This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Anyone following the new South park season? You can get a sneak peak here.
https://youtube.com/@southpark/videos
Unsurprisingly they are going after Trump's administration and hard. So far the first episode was offensive incoherent mess, the second is offensive coherent mess. I hope the rise in quality will improve. They are obviously trying to bite Trump administration into retaliating and seems to be succeeding - seem to have the uncanny ability to find the snowflakes - starting with the snowflake in chief. Vance is playing it cool, so I suppose his mocking will diminish.
I am confused what is better for USA now - Trump to die now and Vance to take reigns now and only have 2 mandates or to die after the midterms and have two and 1/2.
I was thinking it's been a few years (maybe 5 or 6) since I watched a full season of SP, but then I realized the last one I watched was season 17. That was 12 years ago. How times flies.
More options
Context Copy link
The two episodes were fine, nothing special, but their ability to rile up conservatives and the administration itself is by far the funniest thing they've done in a long time.
If I were to just look at episodes in isolation, my main concern would be the fallback on old jokes. They did member berries just under 10 years ago now (coincidentally when they first started doing Garrison as Trump) but have now resorted to "remember Saddam Hussein" and "remember that bank guy"
More options
Context Copy link
You can't really enjoy South Park and take exception to your own sacred cows landing in the crosshairs; the real offense is that they hit our Resplendent Golden Poet-Emperor with predictable Simpsons-tier recycling rather than something worthy of the show.
Old, tired, washed up.
More options
Context Copy link
Some relevant context (from my understanding from the far side of the pond):
Paramount and Skydance have recently completed a merger. As both were big media networks, that merger was subject to approval by federal authorities, e.g. the SEC and the FCC.
At the beginning of July, Paramount decided to settle with Trump for 16M$ in a lawsuit where he contested that they had illegally used editing in a Harris interview, despite the fact that experts say that they could likely have won the case on merits.
On July 17th, they cancelled Colbert.
South Park is ultimately owned by Paramount. Given the length their owners had gone to appease Trump, of course they took it upon themselves to maximize pissing him off.
--
While previously, Mr. Garrison had been a stand-in for Trump as an obnoxious narcissist, Trump now had the dubious honor of becoming (iirc) the second person to be represented by photographs of himself, after Saddam Hussein. Like Saddam, he was also depicted in a gay relationship with Satan, and they also gave him a micropenis.
None of this is particularly funny on its own, but it reads as a credible signal that they want to piss of Trump.
Turning the PC principal from a proponent of political correctness into a power christian worked for me. (South Park has mocked political correctness and wokism for two decades, the death camp of tolerance remains a personal favorite of mine.)
Cartman, being upset that he can no longer start his day by hearing 'liberals whine on NPR' due to a funding cut has a crisis of identity which might be somewhat autobiographical for SP. They were mocking wokeness before it was cool to mock it. Now that everyone does it, it can no longer be Cartman's (or SP's) shtick.
The second episode was okay. The "Kristi Noem shoots puppies and has a face full of botox" thing did not really land for me. The "anyone can earn a huge salary by becoming an ICE goon" was better. Eric Cartman and Clyde "masterdebating" (to) college girls was ok as far as jokes go. So far, the Epstein stuff was more hinted at (Dora the explorer giving a massage to some old guy at Mar-a-lago). Presumably, it will be milked for what it is worth in a latter episode.
Numerous celebrities have been depicted this way, although I think it's been a while.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm frankly disappointed in Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Going back on their initial mockery of climate change; keeping their mouths shut on the frankly ridiculous clown world tier state of dems/ zombie Bidden. Where were they for the four years of nonstop gaslighting and censorship we endured?
One theory is that they might have some sort of relationship with the Bidens. I don't know if there's any true merit to the idea, am not endorsing it, and haven't seen more than idle speculation on this, so caveat emptor. But basic googling does reveal that Kevin Morris, who called himself one of Hunter Biden's "closest friends" and who loaned/gave Hunter Biden at several million dollars to tide him through his tax and legal issues, also has a long-standing relationship with Parker & Stone.
Very much YMMV, but frankly pulling punches for personal reasons makes as much sense to me as the idea that somehow the same guys who did "the snuke" suddenly converted to the resistance.
More options
Context Copy link
Facing Covid disruptions and then streaming deal agreement issues. They were still able to make some but it was limited and messy.
https://instagram.com/southpark/?ig_rid=101d0018-2023-4a52-9fcf-4b35f57c94f2&ig_mid=2F3C71C0-931E-41F2-BCE2-C36B13623776
"This merger is a shitshow and it's fucking up South Park. We are at the studio working on new episodes and we hope the fans get to see them somehow."
