves with.  This is a rare occasion as we were raised to be sent into class no matter what.  I could have a leg off and my mum would still tip me out the car in the school car park at 8am and then speed off to work.  But yes, being properly ill means two things.  One is crumbs in bed, as it’s the only time we’re allowed to eat in our rooms, and honey and toast is typically on the menu so the sugar can give us our strength back following whatever affliction has attacked us, though I suspect this scratchiest of all the foods is simply used to punish us for needing bedrest in the first place, making the very sanctuary of our convalescence an unpleasant collection of the sharpest morsels.  And the second is having the old TV set on a chair by the bed.

Somehow, its position in my room became permanent.  I hadn’t become sickly, but maybe my sister had got her own or some other treat, and therefore my claim to the spare set was recognised.  This meant I graduated from discovering shows alone in our breakfast room (see post on Friends) to being able to tune into all sorts of late-night fare in the privacy of my own room.  In fact, tuning in is fairly literal here, as the set was so old it had a dial-knob for channel selection.  You would twist this to work through the four available terrestrial channels, enjoying an exhilarating burst of snow and crackle between each.  How primal.  This might all seem like self-indulgent preamble, and it is, but it’s also relevant as this is how I discovered South Park.  Channel 4 had acquired the rights to this cult show from the US, and late on Fridays it was going out in the UK too.  Often criticised for its crude animation in those early days, I was able to tolerate not only this but also the lack of colour on my antique telly because South Park was brilliant from the start.

The furtive late-night viewings made it feel inappropriate and offensive, but that’s because it was.  It was some of the rudest stuff you could watch (pre-internet), besides maybe Eurotrash.  But it was also, and still is, very clever.  We’ll come on to the reasons for this, but back to me.  Suddenly, South Park merchandise was everywhere.  You couldn’t move in Clinton Cards for plush toys of Kenny, or sets of highball glasses featuring Cartman and Mr Hankey The Christmas Poo.  I still don’t know what a highball glass is, but I probably had one anyway.  Even my dad revealed he enjoyed the show, catching the odd episode and immediately finding his undying passion for fart jokes catered to by South Park’s storylines.  By 1999 we had a feature-length film complete with musical numbers that I still dream of seeing performed in the West End.  In fact, the lending out of my DVD of this film while at college in 2005 was the first act of cultural exchange in a friendship that is still going strong to this day (love you, T).

But university saw me lose track of South Park.  New seasons emerged as an annual tradition, but I was having the time of my life transferring my student loan to night club owners in Oxford.  Once I started work and moved to London, though, someone showed me a site called allofsouthpark.com.  It’s not there anymore, but it offered great solace during my poverty/grad wage years, with me saving money by staying in and watching up to season 10 before the streaming finally gave out around the 9.0 IMDB-rated Imaginationland episodes.  Even then, it was a lot of content, and the quality was in no way compromised by the quantity.

Spotting this old favourite, then, on Amazon Prime, I found myself revisiting those old series from my childhood, making my way through episode after episode as background entertainment while I built IKEA furniture in my new flat.  I passed Imaginationland and a whole new world of South Park madness was revealed to me, the humour catching up with more recent events.  I had to download series 23 from Sky and fast forward the same handful of inane adverts that are stitched into every segment over and over again, but it was totally worth it.  I can now go around saying I have seen (almost) all of South Park.

And with that, let’s look at what made that a worthwhile experience.  South Park focuses on four young boys in snowy Colorado.  They almost always face forwards, their legs and arms hardly move at first, their winter clothing is mostly the same and they have potty mouths.  We join the boys in third grade, but they journey to the fourth, putting them at eight/nine/ten years old.  Stan feels like the hero – he’s learning what his morals are while his family exasperate him.  His best friend is Kyle who is slightly more impatient, mostly because overweight frenemy Cartman is constantly abusing his Jewish heritage.  Then there’s Kenny, whose dialogue is muffled by his parka hood, and who dies in all the early episodes (creating a great set up for Coon & Friends in later series), while also being absent in some seasons, with the other three auditioning other friends, from Butters (my favourite) to Tweek (too caffeinated too young).  The boys rag on each other like any bunch of friends would, but it’s the innocent response to the stupidity of their parents and the other adults of South Park that leads not just to toilet-themed humour but also to scathing commentary on our modern society and all of its nonsense.  Over time, Cartman comes to signify the right-wing end of things (excluding his behaviour in season 20), while the others are more liberal.  But, eventually, conservative or woke, South Park will come for anyone that takes themselves too seriously (or cereally).

This has proved controversial throughout South Park’s lifespan.  An example is its approach to US school shootings from series 22 onwards.  A background soundtrack of gunfire complements every school scene from the first episode, setting up a wealth of humour where the South Park citizens focus on every other problem besides gun control.  South Park isn’t making light of school shootings or laughing at its victims, it’s viciously parodying the lack of solution in real life to something that requires an immediate response.  It’s true, though, that human life has little value in South Park.  My mind was first blown by this in episode 6 of the first series, Death, when the adults of South Park catapult their bodies into the network building to protest the foul language of Terrance And Philip.  It was funny, but it haunted me – surely each adult experienced a moment of regret at their choice before hurtling through thin air to their death.

