The twelfth and thirteenth episodes of South Park’s tenth season, “Go God Go” and “Go God Go XII”, work as pieces of comedy because they effectively uses humorous triangular formats. Both episodes satirize extremist behavior involving religion and atheism. The episodes usually show situations that involve the audience watching a humorous exchange between two parties. On occasion, the audience watches one character being made fun of, but overall the jokes involve the audience observing an exchange between two parties. The creator’s also use the characters to demonstrate their own beliefs and criticisms.
At the very beginning of the episode, there is already a humorous situation involving the audience’s observation of Cartman. Cartman paces in front of a video game store, desperately waiting for the Nintendo Wii, which will not come out for another three weeks. Eventually Cartman’s mother appears and tells her son that he needs to go to school. The relationship changes when
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Cartman’s mother is introduced. At first, the audience was simply watching Cartman behave impatiently in front of the store. After Cartman arrives, the relationship becomes triangular. Both Cartman and his mother are unaware that they are characters being watched. If this were an actual interaction between a mother and son, the situation would not be funny. However, when an audience is added it makes the situation humorous. Cartman and his impatient behavior are being made fun of in this situation, but he is unaware that he is being laughed at. Throughout the episode, Cartman is involved in more interactions that involve relationships between three groups.
Cartman begs his friends Stan, Kyle, and Kenny to help him freeze himself so he does not have to endure waiting for the Wii to come out. In this interaction Cartman is deadly serious and the boys are horrified because they know that Cartman’s plan would result in his death. None of the boys find the situation funny. However, it is funny to the audience; even though Cartman is absolutely serious about his plan, the audience recognizes how ridiculous his idea is. The same applies to the scene involving Cartman and Butters. As Butters helps Cartman follow through with his plan, the audience would find the situation funny. Cartman believes that his plan makes absolute sense and Butters is only trying to help, unaware of how idiotic the plan is. This is what makes the scene funny. If either Cartman or Butters were to find humor in the situation, it would not be amusing to the
audience. While Cartman is obsessing over his Nintendo Wii, Mr. Garrison is protesting over having to teach evolution in his class. Similar to Cartman’s plot, Mr. Garrison’s interactions involve several relationships that involve three parties. Mr. Garrison argues with Principal Victoria and Mr. Mackey over having to teach the subject. When he is forced to teach evolution to his class, he does a terrible job. In both these scenes, Mr. Garrison is the one being made fun of as he interacts with the faculty and his students. The audience is able to identify that Mr. Garrison’s actions are extreme and they find humor in the behavior that the show is poking fun at because they can watch it from a distance. After Mr. Garrison’s outburst, Richard Dawkins, a real-life scientist and well-known atheist, arrives in the show. The first scene involving Mr. Garrison and Richard Dawkins follows the familiar triangular format. Mr. Garrison proceeds to defecate and throw his feces at Richard Dawkins, after arguing with him in class. The situation is not funny to either Mr. Garrison or Richard Dawkins, but it is humorous for the audience because they can laugh at the character’s expense. Since the audience is not directly involved, they can find humor in the disgusting situation. After that scene involving Mr. Garrison and Richard Dawkins, the episode begins to get more complicated. On the surface the scenes involving Mr. Garrison and Richard Dawkins seem like more scenes that depict Mr. Garrison acting ridiculous. However, there is much more that is occurring in these interactions. An example of this would be during Mr. Garrison and Richard Dawkins’ dinner date. As Dawkins tries to convert Mr. Garrison to atheism, he asks if Mr. Garrison would believe in “a flying spaghetti monster” if Dawkins claimed it existed. There are two things that are occurring when Mr. Garrison replies, “Yes, it all makes sense. God is a flying spaghetti monster! Thank you, Richard!” On the surface the situation is funny to the audience because Mr. Garrison is able to switch sides so easily. However, the creators of the show are simultaneously using the scene to make a commentary on the use of that type of argument against religion. Through Mr. Garrison, the creators are able to strip the argument down in order to make it sound ridiculous and also to point out that the situation is really not that simple. Another triangular relationship occurs when Mr. Garrison and Richard Dawkins are lecturing in class. During the lecture Mr. Garrison states that God does not exist. However, Stan argues that that the theory of evolution does not necessarily disprove the existence of God. This is another triangle relationship. In this particular one, Stan is the one that the audience would side with. At that moment he is the voice of reason and remains open to more than one idea. However, Mr. Garrison angrily overreacts and insults Stan. Mr. Garrison is the one being made of in this situation. As the audience watches the exchange between Stan and Mr. Garrison, they can find humor in his outrageous behavior as well as his inability to reason.
South Park is an animated TV series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, which first aired on Comedy Central in 1997. The show features four boys Eric Cartman, Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Kenny McCormick. South Park has been seen as one of the most controversial shows due to its raunchy humor and obscene depiction of characters in the show. South Park deals with many current issues in the news surrounding anything from in politics to religion. In dealing with these issues South Park involves adult comedy that parodies current issues going on in the United States and around the world. South Park also uses many other rhetorical deceives, such as
“The Onion’s” mock press release on the MagnaSoles satirical article effectively attacks the rhetorical devices, ethos and logos, used by companies to demonstrate how far advertisers will go to convince people to buy their products. It does this by using manipulative, “scientific-sounding" terminology, comparisons, fabrication, and hyperboles.
