South Park tried to teach us a lesson last night, and lesson-teaching is something a TV show should usually try to avoid, because it usually makes for lousy storytelling.
That proved to be the case for South Park. Stan and his pals were irritated by a motorcycle gang that kept roaring around town, and drowning out everyone’s conversation. The South Park gang started yelling at the gang, calling them a crude, three-letter word for homosexual that begins with “f.” (If you think I’m being squeamish for not printing the word, too bad — I’m not going to further spread the use of it.)
The underlying idea was, as one character noted, “f–” isn’t a slur on gay people among “kids today”: “Just because a person is gay doesn’t mean he’s a [f--].” The motorcycle gang, however, took great offense at the insult and roared off to the library, where we were treated to a long, tedious taxonomy of the offending word, stretching back to the 16th century. (Warning: This clip uses the word.)
I wasn’t buying this whole line of reasoning — that word now just means, as was stated last night, anyone who’s “an inconsiderate douchebag.”
Putting in a guest-star turn (well, in cartoon form, anyway) was Emmanuel Lewis, who got banged up quite a bit, but appeared, bloody and unbowed, as the “Head Editor” of the dictionary helping to draft a town proclamation about the new, common usage of the offending word.
The show proclaimed at the end it was “making history,” and given how only moderately funny the half-hour was, I tended to think Trey Parker and Matt Stone were being moderately serious.
The criticisms of motorcycle noise, public rudeness, and hurt feelings among various people got all tangled in the usual South Park fun. (The biggest laugh I had was when Cartman secretly pooped on the gang’s bikes and one member innocently sniffed the air and remarked, “Smells like that new Famous Bowl at KFC.”)
Personally, I thought it would have been funnier and timelier if South Park had used the motorcycle gang to satirize Sons of Anarchy (which is where I thought the episode was going, until I noticed the episode title). But alas, it just wanted to go to some easy gay-baiting.
Did you watch? What did you think?
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dude, stop writing such fwordy columns.
you’re a fag Ken
It was hilarious. I agree with them 100%. Bikers like that are inconsiderate d-bags and should be labeled as such. There’s a motorcycle event held every other Friday in the summer in my town and this episode captured exactly how it feels to be trying to enjoy a nice evening and have it ruined by a bunch of buttholes on unnecessarily loud bikes. And they really do stay stopped at intersections and rev their bikes over and over until they are ready to go again. Thank you South Park, you just showed what many people were already thinking.
As a black gay man and someone who heard the word fag quite a bit growing up I will tell you that the word is used every bit as much today as it was now. Although exposure of gay people and our story in mainstream society is making it easier for kids overall.
I’m sorry, but “the F word,” the REAL F word, rhymes with “Truck” and not “Bag.” I do not buy that “Bag” is okay now. But I’ve also heard a lot of young people use “Gay” as a synonym for stupid, and that annoys the crap out of me, but I don’t think that they mean homosexual-related either. However, Ken I will agree with you that no matter what they are trying to “say” it doesn’t matter if it isn’t in a funny way.
It wasn’t gay baiting at all?
I’m with you on this, Ken. I’m a huge South Park fan, and I’ve only disagreed with where Matt and Trey are coming from once before in 13 years… but last night marks the second time. Yeah, they had a point about biker behavior, but that wasn’t the point of the episode, was it? No, it was an overly-preachy statement about how embracing the use of a derogatory word (or changing its meaning) is somehow “empowering”. I’ve never bought this argument, and think South Park’s attempt to re-state it was clumsy and ill-conceived.
The episode was great! Very funny and very smart. Your review sir on the other hand is terrible, you should change your career. Try dish washing.
hahahaha!
Seriously though, if you don’t know what the episode is about, consider changing careers.
THIS!
If there was any gay baiting, it was just an added bonus. Boosh.
Umm, how did you watch the whole episode and completely miss the point? The meaning of words shift, and Matt and Trey made a good point that the “F” word quite often is used for reasons completely unrelated to homosexuality. The bikers’ foray through the dictionary really proved the point. Think about the “D” word (nickname for Richard). It’s allowed on air now because it can be used without refering to the male anatomy; instead it refers to a person’s attitude. Why can’t the “F” word have a similar change? Or do you need to feel like a victim or a self-righteous prig every time a certain word is said?
