Here is the true message of this special since both the left and the right are too stupid to understand:
Pandering is a lazy form of storytelling, but sending hate to Disney doesn’t solve anything. If anything, it gives them a reason to do more pandering. Cartman is DEFINETLY NOT the voice of reason of this special. Stan and Kyle are. Their cordial speech on why pandering doesn’t work is Trey and Matt’s voice being heard. Stuff like Miles Morales is a great way of representation because it is innovative and a complete new spin on a classic character. Race swapping is just lazy.
I hate how the left wing only focus on the part where Cartman says “complaining about woke stuff is kinda lame” at the end, and use it as the basis of what they think the message of the special is, as if it is in favour of their side only. Disliking pandering isn’t a right wing viewpoint, and I hate how people think it is. They missed the point.
I also hate how the right wing think that Cartman IS the voice of reason, thinking that the whole episode supports the their side only and that sending hate to Disney is the right way to go about it. It is annoying to see conservatives act like the whole episode is for them. They have also missed the point.
Also they showed that they can make content that panders to both sides to gain viewership and discourse online. Maybe SouthPark has been pandering to the widest audience possible this whole time
You people are ducking weird. It was certainly primarily making fun of obvious diversity pandering.
It panders to both sides which is funny.
I haven’t watched the special but I wanted to say something about the Miles Morales-example: Pandering and race swapping are real things but it’s important to get the definitions straight. Miles Morales has always been a canon black character in the marvel comics. Therefore, this is not “race swapping”. He’s literally a different version of spiderman (hence why his name isn’t Peter Parker). Something these Movie Giants like Marvel, Disney etc. are doing is indeed pandering, but in this case it’s more in the sense that they are trying to get brownie-points for solely having a canon black lead in a movie without truthfully engaging with their blackness and it means for the narrative. Which is lazy writing as best and a disgustingly bad cash grab at worst.
Indeed pandering?
Sometimes, people hear what they want to hear.
Threads like this remind me that arguing with anyone on the internet regarding politics is a fool’s errand and a complete waste of time. Everyone has their own backwards and easily disprovable interpretation and opinion over what is right or wrong or whatever, and with some of the absolutely cringe-inducing, ice-cold takes I’ve seen here I can’t imagine that the world will ever get any better as long as ignorance reigns.
What I find amusing is that culture warriors on both sides of the political divide seem to think that Matt & Trey are taking THEIR side. I don’t see it that way. To my mind Panderverse is a polemic against The Culture Wars themselves. Matt & Trey clearly don’t have a lot of love for smug leftists & Disney’s faux corporate progressivism. That said, alt-right “classical liberal” types who rejoice in lib pwning don’t come out of this looking so brilliant either. Kathleen Kennedy IS pretty awful, but so are the idjits who can’t fall asleep at night until they’ve checked under their beds to make sure there aren’t any rogue Disney execs lurking beneath, coiled like a viper.
I think the episode goes out of its way to forgive bad decicion making by a mega corporation. It could have easily been tilted towards cartmans perspective and been right. What south park did by displaying two sides was mercy. It wasn’t indicative of who is most at fault. Which is the huge mega Corp with near limitless resources and talent to pull from.
The problem is diversity and inclusion sells fine in enough other instances where the art isn’t dictated by a committee.
It isnt people like cartman who made Disney’s decicions for them. You can’t both sides a situation where one side has every opportunity to just make better business decicions not clouded by ego and a sense of self righteousness. Especially when you have every reason not to fail.
In short, you can’t please all of them, criticisms will be there, if you’re an artist, you need to be open and reflect on the problems in your work, if you’re a critic critiquing someone’s work, don’t be overly critical or hateful in your critiques, it’s all about being open-minded and understanding
If people saw Star Wars (the series that arguably kicked off the hate mail) and just said CALMLY, “Idk, didn’t feel the same. I didn’t care for it.”
This probably would have blown over. But the demonizing from one side lead to the other side doubling down
Both sides are stupid but to a certain degree there have to be people who complain about this stuff or else they will keep pandering.
True message, movies suck right now
I feel like a lot of people are straw manning the shit out of this episode
I see MUCH more people complaining about how nobody understood it than actual people misunderstanding it
It seems like there’s a very firm consensus that the episode attacked both sides and appealed to the common sense answer to the ‘culture war’: instead of pandering to the cultural zeitgeist in order to achieve a bare minimum, shallow, surface level of diversity, focus on telling good stories and the socially progressive cultural zeitgeist will take care of diversity for you.