South Park Tackles "The F Word," Calls Everyone Over 20 Lame

OMG, I loved it! I should watch South Park more often jeje. Now, I am the type of person who hates to use any slur, regardless of their change of meaning. But I do agree that they were only trying to make a point. And sometimes making a point like this can be very funny! :D

Emmanuelle Lewis used to be Webster

Webster's Dictionary

get it??

"Fate won't compromise"

Since when do 14 year-olds determine the proper usage of a word? Whether it is derogatory or irrelevant?

Yes, the South Park boys and their creators, as usual, weren't trying to defame anyone and the episode isn't worth getting upset about, but I disagree with their conclusion.

If teeny-boppers used a derogatory term for black people, say, the N-word, to describe someone they think is lame, would that mean the word is no longer offensive to black people? Could we call a black person by the N-word because we think they're lame and then claim that we meant it is a judgement of character and not as a derogatory term?

South Park's moral high ground is a mole hill once again.

The show was always a combination of the brilliantly satirical and inspired (see: the episode where the Native Americans try to build a casino and get rid of the South Park residents via blankets infected with SARS), vs. the purile and idiotic (Mr. Hanky, Mr. Slave, and way too much else to mention).  Eventually, I decided that Parker and Stone are just two overgrown kids who never really progressed beyond Age 12, and everything they do is basically for shock value--they'll be seemingly "gay friendly" one episode, then jaw-droppingly homophobic and asinine the next if it'll get them attention.

So frankly, I couldn't care less what "South Park" says anymore--the ship has sailed.  The reason that Parker and Stone are so vehemently pissed off by "Family Guy" is not just because "Family Guy" is often much funnier than "South Park" (if not as daring), it's because Seth McFarland is an unapologetic Democrat who regularly crucifies the Republicans and George Bush for their hyprocrisy and idiocy, and Parker and Stone are Republicans.  (Notice how many of "South Park's" potshots are at outspoken Hollywood liberals?)

Kids (yes, there are moronic parents who let their kids watch "South Park") are not going to grasp the supposed "satire" of this episode.  All they're going to see is that it's OK to us the words "fag" and "faggot" towards people in public.

Like the show in general, still hate that word. Maybe one day the meaning will truly change, but we're not there yet and I actually don't really see the point in changing the meaning of words: let's just make certain words obsolete.

I dunno, I do like South Park, but some of their episodes aimed at society completely miss the point for me and then I just crave an episode of Cartman being a little bastard and Butters taking his revenge and the kids just being mean little bastards in general without trying to make a greater point.

Granted I love South Park. My nickname in college was Big Gay Dan since I watched it all the time and also treated everyone like Big Gay Al did on the show. Some people still only refer to me by that name.

And overall, South Park has shown great acceptance to the LGBT community. Those who are annoying, hypocritical, or ignorant, are made fun of. Stan accepted his gay god Sparky, the boys loved having Big Gay Al as their boy scout leader, and while they did shove a gerbil up Mr. Slave's butt, that show was to show the difference between tolerance and acceptance.

Would I have liked that they did not use Fag? Hell no. The Harley Bikers were in the library, reading how the word changed definition many times over the years. It seems only natural that it can again change. This time by the boys saying a fag is an annoying douchebag. They go out of their way to say they didn't mean a gay fag, but an annoying fag.

And Mr. Slave and Big Gay Al (loved seeing them after so long) were also at first taken aback. But then they too thought it out and agreed with the kids. They were adapting to the youth and how they use the term.

I'm still gonna correct people when they say "That's so gay". But maybe we can adapt to letting go of the power fag has over us.

Remeber, the children are the future.

"Faggot" is an anti-gay slur. And this episode was offensive.

South Park hasn't been funny for many years. It's time for them to annoy someone else.

Like posters above have said, if they tried the same with the N-word the show would be canceled. 

South Park wasn't trying to be offensive, they made an accurate representation of kids using this word. I'm in high school and i hear kids calling other people fags probably about 1000 times a day (not directed at me, im in the closet). About half of the time, it doesn't even mean homosexual to them. Same thing with the word gay.  The reason that it's offensive is that it always means a bad thing.  When kids are associating a word that really means homosexual with only bad things all the time, they are associating homosexual with being bad, even if the word fag doesn't mean homosexual to them.  People think that it isn't offensive it they don't mean homosexual but since it really does, it's extremely offensive. It's offensive any time the words gay or fag are used in a bad way.

...gave up and deleted both of them.

And, yeah, yeah, because I despise this sh*t, I just have no sense of humor whatsoever, but...

All I'll say is f*ck this coming on the day after our loss in Maine.

And f*ck those pr**ks Trey Parker and Matt Stone and their lazy, pretend-to-take-a-stand-while really-never-taking-a-stand, easy target "satire."

