South Park is an animated sitcom that has run on Comedy Central network since its inception in 1997. It is based around the adventures of four young friends: Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman, who all live in a mountain town in Colorado called South Park. The show has constantly courted controversy for its language (at first, a large part of the humour was derived from the device of making eight-year old boys use four-letter words, although the worst of these are usually bleeped out at source in order to satisfy local censorship).
It was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who provided the voices for the characters and scripted the shows in addition to creating the animation. Many adult themes, such as racism, the disabled, paedophilia, AIDS and Satanism have been featured, since the programme is ostensibly not meant for children. Nonetheless, many catchphrases have passed into the English language, and a great deal of merchandising and a feature film (South Park The Movie: Bigger, Longer And Uncut) have helped to underpin the show's success. A considerable number of guest voice actors (including George Clooney, who was responsible for bringing the show to wider attention; Natasha Henstridge; Elton John; Ozzy Osbourne; and Robert Smith of the Cure) have appeared on it. It references and parodies other cartoons such as Scooby Doo, Family Guy and The Simpsons (once devoting a whole episode to the premise that no new comic situations were possible since "the Simpsons already did it") [1], and Parker and Stone have stated that their inspiration was the British comedy team Monty Python.
Peel's Admiration[]
-OH MY GOD- you killed kenny!
The origin of the catchphrase used by the Cuban Boys
Since JP had been a fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus and featured excerpts from it on Top Gear, it seems South Park's savage humour appealed to him. He proclaimed his admiration for it on the 23 August 1998 (BFBS) show, and said on 08 November 1998 (BFBS) that "these days all punk rock singers sound like Cartman out of South Park" (Cartman's aggressive and ranting manner making him one of the most popular characters). The enthusiasm waned at some point during the third season, and on 14 July 1999 he seemed not to know who Mr. Mackey (the school counselor with the catchphrase "Mmmm kaaay?") was, adding, "We've moved on from South Park on this programme."
Cuban Boys: Oh My God! They Killed Kenny![]
Kick the Baby
Secondary Cuban Boys catchphrase
The Cuban Boys released a demo 7 inch initially only available via Rough Trade shops. 'Oh My God! They Killed Kenny!' was widely promoted by John and entered the 1998 Festive Fifty at number 6. It sampled phrases from the show, including Stan's "Oh my God! They killed Kenny!" (constantly used during the first and second seasons whenever Kenny died in some horrible fashion, as he did in every show at that time, only to reappear unharmed in the next), although Kyle's equally famous rejoinder "You bastards!" was not used. Kyle can be heard, however, saying "Kick the baby!", which prefaced a 'game' he played with his adopted Canadian brother Ike.
Links[]
- Wiki entry
- Homepage, with full streamed online episodes [2]
- South Park Wiki (dead link)
- Footnotes
- ↑ Peel once compared South Park unfavourably with this show [1].
- ↑ When Parker and Stone were asked how they felt about pirate copies of South Park circulating the Internet, they claimed they didn't care. However, this facility was created shortly afterwards. The streamed shows cannot be viewed in the UK.