What's up Wisecrack? Jared here.
Today I come to you as a red-blooded ‘Merican to talk to you about America’s 2nd biggest
export behind diabetes: freedom "America f**k yeah"
The current season of South Park has so-far covered immigrant detention camps, big weed,
Chinese censorship, and now anti-vaxxers.
"We can't even risk a .1% chance of vaccinations making our children artistic" It seems Matt
Stone and Trey Parker are reflecting on the complexities of life, liberty, and the pursuit
of ‘tegridy.
So welcome to this Wisecrack quicktake on Freedom n’ Tegridy in South Park Season
23.
And spoilers ahead for the first three episodes
Alright guys, let’s do a recap of the season thus far.
Last season, Randy, incensed by a picture of a dog’s butthole, fled South Park with
his family to escape all the commotion and stress of city life and become a simple weed
farmer full of ‘tegridy.
In the first episode of this season, Tegridy Farmsis losing customers after people start
growing their own weed.
So Randy does what any reasonable person would do and tries to bully the government into
banning the practice.
That doesn’t work, so he decides to become a terrorist and off the competition while
Kyle and Cartman rot in a detention camp.
In the 2nd episode, Randy tries to expand his business to China along with Disney and
the NBA.
Selling weed gets him in trouble, until he manages to woo the Chinese government by assassinating
Winnie the Pooh.
Having given up even more of his ‘tegridy, he makes a killing selling to the new Chinese
market.
Finally, in the latest episode, Randy gloats about his China-fueled riches, while his family
bemoans the farm life and Randy’s increasingly broken moral compass.
Meanwhile, Cartman refuses to get vaccinated by running around like a singular feral hog.
The two big questions that South Park is struggling with seem to be: 1) How do we navigate one
person’s freedom interfering with another’s?
And 2) What does it mean to be free in an increasingly globalized, commodified world?
Let’s start with the first one.
Randy’s continued residence at tegridy farms speaks to the question of freedom: embedded
into most peoples fantasy of moving away from civilization to do some honest work is the
idea that in our current lives we are not free.
We are burdened by PTA meetings, home owners associations, and soul-crushing work.
The show has centered itself on ‘tegridy farms so thoroughly that it’s even replaced
the traditional South Park intro.
But as it turns out, moving to a farm isn’t quite a magic bullet for living freely.
Behind many of the issues of the latest season is a basic political problem.
As political theorists, economists, and anyone who has been around someone eating Durian
can attest to: sometimes, someone else’s freedom infringes on your freedom.
If, for instance, one has a right to do with their private property as they choose, then
my desire to build a 100-foot statue of Keanue Reeves that blocks your garden from the sun
might inhibit your right to enjoy home-grown peppers or whatever.
Governments everywhere grapple with this basic dilemma as they pass zoning laws, regulate
businesses and make sure their citizens don’t kill each other.
This question gets especially interesting with a free market, something this season
is keenly interested in.
The idea of a free market, as the name suggests, is its free.
Everyone is trying to get rich while everyone else competes with them.
What could go wrong?
Well, this: "This is inumane, Diego is my gardener."
In the first episode, Randy takes up some good ol’ fashioned monopolistic behavior
and tries to ban people from growing their own weed.
This is a common tactic in the world: established companies and industries try to reduce new
competition by making the barrier to entry higher.
Less competition means you have a little more leeway in charging what you want.
So, for instance, if you’re a dentist, you don’t just want any asshole scraping people’s
teeth, because they could undercut your prices.
So you make a dental association and lobby the government to make teeth-scraping a hard
business to get into, with educational requirements and expensive licenses.
Now, these barriers can be a double-edged sword.
Technically it limits competition, but then again, do you really want some unlicensed
rando named Dr. Krentist drilling holes in your mouth?
The point is: markets uniquely encourage people to do things that limit other people’s freedoms
because, money.
This is all reflected in Stan’s bizarre speech against home-grown weed, as he tries
to win support through public safety concerns, "Unscrupulous growers could use cheap irrigation
and drown babies, oh come on."
Of course, this petty debate about weed- growing freedom is juxtaposed with the much bigger
problem of freedom for kids in detention centers.
This idea of conflicting freedoms comes back in the 2nd episode, “Band in China - where
free acts by private corporations intersect with a not-so free government.
The episode criticizes the likes of Disney and the NBA for willing to bend backwards
to appease the Chinese government.
As Randy thinks he’s the first to realize China is an untapped market, he boards a flight
full of Disney characters and NBA players.
For context, Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted in support of the Hong Kong protests,
which is a problem for the NBA because they’ve been investing millions of dollars into growing
their Chinese fanbase.
Rockets games were swiftly removed from Chinese media and feeling the money slowly drain from
the bank account, the NBA officially apologized to China.
And Disney, along with other filmmakers, are under constant pressure to make their films
palatable to a massive chinese audience and not run afoul of the Chinese government.
