South Park controversies

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Controversies over South Park have occurred numerous times. The show depicts what many people find to be taboo subject matter, from its use of vulgarity (It Hits The Fan) to its satire of subjects such as religion and cults (such as All About Mormons, Bloody Mary, Red Hot Catholic Love, Fantastic Easter Special and Trapped in the Closet), sexuality (The Death Camp of Tolerance), steroids (Up The Down Steroid), and global warming (Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow). Stone and Parker are self-described "equal opportunity offenders" and episodes often lampoon all sides of a contentious issue, rather than taking a concrete position.

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[edit] Public protests

The show's provocative material quickly drew protest from various spokesmen, who deemed the program offensive. Therefore, South Park merchandise (especially T-shirts) were banned from a number of public schools, day care centers, and other public places. This occurrence is similar in a manner to the prohibition of Bart Simpson T-shirts in the early 1990s, after The Simpsons was accused of contributing to juvenile delinquency.[original research?]

More recently, the program has received some publicity over their use of the deceased Steve Irwin, where in an episode, he shows up at Satan's Halloween party. Typically this issue rated a few short paragraphs in mainstream newspapers.[1] In retaliation to this controversy, Parker and Stone included further references to the incident in the final episode of season 10 "Stanley's Cup" where the doctor says that if Stan's team loses the next game then the team-mate with cancer will "die faster than Steve Irwin in a fish tank full of stingrays," and after Stan saying they're (the other team) not going to kill us at a team meeting, a kid replies "That's what Steve said about those stingrays."

American conservative media watchdog group Parents Television Council has frequently criticized South Park, as well as other Comedy Central programs like The Sarah Silverman Program and Halfway Home, for their "over-the-top vulgar content" and "tastelessness".[2] Among the episodes that the PTC has criticized include, according to columns by its advisor and former president L. Brent Bozell III:

In addition, since the eleventh season of South Park began, nearly every week the Council features a South Park episode and another Comedy Central program in its "Worst Cable Content of the Week". Previously, the episodes "A Million Little Fibers"[7] and "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson"[8] had been featured as "Worst Cable Content".

[edit] Vulgarity

In the episode "It Hits the Fan", South Park broke the swearing record by using the word shit a total of 162 times uncensored.[9] The 22-minute episode averages one 'shit' every eight seconds, and there was a counter throughout the episode continuously displaying the number of times it had been said. A song by Mr. Garrison that consisted of, 'Hey, there, shitty shitty fag fag, shitty shitty fag fag, how do you do?' (sung to the tune of the title song from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), repeated for two verses, provides an example of how 'shit' was so abundantly used. This was meant as a satire of an episode of NYPD Blue. An additional gag in this episode allowed homosexual or bisexual characters to use the word "fag" freely, while heterosexual characters were bleeped when attempting to use the same word. Also, in the episode titled "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson", the racial epithet nigger was used throughout the entire episode for a total of 42 times.[5]

In the episode "Le Petit Tourette", the words "shit", "kike" and "cock" are spoken multiple times uncensored. This episode also received controversy for its depiction of Tourette Syndrome.

In South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, 399 swears were used throughout, including 146 uses of "fuck" and many bodily swears such as "cunt" and "dick".

[edit] Jews

Judaism is often mocked in South Park, especially by Eric Cartman. In episodes where they play a key part in the story line, they are often heavily stereotyped. One of the two South Park creators, Matt Stone, is Jewish.

[edit] Scientology

See also: Trapped in the Closet (South Park)

In November 2005, South Park satirized the Church of Scientology and its celebrity followers, including actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta in the top-rated episode, "Trapped in the Closet." R&B star R. Kelly is also featured in the episode, in a nod to his 22-part "hip-hopera" called "Trapped in the Closet."

In Trapped in the Closet, Scientology leaders hail Stan as a reluctant savior while Cruise locks himself in Stan's closet and will not come out, due to Stan's failure to praise his acting skills. During the episode, numerous characters requested that he "come out of the closet." "Coming out of the closet" is widely used as a term for homosexuals revealing their orientation.

