South Park 's Success And Power

As something people tend to hold the most dearly, culture can be a sensitive topic to discuss and engage in. Often, it is made even more difficult due to issues of the past and the way different cultures influence one another. Moreover, the concepts of cultural assimilation and mainstreaming have brought light on problems regarding the treatment of minority cultures within American culture, specifically with the use of stereotyped imagery and hijacking outside cultural ideas. The issues of cultural stereotyping and assimilation, as seen in South Park, have garnered attention due to the nature of offence and its subjective nature.

A social issue that Steinbeck desired to reveal in Of Mice and Men was the reality women were facing as they were regarded as property or objects and not as individual people in the 1930s. Women would often times not even have the chance to defend and explain themselves against this cynical perspective on them, “Well, I think Curley's married a tart... ‘Listen to me, you crazy bastard,’ he said fiercely ‘Don’t you even take a look at at that bitch’...You mean Curly's girl?” (Steinbeck 28, 32, 55). The first thing we hear George say about Curley’s wife is that she’s a tart and the second thing we hear about her that

South Park is about four boys and their wild adventures, as they go through elementary school. The main characters are Stan Marsh, Kenny McCormick, Eric Cartman and Kyle Broflovski. In an episode called ‘Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride’ South Park is explaining to the audience that we should accept homosexuality and that it is ok to be a homosexual. We should accept homosexuality & homosexuals. Same as we accept heterosexuals, we need to dispel of old convictions.

In the summer of 1997, the network, Comedy Central, aired the popular animated series, South Park. The creators thought the show was not going to be a success with the American people because of their crude humor that could offend women, religions, and current events in the world, but it turned out that it became extremely popular with many people. The demographics of

Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. Look around, and it’s like a social media monster people are being consumed by on a daily basis. Hand written letters and face-to-face interaction have become things of the past. In an episode of South Park called “You have Zero Friends”, the producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone hit the nail on the head as they use satire to portray this concept of being consumed by Facebook. South Park is an animated T.V. series that started in 1997, featuring four foul-mouthed 4th graders, Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman. What’s not to love about the satire? For the well informed, it’s an entertaining take on issues that would otherwise be a dry discussion and for the uninformed, well it’s editorial content served on a silver platter. The great thing about satire is that at any point it doesn’t dumb down the issue at hand. I believe that South Park’s success comes from a mixture of satire, parody, and mockery that it uses to take aim at contemporary culture and values.

South Park has been around for a while now. Since it was aired for the first time on 13th August 1997, the show has constantly pushed the boundaries taking on everything, leaving out nothing. The reception among the wider population and the media had a wide range from “shocking” to “excellent”. One of the aspects of this success story is that, because of its provocative tone the show has managed to stay in the limelight. Public debate was evolving around certain episodes, bringing more and more attention to the show. As it was constantly picking up contemporary themes, topics or events, expectations were growing and “ 'How will South Park deal with x ' has become a common catch phrase” (Johnson-Woods 257). Another

In the summer of 1997, the network, Comedy Central, aired the popular animated series, South Park. The creators thought the show was not going to be a success with the American people because of their crude humor that could possibly offend women, religions, and current events in the world, but it turned out that it became extremely popular with many people.

Ever since 1997, South Park has revolutionized the cable TV scene as a profane and obscene program that isn’t afraid to mock religious, political, and cultural topics and not get away with at least offending somebody. Throughout its twelve seasons, some of the most prominent events in pop culture have suffered the wrath of ridicule from the show’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, and succeeded in making millions of Americans laugh until they cry. The creative genius behind these cultural and controversial statements has exalted the series to iconic status in our entertainment industry for its satirical voice in each episode. Throughout its ten years on air, South Park has broken multiple political,

South Park, the animated TV series aired on Comedy Central was created by Matt Stone and Trey Parker and is one of the many new shows that involve animation with high-level adult comedy that parodies current events going on across the United States and throughout the world. South Park is just one of many new shows that involve this sort of high end entertainment and they are taking the television ratings by storm. This show, along with others of its nature such as Family Guy, The Simpsons, and King of the Hill are all extremely controversial in nature and in regards to the situations portrayed on the television screen. These shows have gotten consistently more obnoxious, racial, and detrimental

South Park is a television show that was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It circumvents the lives of 4 boys namely Eric Cartmen, Kenny McCormick, Stan Marsh and Kyle Broflovski around the town of Colorado. This show mainly aims at picking up various stereotypes in different societies and making fun of them. It is highly racist and makes fun of different genders and performs the act of gender

South Park began airing in 1997. The commercials that preceded it gave the impression of it being another stupid cartoon; however, when I began watching, I realized important issues were being covered through the repeated behaviors and actions of its characters, through the influences these actions could have on the viewers, through the reinforcement and rejections of certain stereotypes, through the long-term effects that could result from watching the program, and through its reflection of social reality.

In this article, the author Devin Leonard discusses the success of South Park. South Park attracts 3.1 million viewers an episode which is Comedy Central’s highest-rated program; it is more than the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In 2006, South Park generated $34 million dollars in advertising revenue. In 1999, when Paramount released South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, a film by where the main characters find their way into an R-Rated film called Terrance and Phillip. The movie was nominated for Academy award for best song- “Blame Canada” and the film had a gross income of $83 million dollars at the box office. After the South Park movie, viewers and critics were looking forward to the satiric take through episodes based on current events such as 9/11 and the release of the movie Passion of the Christ. Devin Leonard has a passive tone in the article, seems Pro-South Park and is an editor for Fortune Magazine. I will use this in my paper to show the statistics of how popular South Park really is and to prove that viewers think the way the material or crude language presented in South Park is relevant

William Young and South Park In a society that is always changing and trends that affect our community, South Park reflects

The difference between the intended meaning of media texts and what the audience actually perceives can be shockingly different. Producers of media can do everything possible to force audiences to experience their work in the way they want them to, but in the end they still take away many different meanings even within the same audience. Stuart Hall outlines this in his encoding and decoding model. One of the most apparent examples of this is the television show South Park. The television show South Park is a media text with the producers’ preferred meaning of being decoded as joke or as being satire, but many audience members take an oppositional stance of taking it seriously. This is clear from the examples of controversy when South Park aired episodes focused on Scientology, red-headed people, and Islam. Through these examples it is demonstrated that the producers of media have less power compared to the audience in determining the meaning of media.

The often-ridiculous situations in the sitcoms provided opportunities for the script wrights to apply their humors and creativities to the lines of the characters. Therefore, new terms are created and find their fast ways to fame through the worldwide broadcast. The production that will be taken as examples in this essay is the famous American situation comedy “How I Met Your Mother”, which was produced by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas and the well-known series of the animated sitcom “The Simpsons”. American lifestyle, culture and existing social phenomena are reflected in satire ways within their particular word choices and innovations of new