We have a genuine crisis on our hands, friends. An entire generation of young, upwardly mobile, educated youths with an interest in current affairs has been reduced to the sole conversation topic ‘have you seen that episode of South Park where X happens to Y…?’
No. No I bloody haven’t. Or maybe I have, and I don’t remember. Or maybe I have, and I do remember, but I have better conversation topics hiding up my sleeve than retelling often half-arsed, visually based jokes that everyone’s already heard the punch-line to.
I’d hate to be mistaken. South Park is often funny. Or rather, South Park is sometimes funny. South Park is a bit hit and miss: there’s a statement we can agree on. For example, only ‘I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die’ grasps the ludicrous nature of menstruation, in the face of science and history. 1-0, South Park. But vast swathes of it are not nearly as funny as the show has been given credit for.
Did you watch last weeks episode of South Park when the spirit of Michael Jackson possessed the body of a kid and they had to all like, go to a pageant and like, dress him up as a girl cuz that’s all he ever wanted in life and stuff? How totally not particularly funny was THAT? The best thing about it was ‘chipotlaway’. Just to recap, the single most humorous aspect of a half hour comedy show which enjoys cult status is a pun and a reference to terrible product naming.
To be honest with you, were it not for the fact that it is the single most dropped name in adolescent male conversation, bar maybe Megan Fox, I wouldn’t have quite such an issue with South Park: at least it’s topical, verging on satirical. Worse still are the dickheads who ask me, ‘have you seen that episode of Family Guy when X happens to Y…?’
Where South Park claws back some points, Family Guy absolutely lets them slip again. The show is not topical, nor is it serial. There is no running plot, so how can it possibly warrant going out of your way to watch each week? Peter fighting with a chicken? Yeah, that jokes not going anywhere is it? It’ll still be funny when I watch it accidentally on TV in eight months time.
On the other hand that joke haltingly described is really not funny. A primarily visual medium, with a long set up and a large amount of slapstick will never be one for the dinner party chat, it simply doesn’t translate. To the perpetrators: that really grinds my gears.
What I shall dub the ‘havvyawatched’ culture isn’t simply irksome, but it full on frightens me crapless. South Park has had an enormous, but overlooked cultural impact; the ‘Chewbacca defence’ used in an early episode has been used subsequently by a number of criminologists, political commentators and forensic scientists, to describe similar deliberately confusing tactics in legal courts.
This suggests that in the legal offices of an attorney somewhere, a group of well paid professionals are sitting at a consultation table saying, ‘did you watch that episode of South Park where they use the Chewbacca defence? Lets totally see if that works’. Not merely that, but the forensic scientists are saying the same thing followed with ‘is that what they’re doing here?’. Imagine, if you haven’t already put the paper down to google the episode, an entire legal system built by our tragicomic generation who think merely in terms of past shows. I envision a terrible courtroom in which a man in a wig stands up and postulates: ‘Your Honour, have you watched that episode where my defendant killed him? No? Nobody has? I rest my case’.
Our ‘havvyawatched’ compatriots are all intelligent, with a good sense of humour, and some grasp of current affairs: a dream singles ad, if you will. Looking for: other people to quote at. Actual conversation not required. Banter provided, courtesy of Parker and Stone. These avid watchers are more than capable of coming up with funnier concepts than ‘fish sticks’, but our feckless generation provides a network of laziness, so that at least once a week, they can fall back on the bad-taste jokes, and know that someone will laugh along.
If that’s what you’re looking for sweet-cheeks, just join the bloody AU.
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