And doing the elections is already tiring according to them, so it makes sense that doing it in the process of all the other chaos is not appealing
Even the first episode this season was delayed due to all the streaming rights fuckery.
I think this is part of why the new season's first episode was "incoherent" as the OP put it, a lot of people didn't follow along with the show so the meta commentary on the process and their anger at Paramount being expressed through targeting the Trump deal didn't make sense to them. Part of the bait isn't just to get the Trump admin mad, it's to get them more mad at Paramount.
It's actually really funny if you understand the metaphor. Cartman and Butters in the car represents the "suicide" of Matt and Trey going down this path, trying to upset the executives. They don't know what if anything will come from it, but fuck it they're bringing the fight. The anger and freakouts at them from the right are not just icing on the cake, they're part of the formula
More options
Context Copy link
I thought South Park went fully mask off at the end of the 2017 or 2018 season when they looked directly at the screen, broke the 4th wall, and told me "Well Whites, what are you going to do about Trump?" Haven't watched it since.
What episode was that?
I believe it was season 21, episode 10, Splatty Tomato.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=STT1ZHPPpGQ?si=0SBcTWEn7GyX2KdJ&t=100
Is this egregious by South Park standards? Didn't they regularly mock minorities in episodes prior to this one?
It's not the mockery. In fact, it's specially that it isn't mockery. It's a genuine, straight to the white viewer plea, so do something about Trump, because something must be done. The mockery I can handle. The "clown nose off" moments are when I turn off the TV.
It does make sense that you would stop watching after this episode. After all, the episode was speaking directly to someone like you.
Y-Yes? That's literally what I said about myself in the first post. Is that supposed to be some insightful zinger?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I laughed at both episodes quite a bit, even as a twice-voter for Trump. This guy summed up a lot of my internal thoughts though. For a show that famously "goes after everybody", they were suspiciously hands off the low-hanging fruit that was the Biden administration.
I really hope they don't make the entire season about Trump. It's already way overdone and feels beneath them.
That's easy enough to explain. Low hanging fruit is kind of boring. They might have had a bit about biden like literally falling asleep in the middle of speeches but then they'd have to set up speeches that anyone cared about for him to fall asleep during. Trump is obviously a bigger fountain of controversy and slots in as a b plot more easily.
I mean, the onion making fun of biden’s age was a recovery of their old charm; their article on him greeting dead European leaders was absolutely hilarious and I’m surprised South Park had nothing like ‘I see Jaques Mitterand regularly, beckoning me into the light’ given its reputation.
Sure, there are definitely bits and jokes to be told about biden. It's just a lot easier for something like the onion to do so in a headline with a couple paragraphs of puns. Southpark has to commit more to bits, most episodes have something like two plot lines going on and unless they're devoting one to presidential politics it's not super easy to just have a scene where the president is doing something. Family guy with it's reference thing can do that but south park is more situational humor so you need to devote like a whole b-plot to the president, and that's a harder sell for Biden than Trump.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I've never understood Parker and Stone when it comes to their politics, or at least not over the last 13 years since they moved on from their early episode libertarian leanings. Why have they gone easy on leftists so much since the rise of wokeness (note: I haven't consistently watched the last few seasons of South Park, so I may be wrong about recent years. But I remember them soft balling progressives from 2013 through 2017ish), and repeatedly claim that Trump is the worst person ever, then turn around and awkwardly claim they're Republicans. And most of the episodes I've seen of South Park over the last 5 years just seem so random and incoherent. I almost feel like they don't really have any convictions, don't really understand the current issues, and are just randomly throwing whatever elements they feel like together in episodes, while trying to pass it off as relevant political commentary.
What are the current issues?
Well, I mean to say they don't really understand the current issues that they try to tackle on their show. They always seem to misunderstand the core issues. I remember when they had an episode about safe spaces where they were fighting a complete straw man. Their main argument seemed to revolve around people using safe spaces to avoid having to think about starving 3rd world countries. That's just so off the mark.
In that episode, they were specifically showing everyone who wanted safe spaces being guys who don't want to feel bad about living in the first world, and don't want to be asked to donate to charity at the supermarket. And "Reality's" argument against it was you should feel bad about living in the first world sometimes. It seemed way off the mark to me, just like they're missing anyone and everyone's points on the issue.
