Animations and cartoons are often stereotyped as mindless entertainment aimed at young audiences, but not all animated works fall within this trope. In the name of satire, some cartoons aimed at older viewers (like Rick and Morty, South Park or The Simpsons) often feature offensive or politically incorrect themes to mock contemporary culture, politics or even countries. Let’s take a look at how the writers of these shows get away with it.
Rick and Morty follows the adventures of cynical dimensional-jumping scientist Rick and his hormone-heavy teenage sidekick Morty – most of which tend to be brimming with strange alien beings, alternate realities of themselves, drugs and alcohol, and death.
Parody or satire?
There’s a fine line between a parody and a satire, but Cliffsnotes identifies several key differences between the two. A parody is a work that simply “imitates the style of another composition, normally for comic effect and often by applying that to an outlandish or inappropriate subject.” On the other hand, a satirical work is one that “intends to do more than just entertain, it tries to improve humanity and its institutions… arousing the reader’s disapproval of an object – a vice, an abuse, a faulty belief – by holding it up to ridicule [through] euphemism, irony, exaggeration and understatement to show the follies of mankind and the parodies and idiocy they can lead to.”
Let’s say we wanted to use superheroes as an inspiration. We can create a team of Avengers-esque heroes who harness the power of cheese to battle the forces of darkness – that’d be a parody. However, if we also wanted to convey the message that superhero movies have become repetitive and are often filled with uninspired plots, we can create a satire by giving our “heroes” boring origin stories and pairing them with equally lame villain counterparts – a plotline that Rick and Morty explored in the episode “Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender”.
Rick mocks the unimpressive character designs of several of the Vindicators, including Million Ants (the ant swarm with a collective consciousness), Crocubot (the intelligent cyborg crocodile) and Alan Rails (the token black hero of the team with the power to summon a ghost train.
This is the first episode depicting the Vindicators, a group of heroes with obvious references to the characters from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, as they call upon Rick and Morty to help take down the destructive overlord known as “Worldender”. Rick absolutely despised the heroes for being “drama queens that spend an hour talking and 20 minutes jumping around while s*** blows up”, and decided to take matters into his own hands – effortlessly sneaking into the villain’s fortress while in a drunken stupor and eviscerating him, and also accidentally trapping the Vindicators (himself and Morty included) in a series of character flaw-revealing Saw-styled torture trials.
Rick’s most offensive trap had the Vindicators pair up each character with a specific trait. However, every trait was equally applicable to each hero – showing that despite the heroes’ aesthetic differences, they were ultimately all the same. The traits listed also ridiculed many modern superheroes for having the same boilerplate characteristics.
At the end, Rick’s traps only served as a catalyst towards the death of many of the Vindicators – it was their jealousy and pettiness towards one another that ultimately doomed them. The title of the episode also poked fun at the trilogy-centric nature of most modern films – and the fact that Rick slays Worldender while blackout drunk is a complete mockery of the Vindicator’s abilities (who implicitly needed a full-length episode to defeat him in the past).
South Park is a show about four young schoolboys and their adventures with the supernatural and inconceivable. Depicted here is Herbert Garrison as he completes his transformation into Donald Trump following his election as President – complete with his signature toupee-styled hair and bad tan. Also depicted is South Park’s grotesque interpretation of Caitlyn Jenner (Garrison’s running mate).
When satire becomes reality
Modern entertainment isn’t the only target of satire. As South Park has shown time and time again, they are at ease with going after anyone and anything that is worth mocking – like the rise of Donald Trump (played by the outspoken former grade school teacher Herbert Garrison) and his ascension to presidency in the show’s 20th season.
The season opened with director J.J. Abrams agreeing to reboot the Star Wars film franchise – resulting in the much acclaimed Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Although some of South Park’s citizens criticised the movie for being a nostalgia trip more than a good film (sentiments echoed by the show’s creators), mysterious fruits known as “member berries” began sprouting around the country and infusing everyone’s minds with thoughts of the “good old days”. This later ties into the ongoing presidential election, where the increasingly xenophobic populace induced by the member berries elected Garrison as president thanks to his campaign promise of putting “all illegal immigrants [and political refugees] to death”.
At a key presidential debate, Mr. Garrison confesses that he has no idea how to run a country and urges his fellow Americans to vote for Hillary Clinton instead. This initially creates the idea that South Park’s creators are siding with Hillary, but much to our surprise, they take on a neutral stance between both candidates and depict her as a braindead “turd sandwich”.
Given the real President Trump’s eccentric behaviour and penchant for firing off unfiltered tweets, you’d think the writers at South Park would have a field day making fun of him. On the contrary, creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have expressed that they plan to back off. “It’s tricky now because satire has become reality,” says Parker. “We were really trying to make fun of what was going on and we couldn’t keep up. What was actually happening was so much funnier than anything we could come up with.” His partner Stone commented that despite the hilarity of some of Trump’s actions, the outcomes of those actions didn’t necessarily make them feel happy about it either.
Keep in mind that a satire’s effectiveness stems greatly from its exaggeration or shock value – if what you’re satirising is already those things, then you need to go even bigger (ie. President Trump plans to use a portion of America’s tax revenue to install a moat patrolled by sharks with lasers attached to their heads).
The Simpsons is a show following the dim-witted Homer Simpson and his family as they attempt to live the American Dream – unfortunately, they often find themselves caught up in easily avoidable problems.
The Simpsons already did it
Beyond Trump, South Park recently got into serious spats with China for their mockery of American greed for Chinese investments (among other things) – resulting in the TV series being banned in the country. However, another show had offended the Chinese Communist Party long ago and had the offending episode banned in China. We’re talking of course about The Simpsons and their infamous “Goo Goo Gai Pan” episode from season 16.
The episode began with Homer’s sister-in-law Selma Bouvier experiencing menopause. Yearning for a child, she decided to adopt a baby girl from China (which had a surplus of female orphans at the time due to the one-child policy and the social stigma of boys being favoured). Although Selma was unmarried, Chinese state law mandated that only foreign couples could adopt – hence Homer’s reluctant pairing with Selma to visit China and complete the process (with Bart and Lisa pretending to be their children and Marge as their nanny).
The Simpsons family travel to China to meet the adoption handler Madam Wu. Along the way, they visit many landmarks (often stereotypical of Chinese culture), including the Shaolin Monastery and the Great Wall of China.
While showing stereotypical Chinese landmarks was nothing new, in traditional Simpsons fashion, they included risqué dialogue that challenged Chinese culture – including the mocking of former Chairman Mao Zedong for causing the death of millions, the seizing of Tibet’s independence and the Chinese government’s crackdown on free speech. As expected, Homer and Selma’s guise failed and the Chinese government demanded baby Ling’s return – through a controversial confrontation in front 1989 Tiananmen Square. Shortly after, China banned the episode (along with most western cartoons) to tighten the government’s control over pop culture.
Although satirising anything related to China today may instantly trigger Chinese netizens to boycott or to hurl abuse, the entire point of satire is to expose the faulty and the unjust – which is why seasoned satirists (like South Park’s Parker and Stone) seem to care so little about how their work is received. However, if it’s your first time writing satire and you’re worried about political consequences, just know that President Trump is always fair game – he probably even enjoys the attention!