SOUTHPARK

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South Park

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

South Park
Format	Animated Sitcom
Run time	approx. 0:21 to 0:22 (per episode)
Creator(s)	Trey Parker & Matt Stone
Starring	Trey Parker Matt Stone Isaac Hayes Mary Kay Bergman (1997–1999) Eliza Schneider (2000–2003) Mona Marshall Gracie Lazar John Hansen Jennifer Howell and Adrien Beard
Country	USA
Network	Comedy Central
Original run	August 13, 1997 – present
No. of episodes	139

South Park is an animated series created by Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Distributed by and airing on Comedy Central since 1997, it follows the surreal adventures of four young boys who live in the small town of South Park, Colorado. South Park satirizes many aspects of American culture and current events, and challenges deepset convictions and taboos, usually using parody and black humor.

The show is noted for its characteristically blunt handling of current events. For example, an episode involving the repatriation of Romanian quintuplets aired during the Elián González issue, and depicted Janet Reno, then U.S. Attorney General, as a murderous Easter Bunny. An episode that aired after the September 11, 2001 attacks had the boys stow away on a military transport to Afghanistan, where they encounter Osama bin Laden. More recently, the episode "Best Friends Forever" satirized both the PSP and the Terri Schiavo case as well as the movie Constantine. The episode was recorded one week after the PSP was released and, coincidentally, was originally aired the night of March 30, 2005, less than twelve hours before Schiavo died. South Park won its first Emmy Award for that episode.

New episodes for the show's ninth season continued on October 19, 2005 after being on hiatus since April 2005. Recent seasons have aired in two parts; for example, half of the episodes from the eighth season were put on hiatus for Team America: World Police, another Stone and Parker production. The show has been syndicated through Tribune Entertainment starting the autumn of 2005.

Series history

South Park began in 1992 when Parker and Stone, then film students at the University of Colorado, created an animated short called Jesus vs. Frosty. The crudely made film featured prototypical versions of the kids of South Park, including a character resembling Cartman but called "Kenny", bringing a murderous snowman to life with a magic hat. The baby Jesus then saves the day by decapitating the monster with a halo.

Executives at Fox saw the movie, and in 1995, executive Brian Graden commissioned Parker and Stone to create a second short film to send to friends as a video Christmas card. Entitled The Spirit of Christmas, it closely resembled the style of the later series, and featured a martial arts duel and subsequent truce between Jesus and Santa Claus over the true meaning of Christmas. This video was later featured in the episode A Very Crappy Christmas of South Park in which Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny, Mr. Hankey and his family "save" Christmas. The video was a hit and was quickly shared, both by underground duplication and over the then burgeoning Internet. This led to talks to create a series, first with Fox, then with Comedy Central, where the series premiered on August 13, 1997.

One of the many deaths of Kenny.

The show's provocative, frequently offensive, and adult-oriented material quickly drew protest from various spokespersons, and South Park merchandise (especially T-shirts) were banned from a number of public schools, day care centers, and other public places. This occurrence is similar in a manner to the prohibition of Bart Simpson T-shirts in the early 1990s after The Simpsons was accused of contributing to juvenile delinquency. Comedy Central defended South Park by noting that the show is given a "Mature Audiences" TV rating (TV-MA) and that it only airs the show during nighttime hours and never during the day, when children may be more likely to see the show.

In February 1998, one episode of South Park posed the question of who Eric Cartman's father was. The episode ended with the announcement that it would be revealed in four weeks' time. A month later, the airing of an episode about Terrance and Phillip (two Canadian comedians who the main characters idolize) in place of the anticipated episode prompted outrage and caused Comedy Central to push the true season premiere up earlier than expected. It was apparently a well-planted April Fools gag, meant to poke fun at season-ending cliffhangers.

The following year, the full-length animated feature film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (the title referring to an uncircumcised penis) was released to generally enthusiastic reviews. The film managed to satirize both itself and the anticipated reaction that it engendered from moral conservatives. It also presented a twisted but seemingly sincere tribute to the film musical with a number of songs, including "Uncle Fucka" and "Blame Canada". The latter was nominated for an Oscar and was performed by Robin Williams during the awards show. It has been speculated that "Blame Canada" was chosen from other Oscar-worthy songs in the movie because it was the only one that could be performed on live TV with its lyrics relatively intact (as the song contains only two swear words). While it is true that "Up There" by Satan contains no swear words at all, it would most likely have created far more controversy on religious grounds given its sympathetic portrayal of Satan and his justification of evil in the lyrics. Phil Collins won the Oscar, however, with his song "You'll Be In My Heart" from Disney's Tarzan, which prompted a number of Phil Collins jokes in subsequent South Park episodes.