It may not have been “gay baiting”, per se, but it really came off as Matt and Trey getting their kicks from using a taboo word, like the sh*t and n-word episodes. I wasn’t a fan of the episode, because as much as it does mean “inconsiderate d-bag” to some, it still has the very distinct anti-gay meaning to many.
That being said, the noises the bikers made (especially in the library scene) and Emanuel Lewis were very funny…
Poorly written article. Don’t watch south park because you obviously don’t understand the humor. And with that being said, don’t comment on the episodes either
If you think Mr. Tucker is a bad media critic, or doesn’t like South Park in general, you obviously haven’t read many of his columns and you obviously weren’t paying attention when you read this article. Don’t offer comments on opinion pieces you can’t understand. It really might be better if you stop reading altogether; you don’t do it very well.
It’s obvious that the inspiration for that episode came because Matt and Trey just want to be able to say “f-g” and not worry about people getting offended. It kinda reminded me of high school, when 16 year olds who dropped the word constantly would try and come up with a rationale for why it was okay. The South Park reasonsing was a little better, but still iffy. You can’t really choose when other people get offended, regardless of how good an argument you make. Still, the episode was pretty funny, my favorite part was an offhand moment where Kenny mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “This is f—in’ ridiculous.”
Please do not review TV shows again or at least tell Google news not to index you.
The episode was awesome. What a waste of space on ew.com. Hire a real writer with a brain. What a f–
I’m gay and I loved the episode. Yeah people use the “f-word” a lil too much but hey, I tell my friends to stop being so straight when they’re being boring, stupid, and lug-headed haha Stop takin South Park so seriously.
I agree, I’m gay to and I found the episode to be hilarious. I even use the f-word to describe d-bags all the time. The word is only derogatory if you let it be.
Chris, so the people who get beaten up while being called the f-word are just letting it be derogatory? The word is still tied to homophobia and violence that is actively taking place. I understand what South Park was trying to do, but I don’t think they succeeded because they failed to acknowledge that that word is currently used with violence against people like us.
Michael — are we meant to believe that any utterance which can or does or has accompanied violence is implicitly violent? Must it then be causally efficacious in an essentially violent manner (does that word have the quality of CAUSING violence wherever it is uttered)? Or perhaps we are meant to think that, while the word is not itself causally violent, that violence is essentially constitutive of the utterance’s character — as though each utterance necessarily invokes that violence as its primary semantic force, as though for it not to is somehow a misuse. But we can imagine saying “Take that back” (referring to an insult) just before hitting someone, and we neither think that the hitting is internal to that utterance each time it is used (as when i mean – take the salt back to the cabinet) nor do we believe that it is a misuse of the utterance if violence is not presumed.
What words do is complicated. And words are efficacious. And their potential semantic and causal forces are certainly a part of them. But your claim needs to be stronger than that. It needs to be that it is a misreading or a misuse to EVER allow some term (in this case “faggot”) not to take it primary force from a particular context — you mean to choose from among various forces THE force which corresponds to THE felicitous use of the term, and then you mean to police that term’s usage to ensure that EACH use is in accordance with THE use (even as other uses become more and more regular, particularly among groups of people for which your preferred semantic center is no longer as widely presumed).
That said, i do not use the term “faggot” to joke, or to deride, or to refer to any class of individuals. I do in fact almost never use it — i do of course utter it if i am mentioning it. I don’t use it because the force it takes from the context you mention is enough to dissuade me from it. But i think that South Park’s etymological argument is persuasive (if the term has applied to various minoritarian groups for much longer than it has, in the US, applied particularly to homosexuals, and if the social desire to have a particular term of derogation for homosexuals has, in some subsections, greatly diminished, then there is in principle no reason not to treat this word as other words — which only means not to recognize the terrible complexity of its usage). Language is beautiful. Lets not ruin it by insisting on it’s being univocal.