Did South Park Just Declare WAR on WOKE?

so a new South Park special was recently released and you know what that means I am so late to making a video on it that everyone's already forgotten about it you see this is usually the part where I try to like explain myself and why I'm so behind schedule but honestly I don't really have an excuse for this one over the last two weeks most of my time has been spent doing well stuff like this oh [ __ ] Phantom Tex game he dropped Dr nice Aus on oh no oh no serious however the one benefit of my laziness is that I've been able to sit back and watch the reactions of the general public to this special and in doing so I have noticed some interesting patterns regarding how people are interpreting the messages here when I first watched the trailer for this episode and saw that it seemed like they were going to be tackling woke media going as far as to race and gender swap all of the main characters I had a feeling I knew exactly how the response to this episode would play out and as it turns out out I was right on the money primarily and what will come as a shock to literally no one who's a fan of South Park it seems like a lot of people kind of missed the point even less surprising is how many people have taken these ideas out of context and use them for their own personal gain if you don't know why that's unsurprising I recommend you check out the video I made about the many many times that that exact scenario has played out during this show so instead of taking everyone at their word and forming our opinion through tweets and YouTube videos let's go ahead and figure it out for ourselves have matent tree finally outed themselves as bigots who are intent on spreading their racist homophobic and sexist rhetoric to all of their fans by denying the importance of inclusivity in modern Media or did they own woke Hollywood did they destroy Disney and Kathleen Kennedy was this a systematic takedown of the woke liberal agenda in our media was it insert more buzzwords here oh I'm not supposed to say that this special answers those questions in the same way that South Park usually answers questions it's complicated and I know that this intro might make it seem like this entire video is going to be dissecting the politics of this special but in reality I'm going to be talking about every aspect of the special most importantly whether it was good and whether it was funny so with the intro out of the way let's get into it did South Park just declare war on [Music] woke so first let's recap what exactly happened in this special and then after I'll go into depth about the themes and the potential messages so the main plot follows Cartman as he sees visions of a terrifying parallel universe one where he and everyone around him are replaced with diverse women he believes that this is all the work of the evil Kathleen Kennedy who demands that every character we love be ruined but then Kathleen Kennedy just like it make it my if you don't know Kathleen Kennedy is the president of Lucas Films which is owned by Disney and according to a lot of anti-woke people online she's the the one to blame for all of this pandering that's being done in modern Disney movies and even though this is the plot that has caused such a stir online a surprisingly large amount of this special is actually dedicated to a completely unrelated plot that sees Randy attempting to fix his oven door but coming to the realization that he doesn't actually know how to fix it in fact it seems as though he's forgotten how to do pretty much any handiwork along with the entirety of the white collar Workforce in South Park they're basically making the point that as technology and especially AI I have made our lives easier the average person has begun to lose these skills that they once had it appears that nobody knows how to do [ __ ] anymore and while that's rather unfortunate for the average person this is great news for all the blue collar workers around town whose jobs are not threatened At All by advancements in AI or technology these workers are in such high demand that Randy can't even get one to come fix his oven door even as he goes to more and more extreme lengths back with Cartman he seems to be slowly losing it as he is completely convinced that he changing somehow as he Witnesses all of these visions of diverse women taking his place God damn it I'm not fat I'm just shamed for my body in a world where white men decide what's beautiful he comes to the conclusion that these aren't just Visions they're glimpses into alternate universes the rest of the boys are not buying it and as Cartman is being sucked into said Multiverse they share their opinion on the Trope as a whole I swear the Multiverse is just an excuse for lazy writing yeah it's like every damn movie now back with Randy he takes a page out of Cartman's Playbook to see if he can finally get his oven fixed no there's people you can hire to do these kinds of things okay listen up Mexicans we need you to read The Old Man and the Sea for us CA but instead of Mexicans all he finds are a bunch of white collar workers offering their services in exchange for handiwork no I I need