I hear a lot of people say “South Park makes fun of both sides” to imply that Trey and Matt don’t lean politically one way or another. This is pretty much copium, or plain lack of media analyzis since South Park, specially in recent seasons, has been very clear about their politics being very much to the left.
In Joining the Panderverse, one the “villains” of the story are the middle class and wealthy Americans which are unwilling to perform any basic labor for themselves; an attitude which renders them useless when AI takes away all of their jobs. A lot of people misunderstand this as “they can’t do” the work for themselves, but that’s not correct. They ARE able to. In one scene Randy asks Siri (he doesn’t even have to type the words on google) “how do I fix my oven door” and Siri gives him a step by step process on how to do it, and Randy still won’t do it. He responds with “Yes, but can you do it for me”. Then he (and the other jobless professionals) proceeds to direct their anger to anything they see: College, immigrants, and then Kathelyn Kennedy. They even make the joke that these people don’t even know who she is. They are just told she’s a problem.
The other villain of the story are racist people on the internet represented by Cartman sending Kennedy 12000 hate emails a day because she tried to make Disney a bit more inclusive. Racist poeple on the internet will defend themselves by saying “So you think anyone that hates that movie is racist?” Which prompts non-racist people who just don’t like the movie to feel attacked and defend the racists. Let me ask you something, random reddit reader. If you don’t like, let’s say the new Little Mermaid, not becasue you’re racist, but just because you don’t like the Disney live action remakes. Do you agree that there are a lot of really racist people on the internet who would be crazy enough to spend their whole afternoon sending racist emails to Kennedy just becasue the “Black little Mermaid” was announced. Let me remind you that this controversy started when the movie was just ANNOUNCED. The same happened to panderverse, I remember starting to see recommended videos since two weeks before it came out being like “SOUTH PARK RUINS DISNEY AND WOKENESS”. They hadn’t even seen it.
So yeah, don’t believe ti kids. South Park may not have been super woke from the get-go (Wow a 90s cartoon being Non PC, call the cops), but it sure is right now.
Think about all the things you need ignore in order for your point of view to be valid :
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the fact that the creators have been lampooning woke/PC culture literally for seasons now with characters like PC Principal, Strong Woman and the PC Babies
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the fact that there have been entire episodes in recent memory that the creators have been criticized for by the left such as “board girls” for promoting far-right idealogy
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the fact that it’s literally only individuals from the left that ever complain about elements of the show (there were literally people in this subreddit making posts about how they were done with this show because all they do now is spread “right wing garbage”
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the fact that the creators have been cracking jokes about woke/lazy Disney productions for years now going right back to the member berries era
As far as the panderverse itself, you’re missing so much nuance :
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you’re totally ignoring the fact that characters like Kathleen Kennedy and Bob Iger fully admit that all they do now is put out woke, pandering content
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you’re missing the point that cartman represents an extremely small portion of the population that as used as a shield by Disney against any and all valid criticism (they’ve already started doing in with Ms Marvel)
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you’re missing the point that characters like Kyle and Stan represent your everyday individual, (as they always have and are often stand ins for trey and Matt themselves), and also pointed out that woke, lazy diverse inserts are stupid
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you’re missing the nuanced joke that in the very white southpark universe everyone (except Stan and Kyle) didn’t bat an eye at the fact that there was a black cartman… Alternatively in the progressive and diverse, feminist universe, everyone had a problem with a white male being there
It seems more like you used to watch south park back in the day, heard about “the panderverse” through social media, checked it out and only saw what you wanted to see. Meanwhile you missed everything that’s been going on in the south park universe for the last few years.
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I don’t think they’re “leftists” more like “rational, empathetic humans who are aware of how fucking stupid and cult-ish politics have become”
But if you condemn racism or promote equal rights these days you are a “leftist” I guess
I am now dumber for reading this.
A liberal is not a leftist. This episode was very liberal.
They’re only left-wing by American standards. As already mentioned, they’re libertarian, and generally very capitalistic if you consider them from the perspective of any other country
Good write up OP but I don’t think it’s going to gain a lot of traction in this subreddit.