South Park and Chef

The irony, the satire, the parody. It's...Cartman, in a thong.

I fkn wish too. Honestly, though, South Park kicks my ass

Darth Chef: "Hello children. Would you like to suck on my chocolate salty balls?"

Dude with Pipe: "Oh, you mean like a chocolate candy?"

Darth Chef: "No, I mean my balls."

Awesome. From what I saw, the sentiment seemed to be "Don't let the whole scientology thing take away all those fond memories", and I totally agree. Plus the character went out with a bang . . . or did he? Deh-de-DEEEEEEHHHH!

The only problem I had was . . . well, South Park started off as a fun show with a great combination of shit jokes and social commentary, and in the beginning they always managed to have something to say without getting all self-reighteous and "messiah-complex"y about it. Nowadays it's still a good show but it's been getting preachier and preachier, which can be really annoying, even though I agree with almost everything they preach. This episode came off as especially preachy. I hope they show it again soon so I can watch the whole thing and maybe it'll seem less so in context (although having been an avid watcher for the last few seasons, I doubt it).

What do you all think? I'm not trying to start a flame war or rally the South Park Haters, I'm just interested in your opinions. Do you think there's room in comedy, especially South Park and similar shows, for overt preaching without any subtlety, or do you think the message should blend seamlessly with the funny stuff? Which makes for a smoother delivery?

I think a lot of their opinions are pretty astute. The shot at the Catholic Church was really insightful. "How can we protect ourselves from our 'boys' speaking out?"

The real prob with South Park as far as I'm concerned is too low brow, you know, too gross. Now you might think, hey, girl talk, but it seems to me to be gross for the sake of being gross, well too staged.

My fav eps were the one with the kid that Tp'd everything, a satire on Silence of the Lambs, "I notice you haven't been promoted Officer Barbrady, why is that Officer Barbrady?". Also the one where they have the cripple fight, which I never miss, whenever it's on. Also, the one about the ladder to heaven, I love when the Japanese 'make it to heaven first, before the Americans' and then the set falls apart. And all the Saddam Hussein and the Devil ones.

Personally I think South Park would be better if it was less gross, but then again Cartman would be rendered speechless.

But I did appreciate it when Kennie didn't die on Christmas. Hallelujah.

> but the wind always blows the same way and I guess to you that translates as preachy.

I'm not familiar with that expression . . . if you're trying to say it translates as preachy to me because I don't agree with what they're saying, that's not true; I said earlier that I do agree with about 99% of what they have to say. For the most part they're preaching to the choir but they do diverge from my point of view drastically on at least two points: it sounds like they have some issues with atheists, and then of course there's that line at the end of the Iraqi Goat episode where they said "America's the home team, and if you don't like the home team you should get out of the stadium". It's not always clear when they're being serious, but you've got to admit that line sounds fishy.

Also . . .

> Now you might think, hey, girl talk

. . . I find it amusing how many people think I'm a guy. Could it be because delicate females are too sophisticated to laugh at or, dare I say make fart jokes like I do? [/sarcasm]

Anyway I like South Park's gross stuff, but the fact that we differ in opinion there is no big deal (sense of humor is an unimportant matter of personal taste like liking one gender or another or preferring stawberries to raspberries) and I'm glad you were as mature about posting as you were -- I mean I said I didn't want a flame war but this being the Internet I half-expected to get one anyway.

And yeah, it was awesome they spared Kenny on christmas. Poor kid deserved a break.

As for the wind always blowing in one direction, what I meant was their opinions are pretty obvious. I figured you felt that was too preachy, and I could understand it.

Yeah, Kenny needed a break, lol. Think Aeon will get any holiday reprieve? But which holiday? Bregnsgiving? Trevor's Birthday?

I still don't think you understand why I find South Park preachy -- it's got nothing to do with their opinions being obvious, it's the fact that their presenting them with all the subtlety of a wet t-shirt contest kinda gets in the way of the comedy, for me. I enjoy messages in entertainment much, much better if they blend easily with the rest of the story/characters/humor and it doesn't feel like they're hitting the audience over the head with it. "Look at us, we're using Allegory! ALLEGORY, GET IT?!!! DO [thump] YOU [thump] GET [thump] IT? Wow, I'm a GENIUS!" South Park sometimes comes annoyingly close to that and it feels like they've lost all their finesse and subtlety, qualities most people don't see in the show but they're there, or at least they used to be. Maybe you're just less sensitive to that sort of thing than I am.

Have you noticed that the two of us are the only ones even remotely interested in this thread anymore? I mean it's only been a couple of days but you'd think somebody else would've chimed in by now.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&oi=news&start=1&num=3&qh=http://www.eonline.com.News/Items/01.18647.00.html&e=14273

and because that link prob won't work, here's the article:

"Dead Chef "Doing Really Well"

by Joal Ryan
Mar 24, 2006, 4:20 PM PT

Isaac Hayes is in better shape than Chef.

