'South Park' Just Got Itself Wiped Off the Internet in China
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Source – South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone probably saw this coming, and to their credit, simply didn’t care.
The most recent episode of South Park, “Band in China,” has been generating loads of media attention for its sharp critique of the way Hollywood tends to shape its content to avoid offending Chinese government censors in any way whatsoever.
Now, those very same government censors, in the real world, have lashed back at South Park by deleting virtually every clip, episode and online discussion of the show from Chinese streaming services, social media and even fan pages.
A cursory perusal through China’s highly regulated Internet landscape shows the show conspicuously absent everywhere it recently had a presence. A search of the Twitter-like social media service Weibo turns up not a single mention of South Park among the billions of past posts. On streaming service Youku, owned by Internet giant Alibaba, all links to clips, episodes and even full seasons of the show are now dead. …
The draconian response is par for the course for China’s authoritarian government, which has even been known to aggressively censor Winnie the Pooh, because some local Internet users had affectionately taken to comparing Chinese president Xi Jinping to the character. …
“Now I know how Hollywood writers feel,” Stan says at one point while a Chinese guard watches over him and alters his work while he writes the script. Several shots also are taken at Disney, including a scene where Mickey Mouse shows up to make sure all his employees (other Marvel and Disney cartoon characters) play ball with the Chinese authorities. …
The episode’s critique has proved especially timely, in light of the controversy now swirling around the NBA. On Sunday, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey issued a tweet expressing his solidarity with Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protestors. … Fearing financial implications, the Rockets and the NBA have since retreated and disavowed Morey’s comments — in precisely the same way South Park satirized.
God bless Trey Parker and Matt Stone. And I suppose that by the same token we should say God bless them and the Fuck You money they have earned through 23 seasons of mostly brilliant comedy, merchandising and from “Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” “Team America,” “Book of Mormon” and to a lesser extent, “BASEketball.”
Because if we’ve learned anything from the way they’ve stayed true to their art all these years, it’s that no one can take your freedom away if you’ve got all the money you’ll ever need. These guys still give less than zero shits what anyone thinks because they don’t have to. So they have the liberty to be equal opportunity offenders. And whether their target is Christianity, Scientology, Islam, Canada, the NFL, Disney, tech companies, Prius drivers or China, they’re willing to take that opportunity every time.
I’ll concede that “South Park” doesn’t have the impact it used to. I suppose nobody could after 23 years of doing anything. It’s only natural. But you can’t argue that it’s because they’ve lost their fastball or taken the coward’s way out. A show that began in the 90s that was funny pretty much in that it was a bunch of foul mouthed kids and didn’t have much more to it than that, got much better when it started being about something. When it started parodying the world in a way that “SNL” used to before it just started doing nothing but political jokes and game show skits. And Parker and Stone show more balls in a single episode than “SNL” used to in a decade. And more integrity than the NBA – an organization that is printing money and could easily tell China to go piss up a rope – is remotely capable of.
Don’t get me wrong; I still love the episodes that are funny just for it’s own sake. The one where they try to get a copy of “Lord of the Rings” but end up with porn by mistake and Butters ends up being obsessed with the porn like Gollum or the one where Cartman feeds Scott Tenorman’s parents to him at the chili cookoff are all time Top 10s.
But you have to admire them for leaning into something like the fact businesses in the freest country in the world willingly kiss the ass of one of the most oppressive governments in the world. And that entertainment companies gladly let themselves be censored by people who put other people into reeducation camps by the millions. Sacred cows still make the best hamburgers.
Having said this, if Barstool is doing business in China, please ignore everything I just said. I don’t mean any of this and I have nothing but good things to say about the glorious, revolutionary government of the People’s Republic for all they do to make the world a better place and may our heroic leader President Xi Jinping live forever. And Winnie the Pooh sucks too. I’m glad I remembered to add that.