AI: Goin’ Down to South Park
Last night Comedy Central aired the second part of a South Park episode that poked fun at censorship.
In the episode, all the celebrities (all the people really) that South Park has ever made fun of attempted to take revenge on the Colorado cartoon town for their “slander”. The only way the boys (and the town) could stop them was to turn over the Muslim Prophet Mohammed to Tom Cruise and Rob Reiner so they could suck all the “You can’t make fun of me” goo out of Mohammed, thereby protecting all the people South Park has ripped on from ever being made fun of again.
As you may know, a few seasons ago, South Park aired an episode in which the image of Mohammed was shown without being censored, along with other religious figures, as part a super hero team. After a Danish cartoonist and others were threatened for showing Mohammed’s image in cartoons, South Park aired another episode featuring an image of the prophet, but Comedy Central refused to allow the image to air. Hence Mohammed’s “You can’t make fun of me” goo.
At any rate, the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, are now apparently in the crosshairs of some extremist Muslim groups here in the U.S.
Comedy Central censored about 35 seconds worth of dialog at the end of last night’s episode, and many are speculating that Parker and Stone, notorious for turning in episodes at the last minute, had included jabs at groups of extremists that might threaten them.
What do you think? Is Comedy Central spineless? Are they just protecting valuable resources? Are Parker and Stone drawing attention to free speech issues in the right way? Or are they endangering themselves and others needlessly?
The Afternoon Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Skepchick community. Look for it to appear Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 3pm ET.
It wasn’t dangerous until they poked fun at this particularly deity. Now! Oh dear, dangerous!
Yeah.
They do us all a service. They clearly know what they are doing. They aren’t stupid.
We NEED biting satire like this. South Park is still relevent after what, 15+ years? That’s fucking epic.
I’ve seen a number of people say that it was Comedy Central that imposed the censorship … but was it? Having watched both episodes, I thought it was a mostly deliberate act by the show’s creators.
For example, [spoilers] after Tom Cruise used the goo transfer machine he had the same censorship box around him as Mohammad. I don’t see why Comedy Central would have added this box as well, it looked like a deliberate act by the animators. It wouldn’t have made any sense if the Mohammad box wasn’t there in the first place. Plus the censorship box itself looked overly animated for something thrown in last minute.
I’m even more convinced that the long-bleep speeches at the end were deliberate. They had the first character (can’t remember who, Stan of Kyle) give a long bleeped out speech, then a second who basically said “Yeah, bleeeeeeeeeep” then they had a gaff character (Santa Clause) also join in. It looked like it was all part of the joke.
Honestly, the whole thing seemed pretty choreographed to me. It all seemed to fit in with the theme of the show, a little too well to have been thrown in last minute by Comedy Central. Is there any official word out on whether it was actually censored? Or are people just assuming it was?
The only thing I though was a bit strange was how the name ‘Mohammad’ was bleeped in the second episode but not the first. That may have just been because the audience probably wouldn’t have known who they were talking about in the first though. :P
It was ok for them to poke fun at Catholicism.
It was ok for them to poke fun at Mormonism.
It was ok for them to poke fun at Scientology.
It should be ok for them to poke fun at Islam.
Islam doesn’t get a free pass just because its followers have been violent in the past.
I understand why Comedy Central did what they did (CYA), but that still doesn’t make it right. Comedy isn’t supposed to be safe. No target is sacred.
I think they’re spineless. If I were offended by anything that South Park did, I wouldn’t watch it. That’s even happened sometimes with an episode or two (I’m not a fan of Mr. Hanky, for example, and tend to avoid his episodes). I don’t have a problem with turning off what I don’t feel like watching for whatever reason, and that’s fine. That’s normal. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t go ahead and do whatever they want though.
It doesn’t really help the Muslim community either, when stuff like this happens. I’m certain there’s a lot of facepalming happening today, with a number of perfectly normal people who just happen to be Muslim saying “Great. Just one more reason for Joe-Six-Pack to hate us.”
@Chrissyo: Yes, the censorship was on the part of Comedy Central, which they admitted. You can see a note on southparkstudios.com that says as much, though there are some bits that Trey and Matt probably added after being censored (like bleeping the message at the end).
@ChaoSkeptic: And they’ve already done it! There’s already an episode with Mohammed and it was okay then … but suddenly it’s not okay.
In a supermarket near where I live they sell canned fear under the brand name “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Respect!”
@Chrissyo: Uh, Comedy Central admits to the censorship. Also, Matt and Trey have on more than one occasion had to go back and add or censor stuff before, for other episodes. Sometimes they are changing stuff until the very last second. Their animation makes it easy to do that. Well, sort of easy.
And yeah, they probably added the bleeps afterwards. But like I said, it’s not unusual for them to do that. They probably did it because, after the forced censorship, it made sense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp9bYLa5gaA
And watch that. That’ll give some more insight.
@Chrissyo: Here’s an article with the statement from Comedy Central:
http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/22/south-park-gets-modified-by-comedy-central/
The thing that I find the most amusing is that the season 5 episode (Super Best Friends) is available online at southparkstudios.com right now uncensored.
I also saw an interview with Matt & Trey saying that the episode is even still broadcast in re-runs uncensored. They even said that it’s like anything that happened before the cartoon controversy is fine, but anything new is forbidden.