I'm Going Down to South Park...
We all have certain milestones which keep us going throughout the year. Perhaps yours is the first match of the Premier League season or the next film installment from Marvel. Mine is when I get a Whatsapp message from a good friend that reads, “New South Park season debuts in two weeks!” No other arrangement of words rings sweeter in my ears. We are three episodes in and already this season has the makings of a classic.
In a world where PC’ness has trumped freedom of thought and true comedy has been substituted for our yearly exposure to Adam Sandler (please Adam, just stop), South Park has got our back. For nineteen seasons, it’s been doing what all of us have wanted to do — to tell it like it is. The series has evolved from being a half hour session of nine year olds making fart jokes to a legitimate news source and social commentary, only with nine year olds making fart jokes. In no more than three episodes, the latest season has already taken to task self-righteous Social Justice Warriors (we all have that one person on our newsfeed) in the most frank way possible. Donald Trump’s foray into politics has been trivialized and Caitlyn Jenner, whatever your opinion of her, has also been given the South Park treatment. Even our over-obsession with urban gentrification has been put under the microscope, laughter not excluded.
When people ask me what my news source of choice is, I never simply recite “News24” or “Time”. Instead I always announce with pride, “South Park”. Give it a try. It holds its own as a weekly roundup of current affairs and still manages to keep the jokes fresh after almost twenty years on air. That’s not bad for a TV show in an era where just about every sitcom is about a group of friends eating takeaways and talking about how they met the mothers of their children.