South Park is one of the great American comedy cartoons and, unlike some other shows, is still held in high regards to this day. Also, unlike some of its competitors, South Parks characters haven’t changed too much over the years and are still the basis for many hilarious character moments even after 26 years on air.
I believe this is due to how South Park structures its jokes which allows them to touch on a large variety of topics from a similar angle whilst still being hilarious. They’re able to take a mundane situation, such as being at school, and turn it into a classic scene by using a few genius techniques.
South Park takes Stupid Situations Seriously
Many comedies will have a stupid character who will break social norms, say ridiculous things, and overall act completely braindead throughout the show. Characters like Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin are prime examples of this and many of the jokes in their shows will come from the escalating consequences of their ridiculous acts.
South Park turns this idea on its head by having everyone go along with the stupidity as if it wasn’t stupid at all. They take this idea further by taking ridiculous ideas but placing them into normal and know structures in society, such as a hierarchy at work, which allows for mundane situations to be turned into jokes. This works because it takes these structures and adds a “what if” element to them. For example, what if you worked in retail and served the Devil as he brought his weekly shopping.
A great example of this would be in the classic episode “Make Love, Not Warfare” where the developers of RuneScape hold board meetings because a player is killing everyone else. In real life, the developers would just delete the player, however in South Park they treat this annoyance as a world ending threat. This idea is then taken further by introducing fantasy elements such as “The Sword of a Thousand Truths” (which is just an asset that the developers never put into the game so sits on a USB) and the developers treating the USB stick as if it was a magical sword. South Park uses this formula to organically bring multiple other themes and elements into a story and use them for jokes.
Breaking the Seriousness to Create Comedy
Whilst almost all stupid situations are taken seriously, South Park will have some characters break this rule to create comedy.
My favourite example is in the episode “Toilet Paper” where the boys throw toilet paper over a teachers house. The police take this case very seriously and approach Josh Myers, who is a spoof of Hannibal Lecter, for help. Josh begins breaking down the police chief and other characters psychology problems in a similar way to the famous scene from Silence of the Lambs.
The police chief later brings Josh to the schools principle to continue his investigation and Josh begins breaking down the principles sexual history. Instead of being affected by this, the principle treats the child as a normal annoying pupil and sends him out of her office.
This scene is entirely unexpected since everyone else has been taking Josh seriously and treating him as if he was Hannibal Lecter until then. The comedy comes from a character having a different perspective to everyone else in the room and this technique is used subtly throughout the show to create comedy in almost every scene. Most scenes will have at least 1 character, sometimes even just someone walking past in the background, glance over to see the weird event happening and then continue walking.
South Park Spoofs from Several Sources
A spoof is a humorous imitation of media where characteristics are exaggerated for comedic effect. The most common examples would be slow motion walking away from an explosion in the background or a supervillain monologuing for no reason.
South Park is able to craft truly unique episodes because it takes inspiration from a variety of sources and then integrates them into the world of South Park as well as the events of the episode. This allows the writers to craft jokes that have a variety of layers that come from external and internal sources. The best example of this would be the “Coon and Friends” arc which sees the children of South Park adopt superhero personas and solve crimes.
This arc plays characters attitudes against the tropes found in superhero stories and creates many jokes from it. My favourite is when it’s revealed that Cartman, who has appointed himself the leader of this group, has set up speaker systems in everyone’s houses and then sets them off in the middle of the night so everyone comes to the base. We see this from Stans perspective as his whole family are awakened by the alarm and he then berates Cartman for setting up this system without telling him as it got him into trouble.
South Park is able to stay relevant and still hilarious to this day because of how it incorporates spoofs alongside existing character attitudes. When combined with many of the characters taking these situations seriously, and some characters breaking this, it creates hilarious moments that fans of both South Park and the original media will love.
South Parks Writing Structure
You cannot talk about South Park without bringing up the writing structure that the creators/writers, Matt Stone, and Trey Parker, employ for every episode.
They use the ABT structure with is “And-But-Therefore” to craft their stories and this is why some of the wildest ideas that South Park has incorporated into episodes will still make sense within the story.
If we use the previous example, and one of my favourite episodes, of “Teepee”, the structure will look like this:
The boys don’t study for a test therefore they fail therefore they throw toilet paper over the teachers house therefore the police open an investigation, but they can’t solve it therefore they turn to Josh therefore Josh is brough to the school, but the principle doesn’t engage with his psychological analysis and kicks him out but (rest of plot happens).
The writers also employ logical extremes to craft jokes that make sense but that an audience wouldn’t have seen coming. For example, the police turning to a Hannibal Lecter character to solve a crime. Any party or faction that is involved in a story immediately opens up the possibility for a range of circumstances related to them, so the writers focus on what story beats they want to touch on and then figure out how to organically bring them into the existing story.
This is why stories in South Park will always make logical sense no matter how bizarre they get.
Overview
- The characters of South Park take stupid situations seriously and incorporates them into existing infrastructure to craft jokes
- Some characters will then break this seriousness to create jokes which allows for unexpected moments of comedy
- South Park spoofs from a variety of sources and makes those spoofs work within the premise of the episode / the world of South Park
- The writers use the “And-But-Therefore” method to bring organically bring bizarre situations into a story and still have that story make sense.