That is just an attempt at absurd humor, intentionally juxtapositing things that are usually thought unrelated (concept of safe space with , first world citizen Randy wants safe space against charity shaming which feels bad). South Park does it often, sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn't
The scriptwriters clearly attempted to interrogate wider concept of safe space. Episode starts with Cartman disliking comments about his weight, eventually Butters has to censor all the social media to make it safe from criticism. In the end, Reality almost gets the point, and the adults proceed to comically misunderstand (something that South Park also does often).
Sure, I just feel like I haven't seen it land pretty much anytime since about 2013, such that it ultimately made me question whether they actually understand anything they juxtapose.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, they already had Cartman as their mouthpiece literally saying as such. The low-hanging political commentary is dead- how could it not be, when it's been 10 years since left and right changed places? It's all very confusing. Add the fact that pop culture took a 5 year sick day, and now, what's left? Even the Tegridy arc was more coherent than this, which is probably why they went in that direction in the first place.
The problem for them, much as it is for everyone else, is that traditional/what is popularly referred to as right-wing thought definitively died in late 2016. Nobody knows what to call themselves any more; partially because we're fighting over the labels (and partially because, as the woke showed, the way you win a [culture] war is not by dying for your
countrylabel, but by making the other poor bastard die for theirs- it is not in either faction's interest to relabel at this time, which is why you see a lot of extremely conservative/fortifying legislation from 'liberal' parties in countries that are not the US).You see, the 2010s were a cutover point: the people born in the 1930s were the last generation to come of age before the Civil Rights Era- I call these people "traditionalists" instead of "conservatives", and most people use "conservative" as shorthand for people who are [either these people directly, or those who uncritically align themselves with them]. And in 2015 they were all dead.
Now, what's the actual definition of conservatism? Preserving power structures that worked in your youth and expanding them. They made you rich, after all. What were the power structures that worked for Boomers? Academics and education above all else, anti-racism, feminism, sexual liberation, and environmentalism- things that labelled themselves as left-wing, since they were in opposition to what the right-wing was at that time.
But the problem is that, as always, age and establishment power perverts. "Go to college" became "feed your youth to the system", "anti-racism and feminism" became "axiomatically, black > white and woman > man", "sexual liberation" became "castrate your children", and "environmentalism" became "degrowth".
It didn't help that '50s conservatism did have a bit of a resurgence in the '80s and '90s (generation in power turned 20 in the 1930s-1940s, so WW2 vets), since most of what those who call themselves left-wing today also tack that on even though the two really didn't have much to do with each other.
So how's any of that relevant to South Park? Well, South Park is fundamentally a 90s show, and thrives under a healthy/competitive political environment, and a healthy media ecosystem, so you had both lots of material and both sides could reasonably be mocked for its excess. Now, the problems are (and we know now, as hindsight is 2020) 100% factually caused by one side- the side that calls itself "left"- and the media ecosystem is no longer healthy for other reasons.
What's left to mock?
Most of the people watching South Park don't think this.
MAGA. I think South Park is overcorrecting after 4-5 years of mocking "woke", but mainstream conservatism as expressed through MAGA is content rich when it comes to parody.
Why does mocking ICE work? Because the average illegal immigrant isn't a gangbanger or a rapist; it's some poor guy with a family mowing a lawn or scrubbing a hotel toilet after Cartman takes a massive shit. The Trump administration implicitly understands this and it's why they have to continuously emphasize ICE is deporting the "worst of the worst" or whatever.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't deport every single illegal. I don't watch South Park to form my political opinions but I can acknowledge that the substance of their critique is correct.
More options
Context Copy link
You can see a similar paradox in the 1991 August Coup in the Soviet Union. The coup plotters wanted to overthrow Gorbachev to instate a more hard-line interpretation of Marxist-Leninism than what Gorbachev had in mind. So that would make them left-wing revolutionaries right? But at the same time, the reason the coup plotters wanted to do that is because hardline Marxist-Leninism was the old, established order and they were old established figures that had a large stake in the old order. So in a lot of ways Gorbachev is the young left-liberal reformer and the coup plotters that want more Marxism are the reactionary conservatives.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"Put a chick in it, make it gay, and make it lame" was pretty good, though, and I say this as someone who has no sympathy at all for Parker and Stone's politics (whatever they may be).
