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I love South Park, but damn, the Mr Garrison trans episodes are just, ahhhhhhhhhggggggggggg.
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I’m neurodivergent, and I laugh in many instances South Park made fun of neudivergent and mentally disabled people. I’m Latin American, South Park made fun of latin americans so many times. I’m progressive, South Park made fun of progressives so many times. I’m atheist, same thing. I’m bisexual, same thing, I could go on.
The problem with the Mr Garrison episodes is that, they are so viscerally transphobic, it is very obviously made in such bad faith.
Of course they are not the worse thing depicted in South Park, but yeah, a show with the objective to be as offensive as possible gotta hit somewhere in a very personal point eventually.
I don’t think anyone should take Mr. Garrison’s arc to heart. They did kinda point out in an earlier episode that Mr. Garrison isn’t what he thinks he is. He’s not gay, trans or anything else in that direction.
He’s messed up. And that’s all he is and all he’s supposed to be. At least that’s my take-away from the show.
Sadly, that’s not enough, just as Jaws did damage to shark conservation and The Silence of the Lambs did damage to Trans acceptance, even though it’s super clear Buffalo Bill is not conventionally trans but his own special kind of crazy.
Then again, our love for police procedurals and serial killer mysteries does damage to mental health awareness and police brutality awareness. Also judicial overreach. (Lots of false convictions.)
For sure. I was mostly hoping that people don’t feel like the show makes a personal comparison to them.
The masses, on the other hand, require disturbingly little to push them over the edge. As you pointed out with Jaws and Silence. Hell, the amount of people that can’t distinguish between actor and character is astounding.
He’s messed up. And that’s all he is and all he’s supposed to be. At least that’s my take-away from the show.
This in and of itself is part of the problem: It’s a common terf talking point. Trans people don’t exist they just have a mental health problem.
Ultimately the South Park moral comes down to change is bad. Let’s keep the status quo.
And that’s what I find offensive. To be fair, The Simpsons does the same thing, as does Family Guy
As does most society critical content that makes it to television.
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Then I may have been successfully trolled.
Still, the status quo message is consistent through the whole series and is a frequent theme for Kyle’s speech at the end of an episode. It’s also a strong theme of Team America. I can’t speak their other Matt and Trey’s other works.
As is tradition.
I think those “both sides” shows have to go out of their way to find things to make fun of in certain circumstances. So they feel forced to charicature or misrepresent those groups in order to make any proper humor. On the audience side people who buck the status quo are held under the same scrutiny as people who are rapidly climbing the discrimination pipeline.
If you have to go out of your way to find (or invent) a joke, you haven’t found the right angle on it. Satire is qualitatively different to bullying.
Shows like South Park are at their most funny when the contrivances are kept to a minimum, or are so absurd that they’re obviously farcical. The best satire is when they’re teasing their target *and* their target’s detractors at the same time.
There are so many other takes they could have made. (I’d give examples, but I’m too prudish to say 'em.)
Matt and Trey are the sort of shitpost wizards who’d be the coolest guys on some dead forum if they didn’t happen to work for Paramount. They were doing the same transgressive edgelord nonsense fueling the best worst Flash animations on Newgrounds. They just did it on television.
It’s important to recognize how things catch on when people are told “no.” Busybodies insist video games are for children, so you get shocking excessive gore like Mortal Kombat. American distributors insist cartoons are for children, so you get a Christmas musical about a turd. Parents hound their kids about dial-up porn, so you get Rule 34. Suppress something widely-desired, and hey guess what, it doesn’t just go away. Those kids grow up and do whatever they want.
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They were in the industry the whole time. They didn’t just show up with a 16mm test print and leave with Isaac Hayes’ phone number. Orgazmo came out nearly the same day as South Park’s premiere.
Don’t forget the masterpiece that is Cannibal the Musical!
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Meanwhile Denise Bryson is on Twin Peaks being totally cool and never the butt of a joke
I love that agents Cooper try to understand her instead of freaking out.
Agent Dale Cooper is just that cool. Also Kyle MacLachlan is a super chill guy.
Also David Duchovny plays Denise as someone who’s just doing their job with honestly and competence.
fix your hearts or die
I wanna say King of the Hill is safe.
I watch that show its actually pretty safe outside of that one weird episode where bill hits rock bottom and thinks he’s his exwife though I don’t really think of that one as transphonic per se
There’s one episode with a drag queen, not trans. It’s pretty positive! She thinks Peggy is also a drag queen and they become best friends. It ends that way too.
