Morals in South Park

[Timber Loftis]

Today's NY Times:
April 28, 2004
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
What? Morals in 'South Park'?
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

Did "South Park" reach its apotheosis this season?

In a March episode a movie called "The Passion" wins over Eric Cartman, the fat one, who was himself crucified in 1999 in South Park's own prescient passion play. After watching the film, Cartman drones on and on about the glory of his longtime hero Mel Gibson, the movie's director, until his pal Kyle Broflovski consents to see it. Shaken by its depiction of torture, Kyle comes to agree with the film's implication that Jews bear responsibility for the death of Jesus.

Kyle then agitates at his synagogue: he wants to hear an apology. The congregants rebel. Meanwhile Cartman organizes a rally and tries to initiate genocide. Holy war comes to South Park. In a related subplot a demented and armed Mel Gibson flounces around in underwear as he did in "Lethal Weapon." Andrew Sullivan, the conservative online pundit, called that scene "one of the more sublime sights of the year."

Depending on whom you asked, that episode, "The Passion of the Jew," proved that the show's still got it or that it's made a comeback or that it's better than ever. In any case, it was good.

This Comedy Central cartoon series, which goes on hiatus until October after tonight's episode about aliens who take the jobs of American citizens, has always prided itself on socking it to old-time religion. Set among unmelting snow banks in Colorado — in "a pissant white-bread mountain town," as it was identified in the first season — it has passed for serious iconoclasm since its premiere in 1997.

Certainly the show is inventive and cool looking. The voices, most done by the creators of "South Park," Trey Parker and Matt Stone, are also hilarious. (Cartman's pronunciation of "authority"— aw-THOR-eh-tah — is unaccountably perfect.) If only a type face could capture them. But the real strength of "South Park" is that it flatters freethinkers by mocking Christians and Jews, including Jesus himself (a resident), along with the stand-out holy figures Buddha, Muhammad, Krishna and Laotzu. (They form a clique called Super Best Friends.)

But that stylized freethinking carries, of course, some dogma of its own. True, the boys of "South Park" — Cartman and Kyle, together with a schmo called Stan Marsh and some hangers-on — are unaffected by whatever spiritual troubles used to depress the "Peanuts" gang.

They have a more specific problem: American hypocrisy, the combination of greed and sanctimony that lets religion and would-be spirituality provide cover for rapacity. Where the "Peanuts" children were sad, the kids in "South Park" are furious and vengeful.

No wonder. They're surrounded by frauds. Cartman has a doting single mother, a Christian and hermaphrodite, who sleeps around for favors. She's indulgent and ineffectual. ("Eric is still supposed to be grounded for trying to exterminate the Jews two weeks ago.") Kyle's mother is carping, anxious, lethally meddlesome; she takes a stand to raise awareness of conjoined twins, which seems intended just to mortify the person it's supposed to help, a school nurse who has a dead fetus attached to her head. Bland Stan has a grandfather who is presented as the picture of happy longevity but begs Stan to kill him.

"South Park" consolidates the rage and humor of preadolescents, kissing up to them with gags about gas, fat and vomit. (And jokes about jokes about gas, as on "Terrance and Phillip," the long-running show within a show.) Then, armed with little more than judiciously applied censor's bleeps, permissible words like sphincter and anus and a willingness to look into digestion, the show musters an air of anarchy. Perfect for the young at heart: anarchy — but a jolly cartoon — and on basic cable.

Formerly rebellious adults may be the biggest fans of "South Park," which is predicated on the hope that it continues to offend someone, somewhere. Really to savor the show, it still helps to imagine joyless souls — repressive parents or balky advertisers, stupefied by political correctness or Christian moralism — tsk-tsk-ing in a distant living room. (Advertisers have stood by the show, even when it pushes decency standards, and parents have never mounted a serious campaign against it.) As much as it offers new jokes, "South Park" also offers a chance to defy those fantasy scolds one more time.

But in spite of this pose, "South Park" does not lay claim to bad-boy television's principle of "no learning, no hugs," the mandate Larry David laid out for "Seinfeld." "South Park" can even be overtly pious. Theology may come off as myth on it, and bigotry and self-righteousness as broadly terrible, but religion here is also a decent sweetener and civilizer.

What's more, a chord of uplift sounds at the end of many episodes. The creators, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone, are regularly identified as libertarians and consider themselves singularly in touch with the wickedness of boyhood. But let's face it: there's learning, even hugs, on "South Park."

It's surprising, in fact, that in almost seven years viewers haven't bridled at the show's pedantry. In an episode this season crusaders in South Park lost sight of real danger when they focused on a trivial Janet Jackson-like flashing crisis. The show spelled it out: people get hung up on phony sex scandals and ignore the real problem of violence.

Two weeks ago a pedophile pop star named Michael Jefferson, who has a son named Blanket, came around to taking fatherhood seriously.

"I've been so obsessed with my childhood that I've forgotten about his," he says. "I thought having lots of rides and toys was enough, but Blanket doesn't need a playmate. He needs a father, and a normal life."

This sounds almost ingratiatingly sane. If "South Park" is one of television's great comedies, it's not great for being reckless; it's great for being a series of funny, topical parables.

Take the end of "The Passion of the Jew." After the holy war subsides, Stan tells fans of the Gibson movie: "If you want to be Christian, that's cool, but you should follow what Jesus taught instead of how he got killed. Focusing on how he got killed is what people did in the Dark Ages, and it ends up with really bad results."

How nice. But et tu, Trey and Matt? This message is not far from the refrains of "Free to Be . . . You and Me," the inspirational feminist album for children released in 1972. That's all right with me. But viewers, don't tell your sons.

[johnny]

Screw morals, as long as it makes me laugh it's a good show.