What Folks Are Missing About "South Park"
The first episode of season 27 of the iconic animated series lit up media last week, but in the tumult over profane political satire pundits only got part of the picture. (Issue #175)
I'm back after a week off. Attentive Dispatch readers may wonder why I didn't share photos from the road as I drove Sydney, an eight year old Welsh Corgi, from Los Angeles to Portland. Sydney wound up staying with her Los Angeles family, so La Profesora and I remain dogless. Don't feel sorry for us, though: we will welcome a new furry friend soon. In the meantime we are enjoying some "don't have to worry about pets" freedom. Yesterday, for example, we spent some carefree time at the nearby David Hill Winery:
Before we get to today's main topic, some miscellaneous goodies and things worth your attention…
Former U.K. P.M. Rishi Sunak had an interesting "By Invitation" piece in a recent Economist: "You don’t have to be America or China to win in AI." Here's an excerpt:
AI is a general-purpose technology, meaning it has the ability to affect every part of the economy in the same ways that steam power, electricity and computing have done. As work by Jeffrey Ding of George Washington University shows, the countries that benefit most from these technologies are not necessarily the ones that develop them first but the ones that adopt them most widely.
I admire Jessica Valenti's "Abortion, Every Day" newsletter. As I've shared in previous Dispatches, reproductive freedom for women is my #1 political issue. Recently, Valenti revealed a new anti-abortion tactic: men suing abortion pill providers for wrongful death of a fetus when the doctors prescribed the pills for women who choose to terminate a pregnancy, including across state lines. This is another "what can we get away with?" experiment from the anti-abortion activists, and kudos to Valenti for surfacing it.
Amazon's new adventure in wearable computers. I have a lot to say about wearable computers (see this talk from 2015), so I was interested in Retail Dive's piece: Amazon snaps up AI wearables company Bee. Bee sells a wristband that records and transcribes conversations around you. Clearly, Amazon will use this tech to extend Alexa from a smart speaker trapped in the kitchen to a ubiquitous presence in our lives, which is unsettling. See also Meta's prototype wristband (NYT $) that lets users control their computers from across a room.
Hulk Hogan, dead at 71. My late brother Evan was a tremendous fan of professional wrestling, and he would have been heartbroken at the death of Terry Bollea. For journalists, though, the Hulkster was at the center of a deadly attack on the freedom of the press, as Elizabeth Spiers describes in a worth-reading NYT Op-Ed ($).
What's next for the Democratic Party? Recently, I wondered about what we might call a new third party, since many Americans are disenchanted with both Democrats and Republicans. In another worth-reading NYT Op-Ed ($), Thomas B. Edsall explores the uphill challenges the Democrats face in the mid-terms and beyond.
On the lighter side...
Ted Lasso is returning for a fourth season: the series was an oasis of optimism during a trying time (COVID, Trump's first term), so I wonder how it will resonate today. MSN has some details.
David Hyde Pierce talked on CBS Sunday Morning about the famous, wordless scene on Frasier when his character, Niles, starts a fire while ironing—it's a scream.
Season Two of Wednesday hits Netflix on August 8: I loved the first.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: I finally caught up on the first three episodes of the new season. It's great fun, and yet another reason to subscribe to Paramount+.
I am now on Book #7 of The Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva. Peter Horan got me hooked on these. I'm grateful and also plotting revenge.
Practical Matters:
Sponsor this newsletter! Let other Dispatch readers know what your business does and why they should work with you. (Reach out here or just hit reply.)
Hire me to speak at your event! Get a sample of what I'm like onstage here.
The idea and opinions that I express here in The Dispatch are solely my own: they do not reflect the views of my employer, my consulting clients, or any of the organizations I advise.
Please follow me on Bluesky, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads (but not X) for between-issue insights and updates.
On to our top story...
What Folks Are Missing About "South Park"
"Take heed, sirrah—the whip."
—Lear to his Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear
It was a terrific water cooler week for people who follow the media, news, and entertainment.
