Call-out culture

How South Park successfully mocks political correctness.

There’s no more natural target for South Park than political correctness. The first few episodes of the show’s 19th season have focused extensively on the issue — most notably with PC Principal, a frat boy-inflected social justice warrior who reminds brahs to check their privilege — but that’s really more a case of naming thine eternal enemy than suddenly turning their sights on PC. The underlying message of South Park has always been that no stone should remain unturned — nor should it remain unhurled at the nearest blowhard.

For as much as the concept of political correctness might bother creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, they’ve remained remarkably unscathed by social-media-fuelled torch-bearings. People certainly complain about South Park — the modern adjunct to Godwin’s Law is “no sufficiently public action will ever go unproblematized by some corner of the internet” — but in the last few years, no complaint has gained sufficient traction to cast a shadow over the show. One of the most provocative programs on television rarely warrants a peep, even when masses of concerned citizens are looking for any occasion to cry foul.

The most temptingly dismissive thought on this is that South Park isn’t really all that provocative. Although a show that depicts Donald Trump literally being raped to death — the climax of this season’s second episode — is certainly crossing someone’s boundaries, particularly in an age where we’re fine-tooth-combing through the offhand comments from strangers for proof of nefarious ideals.

There’s a case to be made that it’s precisely South Park’s outrageous lack of subtlety that douses the fires of outrage before they can even start. It possesses a terrific understanding of the appeals of call-out culture. The most important being the opportunity to appear more sensitive and knowledgeable than everyone else, which renders pointing out obvious offences rhetorically moot and less emotionally satisfying. But the sledge hammer approach also resonates: it effectively flattens objection. There’s a sense here not just that they think you are definitely wrong, but that they also genuinely don’t care what you have to say. It wouldn’t be a powerful stretch to imagine that people pick up on that vibe and just let South Park do South Park, sitting in the corner making fart noises and laughing maniacally.

Even writing out that analogy doesn’t feel fair to Parker and Stone, who, even if they are making a lot of fart noises, never do it without purpose. South Park is certainly crude and at times overly concerned with pushing buttons, but it’s also one of the most reliably thoughtful shows on television. Unlike Family Guy, South Park’s jokes are almost never just jokes. They always advance the point.

This degree of care can lead the show into places that the eminently topical debates they take on generally don’t go. A favourite long-ago episode, “Chef Goes Nanners,” took on the racist flag controversy, and in between excoriating people who cling to heritage to disguise racism, also made the subtler point that eternally viewing things through a narrow lens can blind you to the full depth of human experience. The show is never shy about taking on whatever dumb thing is firing up the youth of today, but it also examines them in a way the eternal hand-wringing about “kids today” never achieves. It even helps them correct their own ignorance: last season’s episode “The Cissy” actually drew praise from transgender communities for its handling of an eminently difficult discussion, which is some trick for a show that had previously used a transgender character as a running joke.

That capacity for correction might be the real secret sauce, not just in South Park’s ability to avoid online mobs but in its impressive longevity and rel- evance. A lot of provocateurs like to play the old equal-opportunity offender card, but they rarely turn the needle on themselves. Last week’s episode featured a tired stereotype of an Asian character ruminating on how uncomfortable he seemed to make people, and whether or not he’s a relic of a different era. That goes beyond self-awareness to self-critique.

If that’s unexpected from two reliable anti-PC warriors, it’s only because Parker and Stone aren’t against PC in the nominally ignorant manner of old white guys tired of being told what words they can or cannot use. They’re against not thinking things through, of mindlessly dismissing a word — or, even worse, refusing to think about something simply because it might make us uncomfortable.

If that’s one of PC’s more annoying tendencies, South Park is smart enough to recognize that no mass movement is that simple. Noble goals can be fought for with petty, selfish reasons, and deep and meaningful sentiments can be boiled down to unfairly simplistic rules. Parker and Stone are capable of looking into an angry mob and recognizing there are some idiots, but some smart and thoughtful people, too. They’re also smart enough to know that making fun of one doesn’t mean you completely dismiss the other.