In English lit class in high school, Bro. Smith taught us that satirists will be vulgar and raunchy in order to shock readers into seeing things in a different way. We studied Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels which included Gulliver assisting the Lilliputians when their Presidential Palace caught on fire. He did this by urinating on it.
Now, no good Catholic would watch South Park, so there I was watching South Park and I saw some wicked satire. The boys think their deceased friend Kenny had their winning ticket for free candy with him when he died. They take his urn, thinking he is in there, and dump it out to find the ticket. Cartman mistakes the ashes for chocolate milk mix and drinks it, causing him to see things through Kenny’s eyes. When he realizes he has Kenny’s “living soul” inside of him he says “I gotta get this living soul sucked out of me”. The scene immediately cuts to “Unplanned Parenthood” where he tells the bored receptionist he wants to have a living soul removed from inside him. Without looking up from writing, she tells him the fee is $200. A young woman and man enter the clinic as Cartman shouts “$200!!! Lady I just want this thing sucked out of me.” This causes the young woman to start crying and saying, “I can’t go through with this, I can’t do it”. The boyfriend, of course reacts angrily to Cartman and throws something at him.
Vulgar? Crude? Childish? Yes. And not at the level of Swift, but still…how many of the show’s fans are used to being exposed to this kind of truth, and in a way that is the opposite of preachy?