That was such a wholesome episode. Peggy ultimately didn’t care when she found out. She was just happy to have a friend that she could relate to.
Thoughts on the episode where Bill pretended to be flamboyantly gay so he could work at a hip salon?
It’s been a while, but I felt like the episode poked fun at the stereotype of the clownishly flamboyant gay man and the belief that gay = fashionable. I think Queer Eye was big around that time and sort of pushed that idea, too. So yeah, not really making fun of gay people as much as making fun of popular culture and the sort of “gay chasers”, I guess.
Maybe I’m misremembering, but i hope not.
I think both of your views are pretty on point. I just wanted to point out that they did use (feigned?) queerness as a plot point.
I, unfortunately, remember when all of my peers called things they thought were stupid g**. And everyone they didn’t like were f*gs.
We’ve got a long way to go, but we’ve made progress.
Scrubs and 30 Rock too :(
Scrubs? That sucks. No episodes come to mind, do you happen to remember which one(s)?
I mentioned this further down the thread, but Scrubs is full of micro aggressions.
I mean, pretty much the very first joke in the series is JD asking Turk if he’s allowed to say the N word.
There’s an episode where the theme is whether Turk is black.
As for trans-specific problems, Todd advertises his website with the T slur in it on his T-shirt one episode.
He’s also a prime example of bi-erasure as when he “comes out,” nobody says bi the whole episode, and it’s like the whole cast can’t conceive of someone liking both men and women. Not to mention the bi stereotype that we’re all sexual deviants and overly promiscuous.
Frankly, I could go on for a while. Scrubs was fine for its time. It does not hold up well. Shame because it was my favorite show for a very long time. But I’m glad society has grown.
blank in one’s armor.
I’m seeing that as an on the nose joke about racism, but it doesn’t seem very offensive, and I’m not seeing anything about transphobia. Care to enlighten me?
It’s possible it was in season 9 since no one watched more than its first episode
There is no season 9.
I mean I’ve seen every one, but granted it’s been years. Nothing is jumping out at first remembering
Maybe something with the Todd? It would almost have to be if it’s there
Nah The Todd was great, they joked about him coming on strong but his sexuality was never the butt of anything meanspirited. As far as I recall his realization that he was bi was tasteful enough.
It’s Always Sunny did pretty good trans rep. Here’s a pretty good video essay on it, if that’d interest anyone :3
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Here’s a pretty good video essay on it, if that’d interest anyone :3
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Thanks, I watched the entire thing.
IT Crowd
I though you said you were from Iran.
But seriously I don’t think that episode was harmful.
Douglas is just a general asshole.
The character is an asshole AND that episode is transphobic. More telling is the creator (Graham Linehan) who is a vocal TERF. I don’t really want to pollute this space with his toxicity, but search if you’re curious.
Can you tell me what’s transphobic about it?
When I first saw it I would have thought it was trans-supporting, other than the detail that (IIRC) the trans woman was played by a cisgender woman.
The entire point of it is that the only thing that is stopping Douglas from being genuinely, incredibly happy, becoming a better person and living an actually fulfilling life in the end is his inability to accept a historical detail that had made absolutely no difference to his relationship. And, since Douglas might be the worst person in the world, we see him destroy that because of his own weird machismo values. Just when we think he’s completely changed as a character, his shittiness on this one thing, emblematic of his incredibly toxic masculinity, comes crashing down on him. This is, darkly, funny. We are abruptly reminded that Douglas is an actual monster, to the point of fist-fighting with the person he loves. “Character is briefly happy but previous behaviour and/or shittiness of their character ruins it for themselves” is like at like 30% of Linehan’s sitcom plotlines.
If there’s something I missed - and it’s been a few years, and thoroughly agree that Linehan’s subsequent behaviour justifies examining his previous work for ulterior motives - I would like to know it. Genuinely.
Nah I don’t think so. Episode kinda got me a bit attracted to the female character ngl and I’m a hetero guy.
More telling is the creator (Graham Linehan) who is a vocal TERF.
well sad to see/hear. But I’m still not convinced that the episode in its entirety is transphobic.
Probably not, but Graham Linehan is by now just one of the most rabid transphobes you can imagine. He threw away everything he had to be a bigger TER“F”
It’s the b-plot from what I recall, it’s not the main focus of the episode.
