Growing Up With ‘South Park’

A trip down humor lane

Paramount

This is a piece I wrote back in 2023 that suddenly feels more relevant than ever. Considering how much coverage the season 27 Premiere has gotten for its fearless political messaging, it’s worth talking more about its context.

Fair warning, though, as some of my pre-2024 writing isn’t quite up to the quality I strive for today. I started editing the piece but quickly realized it’d be easier and more honest to rewrite it from the ground up. So stay tuned for a fresh, updated take. I hope you all enjoy this earlier one in the mean time!

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South Park is a TV show that’s loomed ever-present throughout the better part of my life. From the moment I walked in on my father absent-mindedly watching season 9 one fateful night in 2005, my love for the show was practically set in stone. There’s a certain allure to those shows we’re not supposed to be watching.

It’s over an hour past my bedtime as I wander drowsy from my room, 9 years old and adorned in PJs. “Dad, I’m having trouble sleeping,” I prepare myself to say. But suddenly, the intriguing echo of children cursing enters into earshot and my words stop dead in their tracks.

I wander tentatively into the room and see my dad sitting on the sofa — the TV-MA icon in the corner of the screen fading from sight. I don’t know what it means, only that these animated preteens are swearing and there’s a passive sort of guilt written across my father’s face, the neon colors of our giant old TV screen reflecting across his corneas.

As I stand there meekly, I hold my tongue and watch the joke-cracking paper cut-outs in coats. As a few minutes go by, hypnotized by the realization that there are cartoons with curse words, with my jaw drooping and my eyes bleary, it’s clear that a profanity-latticed spell has been cast upon me by the time a commercial break interrupts my mesmerism.

As my sleepy father turns to make a trip toward the kitchen, he shudders with a gasp. The gasp is due in part to the surprising young figure standing there beside the couch well beyond his bedtime, but mostly by the slightly shell-shocked look in the figure’s eyes revealing the animated revelry it’s just beheld.

“Ben! What are you doing up? How long have you been in here watching??”

With culpability coloring my doughy eyes and an inwardly-turned ankle, I can hardly suppress the spectacle I’ve just seen. Hopeful he’s heard the end of this and won’t need to field any wifely beratings in the coming days, he ushers me to bed.

As a flurry of awe-inspiring swear words dance through my wired mind, it’s clear my father will soon regret the error of his thoughtless ways. With an early internet and cable at my disposal, it’s not long before I realize the name of the show — and that it’s on “On Demand!” They’re posted to the pre-Xfinity forum in the form of what the service lovingly calls “Quickies.” That the very name for them is above my head is a telling proof of how immature I am to begin inhaling the irreverent cartoon.

Nevertheless, I check On Demand ad nauseam throughout these early streaming years for new additions — enjoying the potty jokes and allowing nearly all adult humor to soar twenty feet above my head. It isn’t until a year or two later that I begin to watch the show with the release of each new episode, each Wednesday night at 10PM waiting in rapt anticipation for what creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker will do next.

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For a couple months each year, my early adolescent self would be graced by Stone and Parker’s comedic take on everything from climate change and homelessness, to homosexuality and politics, to religion and death.

South Park is a cartoon that’s driven full speed ahead into so many of the most relevant issues of our time with an admirable disregard for consequence. But sparing the serious controversies, there are few issues that it hasn’t tackled and beaten to a cartoonish red pulp.

It’s sniped every target that’s emerged within my lifetime and then gone on to conjure new enemies from thin air. From pandemics and Twilight, to High School Musical and Kanye West, to Billy Mays, ziplining zeal, whaling wars, and futuristic atheist otter odysseys, the show has taken aim and repeatedly stabbed at nearly every conceivable enemy within a trillion-mile radius. It’s a versatile enough show that this sentence takes a billion forms before even addressing b-plots. I’ll try another.

From hamsters, NASCAR, Facebook, Jersey Shore, and talking towels, to Game of Thrones, geeks, goths, hippies, vampires, emos, gnomes, pirates, gingers, robots, fishsticks, and murderous Christmas critters, there’s little at all that falls outside of South Park’s unrelenting purview.

But one of the show’s most central hallmarks is its ability to speak riotous truths to power. It’s a show that’s been there without fail to cover so many of the strangest and most controversial developments that have emerged in the world since The Twin Towers fell and even well before.