Dubbed "Closetgate" by the Los Angeles Times, the controversy continued as Comedy Central pulled the episode from a scheduled repeat on March 15, 2006 at the last minute (although it has since been repeated several times). It is alleged that Tom Cruise threatened Paramount with withdrawal from promotion of his latest film Mission: Impossible III if the episode were to be re-broadcast (both Paramount and Comedy Central are owned by Viacom). Though Paramount and Cruise's representatives deny the allegation, The Independent reports that "no one believes a word of it." In typical satirical form, Parker and Stone issued the following statement, with several mocking references to Scientology:

"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing [sic] our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!"

—Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Writers of South Park [10]

The South Park creators have not commented on the use of the pseudonymous word "anozinizing" in their statement. However, a connection can be drawn between the heavy emphasis Scientology and Dianetics place on the understanding of word definitions[11] and the inability to understand a fictitious word. The use of a fabricated word also mirrors Scientology, as Scientology is laden with unique terminology created for and used by the church.[12]

The Los Angeles Times reported that, "For Stone and Parker, Closetgate will be the gift that keeps on giving" because there are likely endless story lines that can follow, considering South Park's consistent satirizing of Scientology. This episode was also recently nominated for an Emmy,[13][14] and is included on South Park's 10th Anniversary DVD, called "South Park The Hits: Volume 1."

As a parody response to The Church of Scientology's litigiousness, the final lines of the episode feature Stan taunting the church to sue him, and the ensuing credits read only "John Smith" or "Jane Smith."

South Park has also indirectly parodied Scientology in the episodes "Super Best Friends" and "The Return of Chef," which never mention Scientology by name but which are obviously meant to poke fun at it. "Super Best Friends" mocks the fictional cult "Blaintologists" for charging money to believers, for wanting tax-exempt status and for making normal people think they're not happy, all of which have been attributed to Scientology, and which are themes that come up again in "Trapped in the Closet." Additionally, in both episodes, Stan and Kyle's friendship is tested. In Super Best Friends," Kyle becomes a full-fledged Blaintologist and eventually tells Stan, who wants to leave the cult, that if Stan cannot support his beliefs, they are no longer best friends. Ironically, it is Stan who is taken in by Scientology in "Trapped in the Closet," and when Kyle tells him that he is worried about him, Stan responds by saying the same words to Kyle. This theme, losing friends due to membership in a cult, reappears in "The Return of Chef" as well, when Chef eventually "seemed to turn his back" on the kids in order to stay with the "Super Adventure Club" (and ends up being grotesquely killed because of this decision). Kyle, giving Chef's eulogy at the end of the episode, tells all present that they should not blame Chef for what he did, but blame "that fruity little club."

Arguably, the first time the show satirized Scientology was in the short "The Gauntlet", which aired during the 2000 MTV Movie Awards. Though the short was primarily a Gladiator parody, with the characters fighting Russell Crowe in the Roman Colosseum, it included "John Travolta and the Church of Scientology" arriving in a spaceship to defeat Crowe and attempt to recruit the boys into Scientology. Travolta, along with his fellow Scientologists, was depicted as he appeared in the infamous Battlefield Earth.

[edit] Isaac Hayes

See also: The Return of Chef

Isaac Hayes, who played Chef, the longstanding confidant of the boys on the show, quit unexpectedly days before the spoof on Scientology was to re-air. A Scientologist himself, he left stating, "There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins... Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored." However, some have suggested that Hayes may have been pressured into quitting by leaders within his faith, since less than a week before quitting he had stated in an interview on the Opie and Anthony radio show that he was fine with the Scientology episode, that Matt and Trey were "equal opportunity offenders", and that "people who cannot take a joke need to take themselves less seriously."

In response to Hayes' departure, Stone commented "He has no problem - and he's cashed plenty of checks - with our show making fun of Christians." Parker and Stone decided to kill off Chef instead of casting another voice actor, and used South Park's 10th season premiere, "The Return of Chef," as a chance to lambast Scientology again. At the end of the episode, Kyle gives a heartfelt eulogy and mentions that he'll always remember Chef as he was, and that they shouldn't be mad at him; they should be mad at "that fruity little club for scrambling his brains."