In the wake of CBS announcing that this season of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert would be the show's last, and President Trump taking credit for CBS "firing" Colbert on social media, conspiracy theories popped up like kudzu claiming that the cancellation was a quid pro quo for the Trump administration allowing the Skydance/Paramount merger. (Scott Galloway's analysis that ending The Late Show was a financial decision is useful.)
Monday, on his highly-rated first episode after the announcement, Colbert told Trump to "go fuck yourself" (bleeped, of course). That same night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart led a small gospel chorus singing the same words sans bleeps.
Nothing compared to the first episode of Season 27 of South Park.
Let's get through the obvious stuff in a hurry.
The South Park Season premiere is hilarious. If you have cut the cord and don't get Comedy Central, or if you don't subscribe to Paramount+, then get the free week trial of P+ and see this show.
It's every bit as shocking as you've heard. Yes, it portrays President Trump in a sexual relationship with Satan. Yes, it portrays and vigorously mocks President Trump as having a micropenis. Yes, at the end of episode there's a nude deep fake that looks like President Trump (not animated).
La Profesora and I watched it Thursday on P+. We were so surprised and laughed so hard that we watched it a second time because there was so much we didn't catch. (I recommend watching with the subtitles on.)
Here's the less obvious stuff.
The episode was richly allusive. Back in 1995, a five-minute video called "The Spirit of Christmas" exploded onto the Los Angeles scene. Producer Brian Graden had commissioned then-unknown artists Trey Parker and Matt Stone to create the video as a Christmas card he could send to friends. You can see it on the Internet Archive.
Known as "Jesus vs. Santa," it introduces the foul-mouthed quartet (Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman) and has them watch as Jesus and Santa Claus have a Kung Fu movie-style battle to resolve who is the true spirit of Christmas. (Ice Skater Brian Boitano also shows up. It's hard to explain.) This short video contains the narrative DNA that went on to become South Park.**
Jesus has since been a recurring character in South Park, and he is a focal character in the season premiere.
Satan is also a recurring character. In the 1995 movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Satan was in a sexual relationship with Saddam Hussein. My favorite moment: at one point, Satan was reading a book in bed: "Saddam is From Mars; Satan is from Venus," a nod to John Gray's popular self-help book from 1992: Men are From Mars; Women are From Venus.
Younger viewers don't have to field those references to understand and enjoy the episode, but for those of us who did get the references it expanded our pleasure. This sort of reference has been a key intellectual interest of mine for decades: I wrote my doctoral thesis about how Shakespeare used "repertory allusion" to bind his audience more closely to his company through references from one play to another.
Shakespeare and South Park are not often talked about in the same sentence, but they should be.
The episode is visually complex despite the still-primitive animation. Watching the second time, I paid attention to the paintings in the background, which ranged from a tame portrait of Gerald Ford to obscene pictures of Trump having sex with a sheep and taking advantage of a public toilet glory hole. Also, the portrayal of Trump's face was thoughtful, using myriad different photos so that his expression changed from moment to moment.
There's immense empathy for all the characters in the episode except Trump. This is something that folks don't get about the Parker/Stone oeuvre: their characters experience deep emotions within ridiculous circumstances. When I saw their hit musical The Book of Mormon on Broadway, I found myself crying shortly before the intermission when Nabulungi sings "Sal Tlay Ka Siti" (Salt Lake City) because she is so unhappy and because the missionaries are giving her false hope.
Empathy also abounds in the South Park premiere. The school principal has invited Jesus Christ into the school (literally) because after the election he is searching for answers that he thinks he can find in religion. Stan's father, Randy Marsh, is confused about religion in the school: "isn't that illegal?" he wonders and then talks it over with ChatGPT.
At the local bar, patrons struggle to reconcile Trump's pro-Jesus-in-schools stance with his actions: "Yeah, I voted for him," one man says, "but all I've seen him do is arrest and sue people." "I voted for him to get rid of all the woke stuff," another says, "but now that retarded faggot is just putting money in his own pockets." Kyle's Jewish father then jumps in, "Are we just gonna sit here and let him break every rule of freedom?" "No!" the bar patrons cry.
