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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

South Park and Censorship

18:23 / 18.04.06

Did anybody see the fourth episode of the tenth season of South Park? If not, you can catch it in three parts on YouTube.

It's part two of a two-part episode in which the cartoon Family Guy is going to show an image of Muhammad. Cartman goes on a quest to Fox to get them to pull the episode. Kyle follows in order to get Fox to air the episode uncensored, the reason being that once you censor one thing, you make a distinction between what's fair game and what's not. It should all be fair game, Parker and Stone argue via Kyle.

Unfortunately, the network stepped in and blanked out the scene in which the image is shown. In the scene, Muhammad gives Peter Griffin a football helmet with a salmon on it. It's not really an offensive act in context...

From here, 'Comedy Central said last week that it was motivated by concern for public safety. "Did we censor the show? Yes, we did. But if you hold Comedy Central's 15-year track record up against any other network out there, you'll find that we afford our talent the most creative freedom." '

So the network censored out of fear, not tolerance.

Anybody seen the episode? Care to comment? More information can be found here.

18:36 / 18.04.06

Thank you for starting this thread, matt! I'd been meaning to since Friday! I'm surprised what with ongoing threads regarding Battlestar, LOST, etc, there's been no threads dedicated to the veiws and arguments brought up in South Park.

Sbest show on television, I tell ya.

Phex: Dorset Doom

19:13 / 18.04.06

I've seen the episode (having something of a South Park habit), and I honestly thought that the 'censorship' was just another gag, and the subsequent admission of censorship continues the gag offscreen.
Though most of the time I find myself agreeing with Stone and Parker's political observations here they didn't say enough to clarify their position. I think the thesis behind the episode was that America, through lack of understanding of Islamic culture (see Mrs. Garrison's 'Muslim Sensitivity Training') assumes that showing something as inoffensive as Muhammad giving a football helmet with a salmon on to Peter Griffin would somehow ignite a religious war. That said, the episode shows real-life news footage of Muslims rioting over Family Guy showing Muhammad, and real-life Al Qaeda members threatening 'massive retaliation' for the cartoon.
Oh, and most importantly, South Park did show Muhammad- several seasons ago in the 'Super Best Friends' episode, in which the Prophet was part of a Justice-League style superteam with the holy figures of other religions, arguably way more offensive than the depiction of Muhammad just standing around in this new episode.

19:28 / 18.04.06

let's not forget the last scene, that shows Jesus and gwb and americans shitting all over an american flag. the point being that comedy central allowed images of Christ shitting on people but it wouldnt allow an otherwise harmless pic of mohammed standing in a doorway.

south park makes many points at once, which is part of its genius. it doesnt always take a specific stand, other than to side with common sense. in this case, i was happy to see the issue dealt with so directly.

20:04 / 18.04.06

Phex —

I'd heard that the "Justice League" Mohammed was prior to 9-11, whereas subsequent deptictions are much more considered.

20:33 / 18.04.06

According to Wikipedia, Muhammad appears in the cast pic at the end of the theme song, and has been for two seasons!

21:32 / 18.04.06

Um, I would just like to remind everyone here of a certain recent event known as the Jyllands-Posten cartoon controversy, and that it really doesn't matter what Muhammad is or isn't depicted doing, as any visual depiction of Muhammad at all is offensive to Muslims.

As you were.

21:33 / 18.04.06

Thank you, our revered teacher.

21:44 / 18.04.06

Well, yes, ibis.

That particular political controversy is the point of departure to one of South Park's strangest, and I feel strongest, plots: involving competition between other animated programs, censorship in small and grand scales, what free speech does, how terrorism works, and shredding the FOX network.

22:13 / 18.04.06

I take it you think I'm patronizingly pointing out the obvious. I may be patronizing, but I was specifically responding to the following characterizations of "inoffensive" or "less offensive" depictions of Muhammad. Which is, of course, as you must have already known but forgotten, an oxymoron, and flies in the face of recent rioting in the Muslim world.