Parker and Stone have patted themselves on the back so many times about what "equal opportunity offenders" they are, they've probably both dislocated their shoulders.  But there's no such thing as "equal opportunity offenders" in the real world.  The real world has power structures and gays are being forced to go hat in hand to the whole freakin' country begging for our rights, while homophobes sit around on their fat, bigoted *sses taking their rights for granted and eating Cheetos.

So if you throw out a jibe on your show against a homophobe, the homophobes maybe grunt and eats another Cheeto, 'cause they have their rights and have nothing real at stake.  But you throw out a jibe at gays, even if you only accidentally convince just one more person that gays are jokes or that their rights are trivial, you begin to make things even more difficult for a group with enough of a hard road already.

It's a big difference when you attack something with tremendous power, like, say, a presidential administration or a globally powerful church, and when you attack a group that lacks power or that's already in a tentative or risky position in society.  Classic satirists, and genuinely smart satirists today, have always recognized that distinction.  "Equal opportunity offender" is a meaningless, self-serving term. Are there pompous gays deserving of ridicule?  Sure, but if you're looking at all the many, many deserving targets of harsh satire in the world today, I'd think ridiculous gay folks would be about # 123,765 down on that list.  Funny how they come up so often.

There's no such thing in our social and political reality as a level playing field. You say the word "fag" to probably at least 90% of the country and they're still instantly going to think some combination of "gay" and "negative," not "vague and harmless insult."

So seeing Parker and Stone diddling around at this particular point in time with stupid, lazy word games about whether or not people ought to be able to throw around a term historically used to dehumanize and terrorize gays (and in the meantime, getting to pat themselves on the back once again with 'oh look how deliciously subversive we're being using the word 'faggot' over and over again on national televison, just like we did with the word "sh*t''), and maybe pretending they're somehow helping reclaim that word (something, just as with how the N-word can only be reclaimed by African-Americans, not by whites, that straights can never do), when what this episode is really about at heart is that Parker and Stone had a lot of fun with the word "fag" in Team America and somebody in their own lives probably finally called 'em on it in a way that made them vaguely uncomfortable... 

Well, it makes me just want to...

...delete another post.

Reposted from yesterday's Queerview:

Even when they don't convince me, they always show that they've really thought about the issue, not just parroted convenient politics.

(Although I think tackling the "that's gay" issue would have been more topical than "fag.")

The gist of the argument I got from last night, taking away the various jokes, is that A) people are going to call each other bad names, B) stopping the next generation from viewing "fag" (or, assumably, gay) as a generic insult instead of a sexuality issue is a lost cause, especially because "fag" has always been a fluid word), so C) gay people should accept the inevitability and move our efforts to emphasizing the distinction.

It's not one of their stronger arguments.  I don't think the other usages are as separate from anti-gay sentiment as they believe, any more than telling a man to "stop acting like a bitch" is free of misogyny.  And certainly, you can't just abruptly decide that a word isn't going to have emotional sting any more.  (Although I suppose deciding that it SHOULDN'T have emotional sting is the first step in that direction.)

I think the part of the argument that carried the most weight for me is the inevitability of the new ways the words are used.  I've been in a number of battles over word usage, sometimes liking the new word or usage, sometimes not.  But *every single time*, the new usage won out.  I suspect trying to convince the younger generation that "gay" and "fag" don't mean what every single person their age that they know uses it to mean may be a lost cause.  At least until the terms go the way of Phat and gnarly.

When I saw the episode I was with 3 other gay guys (my best friend, hisboyfriend and one of his friends) and we all laughed at it, and we all got thehumor of the episode.  Heck we even joked about it after words, but Istill came off feeling offended by it because I feel like Stone and Parkerforgot about how the majority of people, specially kids still use the word torefer to anything that could be viewed as gay.  Even in South Park theyhave episodes in South Park where they use things like "that's gay"and stuff to each other to make fun of each other because it's still viewed asan insult for someone to be gay.  So I think for them to turn around thentry to "take back" a word that they just like to use a lot is astupid idea.  Let the word run it's own curse and see if with time theword changes with the rest of the language instead of trying to change it soyou can still use for your own fun. 

It also makes me think of a funny stupid moment in my life, which kindashows the stupidity of how straight guys view the word.  I was with my college roommates (in SanFrancisco) who were throwing a party in our apartment and the courtesy patrolbroke it up.  One of my roommates getspretty up set and yells out “those fags”, but then sees me and then tried toapologize by saying, “I didn’t mean your type of fag, I meant the cock suckingkind of fag.”  The same thing withthe South Park episode I believe.