some broke ass immigrants to fix my oven door dang it meanwhile one of the local handymen pull up absolutely dripped out in designer asking for anyone that has any ability with a saw we then switch perspectives back back to the pandae which is the universe where everyone is diverse women we had our first look at this universe during the opening scene in Cartman's dream when they were all at the bus stop and it made me realize just how much I love these character designs they made sure to go all in on the diversity with each of the main boys becoming women of color all of them look sick and have a bunch of small little details that really tie it together nicely like Kyle's hair being tied with a green hair tie but my favorite is definitely Kenny which I mean I don't think is surprising it seems like that's the general consens among fans but that's for good reason because Kenny's design is just so cool and for some reason it just seems to fit his character the best out of any of the boys I don't know how to describe it but it just it just makes sense you know this is kind of a tangent but I think the funniest part of this whole special is that when these designs were shown in the teaser trailer while all these anti-woke Bros were writing scripts about how Disney got owned the entire online fandom collectively lost their minds and excitement because this is already how they draw all of these characters anyways I don't know I just thought that was funny so we see diverse Cartman ranting to all of her friends about the same Visions normal Cartman is having but then she gets sucked into the Multiverse as well being replaced with the normal Cartman she ends up in the normal universe and she attempts to convince the boys of what happened but once again they're not buying it meanwhile another handyman pulls up to the Home Depot absolutely pimped out and he tells the white collar workers to go away this really pisses off Randy and the rest of them so they decide to go to the local college and accuse it of being a scam as well as attack it with a cat how are we going to break the college if the Catapult is still in the box it's okay we called the handyman he's going to build it for us back with the boys they get called into the principal's office and we get to see PC principal address the situation with Cartman and it goes exactly as we expected to I don't see a problem with it at all and if you boys don't think Eric can be a black woman then maybe the problem is you the real Cartman is still losing his mind over in the Pander verse demanding to speak with someone of authority giving him a flashback to his time spent at the water park back in season 13 [Music] here then we cut to the Disney headquarters where they're discussing their plummeting stalks when someone suggests that Kathleen Kennedy might be the issue when they mention how she seemed different recently someone suggests a theory we here at Disney pandered so much that we've opened a doorway to the panderers she happens to arrive at the meeting right as they're saying this and I mean I don't know she looks totally normal to me so then we cut back to the normal Universe where the boy are still discussing their feelings on multiverses now it's just this cheap device that people use to breathe life into tired franchises so then diverse Cartman comes up with a new plan to get everything sorted out by using Kyle's Mom's credit card then back in the pandae Cartman is at the police station we get to see diverse detective Harris and a small detail that I found hilarious about it is the fact that he's the only character in The pandae that has the exact same voice as his regular counterpart and for some reason that just makes a lot of sense to me more honkies what is this a Taylor Swift concert then Cartman over hears that Kathleen Kennedy is looking for him and he makes a very graceful exit back with Randy he's currently in the process of leading a protest at the Country Club against rich people you know the rich people now being the handymen at this point the handymen are essentially billionaires and they face off over who can buy the most social media platforms who can go to space faster and their plans to fight in MMA gee I wonder if this could possibly be mirroring any real life events or people back at Disney they use an incredibly Advanced AI technology to realize that this Kathleen Kennedy must be from a different Universe they now know what they must do then we have to get everyone back to the right Universe before its complete pandemonium back with the boys they set up their brand new gaming PC to get started on diverse Cartman's plan when Kyle's mom notices the charges to her credit card but because diverse Cartman is still Cartman she's able to convince her that it's just credit card fraud back in the Pander verse diverse Butters is singing her rendition of Butter's favorite song got she's jump scared by Cartman breaking into her room who convinces her to join in on his plan showing that this universe is not so different from their own but immediately after Kathleen Kennedy appears and Cartman makes another graceful exit back in the regular World Randy gives a lecture