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South Park The Movie
"South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut" is sometimes savagely, inventively funny, and, therefore, for better or worse, will be mistaken for a comedy by many of the adults and journalists sure to take the bait and be outraged by it.
It isn't really a comedy, though. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, geeks through and through, have made the most political movie in quite a while, perhaps the most biting film ever about the hypocritical, irrational piety raging in America over the mostly false issue of wholesomeness, popular culture and children.
This movie really takes the wood to America's Morality Industry, the William Bennett - Bill Clinton - Tipper Gore- Joe Lieberman -led campaign so prevalent in journalism and politics. In this country, epidemic and graphic violence and abuse is tolerated, on-screen and off.
But when smutty language or pictures appear, Congress and our many other moral guardians go into meltdown. Kids are caught in the middle between their culture and the nuthouse atmosphere created by many of the people running their lives.
This defiantly subversive movie might send the legions of virtuous right over the edge. Any film that has the U.S. declaring war on Canada is off to a great start. The trouble begins when the South Park heroes finagle their way into a Canadian movie where they hear dirty words.
When they subsequently call their teacher a "butt-fucker" and worse, all hell literally breaks loose, including - here the movie is at its bitterest and most satirical - the insertion of an experimental "V-Chip" into Cartman's brain which causes an electric shock whenever he curses.
Thus a concerned nation - off-screen, our President argues with a straight face that V-Chips are an answer to high school massacres -- sets out to save its children's moral souls at any cost.
This movie flips the bird at pompous adult society in every imaginable graphic tasteless way possible. It's hard sometimes to know whether to laugh or cheeer as the movie goes after an array of irresistible targets - Disney, "Les Miz" Bill Gates, Brooke Shields, Winona Ryder, the Baldwins, Satan and God, teachers, parents who want everyone but themselves to take responsibility for the moral environments of their kids.
In a way "South Park" is too relevant and angry to be uniformly hilarious, and the eerie shadow of Columbine hovers over the movie.
But it is frequently a stitch, and its lever lets up in its savage pounding of the way so-called grown-ups and leaders posture and lie while invoking morality.
The film?s very existence totally exposes the insanity of Hollywood?s ratings system (this movie got an "R" rather than an "NC-17"? It violated every taboo imaginable, from ethic and religious stereotyping, to vile language and a score of references to anal, oral and bestial sex.) In scenes that could easily come from the movie itself, movie theaters all over the country have adopted stringent security procedures to keep the under-17 crowd out of "South Park." This includes the posting of extra ushers at the door to card moviegoers, as if any exposure to graphic language and scatological humor will damage the fragile young.
At the theater where I saw it, adolescents waiting outside easily got older kids and adults to go in with then, and others slipped in the door while the bored usher was yawning. By the weekend, of course, the movie will be all over the Net.
Which, of course, is exactly the point this Parker and Stone are trying to make.
"South Park" was always an idea that geeky people loved more than something many people watched or flocked to see. The series was a hit early on, but has flagged the last year or so.
But this movie is a crowning achievement for its makers. They really show up their mostly gutless, cowering counterparts in the entertainment industry. South Park goes out in a blaze of glory, not only because it?s funny and bizarre, but because it?s out at precisely the right moment, making the right point.
I refuse to believe that any sane person in their right mind would allow a child to see this.
Before you break out the naphtha, read on.
As an adult, i enjoyed the movie very much. it goes right to the heart of something that has bugged the hell out of me for many years: the lack of responsibility that parents take, or refuse to take, for their children.
Now, I'm by no means 'old' (I'm 29, to be exact) but the one thing I refused to get caught up in is the whole society/movie/tv/radio/Canada Blame Game.
Modern society has, I'm sorry to say, shifted its focus FAR, FAR away from the *proper* upbringing of our children. And the *worse* group is *not* the Moralists...oh no. It is the group that wants to throw out the baby with the bathwater, that wants to remove sane limits because 'limits' in and of themselves are 'bad'.
Are they? There are reasons why *children* should not be exposed to certain things, and they aren't that complicated: Children have limited experience. As adults it is *supposed to be* our job to allow them to grow long enough to have the *experience* to make good judgements.
It has *nothing* to do with intellect, rebellion or any other romantic notion. It has to do with a cold, hard truth that often escapes the average mind, but geek culture especially:
Every person the same age has the same amount of experience, regardless of intellect.
That is to say, that unless they are brain-damaged or suffer from mental illness, a 22yaer-old CEO has the same amount of practical, real-world survival experience as a 22-year old drummer in a garage band. They may excel at different disciplines, but overall they are on the same level.
Now, put a 12 year-old in a typical situation of a 22-year-old. No matter how *smart* they are, they lack the saavy that comes with the additional 10 years of life experience.
We are all smart here, and if we put our respective flag-wavings aside, you can see that there is merit to this.
*I* know that South Pak is a compelling look into the evils of society *as a whole* refusing to accept the responsibily laid upon them...especially today's career and goal oriented Dads and Moms, who feel it is perfectly OK to leave your 10 year-old unattended for 18 hours a day. If they tun out bad, the blame is easily shifted away from irresponsibe parents. If I had my way, the *parents* of those murderous Littleton boys would be dropping trou and grabbin' ankles...they are just as guilty, if not moreso. The kind of parents and their enabling society who feel that it is not *their* job to monitor the crap their kids watch on TV, the garbage they listen to, who the hell they hang out with and where they get things from that they as parents did not buy, or give them money to buy.
That's the messae behind the movie, cursing, killing, pandering and taboo-blasting aside.
I'm 29...I understand this. If I were 12-16, my understanding, or more to the point, what I did with that understanding, is another point entirely, and would most likely be to my detriment, and the detriment of others around me...simply because I just wouldn't know any better.
The South Park movie contains strong statements about the way parents in our country and society *should be* and I for one agree with the message 100%
That's why my kids, and any other person's kids I know who's parents will listen won't be getting anywhere near that movie.
Responsibility is a bitch. Parental responsibility is something I feel a lot of you here haven't faced yet, but when you do, and you know that the long-term existance of another life rests squarely on your shoulders, then you too will know just how much of a bitch responsibility is.
Go see South Park. Leave your little cousin at home.
-K
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
I dug up this review from the Childhood Action Project (A Christian group devoted to saving the children.) Needless to say, this review is almost as funny as the movie itself was.
Here's a choice quote from the review: "WARNING! This analysis is blunt. *South Park* is another movie straight from the smoking pits of Hell."