I understand at times that the creators of South Park aren't coming from a bad place with their messages and they don't intend to be hurtful in their messages, but they often miss the mark. For instance, there was an episode where the boys were tasked with changing the flag of the town to something less offensive(it depicted a lynching of a black man). Long story short, the boys showed that they were blind to color and didn't see what was wrong with the flag and this was held up as a virtue. I was baffled as to how it's a good thing that the children are so unaware of the racial tensions in this country's history that they didn't see what was problematic about the town flag depicting the lynching of a black man. Color Blindness is just another way to ignore racial issues, not actually diffuse them or make them less harmful. The issue you aren't aware of is the issue you aren't addressing.

Another episode derided people with addictions wo used faith as a way to recover. The obvious intent was to say that they shouldn't put their faith solely into a higher power to cure their addictions because that means they are just dependent on something else, but the message came out as "Just stop drinking. It's that easy." As someone who has a parent that has struggled with substance abuse, this seemed like an extremely shallow handling of a severe issue. I found this episode's problem similar to the above two, where they certainly have a well-intentioned message, but they seem to view the world as more evolved than it is.

Racism and racial issues still exist, people are still called fags, sometimes prior to being assaulted and killed for being openly gay or suspected of being gay. We don't live in a society where these words are innocuous and the sentiments that typically have accompanied them are no longer relevant. The fact that the kids are too ignorant of reality to notice needs to stop being touted as a virtue. All it means is that in our world where these issues still exist(and not just because we're too sensitive about them), they won't be properly equipped to handle them, because they won't see why they're a big deal.

This is the third time South Park has done this on a level that I personally felt offended. I'm black, I'm gay, and I have dealt with my parent's substance abuse issues and I've felt like each time South Park has tried to make a point on these issues, I've had these straight white men who probably haven't had to deal with racism, discrimination and ill-treatment based on sexuality, or any severe, life-damaging addictions, (though I don't want to presume too much, just going by what i know and has been shown) themselves, tell me how I should feel and be handling these issues. For a straight white male, their suggestions are great as they give you a way to ignore these issues that you may never personally experience in a humorous half-hour block. But as a black gay man, I would prefer South Park just stick to having Cartman trick people into eating their parents.

 I feel it must be nice to sit up tehre where Matt and Trey sit as two straight men and decide what the proper usage or connotation of a word that has been so hurtful and demeaning for so long. It must be nice to make social satire but never actually do anything about it. There are people out there being MURDERED and beaten to death while be called a fag. Is taht the correct usage? You mean to tell me they were calling them bikers as they bashed their heads in on the ground? Was it friendly banter when the insult was hurled at the police officer trainee in the UK by a roving gang of feral tennegers as they merciless beat him nearly to death? Or how about closer to home in NYC when they kicked and punched that man on the street corner? Was it cool or fun then? No. Not funny. never has been, never will be.

O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!

Cartman is wrong in many previous seasons for using the word "dirty jew" to describe things he thinks are lame, but it's wrong because Matt Stone is a jew.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker aren't gay, so it's OK to use the word fag negatively.

Got it.

OH MY GAWD, YOU SLAMMED ED KENNEDY!

YOU BASTARDS!

Sorry, Sorry, but it just had to be done. 

1. Faggot obviously means "a male homosexual, who should be torched in a bonfire For Our Entertainment, because we are so right, God bless us" (no offense to religious folks, take it as a sarcasm, because lots of people who agree with this definition are not that full of faith in God Almighty, but pretend they are).
2. It is the current meaning, though gay men sometimes use it to tease each other inside their homosexual group(s), which makes it not so much derogatory.
3. But when a straight person uses it, doesn't matter towards whom, it is still pretty offensive.
4. What's better: redefining words or simply giving up on using them at all?
   • If you try to redefine some derogatory word, it's because you're offended by this word and want people to stop using it towards some group of people as soon as possible & it's hard to make them stop using this word, so by redefining this word you have to find another group of people to offend (bikers in South Park). Does it worth it? Should we fight insults by victimizing other people instead of us? I say, "No way!"
   • If you try to make people give up on using some derogatory word, you have to fight a lot harder, and it would probably take a lot of time (decades or even centuries), but this would be a fair victory, which won't hurt anyone else.
5. So. The attempt, shown in South Park, to redefine the word faggot was lame and offensive (I'm not going to discuss the very usage of this word in the episode at all, I'll just analyze the idea they offered):
   • It was offensive to gay people for they were depicted as those who actually came up with the idea of redefining this word nation-wide just to throw it away from themselves, de-victimize themselves at the expense of other unpopular group of people.
   • It was offensive to bikers whose activities were depicted as childish & meaningless, and who deserved to become a new minority, hated by outsiders (though we know there is the whole philosophy behind the biker movement).
   • It was offensive to all the other people who were depicted as those who would be fine with redefining this word towards bikers, because they all oh-so-hate them on the roads.
6. So. South Park should have dealt with people and their anger, their overwhelming need to hate someone, to offend someone with words and deeds. And that is the underlying reason of all of it. And just like doctors don't cut your left arm off when your right arm's tissue becomes necrotic, we should never transfer our problems by moving pieces around... We should deal with the underlying cause, cutting the nercotized arm off, giving up on using slur that offends people for no reason whatsoever.