to Shelly about the current state of the workforce I don't want you to end up a deadbeat loser who goes to college shell instead go out and be taught real skills that will still be profitable in this post AI universe so then Cartman is eventually cornered by Kathleen Kennedy who tells him that she's also in the wrong Universe meanwhile diverse Cartman's plan is working exactly as she wanted it to but what the boys don't realize is that her plan wasn't to fix the Multiverse or anything it was just to play balers Gate 3 wow it really is Cartman throughout this episode they mentioned balers Gate 3 like a bunch of times and it makes me laugh because this is clearly one of those times when Matt and Trey got really into a new thing and then they just decided to include it in an episode like I can just tell that they were really excited to make this joke also this part was pretty hilarious because it is incredibly relatable to anyone struggling with games that don't have cross progression save games don't even cross between PCS and ps5s why would they cross between multiple universes so in order to gain access to the panderers the Disney exec tell Randy the requirements to open the portal which are so stupid that I honestly couldn't tell if it was a genuine attempt to make a connection or if it was making fun of the loose and contrive connections made in Multiverse stuff we need to find a place with Integrity that has a broken door meanwhile Cartman and Kathleen Kennedy meet at CityWalk or city woke I should say to discuss what's happening Kathleen Kennedy reveals the secrets of the Pander Stone how it was an advanced form of AI that could be used to create the same movies over and over and have them appeal to to everyone but after receiving tons of hate mail she doubled down using the Pander Stone more and more until it became unstable and released the Cartman version of Kathleen Kennedy meanwhile Randy begins his exploration into the Multiverse where they take another jab at multiverses and what was one of my favorite jokes in the whole special can you imagine it an infinite number of universes with infinite combinations of pants and shirts back at City woke Cartman and Kennedy are sharing their feelings about the pandering being done when Cartman reveals that he alone has been writing the tens of thousands of letters of hate mailed to Disney causing them both to reveal their true motives I wouldn't have tried to fight racism with a Pander Stone if you hadn't written all those letters I wouldn't have written all those letters if you haven't tried to fight racism with aing Pander Stone meanwhile Randy is still experiencing his wardrobe nightmare within the pandae I'm wearing a Baltimore Raven shirt now I hate the Ravens oh oh now it's the dolphin the Chiefs on aief when Cartman and Kennedy finally begin to develop some understanding of each other discussing how their reactions to each other were what caused this cycle of pandering to worsen and in a rather uncharacteristic moment for Cartman he apologizes saying his actions left her no choice but to double down on the pandering Kennedy also apologizes for how she's treated the franchises that so many people love calling it lazy and then Cartman makes a concession that is pretty interesting and that we'll talk about more later in this video I guess just wait in on woke stuff all the time is pretty lazy too just then Randy makes it and opens up a portal for Cartman and Kennedy allowing them to return to their Universe Kyle is still skeptical of Cartman and that's for good reason Kyle I'm back I was so wrong about Kath Kennedy KY she's so awesome okay what Cartman is this you know I think it's obvious that the univers has got mixed up somewhere and accidentally gave them a shaved version of the evil Cartman from Spooky Fish you're so funny no matter how I'm feeling I can always count on you guys to lighten me up you know that's just a theory again no upon his return Randy does everyone a favor by bringing a bunch of handymen from alternate realities which is played like it's supposed to be some sort of commentary on billionaires but honestly I couldn't figure it out so I don't know the special ends with a glimpse into another alternate universe where the Cartman Kennedy tells her mom about her nightmare she tells Kyle that he was in the dream and in a choice that I still do not understand we see that Kyle is Cartman's seral in this universe and he devours him [Music] happily you so yummy cow you know weird VOR like implications aside that is the end of the special oh yeah I forgot about diverse Cartman well she makes it back to her Universe too and they all live happily ever oh yo [ __ ] you killed Kenny you fat [Music] ho all right now we're going to take a look at some of the underlying themes that we see throughout this episode first I'll talk about each plot individually and at the end I'm going to talk about the themes that connect all of the plots so let's start with the Randy plot because it's probably the most obvious it's all about how AI technology is advancing at such a rate that many of the jobs people previously referred to as educated labor are slowly being