there's something so dismal about how so much of tv fandom's energy nowadays seems to go towards trying to prove to big corporations that their show is good enough to save. like whenever a new episode or series comes out it's "remember to watch it all in 24 hours or it won't get renewed!" "play it on repeat for a month or else it'll become another piece of lost media!" "don't stop talking and posting about it during the hiatus or else this season that's already in production might not air!" "if this tag trends on twitter for long enough we might get eight episodes instead of six!!!" it feels less like we're enjoying a show that so many people worked hard on and more like we're trying to create rituals to please the gods (which replace gods with The Algorithm and you're not far off).
like i haven't even been involved in fandom for that long but even just seven or so years ago if a show did well enough that it was nominated for awards and trending on twitter and having well attended comic con panels then it would be renewed for at least a season or two. and back then being renewed for another season meant "we're for sure going to get a new season next year!" with almost no possibility of cancelation. and even shows that did just okay ratings wise would easily get 5+ seasons.
and it was more fun. when i was watching Doctor Who or Arrowverse or whatever in 2014 i could enjoy and critique the media itself instead of constantly being nervous about whether the next season will be cashed in for nostalgia bait or have its episode count cut or be postponed for three years or just outright canceled because it was slightly less popular than last year. like the fandom would still stress out over potential bad narrative choices or whatever but we would also get excited about the future.
maybe it's just my own perceptions but i just tend to find myself favoring fandoms for shows (or at least eras, i'm looking at you Doctor Who) that have been completed. i like Good Omens and Our Flag Means Death and Strange New Worlds and Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the latest Doctor Who era but i just find it hard to get invested when there's so much anxiety around if there will be a future to those shows and so much of the fandom activity revolves around that anxiety. and then as a result when the show does end for good (whether through cancelation or design) the fandom starts to fade away too because so much of it was based on the temptation of The Future.
and i'm also quick to admit that production in pre-streaming era shows had their own problems (once popular shows running for 15 seasons and jumping the shark just because it's a cash cow, tampered down diversity in the interest of "popular appeal", the whole quantity over quality issue, etc) but at least the fandoms were more optimistic and focused on the story itself instead of just being angry about the eternal potential of cancelation or outright deletion.
(also there are obviously much larger issues to the streaming model re: residuals and everything else brought up during the wga and sag strikes but that's all been said much more coherently so i'm just speaking from my own perspective as a fan. and even then there's still definite overlap between the fandom anxiety over renewal and the real world economic anxiety for people involved with production over "will we have a job/be paid". it's far too early to tell but i really hope the strikes will help to solve this problem.)
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i dont think anon was referring to sps simple style, sp is a pretty controversial show. from what i've seen, it seems pretty bigoted? i could be wrong. sorry if this ask is rude, i don't mean to be rude, but yeah i think that's what anon meant
Oh no, not rude at all!! Sorry you have to apologize my response to that anon was a lot more srs than I intended I just wanted to get my point across, I'm all for open discussions :]
to answer the bigoted question, I wouldn't entirely say no. but I can say that South Park was not made to make fun of minorities and spread harmful messages. The show presents bigoted behavior from the antagonists who are too stupid to realize they're wrong, it's up to you as the audience to realize that what they are the antagonists and that their actions should not be justified and supported. And even then, there are characters who outwardly speak out and work to fight against said bigots in the episodes they're in.
However, the show also relies on shock humor. And this is a criticism on the fans part, but they really gotta stop saying "why are you surprised? It's South Park" as if being surprised over something gross or offensive wasn't the point in the first place. The ridiculous shit in the show isn't supposed to be normalized!! It's supposed to be absolutely ridiculous to the audience and catch them off guard!! You're not supposed to get used to it!! You're not supposed to like it, but you're not supposed to read too deep in it either, breaking down why it's wrong and why you found it shocking and why this is SUPER PROBLEMATIC!! Isn't the point.
You just gotta acknowledge that "oh that's fucked up I cant believe they did that, that is so wrong" and just sit in shock for a bit and move on. Like, you can't tear the show apart for one joke when its purpose was for you to realize it's supposed to be ridiculous and wrong at the same time, and the show itself being aware of that fact.
A lot of the offensive material circulating around on why South Park is bad lacks context. Cartman and Butters dressing up as chinese stereotypes? They are at a normal Chinese restaurant, harassing a Chinese family because they're idiots who believe that china will overthrow the world, they are asked to leave. Ike in a relationship with his teacher? Ike is a victim of a grooming that is not taken seriously by the police because the predator was a woman, portraying how male victims situations are overlooked in real life, the teacher dies in the end. Randy saying the N-word on live television? He is ridiculed and seen as a total asshole, he gets called "N-word guy" by the people around him and retaliates by making it illegal to call him that name, a satirical role reversal portraying the hypocrisy and sensitivity of white people (oppressors) where they make the "slur" against them illegal but not the slurs against the people they have oppressed for years.
But even after all this, I can see that there are other examples that I can't, and I am not willing to justify.
At the end of the day, we all have to acknowledge that South Park was made by two cishet white men. (this was why I said I can't entirely say no) Their opinions will not always be right, and I'm sick of fans trying to justify some of their episodes and jokes just because they like South Park, South Park is not one of those shows you want to ride or die on. I personally have a few jokes and episodes I dislike and will absolutely never watch again, but that is not my main focus.
Discrimination is not my draw, and I don't think that's the show's either.
Now we're going out to discussion territory and more of personal opinion. I personally enjoy South Park because I feel very drawn to the characters and I find their character driven adventures and antics to be really entertaining. I don't care much for the social commentary. Not that I completely ignore it, it's just something I acknowledge is important in some episode's narratives, but not something I pay too close attention to.
I don't think I watch South Park for the intended reasons, and I don't think most of the fans over here on Tumblr do either. I can admit that I enjoy a version of South Park that isn't technically South Park entirely.
I enjoy South Park for what it isn't, and that is a situational comedy with four little guys getting into all sorts of trouble <3
And the funny thing about this whole post is that I used to be a South Park hater.
I thought it was just a bigoted show where the only jokes it had were slurs and children saying fuck, right before I actually gave it a chance and was surprised to find out that it was more than I thought it was, and that I actually somehow enjoyed it.
It's kinda crazy to me that I'm technically defending SOUTH PARK of all things right now.
But uh yeah, I like South Park, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was, and I ended up hyperfixating on it. I'm not here to change anyone's mind and make them watch South Park because "it's ACTUALLY spotless and politically correct all the time, you're just sensitive ☝🤓"
People are right to label South Park as controversial, and people are right to be offended by it when it's making fun of something it doesn't understand or without the proper nuance, and people are allowed to discuss and criticize the show for it.
With all that said, The show is not emblematic of its own fans, and some of its own fans need to stop looking up to it like it's the bible.
Matt and Trey can be wrong, and even fans like me who enjoy it aren't too dumb and ignorant to recognize and rightfully not be in support of certain aspects of it when a line is being crossed.
This whole thing was supposed to end right after I attached the photo of the characters, but then I just decided to write more and so I puked this extra fluff out, sorry about that lol
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I have mixed feelings all around about the live action atla but like honestly, I'm very disappointed in Zuko's scar. Where's the scar tissue, the disfigured eye lids, why is his eyebrow still there, where is the Drama of it all. Like it kinda just looks like they sprayed on a bit red makeup and half-assed some veins, put some prosthetics on his face plsss. (Edit: after further studying, I do see some bubbling of the skin so I will give them that, they tried in a way, but I still wish there was more going on) They want to be accurate to the original show and yet are too scared to make Zuko "unattractive" 🙄 He better be bald underneath that helmet.
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