"No one is born a racist bigot. In other words, racial bigotry or racial prejudice is not genetically or
Comedian Jon Stewart gives a speech on the Daily Show during the “Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear”. He wants the viewers of the Daily Show to realize the difference between the real and fake threats and to take a humorous perspective on most of America’s “problems”. Stewart also emphasizes to his audience not to take every person on the media by his word and not to overreact to everything they hear. He uses metaphors, comparisons, and hypothetical examples to get his point across.
It was hilarious whenever Fred Sanford of the hit series Sanford and Son used to fake his heart attack saying that famous phrase, “I’m coming Elizabeth” or what about him telling Aunt Ester how ugly she was. No one took that type of comedy to the heart and it was intended to hurt no one. It was all for a laugh. Now in today’s time there are new shows on television such as The Chapelle Show, which is hosted and directed by the comedian Dave Chapelle. The object of this show seems to be how much fun he can make of a different race. Times have changed and so have peoples’ since of humor. People went from the laid-back type sitcoms such as Sanford and Son, The Three Stooges, and The Little Rascals, which are all types of shows that people can watch with their entire family, to shows even adults feel turned away from. Some examples include The Chapelle Show and In Living Color.
The movie , “The Great Debaters”, was produced by Oprah Winfrey and directed by Denzel Washington, the movie was written based on a true story, the movie revolving around the efforts of a debate coach and his team to be recognized among white debating teams, such as Harvard University. In a time, when the Jim Crow laws were common in the South and lynching mobs were around, the debate team coach Melvin B. Tolson, helped raise his debate team of young black students to the top.
Using exaggeration, irony or ridicule to expose and criticize people's aspects of society. Satire is the theme of “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving. The Institution of marriage, Organized religion/religious types, and the white establishment and respect in white males. These all are contradictory in the story.
Humor can come in many different forms. Many people are aware of the blatant humor of slapstick, but it takes a keener mind to notice the subtle detail in sarcasm or satire. In A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift was able to create a piece of literature addressing the faults of the Irish culture while embedding in a humorous essay. Swift’s satire allows for the gravity of the Irish standings to be exploited under the disguise of a proposal for economic benefit.
South Park contains adult language, animated violence, and very suggestive material (episode titles such as "Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson", "Not without My Anus" or "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut" are just the tip of the iceberg). Every race, religion or culture is made fun of or stereotyped. One viewing, and the watcher will either love it or want it taken off the air. Many viewers think that these rude boys are worth their time.
In the satirical article from The Onion, the author satirically criticizes the methods that advertisers use, and the gullible consumers who purchase their products, in order to urge advertisers to use better methods, and for consumers to read between the lines a bit more.
According to McClennen however, all mirror images of satire might not be beneficial. She believes that shows such as South Park and The Simpsons, which are not afraid to attack anything, do not lead to any kind of positive political discourse. This is because they provide negative critique that does not offer the elements required from an effective public pedagogy (McClennen 74). Theodore Gournelos, the author of The Tao of South Park: Dissonant Visual Culture and the Future of Politics refutes McClennen´s claim by arguing that eventhough South Park does not directly intervene with policy making or legislative initiatives, it forms a social landscape in which we challenge the status quo. He continues by saying that ”conflict-oriented cultural productions like South Park suggest an arra...
John Marwood Cleese, an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer said, “If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth”. The point he brings up is the ideology of satire. Satire, by definition, is a technique utilized by writers to expose and criticize foolishness and corruption of an individual or a society. This can be done by using humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule ("Satire - Definition and Examples", para.1). Often times, the humor used opens the audiences’ minds to the underlying problem that the writer is trying to reveal. By examining the purpose and methods of satire, dissecting literary works, and displaying examples in the media, satire is shown to be a valuable tool.
Comedy differs in the mood it approaches and addresses life. It presents situations which deal with common ground of man’s social experience rather than limits of his behaviour – it is not life in the tragic mode, lived at the difficult and perilous limits of the human condition.
South Park is widely regarded as a contentious television program, but the season thirteen episode “The F Word” “was remarkable for breaking with the usual satirical format and proposing serious arguments for reconstructing the language we use to describe homosexuality” (Schulzke, 2012, p. 24). In his article on South Park, Schulzke argues that one of the show’s few unambiguous social positions is its stance on equal treatment for homosexuals, and that this specific episode makes a credible case to change how the word “fag” is defined and used. Many examples across multiple seasons, starting in the fourth episode, are explored to show the position that the program has taken on equality of rights and treatment for homosexuals. Later, when discussing “The F Word”, he suggests that although the writers may not have known it, they use multiple concepts, such as “meaning as use” and “social construction of meaning” (Schulzke, 2012, p.28) in an attempt to look at and redefine the hate word, and then acknowledge that the final value of a word comes from the linguistic community. Also suggested is the strength of the message inside of the episode, namely, that the multiple repetitions of the theme, whether blatantly stated by the characters or shown more subtly through different segments should more than suffice to display the message of the episode to a large majority of viewers.
If I were to write a film concerning women and sports, first of all I think I'd make it a comedy. I think sometimes it is easier to convey serious thoughts through a comedy, because the viewer doesn't feel so tangled up in the emotion of drama, leaving them laughing and in a good frame of mind to consider the points being made by the film after they watch the film. I think this idea is much akin to the idea that it is easier to discuss issues and problems of race and gender through a forum like film because a person can identify with an idea being expressed without having to take responsibility for the authorship of the idea. I think that a comedy is more capable of providing a powerful ending because the viewer isn't expecting it.