On November 11, 1999 shortly after the U.S. theatrical release of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, actress Mary Kay Bergman, who had provided all of the female voices on the South Park animated series and in the full-length movie, committed suicide in her suburban Los Angeles home. After her death, it was revealed that she suffered from a severe form of clinical depression. Her husband, Dino Andrade, founded the Mary Kay Bergman Memorial Fund at the Suicide Prevention Center of Greater Los Angeles in an effort to help and educate people with the same type of depression that his wife suffered.

The South Park kids drawn realistically, from Free Willzyx.

In the episode "It Hits the Fan", South Park broke the swearing record by saying the word "shit" a total of 162 times. The 22-minute episode averages one "shit" every 8 seconds, and there was even a counter throughout the episode displaying the number of times it was said. A song by Mr. Garrison that consisted of, "Hey, there, shitty shitty fag fag, shitty shitty fag fag, how do you do?" repeated for four verses provides an example of how "shit" was so abundantly used. This was meant as a satire on a NYPD Blue episode released shortly before this episode where one of the main characters said the phrase "shit happens" without being censored, and the American public discussed this for weeks. An additional gag in this episode allowed homosexual characters to use the word "fag" freely, while heterosexual characters were bleeped when attempting to use the same word.

On March 5, 2005, South Park got to number 3 in the 100 Greatest Cartoons poll, losing to Tom and Jerry and The Simpsons. The nomination was for the funniest cartoon ever made, and was conducted by Channel 4. The series appeals to both adults and, more controversially, children.

In December of 2005, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights protested the season finale episode, "Bloody Mary," and successfully requested that Viacom withdraw the episode from its broadcasting schedule. The group subsequently pledged to ensure that the episode never be released on video. [1] The controversial material in that episode can be viewed here.

Evolution of the series

South Park's early episodes tended to be shock value-oriented, but even then poked some fun at current events. In one early episode, for example, Stan asks people whether he should kill his grandfather at the old man's request only to find that no-one wants to discuss it. As the show has progressed the satire/parody element has been brought to the fore. This was very evident in the first half of Season 8; events in its episodes include Michael Jackson visiting South Park, the boys seeing The Passion of the Christ, blue-collar workers in South Park losing their jobs to immigrants from the future, and an episode featuring a "Paris Hilton" toy video camera. Season 9 premiered with the episode "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina," which incorporated graphic, uncensored footage of a farm animal being neutered.

Kenny in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

The pilot episode was produced using construction paper and traditional stop-motion animation techniques, but current episodes duplicate the original, amateurish look using modern computer animation tools (first PowerAnimator, then Maya, which South Park creators have described as "building a sandcastle with a bulldozer"). This allows for a short production schedule that enables the creators to respond quickly to current events. For instance, the December 17, 2003 episode ("It's Christmas in Canada") depicts the capture of Saddam Hussein a mere three days after his capture by U.S. forces, even referring to the "spider hole" where he was found. In the case of this and the Elián González episode, the creators stopped and changed production of an episode to focus on these events. Another example is the "Trapper Keeper" episode which originally aired just eight days after the 2000 Election and featured a kindergarten class president election being delayed by, among other things, an undecided girl named "Flora", a reasonably obvious reference to the undecided vote-count in the state of Florida.

In the audio commentary on the Season 4 DVD set, Parker and Stone remarked that beginning with episode 408, "Chef Goes Nanners", they began to consistently make episodes centering on a single issue, rather than having different subplots going on.

In 2002 the episode "Free Hat" was aired. In this episode, prompted by Kyle's comment on Ted Koppel's Nightline that changing E.T. would be like changing Raiders of the Lost Ark, the South Park depictions of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg decide to alter the first Indiana Jones film. Soon after "Free Hat" aired, the real Lucas and Spielberg announced that they would not be altering Raiders of the Lost Ark for DVD release contrary to rumors. Stone and Parker later claimed that their episode prevented any alterations from happening when they appeared on a VH1 special, Inside South Park.

