South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. Brilliance and absurdity

The fame of South Park should come as no surprise. It’s a brilliant, clever, and unconventional production. Its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, successfully combined a naïve, childlike animation style—reminiscent of something made in Paint—with serious subject matter and biting, vulgar humor. South Park makes no compromises; it doesn’t shy away from taboos. Its wild, mocking narrative interweaves reflections on contemporary reality, of which it is a distorted mirror. Every episode—whether about AIDS, the economic crisis, Somali pirates, the war in Afghanistan, or pedophilia—appears to be just a joke. Yet behind it lies a sharp diagnosis and a moral—always ideologically sober, humane, and sound. These distorted representations don’t drift off into abstraction or unreadable allusions. Despite its heavy caricature, South Park keeps its feet firmly on the ground, reflecting reality by sharpening conflicts and parodying global phenomena.

We all know them: the devious Eric Cartman, the law-abiding Jew Kyle, the typical WASP and everyman Stan, the good-natured Kenny, or the charming loser Butters. The creators have probably used every possible personality type (defined not only by character, but also skin color, political views, degree of disability, religion, or sexual orientation) and placed them within the confines of a small Colorado town. Such a diverse social structure inevitably leads to clashes, misunderstandings, and conflicts. South Park is America in a nutshell—a mixture of what one can blindly admire the country for, and what one can despise it for.

In 1999, the first and so far only feature-length film with the series’ characters was released. Its amusing original title, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, promised to push the boundaries of decency and humor even further. In the film, two leading themes are the vulgarization of youth language and the aggressive foreign policy of the United States. Part of the plot also unfolds in the afterlife, where Kenny, who dies at the very beginning, ends up. Of course, this surprised no one—there are very few episodes in which this character doesn’t die by being shot, run over, eaten by a shark, poisoned, or drowned. The boy, traditionally dressed in an orange parka, finds himself in Hell, where he meets a tender, good-natured Satan in love with Saddam Hussein—what a delightful paradox! Earlier, in town, Eric, Stan, Kyle, and the still-living Kenny manage to sneak into an adults-only screening of a film featuring their TV idols, Terrance and Phillip. The pair are vulgar, crude Canadian comedians obsessed with scatological humor (every joke ends with a fart, whether it makes sense or not). The four boys, of course, have a great time at the theater and then, imitating their idols, adopt their way of speaking. This sparks outrage among the parents, who blame all of Canada for corrupting their children. The conflict escalates until it reaches the level of an all-out war between the two countries.

The most interesting device in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is its double use of a metatextual layer in the narrative. On the first level, it appears as a clear analogy between moving the Terrance and Phillip show from television to the cinema—the same thing that happened to South Park itself. Stone and Parker approach their success with irony, mocking their own work. They are fully aware of their poor reputation among many viewers. In 1999, the outrage and controversy surrounding them was hardly surprising—they were even accused of being anti-American. South Park is lewd, tasteless, and crude. The idiotic, unwatchable adventures of Terrance and Phillip are, within the story’s universe, a simplified and caricatured representation of how South Park itself is perceived.

On the second level, Stone and Parker directly address their own popularity. They humorously trivialize their influence on the increasing vulgarization of language—something they were also accused of. When Kyle, Kenny, Stan, and Cartman leave the cinema, they gleefully repeat strings of curse words, becoming prisoners of the vulgar quotes from the movie. Later, they hurl them at teachers and classmates, provoking a furious reaction from parents. This is not just playful self-referentiality or a conspiratorial “wink” to the fans, but a narrative thread meaningfully woven into the film.

South Park is an animation that’s extremely intense and dense with gags. One joke that made history is Herbert Garrison’s line about menstruation, which he doesn’t believe in because “he doesn’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.” Another great source of humor is the romance in Hell between the “horny” Hussein and the sensitive, shy Satan. A less successful idea, however, was the overabundance of songs, which unfortunately pushed the film too close to the realm of a musical. Perhaps the creators also wanted to parody the hugely successful musical world of Walt Disney in the 1990s? If so, it’s not made clear enough. Still, that’s only a minor flaw.

One scene I especially like is when disgusted viewers leave the cinema during Terrance and Phillip’s appalling film. Only Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny remain, laughing their heads off. In them, I see the two directors themselves, creating new seasons with zest and creativity, having a blast, and caring about nothing and no one. That’s precisely why their productions are so genuine.

In South Park, there’s brilliance, wit, and absurdity. The feature-length film may not reach the level of the very best episodes, but it is still above-average entertainment—further proof that Stone and Parker invented a unique formula that never grows stale. There can never be too much South Park.