![]() Not the company that raced to pull a Taiwanese flag emoji from their phones, in fears it would anger the superpower. The property was considered too dangerous in light of Apple’s myriad other Chinese interests they couldn’t dare upset the nation where the majority of their products are both made and sold. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese ban - which scrubbed all mentions of the show on blogs, message boards, social media, and streaming sites - seems to have prompted Apple to drop out of the bidding war for South Park’s digital rights. They do all of this knowing there will be fallout. Parker and Stone also featured the assassination of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il as a primary plot point in Team America: World Police and won nine Tony Awards while skewering Mormonism again in The Book of Mormon. Over the course of its 301 episode run, they’ve taken on the three major Abrahamic religions, plus Mormonism, Scientology, multiple US presidents, the biggest stars in Hollywood, and perhaps the most prickly subject of all: PC culture. Though there are no targets larger than the most populous country on earth, South Park has been prepped for a battle of this scale. It’s important to note that this whole turn of events likely surprised no one. “Badass” has become one of the most hackneyed, overused compliments in all of media. For anyone paying attention, the various plot threads all wove together into one razor-sharp garrote wire - like the one Randy Marsh used to murder Winnie the Pooh in order to appease the Chinese - thus issuing two almost incontrovertible edicts: South Park is still the most subversive show on the air and Parker and Stone are two of the bravest creative minds in Hollywood. Then, a week later, came the LeBron joke. Xi doesn’t look just like Winnie the Pooh at all! Tune into our 300th episode this Wednesday at 10! Long live the Great Communist Party of China! May this autumn’s sorghum harvest be bountiful! We good now China? We too love money more than freedom and democracy. Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts. In response, Parker and Stone issued this “apology,” via the South Park Twitter handle: Two weeks earlier, the episode “Band in China” - a brutal takedown of the Chinese influence over American media, in general, and the overt changes made to Bohemian Rhapsody to appease Chinese censors, specifically - literally got South Park banned in China. A nice bit of synchronicity for a show that always seems to be a step ahead of the cultural conversation. ![]() This marked the second time in a week that South Park mocked the NBA incident while connecting it to their own recent multi-episode arc tackling China and Chinese censorship. ![]() ![]() It was a direct quote from James - whose comments on a controversial Tweet supporting Hong Kong protesters by Houston GM Daryl Morey have been roundly criticized. “Yes, we all do have freedom of speech, but at times there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you’re not thinking about others, and you’re only thinking about yourself.” The episode Parker and his co-creator Matt Stone were working on, titled “Let Them Eat Goo,” was mostly focused on the Impossible Burger/ Beyond Meat craze, but amidst Cartman’s profanity-filled diatribes over getting tricked into eating fake beef, there was one line that stood out: Last week, while LeBron James was still trying to walk the incredibly fine, “I believe in the power of protest but don’t want anyone messing up my money” tightrope regarding the NBA’s ongoing China controversy, Trey Parker was presumably in a recording studio in Los Angeles voicing Eric Cartman. ![]()
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