While in college, Stone and Parker collaborated on the movie Cannibal! The Musical, a Western satire with humorous musical numbers. (The "Braniff" tune that plays at the end of many South Park episodes is an excerpt from the Cannibal! song, "Shpadoinkle".) Later, they created Orgazmo, a comedy about a Mormon starring in a pornographic movie, which found distribution thanks to the success of South Park later that same year. The pair also starred in the 1998 film BASEketball directed by David Zucker. (In a recent episode in which the boys see the Passion of the Christ and subsequently decide to get their money back for watching a lousy film, Stan comments to Kenny, "This is just like that time we got our money back from BASEketball," commenting on the film's box office failure). Their latest collaboration is the marionette action/comedy, Team America: World Police.

On September 9, 2005, Comedy Central struck a deal with Parker and Stone for three more seasons of the show. The network has committed to three more seasons of South Park over the next three years, 42 episodes (including those of the second half of Season 9), which means that the show will run until at least 2009. Parker and Stone will continue to write, direct, and edit every episode of the show. The order brings the series total to 182 episodes. It is currently in the end of its ninth season. A sanitized version of South Park began broadcasting in syndication on September 19, 2005.

Characters

The characters and backgrounds of South Park are made to appear deliberately crude, as if they are simply made of cut-out pieces of paper. Paper cutouts were used in the original pilot Parker/Stone animation and in the very first Comedy Central episode, but every subsequent episode aired on TV has been produced by computer animation that provides the same crude look. The animation has become less crude over time, though. To put the efficiency of this process in perspective, consider that the average episode of The Simpsons takes eight months to create, while episodes of South Park have been completed in as little as three days (which explains why current events that occur mere days before episode airdates are often included). Some episodes contain sections of regular film as well (e.g., "Tweek vs. Craig" and "Cat Orgy").

Major characters

The main characters as they appear in the series: (from left to right): Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick.

The main characters of the show are four elementary school students:

• Kyle Broflovski: High-strung, skeptical, and at times self-righteous; yet is the most easily influenced. Kyle is effectively the alter-ego of Matt Stone, who is ethnically jewish, but unlike Kyle, is spiritually agnostic. Along with Stan, Kyle often provides a reasonable perspective on the crazy behavior of the adult world around them, though is somewhat more excitable and childish than his best friend.

• Eric Theodore Cartman: Loosely inspired by Archie Bunker, and frequently the catalyst for the plot. He is campy, aggressive, sadistic, bigoted, spoiled, overweight, rude, and antagonistic. He regularly insults Kyle for being Jewish and Kenny for being poor. Meanwhile, his pretentious and sociopathic ways often cause him to regularly be disdained by the other boys, who don't quite know why they put up with him. Many episodes have Cartman acting in a manner directly opposed to or against the wishes of the other three boys. In Passion of the Jew, he starts a neo-nazi group.
• Kenneth "Kenny" McCormick: Comes from an extremely crude, poverty-stricken family. He is obsessed with sex and bathroom humor. His speech is difficult to understand due to his hood closed around his face, although all of his lines are real dialogue. During the first five seasons Kenny served as the eternal victim, who is routinely killed in a number of grotesque (yet often very entertaining) ways during each episode, only to miraculously reappear alive in the next episode. At the end of Season 5, Kenny is killed off for the next season and is replaced, first by Butters and later by Tweek, as the fourth friend. He reappears as a regular character in Season 7, and while he does not necessarily die in every episode any more, on occasion he still meets a harsh fatality.

The show's earliest well-known gimmick, beginning in the first episode, was that in every episode, Kenny would unexpectedly die in some horrible way. After this, Stan would shout, "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" and Kyle would add, "You bastards!" Originally, the notorious "bastards" were the cow-aliens who shot Kenny with plasma; however, Kenny was in fact unharmed by this, and he was actually killed by Officer Barbrady's car after being trampled by Farmer Dinkins' cows. Kenny would be back in the next episode, the incident forgotten. In a clip show episode, one of Kenny's deaths was shown, and Stan and Kyle both act confused at it, implying that they literally forget Kenny's Death. For "Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut"/"Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut", since it is a bipartite episode, Kenny simply fades back into the picture at the beginning of the second part, only to be shocked to death by power lines in a snowstorm. For some time (after the fifth season episode "Kenny Dies"), Kenny had actually died "permanently." In the sixth season episode "A Ladder to Heaven", Kenny's soul became trapped inside of Cartman's body, but an exorcism performed by Chef's mother in "The Biggest Douche in the Universe" undid this.