[edit] Catholicism

In December 2005, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights protested the season finale episode, "Bloody Mary", for its depiction of a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding from her rectum.[15] The group claimed a victory when Comedy Central voluntarily canceled a scheduled airing of the episode which coincided with the Christian holiday season. In early 2006, Comedy Central denied that they were honoring the group's request to pull the episode from future repeats and DVD releases.[16] In New Zealand, C4 pushed the airing date for the episode forward after much publicity from Catholic bishops who urged a boycott of the station and its advertisers. The protest backfired as viewer numbers increased by 600% during the episode. The episode was later referred to the Broadcasting Standards Authority where they ruled, "The material in the cartoon was of such a farcical, absurd and unrealistic nature that it did not breach standards of good taste and decency in the context in which it was offered".[17][18] It has since been rebroadcast on Comedy Central. SBS in Australia has "deferred" the episode[19] possibly due to their recent problems with the "Trapped in the Closet" episode. The episode has aired in Australia on the Pay TV channel, The Comedy Channel.

In February 2006 in the Philippines, authorities threatened to ban the showing of South Park on television as it offends the sensibilities of the predominantly Roman Catholic country. South Park is still shown in the Philippines with 1-hour double episodes, though doing so has become a politicized issue, and its future in the Philippines is unknown.

In 2001, South Park was shown on public television between 9pm-10pm slot at the now closed Channel V Philippines (formerly Citynet UHF Channel 27 handled by GMA Network). Because most of the programs in the Philippines are highly viewed in primetime slots, it is rated as PG (Parental Guidance) with all of profanity and such, censored.

On August 2, 2006, Comedy Central reran the episode at 10:00 PM EST. It was also rerun on March 28, 2007 at 9:30 PM EST.

Other episodes have regularly played upon the character of Jesus in various roles, for example, killing a pretender to the office of the Pope via martial arts (Fantastic Easter Special), as a talk show host on public access television, and in a boxing match with Satan, before being killed in Iraq during the episode Red Sleigh Down. See: Jesus (South Park).

[edit] Islam

Most recently South Park has indirectly attacked the rising censorship in its April 2006 two-part episode, "Cartoon Wars Part I" and "Cartoon Wars Part II." The creators challenged Comedy Central by ending Part I with the disclaimer that the second part of the two-parter episode would only be shown if Comedy Central did not "puss out".

The following episode, "Cartoon Wars Part II," which aired April 12, 2006, replaced the scene of Islamic prophet Muhammad on Family Guy with a title card stating that Comedy Central had refused to show a depiction of Muhammad on their network. With the episode, the South Park boys make an impassioned, anti-censorship plea to a network exec named Doug, a reference to Comedy Central president Doug Herzog. This comes months after the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in Denmark, in which an editorial cartoon depicted Muhammad also in a satirical way. However, Muhammad can in fact be seen in the season 10 opening credits from the episode "Smug Alert!" onwards and was featured in the "Super Best Friends" episode, which first aired on July 4, 2001, though at the time there was no pre-existing controversy. In the DVD commentary for this episode, the creators claim that they were not aware of the stigma and ramifications of showing Muhammad until after its airing.

It has come out via AP television writer David Bauder that Comedy Central did in fact, citing safety concerns, opt to censor the image of Muhammad, a situation that was satirized in "Cartoon Wars Part II." Furthermore, while the channel refused to broadcast an image of Muhammad, Comedy Central opted not to censor images of Christ, the president and the American flag being defecated upon. Stone and Parker's choice has drawn fire from frequent South Park critic William A. Donohue of the anti-defamation group Catholic League. Donohue has called on Parker and Stone to resign out of principle, and was quoted as saying, "The ultimate hypocrite is not Comedy Central — that's their decision not to show the image of Muhammad or not — it's Parker and Stone."[20] It should be noted, though, that Stone and Parker made the choice to mock Jesus to illustrate the hypocrisy in censoring the mockery of one religion and not another, echoing their similar stance on Scientology. Additionally, the images were shown in the context of Ayman al-Zawahiri's humorously anti-climactic response to the portrayal of Muhammad (and were thus not very graphic). The humor of this situation came from the fact that this was labeled as "al-Qaeda's reaction," which was expected to be violence. (In a typical move, Parker and Stone responded to Donahue's criticism by portraying him in the episode Fantastic Easter Special as an obsessed fanatic willing to destroy anything if he perceived it as threatening the Catholic Church, including abducting the Pope and killing Jesus when he thought they had gone soft.)

