South Park - Blame Canada!

South Park came out just as I was first going to university. Since that's almost 15 years ago now I am amazed to discover that it's still going. The other night though I was over at my sister's place and they were watching the new episodes. I had kind of assumed that it had gone off the boil ages ago, but I was informed that the opposite is true - South Park is still going as strong as ever.

South Park is on the surface about crudity, fart jokes and being as un-politically-correct as possible. Dig even slightly below the surface though and you quickly find it's a riotously funny satire. It still has crappily-drawn children doing fart and poo jokes though, which is of course quite a lot of its charm. We watched an episode on Friday that was ostensibly about laughing at people pissing in swimming pools. Beyond the crude hilarity of that though, the episode was a subtle satire on pseudoscience as well as poking fun at the elements of middle America who fear the ingress of 'minorities'.

Eric Cartman sings a song lamenting the minorities in 'his' swimming pool, a song that sent my mind back to South park's greatest achievement - south Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut. To you and me - South Park the movie. The plot of the film revolves around a smutty Canadian cartoon that gets blamed for encouraging children to swear and behave badly. The authorities and parents' groups overreact to the film, declare war on Canada and kick off Armageddon. It's a film that some might struggle to take seriously since it features Satan and Saddam Hussein as a cohabiting couple in hell - but it's satirical gold. The film cleverly lampoons its own potential critics and attitudes towards censorship. At the same time it's a musical - with musical numbers and songs that are pure Broadway. Not least of which is the fantastic 'Blame Canada':



"We must blame them and cause a fuss/before somebody thinks of blaming uuuuuuus" - great lyric. All the songs are on Youtube. In fact, all the episodes of South Park are freely available on the internet. Nice to see that Parker and Stone (the South Park creators) have stayed true to their anarchist roots and shunned the draw of big dollars. Maybe that's why they've retained their creative edge after all these years?

Brings back good memories all this. Has it really been that long since I first went to university?