South Park Review: Through the Years

South park. Saying the very name of the show can inspire laughter in teenagers, Anger is over-protective parents and concern from the elderly. This show has been one of the most controversial and popular shows of our time. Dispite the use of "toilet humor" and "fart jokes" in the beginning of the show's long span, South Park has been an evolutionary process.

If one takes a look at newer installments of South Park, it's soon clear that the writers are no longer concerned with making it as offensive as possible. As opposed to the show's origin, it has now evolved into a pop culture machine. The show focuses more on situational humor and is more deeply nested in current affairs and reality than ever before. Take for instance, an episode simply titled: "Fishsticks".

In this episode, Cartman and Jimmy create a joke which becomes famous and gains national attention. Carlos Mencia takes credit for inventing the joke and gains broad popularity on the fictional talk shows within the series. Anybody who has followed comic culture in the recent years knows how widely accused Carlos Mencia has been of stealing jokes from other comics. Kanye West also appears in the episode as the only entity in the world that doesn't "get" their joke. Instead of trying to understand the joke, he becomes irritable and thrashes out at the world, proclaiming himself to be a "genius" and that says that he doesn't "have" to get the joke. This is obviously poking fun of the pretentiousness of Kanye West and other celebrities of our time.

Yet another example of the evolution of the series is the Somalian Pirate Episode. In this episode, Cartman learns of the current pirate situation in Somalia, gathers up the gang and heads there to claim his riches and fulfill his fantasy of becoming a real-life pirate. Obviously, the gap in cultures here and the presence of Hollywood in modern times hinders the children from becoming Disney-esque pirates and shows the distance between our understanding of the grim reality of the third world and the comfort of American Life.

South Park started as a bundle of offensive jokes and laughs, but has evolved into a shining example of maturity and a clever representation on American's points of view on current events through the years. I hope you've enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it! Now I'm going to go watch South Park. =P