As such, let’s run through, in chronological order, a handful of my top most mind-blowing moments from 23 series of South Park:

Chickenpox, season 2, episode 10

The boys hire a hooker to give all their parents herpes as revenge for a chickenpox party, and the scenes where she goes about using all their toothbrushes remain deeply harrowing for me.  It not only foreshadowed the inordinate generational conflict that drives many of South Park’s storylines (and, increasingly, our actual lives), but gave me a permanent reservation about where my own toothbrush might have been when I wasn’t looking at it.

Cat Orgy, season 3, episode 7

Shelley Marsh remains a joy of a character, perfectly personifying older sister-awkwardness and employing increasingly creative ways to use her favourite word (turd), so it’s inevitable that she should try her hand at babysitting.  Her fatal error comes when she babysits Cartman, with events climaxing in all the stray cats getting invited round for a cat orgy.  Now, whenever someone leaves me home alone, I threaten them with holding a cat orgy in their absence.

Towelie, season 5, episode 8

New character alert: we meet Towelie, who is a towel.  Yes.  He also smokes too much weed and is consequently always too high to be effective.  I can’t get enough of him, even though weed is one of the worst smells available to humanity.

Krazy Kripples, season 7, episode 2

I don’t know what to say about Timmy and Jimmy.  Are they driving greater visibility of disabled people on the TV screen, or are we laughing at children for their handicaps?  The fact that they’re treated as fully formed characters who happen to be disabled edges me to the former of the two perspectives – and this means they simply get rinsed as much as everyone else in South Park.  In this episode, a series of misunderstandings lead to them getting involved in the Bloods versus Crips gang warfare while blind to any of the sensitivities around this.  Oblivious Jimmy encouraging everyone to get along is priceless, and this all unfolds during an aggressive storyline about stem cell research.

All About Mormons, season 7, episode 12

Potentially a precursor to The Book Of Mormon (which I have seen twice on my own money and would happily pay full whack to see again), all the exposition of this curious faith in this episode is soundtrack with a choral accompaniment of “dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.”

Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset, season 8, episode 12

Taking aim at bad role models for young girls, Mr Slave’s performance in the episode finale is not something anyone was expecting.  Jesus Christ.

Woodland Critter Christmas, season 8, episode 14

What begins as a cute festive tail takes a turn for the murderous when the charming fluffy animals’ eyes start to glow red and they indulge in a Satanic blood orgy, all with a really positive attitude.

Make Love, Not Warcraft, season 10, episode 8

I’ve never even played World Of Warcraft, but I learnt everything I need to know about it from this episode.  The boys’ transformation into online gamers is enough to put anyone off.

Imaginationland, season 11, episodes 10, 11 and 12

Every imaginary creature ever inhabits a separate dimension (including the satanic woodland critters from before): this concept allows for a deep pastiche of our hysteria about terrorists when these mostly imagined baddies storm the realm of leprechauns and fairies.  Meanwhile, all Cartman cares about is getting Kyle to suck his balls.

Major Boobage, season 12, episode 3

This episode is art perfectly capturing the hetero male response to big boobs.

Crème Fraîche, season 14, episode 14

One of many episodes where Randy Marsh comes into his own as one of the best and most interesting characters, South Park here takes on the growing passion for food porn in a way that means you’ll never be able to pronounce this ingredient in the same way again.

Sponsored Content, season 19, episode 8

Working in advertising, this episode takes on an issue close to my heart – the power of marketing to disrupt the truth of news.  Jimmy’s school newspaper becomes the last remaining bastion of trust, while Butters’ dad succumbs to clickbait in an amazing montage (that we use in meetings sometimes).

All of season 20

Whereas episodes in early seasons were standalone, by this series we have full narrative arcs taking us through from instalment to instalment like some sort of high-tension drama.  Taking on the challenge of explaining why something like Trump could ever happen (the answer: nostalgia for an easier past that can never be brought back – bit like Brexit), season 20 introduces us to the member berries.  These are small grape-like creatures that provide reassurance by constantly posing questions about retro things you might remember, reaffirming each other by indeed recalling and praising that bygone thing that was once great (such as Star Wars).  I can’t get enough of their scenes, nor can I commend this series enough.

Later season arcs take on increasingly ambitious societal trends, including social media, trolling, the rise of Amazon (which was awkward given my viewing method).  I’ve barely scratched the surface here of the wonderful contributions that South Park has made to popular culture and the world of entertainment, as well as genuinely getting me to reconsider my opinions about important topics that constantly affect us.  Even if I were to list out favourite characters (Lemmiwinks, PC Principal, all of Korn) we’d be here for thousands and thousands of words.  In fact, I’ve already gone on too much, which shows I haven’t the skill of South Park’s creators, crafting everything into the brevity of 22-minute-long episodes.  Matt Stone and Trey Parker: thank you for the offensive comedy.