Page 388 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Pol t cal Enterta nment: From The West Wing to South Park |

Another television show, but markedly different in tone, Trey Parker and
Matt Stone’s South Park hit Comedy Central in 1997. An animated sitcom, the
show follows the lives of several young children in the small mountain town
of South Park, Colorado. Infamous for its profanity, R-rated premises, and le-
thal sense of humor, the show quickly gained a position of notoriety as did
few programs before it, but behind the swearing and the fart jokes were often
some smart examinations of American life and politics. Cultural controversies
from the alleged anti-Semitism of The Passion of the Christ to the right-to-
die debate surrounding the 2005 Terri Schiavo case were dealt with satirically,
adding to cultural discussion of the issues as they occurred. For instance, the
Schiavo-inspired episode ended with a broadside attack on the media’s ghoul-
ish display of Terri Schiavo’s dying days, and a strong moral regarding the eth-
ics of media coverage that was largely missing from public debate at the time.
Frequently using language and premises to shock, South Park has followed
in the noble satiric footsteps of eighteenth-century satirist Jonathan Swift by
using entertainment to grab its audience’s attention and insert commentary
into an ongoing debate. It has also managed the rare trick of mixing politics
and youth appeal.
However, television by no means holds a monopoly on meaningful politi-
cal entertainment. Many films, too, from Crash to Brokeback Mountain, The
Insider to Syriana, Bulworth to Erin Brockovich, Wag the Dog to Dr. Strange-
love, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? to All the President’s Men, and so forth,
have mixed stellar performances and entertainment with political commen-
tary. Meanwhile, music and book publishing have long been the media most
known for political entertainment, with the likes of Eminem, Ani DiFranco,
Rage Against the Machine, and Kanye West, and earlier favorites such as Phil
Ochs, Woody Guthrie, John Lennon, and Bob Dylan in music, and a long his-
tory of uncompromising literature by writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and John
Steinbeck.

LimiTaTions
Undoubtedly, political entertainment has proven more hospitable to some
ideas than others. Thus, for instance, tales of racial and gender politics are com-
mon, especially when the “bad guys” are specific, rather than a pervasive societal
ill in general (though, for example, the 2004 film Crash serves as a notable ex-
ception). Political corruption is also most commonly dealt with when historical
or fictionalized and generic. Overall, political entertainment seems most will-
ing to take on general problems stated in the abstract, rather than engage with
named policies, parties, and individuals. Multimedia corporations are still too
timid in the face of potentially angry audience backlash, and too keen to pro-
tect their own interests, to open the doors of political entertainment too widely.
Hence, as has been the case in all societies, we should still expect those in power
to reign in and somewhat sterilize political entertainment to the best of their
abilities, or simply to deflect its commentary to “safer” abstract topics with no
specific incarnation.