00:01South Park creators explain why they've introduced Donald Trump as a character after years of resisting.
00:07South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have opened up about why they've leaned into Donald Trump's storylines
00:13during the recent 27th and 28th seasons, which has represented a sharp pivot from their prior stance on the matter.
00:20Back in early 2017, after using the Mr. Garrison character as a stand-in for Trump in the South Park world,
00:26Parker and Stone said they were going to back off doing Trump jokes because reality was already outpacing satire,
00:33with Parker saying that satire has become reality and was much funnier than anything we could come up with.
00:40Now, in Trump's second term, however, that position has changed as the iconic South Park creators are politics
00:47have become too mainstream in pop culture to ignore.
00:51It's not that we got all political. It's that politics became pop culture.
00:56There's no getting away from this.
00:58It's like the government is just in your face everywhere you look, Parker told the New York Times.
01:03Whether it's the actual government or whether it is all the podcasters and the TikToks and the YouTubers and all of that,
01:08and it's just all political because it's more than political, it's pop culture.
01:12We're just very down the middle guys, any extremists of any kind we make fun of.
01:17We did it for years with the woke thing.
01:20That was hilarious to us.
01:22And this is hilarious to us, he continued.
01:25You know, next year will be different.
01:27If there's one thing we know, it is that our show will be a lot longer than Trump's administration.
01:31So we just got to do this for now.
01:34During season 27 and 28, which have been running over the course of this summer and fall,
01:41Donald Trump has been heavily featured in the same style that the series had previously used for the likes of Saddam Hussein, Mel Gibson and Ben Affleck.
01:50Similar to the previous Saddam character, Trump also finds himself in a homosexual romantic relationship with Satan.
01:57On top of that, they sensed a fear of speaking out against the administration and that new taboos had emerged, Mr. Stone said.
02:05Trey and I are attracted to that like flies to honey, Mr. Stone said.
02:10Oh, that's where the taboo is?
02:12Over there?
02:13Okay, then we're over there.
02:15Whatever South Park is doing, they clearly have the backing of the Paramount higher-ups,
02:19as the company recently said that the long-running animated comedy series was the top subscription driver on Paramount Plus in the most recent quarter.
Be the first to comment