Kenny came back to life for an unexplained reason in "Red Sleigh Down" and is now the same regular kid he was before, except his deaths are much more rare. Kenny was killed by Saddam Hussein in "It's Christmas in Canada", the final episode of Season 7. He was also killed once during the eighth season, out of his parka, by "Mr. Jefferson", an alias of Michael Jackson, in the episode "The Jeffersons", and in the ninth season, he was killed by the Chinese mafia in the episode "Wing", as well as the following episode, "Best Friends Forever" (in fact, he dies twice in the latter).

In recent seasons, three other characters have gained prominence:

• Timmy, a schoolmate confined by disability to a wheelchair. He has a limited vocabulary, usually only consisting of his own name, Jimmy's name, his pet turkey's name, "Gobbles", "And the lords of the underworld", and other assorted gibberish. On occasion, has managed a few other words. As a standing joke, he was misdiagnosed with ADHD. After gaining popularity, he was featured at the beginning theme of the 4th season. He also replaced Kenny in the theme song in season 6 when Kenny remained dead for an entire season.

• Leopold "Butters" Stotch (replaced Kenny as a main character during the first part of the Season 6. Though Kenny was brought back for the 7th season, Butters has remained prominent): Nervous, naive, easily manipulated, and repressed — while at the same time remains ironically optimistic, and sometimes insightful. He is often callously punished by his overbearing and oppressive parents, and is meanwhile blatantly vilified, taken advantage of and/or disregarded by Cartman, Stan, and Kyle. Adding to the tragic nature of his character, his birthday is September 11. Butters has also adopted the alter ego of Professor Chaos, the costume inspired by Doctor Doom, and has a sidekick called General Disarray. His character is based on Director of Animation Eric Stough.

• Tweek (replaced Kenny during the second part of the Season 6): Spastic, neurotic, wants to be left alone. He is the only kid known genuinely suffering from ADHD (referred to as ADD in the show). His problems are often glossed over by his very docile, Hallmark commercial-esque coffee-shop-owning parents. Although initially touted as one of the leading supporting characters, he has since been upstaged by the more viewer-popular Butters and has returned to playing a minor role.

Recurring characters

There are many other frequently recurring characters, besides the boys and their families.

• The boys' teachers Mr. Herbert Garrison (currently Mrs. Garrison after receiving a sex change in Episode 901, "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina"), and Ms. Choksondik (pronounced "chokes-on-dick") who dies in Season 6.
• Big Gay Al, a recurring character since the first season, with a part as well in the feature film.
• Mr. Slave, Mr. Garrison's flamboyantly gay live-in lover until his sex change in Episode 901 (replacement for Garrison's beloved puppet companion, Mr. Hat). Mr. Slave is now married to Big Gay Al.
• Jerome "Chef" McElroy (voiced by Isaac Hayes), the school cafeteria chef whom the boys seek out for advice. He used to be shown in almost every episode, but has been seen less frequently in recent seasons.
• Satan, portrayed as the insecure and overly-sensitive former lover of Saddam Hussein.
• Jesus and Santa Claus, who have been depicted as gun-toting heroes.
• Mr. Mackey, the school counselor who often appends "M'kay?" to the end of his sentences.
• Officer Barbrady, the incompetent, mentally deficient town police officer.
• Wendy Testaburger, a schoolmate and Stan's girlfriend until Episode 714 ("Raisins").
• Jimmy Valmer, a physically-disabled schoolmate with crutches and a speech impediment. Famous at South Park Elementary for his stand-up comedy. He took steroids to win the Special Olympics. Timmy was jealous of Jimmy initially, which culminated in a fist fight between the two in the episode Cripple Fight The fist fight scene was a tribute to the Rowdy Roddy Piper/Keith David fight in John Carpenter's They Live, including some identical dialogue and "camera" shots.
• Token Black, a classmate who occasionally accompanies the boys on their adventures; his name is intended as irony: being the only African-American kid in town, he is indeed the "token black". Token is also a frequent target of Cartman's racism. His surname was at one point Williams but was changed, forgotten or "black" is his stage name.
• Starvin' Marvin, originally appearing in Episode 109, he was sent to Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny after they donated 5 dollars to an Ethiopian fund for starving children (led by Sally Struthers) in order to earn a Teiko sports watch. They are accidentally sent a small Ethiopian boy they call Starvin' Marvin. When two agents appear to return Starvin' Marvin back to his home country, they accidentally take Cartman instead. Though the episode is set in East African Ethiopia, Starvin' Marvin speaks a language with click consonants, which are more often found in Khoisan languages such as those of the Xhosa people of South Africa. He later appears in episode 311 along with the alien Marklar race.
• Towelie, is a "super towel" created to dry a person, but while being studied he smoked marijuana and "just sort of wandered off". Towelie offers advice on towel usage and is frequently high. Towelie has only apeared in 4 episodes Episode 508, Towlie, where he is first introduced, Episode 509, Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants, in which he only has two lines, Episode 606 Professor Chaos, where he is a contestant in the contest for a new fourth friend, and Episode 701, I'm a Little Bit Country, where he is only seen in the background and has no lines. Towlie has been referred to, by Cartman as "The worst character ever".
• The goth kids, including Henrietta, originally featured in Episode 714 ("Raisins").
• Scott Tenorman, a much older schoolmate, originally introduced when he tricks Cartman out of his allowance money in the episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die". Cartman later takes revenge on Scott at his infamous "Chili con Carnival." Scott has appeared in minor roles in at least two subsequent episodes.

