Meanwhile, Monty Python’s Life of Brian literally had a male character who identifies as female and everybody in the movie is cool with it
And John Cleese is now a transphobe. Go figure. (Other members are cool from what I’ve heard)
There’s also the lumberjack song…
South Park is not a show to watch if you don’t have skin of iron.
They go out of their way to offend as many people as possible, but I think they do so in a way that’s indiscriminate. They even try to offend themselves.
Its not so indiscriminate. Its just that theyre edgy libertarians and radical centrists. Its less about blanket making fun of everyone including themselves and that theyre smugly declaring “both sides bad” on most things.
The viewer must be able to laugh at themselves, or at least be able to tolerate writers who are deliberately pushing people’s buttons. Sometimes there’s a good point hiding in the bullshit.
Or, just skip the show entirely. It’s great that their turnaround time is only six days(!), so they can address surprisingly current issues, but the show is past its prime anyway.
I think the old stuff is for sure, but didn’t they at one point notice how bad they were for thinking that way and change? Idk, I haven’t watched the show in probably 10+ years.
I love South Park, but damn, the Mr Garrison trans episodes are just, ahhhhhhhhhggggggggggg.
So you are laughing when they make fun of others and only getting upset when they make fun of people like you.
Ultimately the South Park moral comes down to change is bad. Let’s keep the status quo.
And that’s what I find offensive. To be fair, The Simpsons does the same thing, as does Family Guy
As does most society critical content that makes it to television.
South Park doesn’t have any morals. If you have been offended then you’ve been trolled successfully.
Then I may have been successfully trolled.
Still, the status quo message is consistent through the whole series and is a frequent theme for Kyle’s speech at the end of an episode. It’s also a strong theme of Team America. I can’t speak their other Matt and Trey’s other works.
I’m neurodivergent, and I laugh in many instances South Park made fun of neudivergent and mentally disabled people. I’m Latin American, South Park made fun of latin americans so many times. I’m progressive, South Park made fun of progressives so many times. I’m atheist, same thing. I’m bisexual, same thing, I could go on.
The problem with the Mr Garrison episodes is that, they are so viscerally transphobic, it is very obviously made in such bad faith.
Of course they are not the worse thing depicted in South Park, but yeah, a show with the objective to be as offensive as possible gotta hit somewhere in a very personal point eventually.
I don’t think anyone should take Mr. Garrison’s arc to heart. They did kinda point out in an earlier episode that Mr. Garrison isn’t what he thinks he is. He’s not gay, trans or anything else in that direction.
He’s messed up. And that’s all he is and all he’s supposed to be. At least that’s my take-away from the show.
Sadly, that’s not enough, just as Jaws did damage to shark conservation and The Silence of the Lambs did damage to Trans acceptance, even though it’s super clear Buffalo Bill is not conventionally trans but his own special kind of crazy.
Then again, our love for police procedurals and serial killer mysteries does damage to mental health awareness and police brutality awareness. Also judicial overreach. (Lots of false convictions.)
For sure. I was mostly hoping that people don’t feel like the show makes a personal comparison to them.
The masses, on the other hand, require disturbingly little to push them over the edge. As you pointed out with Jaws and Silence. Hell, the amount of people that can’t distinguish between actor and character is astounding.
He’s messed up. And that’s all he is and all he’s supposed to be. At least that’s my take-away from the show.
This in and of itself is part of the problem: It’s a common terf talking point. Trans people don’t exist they just have a mental health problem.
I think those “both sides” shows have to go out of their way to find things to make fun of in certain circumstances. So they feel forced to charicature or misrepresent those groups in order to make any proper humor. On the audience side people who buck the status quo are held under the same scrutiny as people who are rapidly climbing the discrimination pipeline.
If you have to go out of your way to find (or invent) a joke, you haven’t found the right angle on it. Satire is qualitatively different to bullying.
Shows like South Park are at their most funny when the contrivances are kept to a minimum, or are so absurd that they’re obviously farcical. The best satire is when they’re teasing their target *and* their target’s detractors at the same time.
There are so many other takes they could have made. (I’d give examples, but I’m too prudish to say 'em.)
It bothers me less depending on how old the episode is, and the overall tone of the joke. Older “let’s put this guy in a dress for cheap laughs” type stuff is lame, but not as bad as more recent attempts to make hatred more palatable by disguising it with a thin veneer of “humor”.