In the scene, Muhammad gives Peter Griffin a football helmet with a salmon on it. It's not really an offensive act in context... - mattvara

assumes that showing something as inoffensive as Muhammad giving a football helmet with a salmon on to Peter Griffin would somehow ignite a religious war. - Phexette

it wouldnt allow an otherwise harmless pic of mohammed standing in a doorway. - ShadowSax

the "Justice League" Mohammed was prior to 9-11, whereas subsequent deptictions are much more considered. - Cassandra

Phex: Dorset Doom

22:45 / 18.04.06

Cassandra- I know it was pre-9/11, and was going to write something but I thought it didn't matter- it's not like the Islamic world invented the rule about depictions of the prophet after 9/11. If seeing a superhero Muhammad shooting flames out of his fingers wasn't offensive then why would seeing the same guy give Peter Griffin a salmon helmet warrant censoring now? Are they censoring repeats of the Super Best Friends episode? Because I saw it on UPN a few months back (iirc, while the Danish cartoons were in the headlines).

P. Horus Rhacoid

23:16 / 18.04.06

It looks like it's not quite so clear cut as that, Ibis- depictions of Muhammed aren't necessarily offensive to all Muslims. That being said, there's a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that more-or-less deliberately pissing off, say, half the members of another religion/culture is as bad as more-or-less deliberately pissing off the entire religion/culture. That's without even getting into the specifics of what Muhammed was actually doing in the scene.

I have mixed feelings about these two episodes, and South Park in general, because the message sometimes seems garbled (not to mention how offensive/gross the show can be), and in this case I'm not entirely sure what the final message even was. My memory's hazy, though, so I'll try to watch it again tonight or tomorrow.

Muslim sensitivity training was hilarious though.

23:20 / 18.04.06

Apologies for my snarky reply....

But, not all Muslims believe that all depictions of the Prophet are offensive. The Qur'an does not forbid illustrations or artistic depictions of him. Some Muslims believe that one can show Muhammad as long the depiction is conducive to propagating faith and respect. I don't pretend to know exactly who allows what.

I'm sure some Muslims would be offended at South Park via Family Guy's portrayal of the Prophet. After showing the episode, one of the South Park characters says "Well, that wasn't so bad. He was just standing there."

What's more fascinating is Comedy Central's complete and utter allowance of showing Jesus shit on the American flag. As Kyle said, this censorship creates a distinction between what's fair game and what's not.

23:24 / 18.04.06

Far Side cartoon:

So that's okay.

23:26 / 18.04.06

And Dali's depiction of the Prophet in Dante's Inferno:

08:43 / 19.04.06

I think this ties into a more general discussion about tolerance and causing offence, which plays into issues of self-representation - ie. we'd be furious if we thought they were using racist terminology because that ties into our sense that groups have the right to self-describe and that negative generalising descriptions are things that should be faught against. There's clearly some kind of a difference here - they're going to be causing offence to people in the world on the basis of their religion for one, and that seems to me (but not to many others) to be a position people occupy rather than a thing they are - but there's still then the question of whether or not one religious group has the right to impinge on the free speech of others, which brings us back (unfortunately) to those conversations that we have about whether or not so-called 'politically correct language' (to use the accusations of the right) is also an attack on free-speech. A nice nasty circle of griminess.

There's also another question about whether or not we should be furious that Comedy Central censored them while also simultaneously furious with the South Park guys for being insensitive. That's not an inconsistent position to occupy.

11:44 / 19.04.06

they're going to be causing offence to people in the world on the basis of their religion for one, and that seems to me (but not to many others) to be a position people occupy rather than a thing they are

This is really interesting to me, as many people who are in a religion would characterise their faith as more important than who they are, that it is a thing that governs their very identity and is not just a belief or set of beliefs that they hold. Because they have faith that it exists beyond themselves they see it as the context for everything that they are. I’d be fascinated with a discussion on here that attempts to delineate how our right to be offended interacts with how deep the offence is judged to penetrate (that is, judged by the offender, the offended and observers from a range of backgrounds), to beliefs, identity, body, or some spiritual context that one has faith governs all the preceding three.

