David Kronke: "South Park's" Cartoon Wars
Well, it's on. Comedy Central's "South Park" concluded its explosive two-part saga "Cartoon Wars" with an image of Jesus pooping on George W. Bush, who was busy pooping on other Americans. But I'm getting way ahead of myself.
The storyline spun off the riots in Europe after Danish political cartoonists depicted the prophet Muhammad, against Islamic law. In Trey Parker and Matt Stone's lunatic send-up, the Fox animated sitcom "Family Guy" was going to do the same thing, and with al-Qaeda threatening revenge (heretofore, al-Qaeda's lone complaint with "Family Guy" was that its jokes are arbitrary and never tie in with the plot), the country was in an uproar.
So, this week: Americans respond, not atypically, by hiding their heads in sand. Cartman, who hates Family Guy, heads to the Fox studio in Century City to demand the episode be censored. Kyle, who likes the show, follows to stop him. Cartman meets another kid trying to get "Family Guy" yanked -- Bart Simpson -- and bluffs his way past the network president to meet the show's writers: a tank full of manatees who nudge storyline balls (Gary Coleman, Mexico, salmon helmet, etc.) into holes, where they're randomly generated into gags from the furthest reaches of left field. (You kind of see the point.) After Kyle and Cartman engage in an extended slap-fight, perhaps the least intense mano-a-mano showdown in TV history, Cartman fails to sway the manatees -- the only life form immune to terrorist threats, it's explained -- and while Fox (ostensibly) airs the Muhammad joke, Comedy Central in fact doesn't.
Al-Qaeda's response, it turns out, is a cartoon of its own, attacking American values. Consult the second sentence of this post.
So, how will The Simpsons and Family Guy respond? The Simpsons - the longest-running sitcom in TV history - did a South Park gag a while back, with Bart marvelling how the show was able to stay fresh after some 60 or 70 episodes. But Family Guy is more or less forced to do something, lest it not play as every bit as daring, naughty and bad-ass as anything on TV. This was too spectacular an affront to its dignity and street cred.
South Park - winner recently of the Peabody Award, something more prestigious than any Emmy - manages to be more timely and more provocative than ever. Even if the jokes themselves aren't wildly funny, the absurdist situations and the way Parker and Stone manage to shoehorn them into commentaries on current issues can be pretty brilliant. And they're happy to stomp all over tricky issues that even TV journalists are too timid to grapple with tenaciously: Consider the celebrated Scientology episode, ripples from which are still reverberating.
And tackling issues and rampant scatology, in today's climate, is a hand-in-glove fit.