In "Snuke" Cartman thinks a new Muslim student, Bahir Hassam Abdul Hakeem, wants to bomb the Hillary Clinton rally that was coming to South Park. Although Cartman's assumption ends up to be false, the Muslim family moves out of South Park, after being stereotyped by Cartman. Cartman, however, points out that his suspicion of Bahir led to the discovery of a completely unrelated terrorist attack. Bahir is not the terrorist, a Russian terrorist cell is attacking America, but they turn out to simply be a distraction to the real threat to America, the British. Cartman never stopped accusing Bahir of being a terrorist. Though he was found not to be the terrorist, his investigation indirectly led to the discovery of the actual terrorist threat. Thus "prejudice and bigotry saved America," a point Kyle tries unsuccessfully to dispute.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Steve Irwin mocked in South Park cartoon | The Australian
  2. ^ Bozell, L. Brent III (1998-02-11). 'South Park' Reconsidered, Sort Of. MediaResearch.org. Creators Syndicate. Retrieved on 2007-07-14.
  3. ^ Cable TV Study - Violence, Sex, and Profanity on Cable - Basic Cable Awash in Raunch. Parents Television Council. November 2004. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
  4. ^ Bozell, L. Brent III (2006-04-20). "South Park" and "Popetown". MediaResearch.org. Creators Syndicate. Retrieved on 2007-04-16.
  5. ^ a b Bozell, L. Brent III (2007-04-12). The Incomplete Anti-Imus Lobby. MediaResearch.org. Creators Syndicate. Retrieved on 2007-04-16.
  6. ^ Bozell, L. Brent III (2001-08-07). Sleazy Sequels on ‘South Park'. MediaResearch.org. Creators Syndicate. Retrieved on 2007-07-18.
  7. ^ Petruzzo, William (2006-04-26). Worst Cable Content of the Week - South Park on Comedy Central. web.archive.org. Parents Television Council. Retrieved on 2007-07-03.
  8. ^ White, Keith (2007-03-15). Worst Cable Content of the Week - South Park and the Sarah Silverman Program on Comedy Central. Web.archive.org. Parents Television Council. Retrieved on 2007-07-03.
  9. ^ Rutenberg, Jim. ""South Park" Takes Gross to New Frontier", The New York Times, 2001-06-25. Retrieved on 2008-03-08. 
  10. ^ "Inside Move: 'South Park' feeling some celeb heat?", variety.com. Retrieved on 2007-11-06. 
  11. ^ Clearing Words. scientologyhandbook.org. Retrieved on 2007-11-01.
  12. ^ The Official Scientology and Dianetics Glossary. scientology.org. Retrieved on 2007-11-01.
  13. ^ Scott Collins. [1] Clamor Outside 'South Park' Closet, LA Times, March 18, 2006.
  14. ^ David Usborne. South Park declares war on Tom Cruise. The Independent. 19 March 2006.
  15. ^ Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights>"Comedy Central Re-Airs 'Bloody Mary'". Retrieved on March 15, 2008.
  16. ^ "South Park" Parked by Complaints?, Eonline
  17. ^ Bloody Mary ruled too absurd to offend
  18. ^ Boycott backfires: South Park gets record audience - CBC.ca
  19. ^ SBS drops South Park episode on the Pope - The Age
  20. ^ 'South Park' Creators Skewer Own Network - Yahoo! News and the Associated Press
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