#sp discourse

"actually tweek is the wendy to craig's gang"

"jimmy is the kenny of craig's gang, so he's the fourth member"

grow up so what if people are putting your lil egg boys in weirdass situations. each episode of the show is just a different au for the boys. what do you win if you smack people in the face with the “ THIS IS SUCH MISREPRESENTATION OF THE CHARACTERSSSSSSSSSSSS “ stick? really? what do you win. 

i mean the source media is still there. its not gonna change because fans exist. put your big boy pants on once you learn to stop pissing and shitting yourself over people on the internet. 

Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride shows up in 1997, and while it’s definitely aged, at the time it’s a sympathetic and not unrealistic portrayal of a gay dude.  He’s not perfect but it’s fine.  We get a few other portrayals, including Satan, who yeah is Satan but is sympathetic, his boyfriend Chris, a few mentions here and there.  So when Mr. Garrison is embodying every negative shitty thing said about gay dudes and Death Camp of Tolerance rolls around, and it’s pointed out that hey we’re not criticizing gay people, we’re criticizing A Gay Person, and this is HIS shitty behavior, it actually works!  We know that’s the message, because there’s non-shitty gays in the show and we’ve seen them and the nuance makes sense because there’s context.

We’re given a range of gay characters, good to neutral to bad, so when they want to make a point about a particular part of the gay experience or how The Gays interact in society, it’s very easy to do so, because there’s a wide range of characters and the world feels bigger and wider than that one “Bad” Character’s behavior.

So far, trans characters in the show are:

Mr. Garrison, who is just the most garbage human being

The entire nightmare scenario involving the Mrs. Garrison episode, including “trans dolphin Gerald”

Cartman, wanting to sneak into a bathroom

Wendy, wanting to fuck up Cartman’s plan

Randy, also a shit human, also wanting to sneak into bathrooms

Caitlyn Jenner, whose trans identity is never questioned or judged by the show but is otherwise shown as a garbage human being.

Randy Savage, wearing a ballsack thong

So yeah the idea that people need to watch the episode with nuance absolutely have a point but the show hasn’t bothered to establish any kind of context in which that nuance is possible, because the overall context of the show is trans characters are either faking it for personal gain or just genuinely shitty people.  The show wants to make a nuanced point while still going “of course like, you know, trans people are fine” without putting any of the narrative work into making people believe that.  And if you think that point should be obvious, don’t ever go on twitter, because people there are PSYCHED that south park is “making fun of the trans now again”.  And it’s a fairly easy solution to just have any random average trans character be like “hey that dude is a dick” and actually present some context.  It just requires thought.

 (Sidenote: I’m NOT advocating for perfect paragons of representation, here, either, just normal, average characters to widen the boundaries of the world.  The bar lesbians from the 300 episode are some of my favorites because they’re just so normal and the whole joke and plot works without being ABOUT their lesbianism except as a social group)