We’re a long way from August 13th, 1997, when South Park first aired on Comedy Central. The show, which centered on four boys—Kyle, Stan, Cartman, and Kenny—in a small town in Colorado, became the epicenter of shock-value TV, a subgenre that had a major stamp on the 1990s. In South Park’s pilot episode, “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe,” Cartman, after visions of aliens abducting him, turns out to be right despite his stubbornness on the topic. Then, when Kyle’s younger brother, Ike, is kidnapped, the boys use Cartman to lure the aliens to give him back by having a satellite come out of his rear end. Yeah, shock value television.
In the years that followed, South Park would be the source of great humor for the teenage mind. A hub for what was wrong in the world to be made fun of. Any celebrity at the time, from Paris Hilton to Kanye West, was not safe from the satirical humor of creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. In between all of that, the show knew how to make pop culture references and tie them into the kind of humor it does best. However, in the years post-COVID and during the era of Donald Trump, flooding the news cycle with polarizing information for the American people, South Park has seemingly put a mirror up to society, almost abandoning the bathroom humor that made it a hit and becoming arguably one of the most important shows on television.
South Park Has Taken on Trump’s White House
Donald Trump and Satan Departing Air Force One in South ParkImage via Comedy Central
For a few years now, South Park has skipped actual seasons of the show and released one-hour specials that have tackled everything from COVID-19 to the celebrity fascination with Ozempic. The period from 2021 to this past winter featured many humorous moments in these series centered on South Park’s lead characters.
The show even took us to the future, where Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny were adults, and the world had begun to look eerily similar to the world of Blade Runner. Then Donald Trump was elected as president again.
Stone and Parker always tiptoed around how to portray Trump in South Park. It’s almost as if they knew it had to be done right to get a leg up on social discourse in case the commander in chief wanted to have an aggressive response. Both Stone and Parker have taken jabs at both sides of the political spectrum. There was a time when the pair aimed at liberal ideology, even early on, with things like herbal medicine. There was even an attack on cancel culture before it ever became mainstream, with the infamous “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson” episode, which shows Randy Marsh saying a racial slur. The show’s creators stated back in the mid-2000s that their libertarian views align with their split-down-the-middle takes of Democrats and Republicans.
Although allegedly having down-the-middle views, this made for an aggressive attack on Trump and his staff at the top of their brand-new season, which hit in late summer and scored some of its highest ratings ever. The president is seen in bed with Satan; Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is seen shooting cute dogs in every scene they portray her in; even Dora the Explorer (who is a piece of IP under Paramount Skydance) has her moment on screen, giving a speech at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s resort in Florida.
South Park’s Stance on the Political Climate Even Went After the Show’s Parent Company
Trump ortrayed on South Park Image via Comedy Central
South Park’s attack on the White House was timely, not just for the divisiveness of the Trump administration, but also for a major business deal underway in the media world at the time of the Season 27 premiere. Early this year, Stone and Parker signed a massive streaming deal with Paramount worth more than $1 billion. It seems that during this deal and the pre-production of the new season, the show’s creators took notice of Paramount’s ties to the President and the move to remove late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert—an avid Trump critic—from CBS’s late-night lineup.
South Park made a point of taking aim at its parent company in the season premiere, calling out Paramount for a $16 million payment it made to Trump’s foundation to settle a lawsuit against CBS News. The White House has blasted the show since its new season began due to its takes on Trump, Epstein, and ICE, but many seem to read the writing on the wall. Many pundits and MAGA conservatives have gone on national television to dismiss the show as irrelevant and out of touch.
With this outrage, the days of understanding that being famous in America came with getting made fun of on South Park are now over. The uprise of MAGA voters who lean into the ideology of “facts over feelings” seems to have taken to heart how South Park now presents Trump as a man-baby who is in bed with the devil behind closed doors. This outrage only fuels what the show continues to do. All of this cartoon-like anger we now see against the long-running show seems to just become bulletin board material at South Park HQ, and it won’t stop anytime soon unless we find some ways to calm the fire inside of most of us when it comes to our politics.
As long as this chapter in American history continues, so will South Park, and yet, even after it ends, the show will most likely soldier on until the show’s creators no longer want to do it. However, the days of fecal matter jokes and Kenny being killed in every episode are a thing of the past, because our culture has evolved into one where we know everything about everyone, and that can be dangerous. Everyone acts out now and shows you who they really are, thus making them prime targets for criticism.
We are in a time when South Park and reality have become one and the same. Therefore, the show does not need a lengthy meeting in the writers’ room. They look at what happened in America that week and go to work. So how should that make us feel? It’s so easy and quick to make fun of now. Are we great again? Or are we a laughingstock? Until we figure that out, South Park will continue to aim for anything from tech billionaires to whoever is in the Oval Office. Matt Stone and Trey Parker are going to be around to point their satirical mirror at us any chance they get.
Eric Cartman, Stan Marsh and Kyle Broflovski are smiling while standing in front of the South Park sign on the show’s poster. Kenny McCormick is hanging on top of the sign.Image via Comedy Central
Release Date
August 13, 1997
Showrunner
Trey Parker
Trey Parker
Eric Cartman / Stan Marsh (voice)
Matt Stone
Kyle Broflovski / Kenny McCormick (voice)