The 'South Park' Rules: How to do Taboo Comedy Without Getting Cancelled
Fire up your time machine
Dear Readers,
South Park is making waves again these days, so, since I’m off this week, I thought it’d be a good time to reprint this essay from about two years ago.
It will probably be new to you, and the topic will remain current as long as South Park remains a cultural force.
All the best,
Ted
Today many jokesters take precautionary measures against cancel culture. They self censor. They avoid the thorniest of topics or at least exhibit extreme caution around them.
Then there’s South Park.
Since its debut in 1997, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have poked the bear. Whether it’s race, sex, religion, trans issues or #MeToo, they keep on poking. And nearly three decades later, they still haven’t gotten mauled. In fact, the duo seems mightier than ever.
Even Parker and Stone can’t really explain their supernatural run. Can anyone?
Yes, of course, being really funny is a prerequisite. And some suggest their power comes from their decision to make fun of everything or because they make the suits lots of money.
All of that explains part of the magic, but not all of it.
The mystery leaves show creators and comedians who want to indulge in some real blasphemy—as opposed to another set about how they fled mom and dad’s Christianity—in a strange spot.
South Park offers a giant, yet rather inscrutable, example of how to succeed with dangerous comedy.
I’m mostly groping in the dark too, but gather round, you ambitious youngsters. As far as I can tell, here are South Park’s rules for cancel culture immunity:
Be really funny
Make fun of everything
Make industry gatekeepers wealthy
Get famous before 2013
Sorry up-and-comers, #4 is going to be tough for you to achieve. And what’s so special about 2013 you ask?
That’s about the time The Maddening began.
Teen anxiety and depression shot up. Race relations, which had been chugging along quite well for years, suddenly got much worse. Innovations like “liking” and “retweeting” turned social from a mostly harmless novelty into a tool that allowed online mobs to burn witches and torch dissenters.
The Maddening changed gatekeepers’ calculations the same way smoking changes life insurance premiums. Higher risk requires higher reward. As certain types of comedy grew riskier, studios, networks, distributors, and others demanded higher financial rewards.
Present day South Park is a guaranteed cash cow, and that allows the show to pass Hollywood’s benefit-cost test. But imagine Trey and Matt as newbies pitching Comedy Central or Paramount.
Do you think execs would greenlight South Park today?
Before you answer, keep in mind that we now live in a time when a New York Times columnist calls out a cartoon skunk for fomenting rape culture.
Rule #4 also helps explain why Dave Chappelle’s career has not been assassinated. Like the South Park guys, he had the foresight to get famous before The Maddening.
That’s not to say that younger comedians and show creators aren’t taking risks. They certainly are, but they generally perform their acts of heresy within the parameters established by modern fundamentalists. Is South Park’s massive success spawning post-Maddening offspring the way monoculture-approved shows like The Daily Show have?
From Trevor Noah to Hasan Minhaj, Jon Stewart’s progeny represent the shallow modern-day conception of diversity: people who look differently, but think the same. Stewart elevates the careers, of not just minorities, but minorities who agree with him politically.
From Netflix to NBC, other gatekeepers exhibit similar self-referential hiring practices. The result is that unproblematic Indian comedians like Minhaj (his recent embellishment-related controversy is a separate matter) and Lilly Singh are more likely to get that big break over their problematic compatriots like my one-name Gen Z comedian friend Surbhi.
Another young, minority comedian who probably wouldn’t get a second look from Stewart is Chris Lee. In 2015, I interviewed the South Park-inspired college student funnyman for my documentary Can We Take a Joke?
Lee explained how the political filtering of comedians starts early. If he wanted paying college gigs (supported by student fees), he’d have to abide by the revisions to his act demanded by college administrators.
Imagine that. University administrators, perhaps the least funny people on earth, are helping to define the future of comedy!
Jay Leno prided himself on being an “equal-opportunity offender.” I used to roll my eyes at that term, but now I miss its practitioners. Leno left the Tonight Show in 2014, and since then late night comedians seem content to stick to the tedious “our team good, their team bad” script.
Younger comedians tend to abide by the unwritten rules. They didn’t watch the Dave Chappelle saga and conclude, like so many myopic commentators, that cancel culture doesn’t exist. No, they watched and wondered, “If someone as talented and powerful as Dave Chappelle nearly got offed, what chance do I have?”
In my interview with Surbhi, she explains how she and her peers react to the current climate. They tread lightly or avoid topics like trans issues, sexuality, Islam, and race. She points to unwritten rules like, “You cannot make jokes about any race that’s darker than you.”
Comedians know what will get them cancelled, and Surbhi says they adjust accordingly, “So I wouldn't say that people are getting booed off the stage more, but people are also, you know, doing risky stuff less.”
It makes you wonder: What will become of today’s up-and-coming Trey Parkers, Matt Stones, and Dave Chappelles?
If self-censorship persists, modern-day scolds might never need to target them.
Further Reading
Welcome to America, You're Cancelled: Indian Comedian Has the Last Laugh
America Wants Problematic Comedy: Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle Keep on Winning
Why Won’t Late Night Comics Rip Biden? Conventional wisdom can’t explain the groupthink
Why is Late Night Comedy One-Party Territory? Groupthink grips Colbert, Kimmel, and Fallon
And most important of all don't make fun of Mohammad or Islam. You kind of left that out.
Will we ever come back from The Maddening?