One of the most egregious examples I can think of from recent media was from Kimmy Schmidt where the people that take issue with trans/enbyphobia were turned into the butt of a joke because… they’re annoying I guess?
Came out of left field in a show I thought was queer friendly but I realized later on that it tracks with the brand of feminism that Tina Fey follows. (I never watched 30 Rock and don’t intend to so I had no idea she was already problematic)
Oh no, what has Tina Fey done? I’m trying to think back on 30 Rock and I can imagine how some of it hasn’t aged well.
Whole lotta t***ny drops and the infamous black face.
No, that old stuff is just as bad. Go watch the end of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. It was just simpler then because the writers considered that type of hate to be ubiquitous instead of needing nuance or explanation.
It’s like saying older racism wasn’t as bad as the more recent attempts to galvanize people into nazis. But I contend it was for the same reason above. You’re seeing recent attempts at both towards being more palatable specifically because it’s not as accepted now.
I wanna say King of the Hill is safe.
There’s one episode with a drag queen, not trans. It’s pretty positive! She thinks Peggy is also a drag queen and they become best friends. It ends that way too.
I watch that show its actually pretty safe outside of that one weird episode where bill hits rock bottom and thinks he’s his exwife though I don’t really think of that one as transphonic per se
Scrubs and 30 Rock too :(
Twin Peaks is safe 🙏 Bless Denise
IT Crowd
I though you said you were from Iran.
But seriously I don’t think that episode was harmful.
Douglas is just a general asshole.
The character is an asshole AND that episode is transphobic. More telling is the creator (Graham Linehan) who is a vocal TERF. I don’t really want to pollute this space with his toxicity, but search if you’re curious.
Can you tell me what’s transphobic about it?
When I first saw it I would have thought it was trans-supporting, other than the detail that (IIRC) the trans woman was played by a cisgender woman.
The entire point of it is that the only thing that is stopping Douglas from being genuinely, incredibly happy, becoming a better person and living an actually fulfilling life in the end is his inability to accept a historical detail that had made absolutely no difference to his relationship. And, since Douglas might be the worst person in the world, we see him destroy that because of his own weird machismo values. Just when we think he’s completely changed as a character, his shittiness on this one thing, emblematic of his incredibly toxic masculinity, comes crashing down on him. This is, darkly, funny. We are abruptly reminded that Douglas is an actual monster, to the point of fist-fighting with the person he loves. “Character is briefly happy but previous behaviour and/or shittiness of their character ruins it for themselves” is like at like 30% of Linehan’s sitcom plotlines.
If there’s something I missed - and it’s been a few years, and thoroughly agree that Linehan’s subsequent behaviour justifies examining his previous work for ulterior motives - I would like to know it. Genuinely.
Nah I don’t think so. Episode kinda got me a bit attracted to the female character ngl and I’m a hetero guy.
More telling is the creator (Graham Linehan) who is a vocal TERF.
well sad to see/hear. But I’m still not convinced that the episode in its entirety is transphobic.
It’s the b-plot from what I recall, it’s not the main focus of the episode.
It was written long before his TERF days and so it’s not exactly hateful, just ignorant and it’s comparable to a lot of other ways comedy treated trans characters from the era - The League Of Gentleman was much, much worse than the IT Crowd imo, and that was a recurring character in every episode.
It’s rather the issue that while Matt Berry has distanced himself from the episode Linehan actually still defends it as pro-trans.
Probably not, but Graham Linehan is by now just one of the most rabid transphobes you can imagine. He threw away everything he had to be a bigger TER“F”
Issues like this make me wonder: what’s acceptable to joke about now that future generations will find shameful? Any suggestions, folks?
Some people are starting to shift their opinions on it, but jokes about men being raped (especially in prison) are weirdly accepted.