Minor characters and celebrities

The satirical disclaimer that begins every episode

Part of the show's surrealist nature derives from the minor characters who appear in the series. Notable appearances include God (who appears as a small creature resembling a hippo-rodent hybrid), Jesus (who owns a home and hosts a public-access television show in South Park (Jesus and Pals)), Satan (with or without his lover Saddam Hussein), Moses (who appears exactly as the Master Control Program (MCP) does in the Disney film Tron and demands pictures made of macaroni glued to paper plates from his faithful), the alien Marklar race; the Jakovasaurs; Death; Mr. Hankey "the Christmas poo" (who adds to the holiday festivities in much the same spirit as the 1960s Rankin-Bass cartoons), and Towelie, a talking towel that smokes marijuana.

Most celebrities who make appearances on South Park are usually "impersonated.....poorly" by the staff or others. See partial list below:

• Yoko Ono is present the episode "The Brown Noise" as the director of the '4,000,000 Children Blow Concert."
• Kenny G. is also in "The Brown Noise," acting as a prostitute of sorts when Mr. Garrison's father refuses to have sex with Mr. Garrison, despite his wishes. Kenny G. is hired to do the action to decieve Mr. Garrison.
• Barbra Streisand, is transformed by a mystical artifact Cartman found while digging and became Mecha-Streisand, a Mechagodzilla-like creature.
• Kathie Lee Gifford, is nearly assassinated by Mr. Garrison in the episode "Weight Gain 4000."
• O. J. Simpson, is a member of a support group for relatives of murder victims in "Butters' Very Own Episode."
• George W. Bush, under the influence of Satan's advisor (a Wormtongue lookalike, who probably represented Karl Rove) fought against removing a feeding tube from Kenny in the episode "Best Friends Forever." Also seen trying to handle the mass suicide situation in the episode "Super Best Friends"
• The 1980s band Toto
• Brian Boitano, a figureskater who is a kind of superhero to the children of South Park first appeared in "The Spirit of Christmas" and then again in the South Park movie, "Bigger, Longer, Uncut."
• Russell Crowe, star of the TV show Russell Crowe: Fightin' Around the World, in which he travels the world in a cartoon tugboat and picks fights with random strangers based on perceived insults
• Madonna is ridiculed in the episode "Kenny Dies."
• David Blaine, founder of the fictional, suicide-cult-like "Blainetology" religion in the episode "Super Best Friends."
• Sally Struthers is portrayed as a Hutt (as in "Jabba the Hutt" from Star Wars) hoarding food while pretending to save "Starvin' Marvin" and his people.
• Michael Jackson appears as a new neighbor named "Mr. Jefferson" who moves to South Park with his young son Blanket to escape accusations of child molestation (such as those that were made against Jackson in late 2003). Unlike most recent satires, South Park was uniquely favorable and non-accusing of Jackson, yet was nonetheless critical about his actual personality and parenting skills.
• Paris Hilton as spokeswoman for the Stupid Spoiled Whore clothing store chain.
• Will Smith moves to South Park along with Kobe Bryant, and Snoop Dogg in the episode "<a title="Here Comes the Neighborhood" href="http://

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