Eric Cartman, the most foul-mouthed and rule breaking of the four key boys, is suicidally depressed because in the Trump era there is no place for his willingness to cross verbal lines and say terrible things—because everyone is doing it.
Even Satan is bummed because his relationship partner (Trump) is unkind and starting to remind him of another guy he used to date (Saddam Hussein).
Trump doesn't care about South Park. Sure, he was probably irked at the attacks on his genital size, but at the same time the episode plays to his vanity by portraying him as the most powerful man in the world who, among other things...
Has 60 Minutes correspondents quivering in fear about saying the wrong thing, and
Gleefully sues the citizens of South Park for $5 Billion and gets them to settle for $3.5 Million, even though all they did was exercise their freedom of speech.
Side note: the least convincing aspect of the Trump parody is the animated president's happiness. The South Park Trump hums merrily to himself as he walks around the White House, laughs at his successes, and smiles as he works the room at a party, all of which miss how the president's emotional fuel is rage. (End of side note.)
Why do I think Trump doesn't care? Two reasons.
First, the most thin-skinned man in history hasn't said or posted anything about the episode. The White House (i.e., not Trump) released a bizarre statement that includes:
This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention. President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country’s history—and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.
But Trump himself has been silent, which is wildly out of character. Ergo, he doesn't care.
Second, Trump understands AQ or "Attention Quotient." Negative attention is still attention. Even if Parker and Stone are making fun of him, Trump still dominates the news cycle.
I first wrote about Trump's powerful use of AQ almost exactly six years ago in July of 2018. What I concluded then is now again the case:
The president’s opponents—especially midterm Democratic candidates—need to bear in mind that every time they mention the president they are doing him a favor. Any campaign that builds its identity around opposition to the president is doomed because that campaign is about the president (which he likes) and increases the president’s AQ.
Parker and Stone won't get into trouble with their new overlords at Skydance / Paramount both because South Park is a valuable property and also because they enjoy the privilege of clowns.
In King Lear, Lear's Fool says out loud the things that the king needs to hear but resists. In an irate moment, Lear says, "take heed, sirrah—the whip," but never acts on that threat. Fools and clowns act as release valves for social pressure: critic Mikhail Bakhtin called this the carnivalesque in his 1960s book, Rabelais and his World.
But while clowns point out important things, those things don't change because of the satire. We should all celebrate the brilliance and bravery of South Park—which is astonishingly at the top of its game in its 27th season—but we shouldn't mistake political satire for political action.
Thanks for reading. See you next Sunday.
* Image Prompt: "In the style of South Park animation, create an image of a 79 year old white man with blonde hair and an unnatural orange tan. The man is obese, wears a two-piece blue suit, and has a red tie that he wears so long that it goes past his belt buckle." I then asked ChatGPT to "make the man in the image more of a blustering blowhard" to get the angry quality of the image that I wanted.
** I did not know until writing this piece that Parker and Stone had created an even earlier "Spirit of Christmas" video in which Jesus battled Frosty the Snowman.
It was a great episode. I think you are partly correct that for Trump, any attention keeps his flame alive. Though I do wonder if, in this instance, even he understands that railing against the episode will only give it more oxygen. And I hate to be that guy, but "Bigger, Longer, and Uncut" was 1999. I remember because I went to see "The Blair Witch Project," but it was sold out, so wandered into the South Park movie. I left with sore sides and my mouth agape. And singing "Uncle F__ker."
It was a damn funny south park. I'm sure it got under the skin of the most thin skinned man in the world. It's also probably one of the reasons (along with trying to dodge/ distract from Epstein) that he fled to Scotland, where he was greeted by even bigger mockery and derision! Ha!
BTW, My wife and I have been to David Hill and it a fabulous place. I hope you've managed to take in the rest of a wine region. It's perfect weather right now.