Not South Park

[alice wellintown]

Sorry about the link.

That Parker and Stone deem themselves fit to offer advice on
child-rearing is not what makes South Park disappointing. As Steven
Weisenburger points out in Fables of Subversion: Satire and the
American Novel 1930-1980, satire is traditionally “corrective.”
Moralizing may be integral to the genre, as is a belief that wit can
affect reality for the better.

Pynchon's Romantic Subversive Satires are not like South Park. Not
like the Simpsons. If they were, I said, we would not need to read his
works. That doesn't stop reviewers and critics and some readers from
writing about his works as if they are like South Park and traditional
corrective satires.

The Reviews are getting better. The one Monroe and Doug posted was the
best yet. Not quite John Leonard, but the best of the bunch. But for
that Kindness stuff and happy ending stuff. Kindness is the stuff of
Dickens novels, It doesn't happen in IV. The possibility remains.
There could be kindness in the future. But it can't happen, and
doesn't happen in or between the pages of the book. The grass does
grow in the cracks of the concrete, the earth, the Orphic song,
despite all that Humanity does to prevent and deny its fecund
mysteries and make the world an artificial and sterile sphere, can
still be heard, although those over thirty may need some youthful
amplification to hear it.


South Park: The Complete Eighth Season


By Jesse Hicks
Blunt
You work 18 hours and whaddya get? Parents sell ya to Paris Hilton.
—Butters, “Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset”


South Park‘s eighth season is dubbed “the year from hell” by
co-creator Trey Parker during his commentary for “Cartman’s Incredible
Gift.” He and partner Matt Stone were juggling production duties for
2004’s Team America: World Police with their work on the show,
complicating a normally grueling schedule. Only at the beginning of
the season did they realize “how screwed [they] were.” And yet,
despite the frenetic pace of production, Season Eight is a solid one,
offering some enjoyable episodes and the occasional bit of sharp-eyed
satire.

Voltaire it’s not. Commenting on the eighth season premiere, “Fun with
Weapons,” Parker and Stone apologize, “We just don’t have that much to
say about each episode.” (Their commentaries rarely run longer than
five minutes.) This lack of reflection is partly a function of the
show’s creative process: South Park writers often struggle into the
early morning hours, completing scripts mere days before airtime. Such
a high-pressure approach can yield some inspired work—call it the
“writing your term paper fueled by Mountain Dew” method—but don’t
expect the finished product to sustain much in-depth analysis, even by
its creators. The rush enables a timeliness few shows can match, but
episodes tend toward gut-level reactions to that week’s zeitgeist
stimuli.

Episode 12, “Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset,” takes Paris Hilton
as its target. She’s probably the world’s most satire-proof effluvia.
While she might be emblematic of the vacuity of American popular
culture, with its irrational worship of “celebrity,” even this
observation is banal. Parker and Stone’s jab that Paris is famous
because “she’s a whore” is less satire than axiom. Animated as a
semi-conscious celebutard stumbling from scene to scene, this Paris
has one eye half-open, coughing up white gunk every few minutes.
(“That is man-spooge she’s coughing up onto her hand, if that wasn’t
clear,” Parker comments helpfully.)

She visits South Park to celebrate the opening of her new store,
“Stupid Spoiled Whore,” where, she says, “Girls can buy everything
they need to be just like me!” The episode concludes with Mr. Slave’s
speech: “Being spoiled and stupid and whorish is supposed to be a bad
thing, remember? Parents, if you don’t teach your children that people
like Paris Hilton are supposed to be despised, where are they gonna
learn it?... You have to be the ones to make sure your daughters
aren’t looking up to the wrong people.” Duly noted, South Park.


What makes South Park such an uneven project is the success of its
absurd, scatological, non-sequitur-based humor combined with the
relative limpness of its satire. Weisenburger defines two kinds of
satire: the “generative” and the “degenerative.” Parker and Stone work
in the former, working to “construct consensus, and to deploy irony in
the work of stabilizing various cultural hierarchies.” Whereas
degenerative satire, typically postmodern, focuses on “delegitimizing”
all cultural values, South Park wants to reassert “common sense”
moralities: Paris Hilton is a whore, not a role model. Mel Gibson is a
little crazy and Jesus should be remembered for his words, not how
badly he suffered for you (“The Passion of the Jew”). American
politicians are often indistinguishable from one another (“Douche and
Turd”). The problem with Wal-Mart is not corporate greed, but that
people want to buy things at cheap prices (“Something Wall-Mart This
Way Comes”). Michael Jackson is weird (“The Jeffersons,” and finding
new ways to mock Michael Jackson is a bit like the quest for cold
fusion).

If these sound like clichéd “insights,” it’s because they are. Despite
its reputation as an equal opportunity offender, South Park rarely
asks viewers to rethink their expectations. Even more rarely does it
brandish the satirical scalpel rather than the sledgehammer. (A recent
episode “took on” 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and guess what? They’re
“retards!”) Instead, the show offers poop jokes with the faint aroma
of topicality. Funny, yes. Hilarious, even. But finally, as Parker and
Stone admit, they just don’t have that much to say.



On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 3:52 AM, umberto rossi
<umbertorossi_000 at fastwebnet.it> wrote:
> On 11 Sep 2009 at 22:30, alice wellintown wrote:
>
>> Try reading the
>> article.
>
> The link doesn't open, even though I have a broadband connection, so
> it ain't a matter of slow dataflow... what does the article say, if there
> is an article behind that link?
> _____________
> umberto rossi
>
>