made obsolete the attitude of Randy and the rest of the white color workers is very resentful and angry at how seemingly unfair it is for the hand meant to be making billions of dollars while they struggle to even find work now this is set up in a story structure that South Park uses all the time I talked about it way back in my very first video on this channel where I called it flipping the script 3 years later and I still don't know what it's actually called so that name will have to do it's one of their trademark ways of satirizing something essentially placing those on either side of an issue in each other's place in this case Randy and the rest of the men take the role of your typical blue collar worker while the blue collar worker ERS become the wealthy businessmen however I think most of the message can be drawn from ry's actions it all started with his broken oven door and as the story progresses he becomes obsessed with getting a handyman to fix it he slowly moves further and further away from his original Mission until eventually he's leading a protest against capitalism in traveling through SpaceTime you probably wouldn't have even remembered that this was all to fix his oven if it weren't for Sharon calling to remind us every once in a while Randy did you fix the oven door yet I'm working on it hey Randy the oven door in the kitchen still isn't I am working on it hey Ran the oven door still isn't shutting right yeah I'm working on it Sharon Randy I think the oven door is still having problems if I am working on it Sharon but what does any of this have to do with fixing an oven door how did we even get here well Randy's attitude is spelled out for us early on when he has a conversation with Siri Siri gives him all of the information he would need on how to fix the oven door he just doesn't want to do it so instead he inadvertently goes to much further lengths trying to get someone else to do it when he could have just done it himself from the beginning it reminds me a lot of how Sheila and the moms act in bigger longer and uncut they go to all these extreme lengths to protect their children from TV when they could have just talked to them from the beginning in both of these cases their behavior is a reflection of their unwillingness to take any personal responsibility but why specifically is Randy acting like this well we'll talk about it more when we discuss the connecting themes later but for now let's talk about the pandering so what does this episode really have to say about woke culture and do they really own Disney as hard as these YouTubers would lead you to believe well there definitely is a lot of dogging on the pandering being done in media I mean by replacing every single character in the show with diverse women they're already making fun of the concept showing how little sense it makes to randomly give characters a new race and gender especially in a show like South Park a lot of the critique of the concept comes directly from Kyle and Stan who argue with PC principle about why it makes no sense what's wrong is it doesn't make any sense they make an important distinction after PC principal brings up Miles Morales though no Miles Morales is sweet that's a whole constructed thing with its own character and narrative and this is just taking Cartman same old Cartman and putting a black woman in it see this scene explains the core of the episode's criticism of woke pandering they're not making fun of race and gender swapping as a whole but rather the way that it's done done the Miles Morales thing is a perfect example since Miles Morales isn't just Spider-Man he's an original take on Spider-Man it makes sense to have him be A different race because he's really his own separate thing on the opposite side we have movies like The Little Mermaid remake which is exactly the type of representation that the show is making fun of making Ariel black without changing anything else is not actual representation because representation is about much more than just skin color it's about identity in Culture by just changing her skin color you might as well have just released the original and reanimated Ariel to have darker skin really it's insulting to those that it's attempting to represent it's just a blatant attempt at pandering to them covered with a thin veil of surface level representation if they really cared about making progress for these underrepresented groups they would be putting their effort into creating highquality original characters in IPS that have diverse characters I mean just look at Black Panther it was one of the highest grossing movies of all time and it did way more for black representation than any of these movies ever will the show's biggest gripe with this kind of race swapping is that it's just lazy it's an attempt to profit off of marginalized groups without having to do anything besides casting an actress of A different race so of course people are going to be upset since so many people care so deeply about these characters in franchises to have them all change so unnecessarily can be frustrating I'm sorry I was so reckless with the things that you love it was just lazy so did South