I’d hope it’d be things relating to our treatment of non-human animals. There’s a pretty good talk making that case (not so much in terms of jokes, but in general)
I was thinking this binging The Boys recently. In universe apparently fish can communicate with each other and have feelings and shit, there is a dude who can talk to fish. But they also show a weird amount of casual fish abuse in relation to that character and in a way that sorta plays it for laughs. The Boys is already pretty satirical so I think the writers are doing it on purpose to satirize real life animal mistreatment but even still I’m not sure it’s done that well as its still presented in a lot of scenes as a joke.
they do that because in the first episode SPOILER The Deep rapes the new superhero joining the team. and its found out hes done this countless times. so the show shits on him hard the rest of the way
The part I am criticizing is all the depictions of animal abuse surrounding the deep, mostly not being committed by him but characters around him. Like the show sorta plays it as a joke or something. Like he deserves to see all these fish that as far as he is concerned are thinking sentient people be abused around him because he is a rapist. And in later season he himself is raped. It’s unclear what we are suppose to take away from his story line, is the animal abuse only he seems to care about suppose to be ok because he is a rapist? Or are we supposed to sympathize with him? the fish? It’s just a bit of a mess.
I just think that aspect of the show could have been done better… the deep in general is kinda one of the worst characters in the show imo, by s3 his story line barely even intersects the main plot.
Another good one! Thanks!
You should be safe if you don’t make fun of others. It’s not necessary to ridicule a specific person or group to make a joke.
True. Generally speaking, punching down is not okay.
Who is considered weird and or crazy?
That’s what I have a hard time with. Antivaxxers? Trump supporters? Callous billionaires? They all seem like fair game to me.
Antivaxxers? Trump supporters? Callous billionaires?
Science deniers and right wingers has never been on the right side of the history, so these you mentioned will be remembered as the idiots they are, and Billionaires will continue to exist but will be remembered but not in the Star Trek name dropping Elon Musk kind of way, but in the way we remember other idiotic and callous billionares from a century ago.
In the case of previous groups, it’s usually persecuted and marginalized groups. So I don’t think that fits.
I’m already seeing terms like “stupid”, “dumb”, “crazy” and other terms to refer to conditions people didn’t choose, especially mental ones, being used less and frowned upon occasionally. So maybe “crazy/insane” if we actually recognize it wildly as an issue or treat it.
Online? I’m seeing a lot more hate and memes against furries cropping up that I hope goes away. Not that that’s new, but I think it’s shifting towards them since it’s become unacceptable in most circles to denigrate sexual and gender identities.
Otherwise I think the question is: Who is society denigrating that is both a marginalized group and not actively/actually harmful?
Furries is a good one. There’s definitely a lot of hate. “My coworker’s daughter said they were talking about putting litter boxes in the classrooms!”
Weird fetishes like foot and diapers perhaps?
Think about the words you and other people use and what they actually mean. Are you using a word that refers to a certain group of people who are part of some marginalised group? “Gay” used to be a very common insult, particularly in South Park. What about “lame”, “dumb”, “tard”, etc.
Go in the future long enough and jokes about cis white males are gonna look really hurtful. Trying to attack Patriarchy and hitting the individual instead.
Going to throw this out there: self identification as a member of racial/ethnic/cultural group will become a hot button. Right now the left screams “cultural appropriation!” when this happens. But appropriating another gender is somehow okay. There’s a real mismatch here in logic, and at some point in the future this will flip. Like, currently it’s okay for me to say “I identify as a woman” but not “I identify as a black woman”. How does that even make sense?
I think that’s mostly an American thing: they think that their “racial” categories are the same thing as ethnicity, and since race is defined by racists (who believe that it’s an innate inherited trait), it’s constrained by them too.
“I was born French, but now I consider myself Corsican.” is an uncommon but perfectly normal thing in Europe.
American racism is just absurd, even by racism standards. That absurdity even influences American anti-racism.
Good question. Men and women generally have radically different traditional roles, limitations, stereotypes, and expectations. The same can be said of white people and Black people. So, why is it okay to identify as one but not the other?
Most questions I see involving identity aren’t asked in good faith, but this is an interesting one. Granted, it’s probably been addressed repeatedly, but I haven’t come across it before.
Something that is right now still in the closet.
I’ve only got skeletons and a broom in mine.
Well then I’ve got a bonne to pick with you. And don’t try to sweep it all under the rug!
- Omega_Haxors ( @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml ) English14•8 months ago
Shout outs to Lily Simpson for showcasing just how bad these shows really are.
?
I didn’t know either
getting back into arrested development and then getting to that episode
This is what I was thinking of. I didnt know where that image in my head was from, now I remember.
of those American Dad is the only one I know has a non-transphobic trans episode. Namely the rollerderby one.
Futurama