On Wednesday, hours after Trey Parker and Matt Stone signed a $1.5 billion, 50-episode deal with Paramount, the 27th season premiere of “South Park” aired on Comedy Central. Like most episodes of “South Park,” it featured a heavy dose of naughty words that my editor probably won’t let me write without using asterisks. Unlike most episodes of “South Park,” this one elicited an official condemnation from the White House:
“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end — for years they have come after ‘South Park’ for what they labeled as ‘offense’ [sic] content, but suddenly they are praising the show. Just like the creators of South Park, the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows.” The statement went on to declare the show “fourth rate” and “irrelevant.”
Trey and Matt must be absolutely delighted.
It seems the billion-dollar nose-tweakers behind “South Park” have the president pegged; after writing the odious, bigoted, cowardly Eric Cartman character for almost 30 years, they know the psyche of MAGA world better than just about anyone. They must have hoped that Trump would not be able to resist responding.
It’s clear that it’s the MAGA-fied edgelords in the audience who should, like Cartman, feel useless.
In the opening moments of the episode, titled “Sermon on the ’Mount,” Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman notice that things have changed in South Park. Cartman, who has always been a selfish and cruel loudmouth, is dismayed when his supply of schadenfreude is cut off with the cancellation of NPR, which Cartman describes as “the funniest show ever where all the lesbians and Jews complain about stuff.”
The strangeness continues at a school assembly, when the boys find that PC Principal — who for the last several seasons has strutted around in wraparound shades enforcing a rigid liberal orthodoxy — has gone full youth pastor, declaring himself Power Christian Principal and inviting Jesus Christ himself to South Park Elementary.
Cartman spirals further when he discovers at school that none of his edgelord histrionics elicit a reaction from people like they used to. He’s no longer the only one openly hating Jewish people or using gay slurs — being a bigot in the open is acceptable now. “Woke is dead,” he laments to his friend and frequent target of abuse, Leopold “Butters” Stotch. He adds, “I used to laugh, Butters. I used to have fun. But I’m not special anymore. So what’s the point of me even existing?”
As the people of South Park grumble about the changes in their town and the intrusion of Jesus in their public school, they watch a news report explaining why this is all happening: President Donald Trump threatens to sue anybody who doesn’t do what he says.
At the show’s midpoint, Trump makes his “South Park” debut. (In previous seasons, the teacher Mr. Garrison played a sort of Donald Trump-like role.) Longtime fans of the show may recognize Trump’s voice and animation style; he sounds exactly the same as the character of Saddam Hussein from early seasons and the 1999 film “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.” Also like the Hussein of old-school “South Park,” Trump is depicted with a photorealistic head that flaps open and closed when he speaks, affixed to a crudely animated body made of cutout rectangles. Like the character of Hussein, “South Park’s” Trump is also in a sexual relationship with Satan, who complains that Trump reminds him of one of his exes. (It’s pretty clear where this subplot is eventually headed.)
But unlike with Hussein’s character, we see in multiple scenes that Trump, along with an obsession with his virility, has a micropenis.
Jesus later admits to the people of South Park that the reason he’s at the school is because Paramount made a deal with Trump and he’s forced to be there to avoid more litigation, echoing Paramount and other institutions’ capitulation to threats from the administration. The episode concludes with the townsfolk settling a threatened lawsuit from the president by agreeing to pay him millions of dollars and create pro-Trump content.
What follows is a live-action public service announcement featuring a deepfake of a fat and out-of-breath Donald Trump stumbling through the desert and removing his clothing until he’s naked but for his shoes and socks. A little penis with googly eyes peeks up over the president’s heaving belly and chirps, “I’m Donald Trump and I approve this message!”
Trump’s anatomy and gay relationship with Satan seems to have grabbed the most headlines, but the true insult to South Park’s MAGA fans came in Cartman’s arc. Cartman, realizing that his entire personality was based on triggering liberals and mocking wokeness, finds that his knee-jerk contrarianism is no longer interesting. Without purpose, he decides to kill himself and Butters. (He does this by trying to asphyxiate them both using Butters’ parents’ car, which turns out to be electric and thus an ineffective suicide tool.)
Cartman spirals further when he discovers at school that none of his edgelord histrionics elicit a reaction from people like they used to.
If operating under the shallow assumption that “South Park” is a show that exists to mock woke culture, Cartman’s despair could be seen as a meta-commentary on the program itself, which in the past has frequently satirized liberals by poking fun at activism in favor of trans women in sports, inclusive Hollywood casting, the #MeToo movement and performative antiracism. But with Cartman’s existential crisis happening as the show fires on all cylinders at a new target, it’s clear that it’s the MAGA-fied edgelords in the audience who should, like Cartman, feel useless.
Like Cartman, MAGA media figures who have built their entire careers painting themselves as aggrieved and silenced victims of a cultural “left” must grapple with who they are now. They are the dog that caught the car.
“South Park” is once again making clear that the show’s humor was never about agreeing with its creators (or anyone) ideologically; it was about exposing phoniness, satirizing moral rigidity, poking fun at bullies and mocking unquestioned power. Trump demanded unquestioned power; he got it. MAGA fell in line. Institutions are falling in line. Now it’s their turn to be mocked.
On Thursday at San Diego ComicCon, Parker and Stone were asked to respond to the White House’s condemnation of the episode. “We’re terribly sorry,” Parker deadpanned.
Erin Gloria Ryan
Erin Ryan is a writer and podcaster. She’s the creator, co-host and executive producer of Crooked Media’s “Hysteria” podcast and a frequent contributor to other Crooked Media podcasts and video series. She’s written for “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” The Daily Beast, Jezebel and other TV shows and publications.
Erin Gloria Ryan
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