03:15 / 04.11.07

Anyone else see the fantastic three parter "Imaginationland" that South Park did? I'm not a big fan of the series, but I loved these episodes, bursting with Morrison and Alan Moore ideas as they were. The basic premise is the crew crosses over to 'Imaginationland,' the place where all fictional characters come from. There, they hang out with people ranging from Zeus to Charlie Brown to DC Comics' Flash. Subsequently, the bad imaginary characters invade, and we get such dream matchups as Popeye vs. Jack Kirby's Darkseid. It's really fun, and suitably epic, my favorite thing the show's ever done.

12:29 / 04.11.07

I thought the gist of it was that they were making fun of all that "imagine-nation" that Moore & Morrison can be at times (is there a movie or piece of pop culture out there somewhere at this time using those things? I thought Stardust could have been the film they took the notion to piss on, but I haven't seen it).

I liked mostly for (don't know if it was intended satire or not) the notion of an imagination's weak point that any imaginary event to be made solid (/imagined), for instance in a movie (or marvel comics), is immediatly filtered through the US military's domain. And the notion that the entire thing begins due to a suicide bomber that "invaded the place" -- or the ambiguous notion that he was an imaginary boogieman.

And that whole plot of Kyle having to suck Cartman's balls was just tiring. You get the feeling sometimes that Cartman is not just a bad mouth piece of ignorance so you can point and laugh, but that many people find him awesome!1! (saying stuff they heard him say etc), but these episodes gave the feeling the creators are sometimes in that same camp (how many balls-dick-sucking jokes have been on Cartman's plots lately?).

15:17 / 04.11.07

Well, I'm not sure how much was poking fun at the idea and how much was legitimately praising it, but you've got to keep in mind the implicit message is that everything we're seeing is imaginary, the whole of South Park, and any TV show is actually Imaginationland. That seemed to be what the jump to white part and subsequent rebuilding of the universe implied.

As for the ball sucking, it didn't make much sense why he wanted his balls sucked, and I probably could have gone for more Imaginationland and less sucking, but considering it was a three parter, the story stayed fairly fresh. Though, it did peak with that dream sequence in episode two.

15:35 / 04.11.07

Well it all felt somewhat Neverland in a satiric manner, with Jackson instead of mr Pan.

And yeah, they make characters verbalize those themes. But when I used to watch them I always felt they'd at times stretch whole stories with extreme irony from the get go. This one didn't felt straight-faced or anything.

I think my sucking jokes tiredness might have something to do with an episode I saw once -- Cartman putting sleeping Butters' penis on his mouth to take a picture.

But it was worth it just for Butters' "shit!" in the end. I think he's adorable (it's what makes the awful stuff that happens to him that much sickly funny in a Strangers With Candy way).

Our Lady Has Left the Building

05:07 / 05.11.07

I did like that episode where Stan breaks up with Wendy and becomes a Goth, until something bad happens to Butters and he explains he's not going to let it get him down because the bad times make the good times feel better, and remind him that he's human. It's rare that the South Park guys let anything nice through the dick jokes barrier, though as Butters has a worse time of it than Kenny he deserves to have a profound moment once in ten years of misery.

12:36 / 05.11.07

there's a British TV show that has interviewed Parker and Stone [the segment is over at Youtube in it full; forgot the name but it's presented by the guy who did that show on Michael Jackson] in which they say both have agreed with Comedy Central on not showing Muhammed.

the producers told hem they could have had their heads cut off if ever a fatwa was put on them by the most radical Muslim factions. look what happened in Denmark. people got killed in riots.

in this case it was agreed upon, it's not censorship, it's only survival. when the dust wears off maybe they can portray Muhammed again, which i hope they'll be able to.