Sometimes this means a rewrite or even editing a whole new version.
Notably, in the Chinese version of Iron Man 3, Tony Stark seeks medical care in China
in a scene that doesn’t exist in the US version.
Also in the episode, Stan struggles to maintain his integrity as a producer, and even a Chinese
general, pressure him into making a biopic that will appeal to Chinese audiences.
It’s likely a reference to the chinese version of Bohemian Rhapsody which cut out any reference
to homosexuality, which is kind of important..
So sure, you have a government clearly infringing the rights and freedoms of its citizens.
But what about the US?
This question is interesting because, technically, nobody is forcing Disney or the NBA to do
anything.
They, as a free actor on the global market, choose to work with China.
But in this basic act, is Chinese censorship trickling down to American citizens?
What if a private citizen tweets support for the Hong Kong protests and is then reprimanded
by his corporate overlords?
Blizzard, a US company, banned a non-American player from a tournament for voicing his support
of the Hong Kong protests.
We could say these US companies areacting in their own free self interests, but they
are also heavily incentivized to quash any kind of behavior not in line with the Chinese
government.
So what do we make of freedom then?
It’s a problem South Park might also uniquely understand considering its own history.
While not governments, plenty of American interest groups, usually representing family
values or something, have boycotted the show.
The logic is the same: if you’d like to make money off of our community, you have
to appease our community.
Not that South Park ever tried to go straight Blizzard and get an Evangelical audience.
In fact, their solution seems to be what they’ve always done, to take responsibility - but
we’ll get to that later.
Last Wednesday’s episode also tackles a central issue surrounding conflicting freedoms:
the right of anti-vaxxers to be dumb, and the right of anyone else to not get polio.
Cartman, afraid of shots, conjures up a series of dumb talking points to not get vaccinated.
"I told this school, I said look you guys, I happen to have religious, moral or philisophical
convictions."
Meanwhile, everyone else in the town is worried about the danger he and other unvaccinated
kids pose to the community.
Making choices about our health is a cornerstone of American rhetoric about freedom.
If I want to eat cheeseburgers everyday and get the ‘beetus when I’m 35, well god
dammit, that’s my right as anAmerican.
It’s similar rhetorically to the feminist slogan “my body, my choice,” which not-so-subtly
adorns Cartman’ shirt.
Of course, the argument goes, my future case of the beetus isn’t hurting anyone but myself,
and maybe my friends and family.
But vaccines are different, because vaccines stop the spread of communicable diseases.
You might say, “well just get the vaccine and don’t worry about me,” but vaccines
aren’t 100% effective, they work through herd immunity "everyone has to follow protocolo
r it puts everyone at risk." and then there’s people who are too young, sick, or allergic
to be vaccinated who are put at risk when too many people opt out of vaccinations.
So if, for me, freedom is walking around free from fear of dying from a preventable disease,
those opposed to getting vaccinated are going to really fuck up my day.
So what are we supposed to do when we want to live free with integrity, but have to deal
with conflicting pressures?
Whether about making money or yielding to government control?
Based on the resolution of the most recent episode, it seems Matt and Trey want us to
do something that South Park constantly preaches: take personal responsibility.
Cartman’s mom first tries to defer to others to get her son vaccinated, eventually leading
to a all-community vaccine roundup where Cartman will be lasso-ed, hogtied, and vaccinated.
She opts, instead, to take the needle for her son and get him vaccinated on her own
terms, to take responsibility as a mother.
Similarly, Randy’s schmoozing with China allegedly ends after he makes amends with
Towlie and emphatically says “fuck the chinese goverment."
This is in line with traditional South Park thinking.
In the movie, Bigger Longer and Uncut, the parents initially blame everyone from the
media to the Canadian government for the bad behavior their children exhibit after watching
the Terrence and Philip movie.
But it’s ultimately the responsibility of the parents to make sure their kids don’t
suck, not TV.
It could be implied then that South Park doesn’t want government intervention for China or
vaccines, but would prefer companies and people to simply do “the right thing” of their
own accord.
This is the show telling people like Blizzard, or the NBA, etc to step up and take responsibility.
A point made exceedingly clear in their psuedo-apology to china where they sarcastically opened their
hearts to Chinese censors because “we too love money more than freedom and democracy.”
There’s still so much of the season left, and so much potential for these ideas to develop.
There’s even a whole meta-textual thing going on with Randy constantly conflating
'tegridy farms with the show itself that doesn’t quite make sense yet.
But you can be sure we’ll be watching the rest of the reason with a close eye.
Thanks everyone for watching and listening to our South Park podcast.
Don’t forget to subscribe and be sure to visit Upstart.com/wisecrack.
Thanks for watching guys, peace.
[a]https://www.indiewire.com/2019/03/china-bohemian-rhapsody-cuts-gay-scenes-1202053796/