South Park on hypocrisy, censorship and good old American parentingThe series and film versions of South Park have quite the reputation for their vulgarity and often humor absurd which, one way or another, also includes relevant social criticism. The film effectively exposes many hypocrisies within American culture, including our aversion to sex and swearing, but our innate love of violence, our supposed hatred of ignorance while being ignorant, and the root of all of this, how parents want to raise their children versus what children actually need. These examples are examined in depth because of South Park's strategy of making us laugh, letting our guard down, and allowing us to see problems in our world that we weren't aware of or didn't want to acknowledge. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay America has some strange ideas about censorship in our media. Cartoon violence, exemplified by classic shows like Tom and Jerry or Family Guy, is ideal for young children, and even modern shows like Game of Thrones display incredibly graphic and gory depictions of mutilation, death, sex and even quite disturbing combinations of these. Although this is an extreme example, as journalist Stephen Holden writes, most films aimed at mainstream audiences "permit almost unlimited violence while remaining petrified of anything that stinks of coal." (Holden) Many television shows may contain intense physical violence but are only allowed a certain amount of swear words. If the idea is to protect young observers, it doesn't really make sense. They'll learn to swear at school, from friends or online, so banning them from TV ultimately doesn't really matter. The excess violence displayed in our media desensitizes us over time. In a way, the film aims to try to achieve the same effect, by disrupting "notions of suburbia, authority, bodies, sexuality, war... through its omnipresent intertextuality and vulgarity" . (Halsall) His characters throw out quick, creative curses so often that eventually the audience becomes immune to a phrase like "boner-biter, dick-fart, damn face" that would probably cause a sensation otherwise. This is just another line in hundreds of equally crude lines. In doing so, South Park shows its audience exactly what desensitization to violence looks like and how ridiculous it is that it is allowed to be so common while we place limits on arguably less important things like profanity . While the film does a great job of clearly showing their thoughts on this particular sample of hypocrisy, it also succeeds in showing America's backward behavior when it comes to parenting and education. To clarify, South Park develops the parent characters as trigger-happy, self-sufficient characters. righteous and, more worryingly, incapable of raising their children well. They are forming an anti-Canadian coalition and whipping up a frenzy to go to war over a movie that "corrupted" their children without first attempting to safely fix the unwanted swearing. This goes back to the question of censorship. Although parents may nobly wish to limit their children's exposure to anything we consider "adult," they often go about it the wrong way. The creators of South Park make it clear that theybelieve that “pompous and hypocritical rhetoric about protecting children from basic, albeit unpleasant, realities” (Holden) does more harm than good. In fact, the fictional parents' overzealous actions mirror real-life parental moves to keep kids away from weed — not other, worse drugs like heroin, cocaine, or anything else for whatever reason — as well as swearing, sex, gluten, video games. , etc. The film paints a clear picture of the “desperate, paranoid adults who yearn for an incredibly sanitized environment” (Holden) that we so often see but rarely think about. Interestingly, Holden's "sanitized environment" describes forms a fairly realistic metaphor for real-life parenting. Some parents keep their young children in very sterile environments, which seems like a good thing at the time, because they don't get sick. But as they age, they are exposed to common pathogens that their immune systems have no experience with and they become seriously ill, and more often than their peers. While parents certainly had good intentions, they simply don't understand that children need some level of exposure to the real world, whether for the benefit of their immune systems or their general understanding of the world . Too often, overprotective behaviors end up harming their children because they involve a lack of trust, invasion of privacy, and neglect in providing the essential information children need. Amusingly, South Park uses Stan's questions about the clitoris to highlight this aspect. Even though children seem to have a rudimentary idea of ​​sexuality, almost everything they have learned comes from the media, so it is not necessarily complete or correct. Her misguided attempts to understand female anatomy highlight a fundamental problem in our country: the hesitation and, to some extent, refusal of parents to fully educate their children in subjects they consider taboo. Shielding children from the truth can be beneficial in some situations, but Stan is clearly at an age where he deserves an explanation for his questions. Excessively withholding information from children is simply keeping them sheltered, and this can easily backfire when they receive the information in a way like Chef gave Stan; somewhat informative, mostly confusing. Alternatively, they simply never learn something incredibly basic about sex properly. For example, parents' reliance solely on schools to teach sex education can have disastrous consequences in states where education is exclusively focused on abstinence. They discover the horrors of not using condoms without having learned how to use them. And what's most worrying is that they don't learn anything substantive about sexual safety other than "chlamydia exists and it will find you." However, teenage sex continues regardless, and their rates of STDs and teenage pregnancy are skyrocketing because they are not properly educated. Parents' insistence on preserving their children's innocence ultimately harms them, and it truly reflects the "naiveté of the adult population obsessed with the corruption of innocence." (Halsall) It is not uncommon for children to experience a loss of innocence early in life, unbeknownst to their parents, and then try to protect something that does not exist. While the parents.”