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Macro: South Park was relatively respectful, censored unreasonably

April 30, 2010

by Sean Willson-Schafer, guest writer

Over the past couple of weeks, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker may have created the most controversial episodes in the show’s history, which were followed by heavy censorship of the program as well as death threats from an extremist Muslim group.

The two part episode titled “200” and “201” begins like a pretty standard episode of South Park, making fun of celebrities that most people dislike. Soon a large group of celebrities threaten to sue the City of South Park and only one thing can save it: Someone must find the Islamic Prophet Mohammed and bring him to the celebrities. Their rational is that Mohammed is the only person that is immune to being mocked, so maybe they can harness this power to protect themselves from ridicule.  

And now you can probably see the problem−South Park touched the issue that nobody is allowed to touch. They attempted to show the image of Mohammed, which in Islam is forbidden.

Now, this isn’t the first time that Stone and Parker have upset religious groups. Such episodes have included a statue of the Virgin Mary anal bleeding on the Pope, a depiction of the crucifixion of Christ by stereotypical representations of Jewish people, as well as arguing that the Mormon faith was completely made up by Joseph Smith. This also isn’t the first time Mohammed has been featured on South Park, going back to 2002 in which he was shown multiple times, completely uncensored, shooting fire out of his hands nonetheless.

So what was so offensive and off-color about these two episodes and their usage of Mohammed that caused the New York based group Revolution Muslim to issue death threats towards the show’s creators? Besides showing the image of Mohammed, which was censored out, absolutely nothing!

 When the threats were issued the day before episode “201” aired, Comedy Central decided to add extra censorship to the episode, resulting in an almost hard-to-follow plot and not only censoring any image or verbal usage of Mohammed, but also content about fear and intimidation that didn’t even mention the prophet. The episode has now been removed from any viewing on both Comedy Central and the Internet.

Now, please don’t get me wrong, although I am arguing that none of this censorship should have occurred, including the images of Mohammed, I also consider it courtesy to not publicly and cruelly mock someone’s religion and personal beliefs for no reason. However, Parker and Stone treated the content involving Mohammed respectfully and used the prophet to prove a point. Mohammed’s role in South Park is to represent a religion that seems to be above non-religious public reference. Why? Because some members of the Muslim faith believe it is acceptable to intimidate people with violence, if their beliefs compromise that of Islam. At least in the United States, freedom of expression is protected by law, no matter what. That is, unless it is threatened with acts of violence apparently.