Most of the best episodes of “South Park” meet two key criteria: they satirize at least two completely unrelated things, and they focus on Eric Cartman.
This formula works because “South Park” is at its funniest when at its most absurd and most biting. The punches its creators refuse to pull almost always land magnificently (case in point: the show’s ongoing mockery of Kanye West).
The season 18 premiere, “Go Fund Yourself,” goes above and beyond these criteria. In just more than 20 minutes, the episode manages to rip on the Washington Redskins, the NFL, Kickstarter and Apple. That’s a pretty broad cultural palate to work from, but Matt Stone and Trey Parker masterfully weave these disparate cultural touchstones together.
The episode’s spotlight clearly shines brightest on Cartman, whose quest to kickstart the ultimate do-nothing startup company forms the basis for the plot. Nonetheless, Stan and Kyle are given an amusing and relatively purposeful subplot which makes the episode significantly more balanced than last season’s (still amusing) premiere, “Let Go, Let Gov.”
“Go Fund Yourself” begins by mocking the increasing meaninglessness of the term “startup company,” which in the day and age of Kickstarter has come to include projects like making a bowl of potato salad. In satirizing the nature of many Kickstarter projects, however, South Park pushes an even broader message about the absurdity of Kickstarter itself. The show makes some intriguing criticisms of a business model in which people pay a website to do, in some instances, essentially nothing. Whether you agree with this view of Kickstarter or not, it’s pretty damn funny to watch Stan and Kyle register their own startup, “Furry Balls Plopped Menacingly on the Table, Inc.” Moreover, Cartman’s Apple-style press conferences in which he tells a cheering crowd to “go f*** yourselves!” comes hauntingly close to the feeling of Apple’s actual recent unveiling of the iPhone 6 and iWatch.
The episode’s critique of the NFL is similarly poignant, though it may boil down to little more than “we should not care about NFL team names, and Roger Goodell is a moron.” It’s a pointed argument which is perhaps equally debatable, though not quite as thought-provoking, as the parody of Kickstarter. The show’s realistic visual portrayals of real-world NFL figures like Redskins owner Daniel Snyder are a nice touch, in contrast to other episodes’ creation of a generic character to symbolize a larger organization (the Treasury Department, for instance, in the classic “Margaritaville”).
It’s worth noting this episode continues the “South Park” trend of magnifying the scale of the boys’ schemes. Where once something like a detective agency might be made of cardboard boxes and other repurposed materials, now Cartman has a fully developed store-front office. This doesn’t really impact the humor of the episode, but it’s a stylistic departure from the show’s earlier days when the boys were left with more sparse, realistic resources.
Small grievances aside, this is a strong start for the season. Nearly two decades on, “South Park” still manages to crank out satire as sophomoric as it is profound. Hopefully the momentum of “Go Fund Yourself” will continue through the next nine episodes of the season.
Read More
Early Visions at The Fralin facilitates creativity through artistic mentorship
By Delaney Coppola | YesterdayThe 10 week-long after-school program brings together children from the Boys and Girls Club of Central Virginia with University student-artistic mentors.
Around the world in three stories — recommendations from Language House residents
By Gretel Brown | 2 days agoThese works of international fiction — all originally written in languages other than English and set in countries other than the United States — are the perfect getaway for students looking to put the semester behind them.
The Filmmakers Society is the heart of student filmmaking on Grounds
By Zachary Geller | 4 days agoThe Filmmakers Society, or FMS, is the University’s only filmmaking-based Contracted Independent Organization.