It was written long before his TERF days and so it’s not exactly hateful, just ignorant and it’s comparable to a lot of other ways comedy treated trans characters from the era - The League Of Gentleman was much, much worse than the IT Crowd imo, and that was a recurring character in every episode.
It’s rather the issue that while Matt Berry has distanced himself from the episode Linehan actually still defends it as pro-trans.
Twin Peaks is safe 🙏 Bless Denise
Caitlin Jenner deserves every minute of air time in South Park though. JS
Not to mention Randy and her music career
Shout outs to Lily Simpson for showcasing just how bad these shows really are.
?
I didn’t know either
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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getting back into arrested development and then getting to that episode
This is what I was thinking of. I didnt know where that image in my head was from, now I remember.
Futurama.
The one where Bender becomes a woman bot to participate in the robot Olympics, I’m guessing? That one was kind of rough watching with modern sensibilities last time I recall, especially with all these recent trans people in sports debates. Also the one where they go to the planet where they switch genders. Is there any others I’m forgetting?
There’s also the one where Bender is a pro wrestler, and becomes a cross-dressing heel. And there are recurring gags and side characters like the trans prostitutes. Overall, the show is fairly progressive, but some of those gags were problematic.
worth it for his wrestling name
Oh ya, I totally forgot about that one.
Yeah, that one too.
That’s why I love Star Trek
Instead it’s an episode thats either racist (early TNG) or ablist… as a trek fan even I recognize these shortcomings. Also I’m pretty sure I remember a transphobic episode? Somewhere in voyager I think…
I’ve seen sexism in early star trek before (like TOS), but I haven’t seen much ableism or racism yet. Is there a specific part you are referencing?
I was referencing TNG s1e4 (African stereotypes), s1e5 (Ferengi, especially early representation), DS9 s2e06 (ableism, see interview about stereotyping). The Voyager incident I don’t remember well, it may have been just quips about or enforcing gender norms, but I seem remember is being connected to Seven?
I’ve not actually seen any DS9 yet
I’d also brace for DS9 s6e9 (ableism/neurodivergent stereotyping). Anytime Bashirs background comes up it gets a bit dicey, I usually just skip them as they don’t add anything to the plot or character development that you wouldn’t get from a few sentence synopsis. DS9 is a worthwhile show, as it has wonderful characters with actual, moving, character development, a huge step forward compared to TNG.
I don’t remember notable instances, I mean TNG’s smartest (non-synthetic) crew member and chief engineer was a black man with a visual disability.
What really aged badly from TNG was the rampant sexism, and how weirdly horny it was.
I always got the sense that they were trying to promote sex positivity but didn’t know how.
of those American Dad is the only one I know has a non-transphobic trans episode. Namely the rollerderby one.
Meanwhile, Monty Python’s Life of Brian literally had a male character who identifies as female and everybody in the movie is cool with it
And John Cleese is now a transphobe. Go figure. (Other members are cool from what I’ve heard)
Terry Gilliam is also a transphobe.
Damnit, what did they do? They’re my favorite director :(
He’s basically just railed against cancel culture and what he sees as forced diversity in media. In the Chappelle vein, where they’ve convinced themselves they’re not transphobic, just against “censorship”.
Now, to be fair, Gilliam was always the most defiant, aggressively anti-establishment guy of a group who are all pretty anti-establishment. He’s very much made a career off of being transgressive and pushing back on those that tell him no. So this isn’t exactly unusual for him. “Cancel culture”, to a 70 year old man who made a name for himself by being anti-censorship at a time when you could barely curse on television, would certainly feel like a familiar type of “authority” that they’ve spent their whole careers defying.
That’s not an excuse, but it’s also why I stopped expecting better from the legacy entertainers of that time who are all pushing 80. They’ve progressed about as much as they’re going to in their lifetime. Just take away the microphone before they hurt themselves (or anyone else) because you’re not going to change them.
There’s also the lumberjack song…
Just like my dear Papa!
You can make the argument the joke there isn’t so much that being trans is weird or wrong, it’s in the juxtaposition between where it starts and where it ends up. The singer starts with a very masculine stereotype and shifts drastically into a feminine one to the point it confuses other masc stereotypes who reject him. The singer didn’t read the room and went way off the rails.
