After Donald Trump was first inaugurated as President of the United States in 2017, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone made the decision to ignore the political situation in North America. This changed the course of the popular adult animated series that changed the art by crossing the moral barriers of humor. Until then, current events served as input for the plots. Between sarcasm, belittlement, and a deep sense of irony, American and global political reality entered every joke like a parody locomotive that indulged in impudence and sarcasm.
“It’s complicated because the satire is now reality,” South Park co-creator Trey Parker said that year. “It’s very difficult to tell jokes. In the last season of South Park, which ended a month and a half ago, we really tried to make what was happening funny but we couldn’t do it. What was happening in real life was funnier than anything we did.”
On the attack. That policy, which had been in place for several years, changed in the final season, the twenty-seventh of South Park. In an interview published by The New York Times, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were asked about this remake that has brought unprecedented ratings to the series. Parker summed it up by saying: “It’s not that we’ve become political, it’s that politics has become something very popular.”
Authoritarians don’t like this
The practice of professional and critical journalism is an essential pillar of democracy. This is why it bothers those who believe they are the bearers of the truth.
For his part, Stone commented that the Trump government was starting to be seen as taboo, with a whole network of censorship and crossfire between the president and the media, or with Jimmy Kimmel Live, for example, or with Stephen Colbert on late night. “Trey and I were drawn to it like flies to honey,” Stone added. “So this is where the taboo is? So let’s go like this; we just had to show our independence somehow.” Parker expanded with some sarcasm: “We’re very moderate men. We make fun of extremists of any kind. And so we’ve done it for years with the woke world. We find it funny and so does this attendee.”
Clear criticism. The fact is that since the first episode of the final season of South Park, Trump in this second presidency has become something whose perversions have been caricatured to generate South Park-style humor.
The scene that particularly upset Trump was the scene in which he is seen having a romance with Satan, a recurring character in the animated series. In that romance, it was made clear that Trump has a very small penis. The North American government asked the creators of the series to black out all explicit parts. In the face of rebuff, spokesman Taylor Rogers came out with a letter that followed what Trump said when he asked for Jimmy Kimmel’s show to be censored: saying they had no audience and they lost.
“South Park has been irrelevant for over twenty years, hanging by a thread of uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt to attract attention,” Taylor Rogers said. “President Trump has delivered on more campaign promises in just six months than any other president in American history, and no fourth-rate platform can stop his winning streak.” As if that wasn’t enough, Rogers also pointed out the left’s reception to South Park over time. “There is no end to the left’s hypocrisy. They have criticized South Park for years for what they called offensive content, but suddenly they are praising it (…) Like the creators of South Park, the left lacks authentic or original content, which is why its popularity remains at historic lows.”
The dilemma. This controversy erupted when South Park signed a five-year, $1.5 billion contract with Paramount. In parallel, that company was seeking approval from the government authority to merge with Skydance Media. The position of the creators of South Park has always been clear: If one joke offends, the next one will offend more or less, but it will happen. A kind of maximum freedom of expression without restrictions or obedience that pushed them to get their own way relentlessly enough so that they didn’t have to give explanations.
When Trump’s political rise was little more than a fantasy, South Park replaced Trump in the presidential debates with the character Mr. Garrison. As time goes by, it’s time to emulate a lot of the “comedy” of power.
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