South Park: Greater, Longer, and Uncut Continues to Give and Level the Finger
Because the movie adaptation of the smash animated hit turns 20, we glance again on the legacy of its commentaries on censorship.
Blame TV. Blame your dad and mom. Blame films. Blame society. Hell, blame Canada. However no matter you do, blame one thing, and shortly, earlier than somebody thinks of blaming you.
South Park: Greater, Longer, and Uncut turns 20 this weekend, and for as a lot because the film’s Saddam Hussein-heavy, Celine Dion-referencing tackle the world could be very a lot of its time, the movie however captures the methods wherein American tradition would would proceed to take deeply entrenched, compex cultural issues, and hunt for handy scapegoats and simple solutions within the years to return. There isn’t a problem too inflammatory, no societal illness too multifaceted, that it can’t be oversimplified and laid on the toes of a readily-available boogeyman.
Greater, Longer, and Uncut channels that concept by way of a premise stuffed with basic South Park absurdity. After Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny sneak into Asses of Fireplace — a cinematic encore to their favourite flatulence-based tv present Terrence & Phillip — they stroll out cursing a blue streak. The mixture of their foul mouths and an imitative stunt, which brings in regards to the inevitable “Oh my God, you killed Kenny!” second, results in their dad and mom (and Mrs. Brofllowksi particularly) occurring a campaign in opposition to the fart-firing, curse-hurling villains who they consider have poisoned their kids’s minds.
This being South Park, that spirals right into a battle with our Canadian neighbors, a resistance motion led by 10-year-olds to smuggle their heroes away from a public execution, and ultimately the apocalypse, as Devil and his boyfriend Saddam Hussein mount an invasion from the netherworld. It’s half and parcel of South Park’s trademark comedian escalation, the place customary ethical panics are taken to ridiculous extremes till kids are implanted with V-chips and an all-out battle with the satan erupts from a film that includes some naughty language.
Nonetheless, there’s a grain of fact beneath the entire absurdity. For as exaggerated because the notion of going to battle with one other nation over a juvenile cartoon appears within the movie, and on the whole, the follow of blaming “dangerous cultural influences” from different nations for corrupting our kids is all too actual and harmful.
From McCarthyism and previous satanic panic, to the Dad and mom Tv Council’s frequent rebukes of South Park within the ’90s, to modern-day situations of Islamophobic fearmongering, there’s a protracted pressure of sure factions in the USA making an attempt to sound the alarm in opposition to supposed cultural air pollution. Nonetheless foolish the concept of the federal government branding and executing a few sophomoric T.V. entertainers as battle criminals could seem within the movie, the straightforward impulse responsible troubling conduct in a youthful technology on films and music and video video games is simply as current now because it was then.
Most significantly, South Park’s first (and so far, solely) foray onto the massive display screen bluntly tackles the methods wherein we use this strategy to absolve ourselves of ethical accountability. “It’s not my child’s fault, it’s the evil messages coming from these rattling screens.” “It’s not the dad and mom’ fault, it’s a society gone mad.” “It’s not our nation’s fault, it’s these rattling outsiders who’re diluting our tradition.” Because the immortal “Blame Canada” captures in track, it’s straightforward to throw these types of recriminations at any variety of exterior causes, as a result of it helps maintain individuals from considering to throw them your approach. Particularly when you might have them coming.
There’s a sure irony to this message, when seen in 2019. Arguably, it wasn’t till round South Park’s 20th season that the sequence itself started to reckon with its affect on fashionable tradition. Whereas the sequence would sometimes deflect blame again onto the ethical guardians who showered it with disdain and disapproval, 2016 was a watershed second for the present in the identical approach it was for a lot of Individuals. Within the age of trolls and “edgelords” and different web denizens crossing traces simply to impress a response, even South Park needed to reluctantly face some harsh truths of its personal. The sequence needed to confront the likelihood that the people who had unreflectively adopted its boundary-pushing instance have been part of the issue.
For its half, Greater, Longer, and Uncut provides away the sport in its opening track. Stan’s mom describes her son as so “tender and gentle” that he’s “like Jesus,” and thanks God for his or her life in an idyllic little city removed from any large metropolis evils. Mrs. Broflowksi describes her son and his buddies as “frail and fragile boys,” lamenting the broader world as a “rotten place” that would in any other case threaten to spoil such innocence.
That notion goes in opposition to all the pieces that South Park has stood for because the starting. Opposite to fashionable perception, the animating impulse of the sequence shouldn’t be that censorship is flawed, or that caring is lame. It’s that kids will not be candy harmless angels, however quite flawed, crude, and typically messed-up people like the remainder of us, and the extra we attempt to level to outdoors elements to account for that, the extra we deny who and what we’re.
Within the movie’s last act, Kyle pleads along with his mom, “At any time when I get in hassle, you go off and blame everyone else. However I’m the one responsible. Take care of me.” It’s, maybe, not fairly as eloquent as to say, “The fault, pricey Brutus, shouldn’t be in our stars, however in ourselves,” however the sentiment is similar. The thesis of the movie, past South Park’s standard missives in opposition to the censors, is that when issues arrive in our yard, Individuals go hard-charging in opposition to no matter exterior causes, actual or imagined, they will conjure up, when the actual sources of our issues are often much more sophisticated, and quite a bit nearer to house.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone posit that such troubles are much more inner and intractable than we would prefer to consider. For all of the curse-heavy mania of the movie, South Park: Greater, Longer, and Uncut is about offended communities, unwilling to look within the mirror, and as an alternative in search of somebody or one thing at which to level the finger. It’s an impulse that’s, sadly, nonetheless with us and, if something, extra outstanding and harmful right this moment then it was in 1999. So the place’s Brian Boitano to save lots of the day if you want him? That is actually all his fault.
