I really don’t watch TV ever. I wish I did, because it would make topics for this blog a lot easier to write. I just don’t have time and I’m running around like a madwoman with her head cut off? Weird analogy, I know. Well last I decided I’d do myself one better and put in my South Park DVD. It was the episode that is a parody of 300, where a group of Persians come into South Park and take over a Lesbian bar called ‘Les Bos”. Also, Mr. Garrison (who recently had a sex change to be a women, is now gay because he/she likes woman.) finds that he/she belongs at the bar and feels comfortable there. When the Persians come and try to take it over, Mr. Garrison and the town fights back. What I am getting at with this episode is that Matt Stone and Trey Parker do a good job making light of issues such as LGBT identity and in turn point out the way that media sees the gay community. The episode is not necessarily making fun of gay individuals, but it is showing that the media’s representation of the gay community is skewed and stereotyped. The writers of the show both know that the lesbian community is truly as the stereotypes portray them to be, but do a great job making fun of these stereotypes with the help of various media parodies. In the media today, the LGBT community is positioned as a taboo topic or something to be kept ‘private’. This is unfortunate, but it is the current mindset of the masses. I think it’s great when shows make fun of how ignorant this type of 'group think' really is. South Park usually does a great job throwing out and surfacing ignorance.
Among my favorite cartoons there is South Park, of course they would show the LGBT community within the stereotypical concepts. Although, the viewer is always going to apply their own subjectivity to the material being presented to them, they have to also take into consideration the material they are being shown and why they are being presented with such concepts. South Park emphasis is to make fun of everything and everyone, there is no taboo subjects to them. Which I think it gives them the liberty to be very open and state anything they want to state with their cartoon for the fact that some people love it and others hate it. The fact that South Park has a huge fan base is the fact that the material is for comic relief, it is going to be cruel and even at times quite vulgar. However, it manages to address important current issues, with a certain twist. Being able to have a network such as comedy central that allows to show this material to viewers gives the opportunity to educate others nonetheless about the distorted issues that should be addressed in a possibly different matter, such as in this case the stereotypes of the LGBT community.
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