I've been watching all the SP seasons i had previously lost and i have to say they got really annoying with the 'topic of the week' plots, when they have the kids voice their take on anything that they feel is important. and boy, do they preach...

"we ask each other 'what's our take on Alcoholism?'" they said in a BBC online interview. well, the answer produced one of the wort episodes in my opinion, BLOODY MARY - which had to do with a statue of Virgin mary bleeding through its ass and Stan's father thinking it could cure his Alcoholism.

i was not offended by the bleeding statue at all, but thought their take on the Alcoholics Anonymous was stupid, poorly-researched and biased. they basically say [through Stan] that Alcoholism is not a desease, but something stubborn people can be freed from if they just "drink less", only because there's "God\Higher Power" in several of the 12 Steps... so they pointed AA as a religious scam not unlike Scientology [brilliantly mocked just the episode before].

that was like saying a Diabetic can eat as many sugar as he\she wants, or that someone with the HIV virus can have sex at will without any protection. i hate the expression 'jump the shark', but it seems the guys have lost their hand...

my favourite episodes are the more character-driven, which come out really funny and well-timed, like "Marjorine", which has Butters [what a great character] dressed as a girl to sneak into a slumber party to steal a "device that allows to see into the future".

13:06 / 05.11.07

I feel I should give a try to some new episodes (or the ones I never saw at least). If only to see where these episodes are standing now. That alcoholism and the Muhammed one seemed awfully shitty from the bits I heard.

But I love Butters, and I remember fondly of that Marjorine episode, so I should give it one more try.

Loo loo loo, I've got some apples,
Loo loo loo, you've got some too,
Loo loo loo, let's make some apple sauce,
take off our clothes and loo loo loo.

14:30 / 05.11.07

i've just seen the 2-part Mohammed ep.. tsc. i liked how they discussed the conflicting points of view and even commented on their own preaching.

but the black screen telling "Comedy Central didn't let us show an image of Mohammed" seemed like self-righteous bullshit to me, even more after the tv interview mentioned above.

All Acting Regiment

15:16 / 05.11.07

It is self-righteous, and possibly bullshit. And one thing that's worth pointing out is that the Danish prophet cartoons depicted Mohammed with a bomb, as a terrorist - and that it's this factor which caused the problems. If depiction of Mohhamed was always just depiction of Mohammed with a salmon, then the bluster from the 'censored artists' would be understandable. Except it's not.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

19:12 / 05.11.07

But, if South Park makes you angry, doesn't that mean, the terrorists win? No, hang on, wait, not the terrorists, um, the two overgrown frat boys? I think Parker and Stone have gone on record several times warning people not to assume that anything that any of the characters say is necessary what either of them believe (and after all, quite a few of the 'I've learned something today' moments are counter-revolutionary, the Underpants Gnomes did teach Stan that capitalism is a good thing that brings choice to the consumer while driving down prices) and really, you're offended by what one episode says about alcoholism, but not what Cartman says every episode about the Jews? About what the character of Mrs Garrison says about transsexual lesbians?

That way madness lies people.

20:43 / 05.11.07

Lady, I don't know if it is the effect of watching several episodes in a row [what you love and hate about any series gets easily magnified this way], but Stan's or Kyle's point of view started to come by as the "voice of reason" several times, or at least the "thesis" and "antithesis" of the topic discussion. and they were not the ironic Moral of The Day of earlier seasons.

so, i tried to find quotes from Parker and Stone themselves to back me up:

More often than not, we don't have any ideas.

Sometimes we'll come up with, OK, alcoholism - what's our take on Alcoholics' Anonymous.

and

Reason: In the climactic scene of the episode, Kyle lectures the president of Fox that he has to stand up in favor of free speech. Is it true that the dialogue was taken directly from the conversations you had with Comedy Central about showing Muhammad?

Parker: Yes, the dialogue is almost exactly the same. We even had Kyle call him Doug, right?

Stone: Doug Herzog is the head guy over at Comedy Central.

Parker: It was very personal.