The narrative around South Park this year is that it has had a resurgence, finally creating something hilarious and relevant after a few years of obsolescence. I have to assume that many of the people saying this did not bother to watch the previous season, which was arguably stronger than this year and also flirted with season-long continuity. In either case, it’s nice to see a show like South Park, which was once dangerous enough to inspire religious protests but has since become an American establishment, finally making headlines again.
Really, though, South Park succeeded so strongly this season by leaning into a subject that appears to have been irritating many people who have been too afraid to speak up about it: politically correct culture and it’s current adoption by the self-righteous. In the age of Twitter, when everybody is self-branding by what they decide to say online and tweet out, there’s a seriously negative trend toward co-opting the discrimination and abuse of minorities as a way of showing off one’s own worldliness. That’s not to say that social justice is bad; it’s important to try to step out of one’s own shoes and consider the viewpoints and treatment of others that are often invisible to us. But when that cause is used to insult and belittle people who are unwittingly un-PC, or attack comedians and writers for using un-PC subject matter to get across well-meaning points, it stifles necessary dialogues and creates a schism.
South Park gets the point across brilliantly in its first episode this season. Kyle, the moral center of the show and the counter-part to Cartman’s hedonistic opportunism, is now the target of the PC movement, embodied by new character PC Principal. PC Principal and his PC fraternity (notably all white men) spend most of the season violently enforcing politically correct values and trying to turn South Park around.
From here, Trey Parker and Matt Stone expand their target to disingenuous progressive culture and the self-important. The season is a scathing indictment of gentrification, as SoDa SoPa and Shi Tpa Town, the trendy new renovations of South Park’s poorer neighborhoods, use the poor as a selling point while completely pricing them out of their own neighborhoods. Whole Foods, too, is held up as an example of all that is wrong about progressive culture, a supermarket that’s important primarily for signifying to the world how forward-thinking a town is.
As far as the self-important goes, the highlight of the season is “You’re Not Yelping,” which takes on the false sense of importance that hits so many Yelp reviewers. The image of a whole sea of Yelp reviewers, all shouting as if they’re the ones making a heroic speech and leading the charge, is the perfect way of encapsulating internet commenter/reviewer culture in a nutshell. It’s obviously something that really irritates Parker and Stone, and they get to take out their frustration in a very cathartic and incredibly gross broadway track.
Not everything in the season gels. The last stretch of episodes focuses on the real threat against South Park, ads, and PC Principal, Mr. Garrison, Caitlyn Jenner (oh yeah, she’s a part of this whole thing too), Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Jimmy are all technically fighting the same enemy. There’s potential here for some very cutting satire, in regards to movements like social justice being co-opted by corporations to sell products, but little of that comes through. Instead it feels like Parker and Stone perhaps hit a wall and had to wrap things up somehow or another.
Still, season 19 of South Park definitely struck a chord with a lot of people. In a world where online discussion had devolved into racist/misogynist scum on one side and humorless/self-righteous pricks on the other, it’s liberating to see such an established entity like South Park finally open the middle back up again. South Park significantly improved public discourse, and gave us quite a few laughs to boot.