Many may not realize this, but following the paradigm-shifting terrorist attacks of September 11th, South Park was among the very first shows to comedically address the events that happened that day. The episode’s scathing political commentary and the looney-tunes-esque portrayal of Eric Cartman pursuing Osama Bin Laden earned it a righteous Emmy nomination. It not only addressed, but brutally satirized the paranoia that sent people into spirals and airports into frenzies.

For those unaware of the power that an animated satire with fart jokes can have, it’s an episode well worth the watch. But it’s hardly the only time in which the long-running adult cartoon has affected the outcome of events in the world around it. It’s increased awareness of Tourette’s syndrome — albeit inadvertently. It’s called out vaccine hesitancy, and it’s continually addressed the issue of climate change in biting ways. It’s heightened scrutiny of the church of Scientology, as well as the failings of other major religious institutions, and it’s opened the door to conversations about censorship on many different occasions throughout its enduring tenure in the comedic limelight.

South Park has rarely shied away from even the steepest of controversies in its attempt to make comedy of our serious world. Even going so far as to depict the Islamic Prophet Muhammed — an offense for which lesser-known figures have lost their lives — there’s hardly a hot-button issue that the show hasn’t tackled and eviscerated. With the ability to ensconce politicians, celebrities, and public figures in the show’s ongoing animated shenanigans, it stands on a platform no other cartoon can quite boast.

South Park has also even delved into emotional territory. The episode “You’re Getting Old,” is a thoughtful reflection on aging, change, and divorce. It powerfully covers the cyclical nature of older generations’ cynicism toward emerging trends and marks one of the series’ more poignant moments.

“Kenny Dies” achieves the sobering feat of answering the question “What if Kenny dies this time and it’s… sad?” in a morose retort to the character’s routine and comical slaughterings. That a show like this could ever jerk tears was no given, but as the famously muffled and serially murdered child in orange dies tragically and his friends finally give the situation its long-overdue gravity, there’s something crushing about the scene. Struggling to cope with the understanding of their loss… it’s an impressively somber offering that the show never needed to deliver.

But likely no episode was more impactful for me than “Raisins,” one in which the lovably naive Butters has a bout of despair after a breakup. Through stifled tears, he states to his friend Stan that, “… I’m sad, but at the same time I’m really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It’s like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin’ really good before.” By itself the quote might not seem like much, but arriving for me at the moment it did, it was enough for me to decide to name my new dog Butters as the one I’d had since age 8 laid dying.

South Park is far from the typical animated TV show for adults. The thoughtful commentary that it goes to such painstaking lengths to offer on nearly every arising issue distinguishes it from the Family Guys and Rick and Mortys of the animation world and is a timeless proof of its prowess.

One of the most defining features of South Park is how almost every plot is conceived of and realized by the production team within the frantic six-day periods in-between each new episode.

It’s a remarkable achievement that South Park has been able to attain such soaring comedic heights even while each episode has been brought to life in under a week. It goes to grueling extremes to stay present with the pertinent issues of our time in a way that likely no other animated show ever has. The onerous time constraints under which each episode is created are what keeps the show so stunningly well bound to the present. It’s why it still feels fresh as it forays further and further from the potty humor-laden sagas of its earliest seasons.

And while there’s no denying that South Park has seen its share of duds throughout its enduring stay on Comedy Central — and arrival onto the scene of streaming — they’re few and far between. In this show whose very nature is to deep dive thoughtfully and satirically into a world of ever-changing culture and chaos, it’s mustered a bullseye average that makes Saturday Night Live look like amateur hour.

That South Park has continued on to this day gracing satirical tidings on issues like the streaming wars, QAnon, vaccination, Queen Elizabeth, TikTok, ChatGPT, pandering, and Prime drinks speaks volumes about Stone and Parker’s laudably childlike refusal to quit poking fun at the people and problems of the world.

It’s criminally rare that South Park gets the credit it deserves for offering this unceasing brand of satire throughout the years. Their tireless writing staff has been animating those paper cutouts throughout five American presidencies. Few seem to remember that their tenure on television stretches back nearly as far as The Simpsons.

South Park stands not just as one of the greatest and most tenacious animated shows ever made, but as one of the most important shows to come to television screens since before even the turn of the millennium. That the show so often gets relegated into a category of “fart jokes” and “potty gags” when it’s been routinely offering some of the most thoughtful commentary on so many of the most important dilemmas of our time is, frankly, tragic.