This, according to Hayes' production company, which denied a report that suggested the "Shaft" soul great had been incapacitated by a stroke and that a mystery person had issued a headline-making denunciation of South Park in his name.

"That's a false report," Amy Harnell of Isaac Hayes Entertainment said Friday.

Specifically, Harnell denied Hayes, 63, suffered a stroke in January. She maintained that, as previously reported, the music legend checked into a hospital in his native Tennessee that month for treatment of high blood pressure and exhaustion.

"He wasn't in the hospital for very long," Harnell said. "He's back on his feet, and doing really well."

Harnell further denied someone other than Hayes was behind a Mar. 13 statement in which the entertainer declared he was leaving South Park, where he'd been the longtime voice of Chef, because of the animated series' "inappropriate ridicule of religious communities." While the statement didn't reference Scientology, it was believed that Hayes, a Scientologist, was taking a stance against a South Park episode that riffed on the religion.

"The press release did come from him," Harnell said. "He is the one who decided to leave South Park."

The stroke and collusion theory was reported Monday by FoxNews.com's Roger Friedman. Friedman wrote that Hayes' friends were "mystified" by the singer's abrupt departure apparently over an episode that first aired four months ago.

Certainly in interviews just prior to his hospitalization, Hayes expressed admiration for South Park's style. "Nobody is exempt from their humor," he said in the New York Daily News on Jan. 12. "Don't be offended by it. If you take it too seriously, you have problems."

It was not known if Hayes took seriously what happened to Chef on Wednesday's South Park season premiere.

In the episode, written by series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone in the wake of Hayes' resignation, Chef was brainwashed by a group of globe-trotting child molesters--the mere warm-up for the big finish in which the character was struck by lightning, impaled, mauled, shot and finally turned into a Darth Vader-like monster.

Harnell said she didn't know if Hayes tuned in. (About 3.5 million others did.) Generally speaking, Harnell said, Hayes "doesn't have any comment from that episode. Basically, he decided to leave...it behind him."

Currently, Harnell said, Hayes is "totally wrapped up in his baby"--a child "due any minute" with his fourth wife, Adjowa".

The thing is, I don't really know if I like this 'treatment' of one of their regular character actors, I have to say I don't think that would happen on Aeon Flux. I kind of have the impression they're a nicer bunch of guys over there, I have no inside info to support this, but I just think so. I don't trust those two creators now, although I like their show, still, maybe I'm misjudging them. I sort of wonder if that's the general feeling out there, too. Could be the end for them, the beginning of a downward trend in popularity. I'm interested to see what comes in the next few years from this.

Anyway regarding Chef's being Kennified, I saw a little more of that episode a couple days ago and it really seemed like they were trying to get revenge on Hayes for leaving the show. It absolutely reeked of egotism. I mean I know scientology's a crackpot religeon but he had every right to leave the show, and in the end it was his decision (stupid and hypocritical, but still well within his rights). Stone and Parker overreacted to say the least, and that struck me as more immature than the collective ass/fart/shit/sex/queef/oh/god/that/teacher/has/huge/hooters jokes of the entire series -- immature in a bad way. On the other hand, as I said before it was a spectacular death scene, which I think every good character deserves.

There is an historical writer by the name of Charles Upham, who wrote a book called Salem Witchcraft.It was published in 1867, right out of Boston. Upham remained the authority on the trials for 130 years after it's release. Charles Upham was the ordained pastor of the First Church of Salem and he married the sister of Oliver Wendall Holmes, and so he was socially important.

He participated in the founding of the Salem Lyceum and gave lectures there on the trials which caught the attention of Nathaniel Hawthorne and influenced him to write his books with Upham's history as a source of material. They became friends. Later on, because of political differences (Upham was a Whig leader, Hawthorne a Democrat) Hawthorne was fired from his position as a Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly because of the election of a Whig president, Zachary Taylor. Upham supported this move, for political not personal reasons.

Hawthorne, now hating Upham, fashioned the key figure in House of Seven Gables after a fusion of Upham and Cotton Mather, Judge Pyncheon, a character who resembled a reincarnated Pharisee of the Puritan judge of the witchtrials, now cast in the modern (19th century) world. Uphams personal opinion of Cotton Mather was he was the chief instigator of the Trials, that opinion was well known. Everyone at the time recognized who the character was designed to resemble.

Of course Pyncheon dies at the end, and Hawthorne in his book fairly gloats over the dead body for a couple of pages.

The famously loved House of 7 Gables was not likely loved by Charles Upham.

