Perhaps the comedians best suited to fight President Donald Trump are the ones who speak his language of crass insult most fluently.
The season premiere of “South Park,” which aired July 23, depicted Trump in crude caricature — involved in a gay sexual affair with Satan and embarrassed over his minuscule genitalia. The townspeople of South Park are subject to Trump’s frivolous lawsuits, which eventually settle out of court; they then are forced to produce an advertisement for the president, which, once again, paints one particular part of his anatomy as microscopic.
(In response, Trump’s White House issued a statement: “This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention. President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country’s history – and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.”)
Is the episode especially groundbreaking? Well, no, neither for “South Park” — which, since its launch on Comedy Central in the Springer-ized cultural moment of 1997, has been gleefully gross — nor for our country. (It was, after all, the current president who made a certain kind of history by declaring on a debate stage that he had “no problem” with regard to his manhood.) But it’s striking all the same for its willingness to challenge Trump, and “South Park”’s corporate owners at Paramount too. In daring to venture into the breach with the nastiness this era merits, “South Park” may not be the best show right now, but it’s perhaps the best show for right now.
Consider that it had perhaps the most startlingly timed response to Stephen Colbert’s departure from CBS. As Paramount (which owns both CBS and Comedy Central) sought federal approval for its planned merger with Skydance, it announced Colbert was to be cut loose, a supposed coincidence that struck many as fishy. “South Park” creators Trey Parker (the episode’s credited director and writer) and Matt Stone make their contempt for their corporate siblings clear, in a feat of timing that’s due both to their finishing the episode very close to air and to their having just reached a streaming deal to place “South Park” on Paramount+, which will bring the duo some $1.5 billion over the next five years. (Unlike “The Late Show,” which no one contests was financially challenging for Paramount, “South Park” is hugely lucrative — too big, perhaps, to silence.)
The creators’ recent deal, though, hardly means that Paramount is immune from critique — quite the opposite. “60 Minutes” journalists covering the story of South Park’s persecution by the president are depicted as terrified to say anything but positive things about Trump, a nod to CBS News’ capitulation in settling his lawsuit against it; Jesus Christ himself appears to the community to urge them to settle, citing Colbert’s fate and telling them that even He, the Son of God, has been subject to Trump’s lawfare.
The episode, intriguingly, wriggles away from easy classification as partisan art: In this, Stone and Parker differ from Colbert, whose monologues and frequent booking of Democratic Party officials positioned “The Late Show” as the voice of the institutional center-left. Indeed, the most coherent political philosophy of the episode is expressed by Cartman, the show’s fourth-grade id, who is furious that NPR has been defunded… because now he can’t laugh at how inane he finds it. With Trump’s election having shifted the culture away from “woke,” he proclaims, there are no jokes that one can’t tell.
Love Film & TV?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in music, film and TV in Australia and abroad.
Well … except for one type of joke. The episode makes the case that the only taboo in contemporary society is criticism of our president — and then giddily bulldozes him in terms that he might appreciate, if applied to anyone else. As for the rest of the season to come? Say this much for Parker and Stone: Once they alight on an angle of approach, they’re loath to let it go. A trailer for the next episode features Trump, once again in bed with Satan, as well as footage of the characters on an ICE raid. One imagines at least one viewer, on Pennsylvania Avenue, furious that he can’t shut this show up.
From Variety US