Not the best justification, I know, but it doesn’t feel especially hostile towards trans, just using it as an irresponsible punchline in a joke about traditional masculinity vs feminity, which was typical of the time.
Issues like this make me wonder: what’s acceptable to joke about now that future generations will find shameful? Any suggestions, folks?
Some people are starting to shift their opinions on it, but jokes about men being raped (especially in prison) are weirdly accepted.
You should be safe if you don’t make fun of others. It’s not necessary to ridicule a specific person or group to make a joke.
True. Generally speaking, punching down is not okay.
I’d hope it’d be things relating to our treatment of non-human animals. There’s a pretty good talk making that case (not so much in terms of jokes, but in general)
Another good one! Thanks!
I’m going to hope it’s about wanting to kill ourselves all the time, because if it becomes taboo I hope it’s because we have actually managed to make life better and thus suicide rates drop, but I honestly don’t know if we will get any better tbh
“There are no taboos against taking one’s life here,’ said the Night Haunter. ‘Many do. This is not a happy world. But it can be a better one. By killing yourself, you take the easy way out, you encourage others to do the same. You might think you add yourself to a statistic, but your self-murder is much more than that. Every suicide adds to the rot weakening your culture. Every life abandoned is a signal that change can never be effected. You throw your existence away, and in doing so lessen the value of humanity.”
Proceeds to de-skin suicidal woman slowly.
Heh, as someone who deals with suicidal ideation daily, our collective devaluation of humanity drives my disgust. While our planet burns, human civilizations embrace imminent extinction (and the irrelevance of all current culture) to preserve the current power hierarchy.
Nothing we do today will matter including those efforts to reduce the effects of a looming cataclysm and population correction until we collectively achieve a high threshold that significantly reduces its effects. Nothing in this case includes both my choice to kill myself and my choice to live another day.
This time doesn’t matter until a huge number of us decide to collectively make it matter.
Who is considered weird and or crazy?
That’s what I have a hard time with. Antivaxxers? Trump supporters? Callous billionaires? They all seem like fair game to me.
Antivaxxers? Trump supporters? Callous billionaires?
Science deniers and right wingers has never been on the right side of the history, so these you mentioned will be remembered as the idiots they are, and Billionaires will continue to exist but will be remembered but not in the Star Trek name dropping Elon Musk kind of way, but in the way we remember other idiotic and callous billionares from a century ago.
In the case of previous groups, it’s usually persecuted and marginalized groups. So I don’t think that fits.
I’m already seeing terms like “stupid”, “dumb”, “crazy” and other terms to refer to conditions people didn’t choose, especially mental ones, being used less and frowned upon occasionally. So maybe “crazy/insane” if we actually recognize it wildly as an issue or treat it.
Online? I’m seeing a lot more hate and memes against furries cropping up that I hope goes away. Not that that’s new, but I think it’s shifting towards them since it’s become unacceptable in most circles to denigrate sexual and gender identities.
Otherwise I think the question is: Who is society denigrating that is both a marginalized group and not actively/actually harmful?
The thing with stupid/crazy is inevitably a euphemism treadmill more than any meaningful shift. We still need to deal with people who make absolutely terrible decisions in ways that are both shockingly unexpected and predictably exploitable. Calling those people “wild” instead of the r-word won’t change that they dislocated their skeleton doing some obviously pointless stunt for momentary clout.
Furries is a good one. There’s definitely a lot of hate. “My coworker’s daughter said they were talking about putting litter boxes in the classrooms!”
Think about the words you and other people use and what they actually mean. Are you using a word that refers to a certain group of people who are part of some marginalised group? “Gay” used to be a very common insult, particularly in South Park. What about “lame”, “dumb”, “tard”, etc.
Going to throw this out there: self identification as a member of racial/ethnic/cultural group will become a hot button. Right now the left screams “cultural appropriation!” when this happens. But appropriating another gender is somehow okay. There’s a real mismatch here in logic, and at some point in the future this will flip. Like, currently it’s okay for me to say “I identify as a woman” but not “I identify as a black woman”. How does that even make sense?
I think that’s mostly an American thing: they think that their “racial” categories are the same thing as ethnicity, and since race is defined by racists (who believe that it’s an innate inherited trait), it’s constrained by them too.
“I was born French, but now I consider myself Corsican.” is an uncommon but perfectly normal thing in Europe.
American racism is just absurd, even by racism standards. That absurdity even influences American anti-racism.