Though I didn't see this episode, I think it's worth noting that "queer" used to be considered hugely offensive until it was "reclaimed" by the gay community and put at the "it's okay when WE say it" status. Having been a teenager when "Queer As Folk" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" became popular, sometimes I forget that "queer" was ever taboo. I wouldn't call someone a queer because I don't even think of it as something you'd call someone. Yeah, if someone yells "You're a queer!" it's insulting, but only because they're using it to be insulting.

"Lame" used to be about disabled people, "dumb" used to be about mute people, and "moron" used to be about moderately retarded people. (I believe "idiots" were the more severely retarded ones.) Then people started using them in ways that weren't meant as insulting to certain groups and nowadays I think most people would say "that movie was really lame" in front of somebody in a wheelchair and not think twice about it. Some Christians used to be offended by people saying "geez" because it probably started as an abbreviation for "Jesus" when used as an exclamation ("geez, what a jerk!"). I used to run across them on a semi-regular basis, but I haven't in years. Saying something "sucks" used to be considered way more offensive too.

Any word can be offensive..............or not.

The only thing is who use it, in witch circumstances, with witch tone etc...

Often Homo or Homosexual can be more offensive than fag or faggot,

I remember in France when I was younger some people use:"comme ça" (like this)

for me it was one hundred worse than "péde" ou"tapette" (fag, queer...)

I'm not a f*g, a qu**r, une tap**te, un p*dé, un ma**con...

Are almost soiled after seeing this episode!

"Everyone realizes that people who are so needy for attention, they need to dress up and be as loud as possible, are you guys and 16 year old girls! Just want to let you know, You're F%$*ing Fags!"

Priceless! 

I wanted to watch this episode, so I went to a site that purported to have it and ended up watching the South Park kids sing "Poker Face" instead.  It was pretty hiliarious, but it reminded me of a sad truth: no matter how funny I find a cartoon, I just can't take it seriously.  Whatever the South Park kids have to say about the "F" word, I refuse to be offended.  There are enough real world problems to engage my anger.  If Cartman and the guys want to milk laughs out of my life, I say, more power to the animators!  Meanwhile, I'm too busy following Dean Winchester's man-crush on Dr. Sexy to care. 

"The mountain has wings."

I can't help but feel that that the title of the article includes the phrase "call everyone over 20 lame" rather illustrates the major point to consider here - people understand that when kids call something lame, they mean rubbish, they don't mean disabled. Lame is far more accepted currently than "retard" which I have seen people be shocked over, but the same thing is happening there. Casual use of a word in a new context leads to different use. Its not really a good thing or a bad thing, its just the way language evolves and changes.

And, I find it strange how possessive the lgbt community are over the words faggot and fag. Words change; if this one is so offensive, why not change it so that it isn't? I dunno, I was brought up in a society where fags are cigarrettes and faggots are small wooden things you build fires from, so the determinism of some that they always will allow themselves to be offended by it is somewhat baffling.

First of all, I don't think it's fair to decry South Park as homophobic. I can't access that site (college network managers are bastards when it comes to filtered sites) so I can't watch the episode in question, but South Park has always treated homophobia (like racism or any other kind of bigotry) as being wrong. That said, they've frequently lampooned the tendency of minority groups to over-react and take offense where offense isn't intended, and the idiocy of being too PC. (A good example is "The Death Camp of Tolerance", mentioned upthread)  I'll be in a better position to judge after I've seen the episode, but I don't think it's unfair to attempt to separate the word "fag" meant in a derogatory context from the word "fag" as an anti-gay epithet. How many people on this thread have ever used the word "bastard" without giving due consideration to the hurt and stigma you put upon the children of unmarried parents when you do so? How many people read my use of the word "bastards" in the second sentence of this post and thought "man, now there's a guy who hates kids born out of marriage!"? My guess is "lots" and "none", respectively. And why is that? Because the meaning of the word "bastard" has evolved, so while it can still be used as a specific insult for kids born out of wedlock (and should be duly decried when used in that context), its use no longer automatically means that the user hates or is trying to hurt those kids. 

Secondly, I'd like to start a great big slow clap for users like Nanite for demonstrating once again why the ratings system is utterly flawed. I like the idea of having a way to mark when you completely agree with posts because they're eloquent or well-written, but going through a thread and giving automatic "0"s to posts that express a viewpoint contrary to your own irrespective of how well or badly the point is made is just childish, and really doesn't make your side of the argument any more convincing. 

*Sits back and waits for the "0" votes to start rolling in*