Reviewed by Jean Roberta
(9/22/99)
The creators of this movie, based on the animated television show of the same name, have taken some big risks. One of these is the crudeness of the artwork (which is played up as "crude" in several senses) compared to the dazzling three-dimensional effects of Disneyesque computer animation that current audiences have come to expect. The creators and producers seem to have counted on the drawing power (so to speak) of a movie based on a TV program, which already had a cult audience.
Several aspects of this movie contrast strikingly, while some are deliberately ironic. It is a simply drawn musical comedy with an ambitious plot, and it contains a movie-within-a-movie, Asses of Fire, starring an obscene Canadian comedy team named Terrence and Philip. The "foul language" in the "foreign film," Asses of Fire, guarantees that South Park, as well, is likely to be labeled "Restricted" by local censor boards, tempting real-life children to sneak in, as the grade-school characters of South Park do in the movie. And just as humorless American puritans focus on Asses of Fire (and its stars) as a dangerous import which is supposedly corrupting the nation's children, South Park dares humorless Canadian puritans to focus on it as one more example of the American crudeness which is said to be lowering the tone of Canadian culture.
In South Park, the proposed solution to the "problem" of cross-border infiltration or seduction is a public execution of the offenders (as in the "good old days" when parents brought their children to watch such things) followed by a war. The anthem, "Blame Canada," is meant to arouse patriotic zeal in the American soldiers who are recruited to kill in the name of moral decency. Black soldiers are considered expendable and sent to the front lines. When the adults are (literally) losing their heads, it is up to the kids of South Park to save the day.
The anti-addiction strategy of the expert who is brought in to reprogram children who have learned to swear, and the "censor chip" embedded in their brains, obviously satirize twelve-step programs and various plans to censor the Internet. Some of the targets of satire are harder to pin point. A dysfunctional gay relationship between Saddam Hussein and the Devil (who is less evil) could be seen as satirizing war propaganda in general as well as homophobia and self-help books on "how to save your marriage," which the Devil reads in vain. A boy who wants to know how to make a girl like him better than she likes other boys is advised to "Find the Clitoris," and a giant clit then appears as a kind of Holy Grail. There is something in this movie to offend almost everyone.
This Canadian reviewer watched the movie with a group of gay male and lesbian friends, and at times we almost fell out of our seats laughing. Later, we discussed the delicious irony of Canadian art (to use the word loosely) as a bad influence to be stopped at the American border. All of us have been following the ongoing legal fight of one of Canada's few gay/lesbian bookstores (Little Sister's of Vancouver) against Canada Customs on grounds of discrimination. Customs, a branch of the federal government, routinely stopped shipments of reading matter, ordered by the bookstore from American distributors, from reaching their destination in the 1980s. If the "Little Sister's Case" had not become a focus for anti-censorship organizing in Canada, and if Little Sister's had not taken the offensive by suing the government, the bookstore would probably have gone bankrupt years ago. (The good news is that Little Sister's has already won several rounds.) The redneck belief that "bad" art always comes from somewhere else, where it is produced by depraved foreigners, is amusing to anyone who can see how universal this claim seems to be.
In life, of course, drastic decisions are often based on assumptions this irrational. Whatever its faults, this movie is thought-provoking. Like all other art that is panned, banned, or restricted, it should be seen and discussed.
