Blue Tomorrows

Commission for Annonymus commissioner

south park made it funny to be antisemitic, racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, ableist etc. it introduced forms of bigotry to a lot of kids who otherwise wouldn’t have considered it otherwise.

The first two seasons are coarse, puerile, surreal, absurd, and brilliant. It's iconoclastic and flies close to the wind but it pulls it off with its sheer anarchic energy.

Then, at some point, around that third and fourth season, you realise there's something different about the show. It punches down a lot more. It feels...nasty. It's because the show is now a worldwide hit, the cutting edge of comedy, THE zeitgeist, and Parker and Stone realise they don't have to please other people as much; they can write more from the heart, espouse their political beliefs without varnish, because the show is such a cultural phenomenon that it's guaranteed to succeed.

Within the last decade, though, the comedy has circled entirely around being cruel. It finds the most vulnerable, the most undeserving people it can, and wrings every last drop of malice out of disparaging them. And that's because the nasty little boys who grew up on the mean, uncaring, bullying version of the show have grown up to become nasty little men who now help to write the show.