Yeah, that's true, but did they really have anything to say about that? If I recall, that episode still ended with the "real" Kathleen Kennedy coming back and her viewpoint being mostly vindicated. I'm just throwing this out there, but I feel like maybe their worldview these days skews towards, leftists are right but take it too far, and conservatives are just wrong.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Old age and actually having status to lose has made them cowardly. The new school principal character South Park introduced in 2015 was basically a meta-textual admission that they just can’t do the same kind of jokes that they did in the 90s for fear of getting cancelled. Even with their criticism of Trump, they spent 10 years walking on eggshells and are only being really vicious in their parody now that much of the controversy over Trump has died down and he has safely solidified into a semi-establishment figure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The "anti-vaxxers" and “conspiracy theorists” were not "right about everything".
Apart from Biden's senility, what other low-hanging fruit were there from the administration? South Park didn't attack Dems per se, but it did mock Dem-adjacent policies. And what other show makes fun of fat black women?
MAGA and its menagerie of spokespersons are, unfortunately, cartoonishly easy to lampoon. There are "serious" right-wing intellectuals on Twitter and Substack, but these people are not represented as the public face of MAGA.
Sam Brinton, Karine Jean-Pierre, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, Rachel Levine, and just general DEI out the ass. Vaccine Mandates paired with fear-mongering/demonizing White House statements directed at people refusing to vaccinate. Pressuring social media sites to toe the prescribed line. Phoning a convicted felon's family because he was black and shot by the police (while committing a felony). Having a literal crackhead of a son appear alongside the president in public settings while other crackheads sat in prison for the same crime. Expanding protections for asylum seekers that allowed millions of people to flow into the country and rush the border. Attempting to, and almost succeeding in imprisoning their primary political opponent. An entire media apparatus going to bat for nearly cause the Democratic party supported. There was so much of it going on that if they had done less it might have stood out more. But, because the ideological insanity was such a regular occurrence, it all just blended together into one cloudy nightmare of political correctness and "accountability" toward those who had dissenting views and opinions.
Maybe these things weren't low-hanging fruit to the average person, but they were to me.
There is a lot of material to work with when it comes to MAGA and the Trump admin, but that is the cost of taking necessary actions over "appropriate" ones. The optics are terrible when viewed through liberal eyeballs, I get that. But our country's fatigue with political correctness has gotten to the point where drastic action feels inevitable.
Liberal comedians made fun of Hunter Biden and Joe's age in their bits about how conservatives have more fun('Causing climate change is more fun than worrying about it, amiright?').
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Where to even start, the government used its tendrils in twitter and youtube/google/facebook to do its damndest censoring right wing voices/ gaslighitng the public about the origin of covid. They entirely suporessed biden's son's laptop shenanigans and the corrupt dealings with Borisma.
These mother fuckers tried to unperson and ruin Alex Jones. Hilldawg is still not in prison for the e-mail server and use of the state apparatus to try and paint Trump as a Putin controlled puppet.
very worthwhile goal
and if Alex Jones is alternative then I am taking modern mass media as preferable
even Hamas press releases are better
wait, has it sadly not worked?
More options
Context Copy link
Alex Jones is a professional liar. If anyone deserves to be unpersoned, he does.
Nah, they are making the frogs gay, the elite ARE fully bought into the Malthusian catastrophe meme and would love to slash birthrates and start disposing of large swathes of the population if they could (what he refers as soft kill), and finally you can't convince me hilldawg isn't a literal demon smelling of Sulphur.
What about government steering tornadoes, Sandy Hook shooting as a hoax that involved child actors, secret network of FEMA concentration camps, global warming being hoax etc?
I too watched that smilling giggling asshole before the cameras at Sandy Hook, they nailed Alex's ass on a technicality, as far as I'm concerned Sandy Hook was a hoax, also global warming has been a grift since the beginning, they gaslight the public about carboon footprints while a single person can't offset enough energy their entire lives to make up for a jet airplane doing a single cross Atlantic hop.
I am curious: why you think so?
how that is related to whether global warming is real or not?
AFAIK he did much to nail themself, his incompetent lawyer helped obviously there was thorough lack of sympathy to him (part for valid reasons, part for invalid in my opinion)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, it wasn't very good. Also the weird speech from Jesus about their legal drama with Paramount. I didn't feel offended, but kind of bored and confused, like their characters should go grill pill at Casa Molina or something. There was a funny scene with Randy talking to his digital assistant with his wife looking grumpy next to him. There was an episode where everyone came in from Denver and tried to order cortados from a few years back was pretty funny. Scott's most recent Bay Area House Party post would make a good episode.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link