One would almost think of our times as ripe for spawning immature behavior, we're pretty soft compared to those old days, but here is a pre-civil war writer, and a name as famous as Nathaniel Hawthorne doing the poison pen bit.

Not to mention, how else would you get the Darth Vader setup....

Another way to look at this is when a voice actor, who voices one of the main characters, suddenly leaves a show it puts the animators in one hell of a spot. I'm pretty sure he voiced the character remotely, so all together it wasn't that difficult for him, and he's clearly not too old to keep doing it at 63 because he just had a freaking child, so basically he screwed the animators over in destroying one of the show's most beloved characters and he did it for insanely hypocritical reasons.

Sure he had the "right" to do it. Who doesn't have the right to do whatever they want? It doesn't mean he's not an ass for doing it. How else would they have given him a send off anyway? Beg him to do one last episode? That doesn't really sound like the creators of SouthPark. And if they had given him a "proper" farewell, then it would have looked like they were trying to salvage the situation and would have become the victims. Instead, they did what they always do and satire the situation in a twisted and comical way.

And sure it made me cringe to see chef become that, but what alternatives did they really have?

Actually... ya know... they are a tadbit late with that whole thing arent they....

Example:

http://www.metrocast.net/~stefburk/stupid/vader_subtitles.jpg
this translation is classic. darth vader is actually shouting, "nooooooooooooo..."

Like Barb e posted, from the greats to the belly of society we all have our violent fantasies of tearing apart those who've wronged us, well the twisted of us do, why hold it back from displaying it through creative ventures?

And I understand two wrongs don't make a right. Blah blah blah. But a petty action towards a petty person is satisfying, and I believe can be justified.

Oh, and if they could of added the noooooooooooooo, it would have been quite a feat. Honestly I thought star wars 3 sucked balls, but hearing that noooooooo made me laugh just enough to find the movie watchable.

The South Park dudes don't strike me as crazy or violent people, what they did was just fucked up. Even I wouldn't make a point out of dismembering people I hated in my stories -- it just seems wrong. I mean venting is good but it's like everybody in this whole deal is acting like spoiled little kids throwing one tantrum after another. Appears to be the type of immaturity that infects almost all celebrities. I used to think the South Park crew were above that sort of thing until they exploded in a trifecta of hissy-fits. It's made me really hate all three of them.

(still looking forward to the next episode.)

she was lost in an alien breeding camp to be constantly raped by aliens

or even Davies character...
He had his brains sucked out, got shot, then the world in that reality blew up....

>.> me thinks Peckinpah had a bit of a grudge with the original cast ya know

Also I think it's a bit shallow of you to assume someone's fucked up just because they have a fucked up sense of humor -- twisted humor doesn't in any way make a twisted person. None of the gross stuff they did with the show was what I'd consider indicative of a fucked up personality; to see real evidence of some artist's inner freak you have to read between the lines.

And in the end, none of this really matters. This issue is in no way any of our business, we're all just a bunch of nerds wasting time by arguing on the internet about some show -- it's not even an interesting argument. Honestly there's no important reason for us to talk about this at all. Why don't we just sum up our opinions in succinct little packages and be done with it, since nothing good ever came out of forum bitching. I'll go first:

* I hate scientology. It's a crackpot hollywood fad that will probably die out in 20 or so years and be made fun of in future retro sitcoms.

* Issac Hayes is a complete and total douchebag who left the show for reasons so rediculous that it would be flattering to call them hypocritical.

* Parker and Stone handled the situation just as badly as Hayes, even though it made for a funny episode.

* I have now lost my respect for all three dudes for acting like overgrown spoiled brats.

* These are all just opinions, and we are the only two people on earth who care what we have to say.

Your turn.

First of all, you know I read your post. Don't give me that crap. If I misinterpreted what you were trying to get at then I apologize, but please don't jump all over me.

And ok, so were all dorks, and losers, and no one cares what any of us thinks, I get it, but this topic was started so that us specks of society could discuss the in's and out's of this episode and the controversy that surrounds it. So you seriously don't have to belittle the argument while in the middle of forming one side of it. In a few weeks, if it hasn't died already, the situation will dwindle down into just another episode of south park and everyone will forget, but why not get into the heat of controversy while it's hot? Lord knows I ain't got nothing better to do.

Cripes. Anyways, I think I'm just going to end it. *He wields an axe up high in the air as the setting sun gleams off the blade. Anticipation steals the surrounding crowds breadth. With his hands clinched the sexy, sexy beast opens his eyes and brings the ax down with the force of some crazed and forgotten god, and he severs, sexily, the unruly and misguided conversation at hand. The crowd can at last breath calmly again.*

... it got bethreaded!

I wonder if Darth Chef becomes a regular