Park dunk on Disney and their woke pandering like all these dudes say well to a degree yes but what these people seem to be forgetting is that this is South Park and anytime that you think the show is fully on your side they're probably making fun of you too and of course this special is no exception when Cartman and Kennedy sit down to discuss their roles and all of this she reveals that the reason they have been pandering so hard is because of all the hate they're receiving so much racist and sexist hate that she felt the need to continue pandering in an attempt to counteract this hate ugly letters from racists who couldn't understand that some of the Pander Stone's rehashes had diverse women characters in the lead then Cartman reveals that he has been writing all of the letters well I'm sorry I wrote all those letters they probably was a bit much oh I got like 10,000 letters a day I was doing more like 12 to 13,000 especially after the new Indiana Jones came out and it brings them both to a realization I reacted to you and you react Ed to me and I guess we created each other each of them are a product of the other they use Cartman to represent the people who are genuinely hateful towards these groups the people who will label any sort of attempt at representing a group as pandering trash people who are actually bigoted because these people are so vocal in their complaints they over represent themselves and Disney doubles down in an attempt to fight back this leads to more hate which leads to Disney tripling down and so on and so forth and feedback loop that just makes everything worse so now we can finally return to that line that Cartman said earlier I guess just wailing on woke stuff all the time is pretty lazy too in this case they're pretty much admitting that even though there are valid things to critique within the woke movement those people out there who spend all their time talking about how terrible woke culture is are doing pretty much the exact same thing as Disney these people ripping on wokeness all the time are also creating incredibly lazy content uploading the exact same same video every day making the exact same jokes that everyone else has already made profiting by pandering to the anti-woke crowd instead of presenting any valid criticisms of woke culture they all just talk about how wokeness is coming for everything you love they'll spend half the video reading an article about how they're making Tinkerbell black and at the end they'll talk about how it's just ridiculous this is the woke liberal agenda it's so hypocritical oh my God I have to pick my pronouns in a video game now what's next shovel you're d Shing crap ideology into everything every single it's all just lazy pandering garbage that anyone could make anyone could buy a microphone and build a brand off of ripping into woke stuff all day so yes South Park did make fun of Disney and the woke culture but they also made fun of all of you and I don't know if it's just me but I'm not seeing any of you talk about that part in your videos this came out last night I have not watched watch it its entire day I've seen a bunch of Clips out I've not watched it it's entire day I've not watched it it's entire [Music] day so now that we've established how the show feels about all of these topics what was the point of it all well the theme that connects everything together that's the underlying cause of all these different plot points is actually super simple laziness everything they criticize throughout this special has a root cause in laziness from technology and AI making all of us lazy to ry's Lazy attitude causing him to look for any way to fix the toilet besides learning how to fix it himself to the laziness of Disney just race swapping their characters instead of creating compelling original characters to the lazy cash grab content of the dudes that talk about wokeness all day and even the jokes about the Multiverse being an excuse for lazy writing it's all just laziness so really even though the online reaction to this episode may lead you to believe it's all taking down culture it's really not at its core this special was a message to everyone out there whether you support every single diverse remake Disney pumps out or you complain Non-Stop about them whether you don't know how to fix anything or you know how to fix everything if you're a writer out there who's about to explain away a plot hole with a Multiverse just please for everyone's sake stop being so lazy all my fellas all my fellas all Myas Myas you know all around I thought the special was pretty great there were a ton of funny moments relevant social commentary good messages and some awesome new character art I ended up enjoying it a lot and I'm excited for the next special they release before the end of the year comparing it to the other specials I'd say it was pretty significantly better than the streaming Wars but still not that close to the quality of postco [Music] go my my [Music] fellas

Channel: Blooms

Views: 1,085,670

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Id: ENcfQhbL3cg

Length: 24min 22sec (1462 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 10 2023