A justification for American militarism from the South Park guys in the form of “dicks have to fuck assholes” or whatever.
Racism towards Middle Easterners and Kim Jong-il too, because why not?
The real problem is that some Hollywood actors said the Iraq War was bad.
I was thinking about how North Koreans have been dehumanised and the bad guys since the 50s, but this film really was the start of the “North Korea is evil and weird”. Like if you told people Yeonmi Park stuff in the 80s they’d be like “what the fuck are you talking about?”
Same guys who said climate change didn’t exist, made an episode about it. Same with that Penn Teller guys, when asked about it years later they said some bullshit like “Uh… We were wrong, but AL GORE was way to preachy about it!!!”
They did all that shit about muslims, but are way to scared to fight the Trump people and will wait after the elections.
“Uh… We were wrong, but AL GORE was way to preachy about it!!!”
The real crime was appearing to care about something too much. Fucking cishet white Xer brains.
Same people who said there’s no proof that secondhand smoke is harmful, same people who compared transitioning to getting surgery to become a dolphin, etc…
They did all that shit about muslims, but are way to scared to fight the Trump people and will wait after the elections.
Treat defenders have said “there’s nothing more to say about that, it’s not funny anymore.”
But there’s infinite resources to say caring too much about things is stupid and bad, though.
The good news is that (obviously extremely anecdotally) most people I saw it with only took home the message of the first part of the movie, where the US were infinitely worse than the “terrorists” they claimed to be fighting.
I must have come from a much more colonialist-brained part of the country, because I heard a lot more “dicks also fuck assholes” edgy metaphors to justify colonialism.
See, I don’t understand something. It is satire but it also is just genuinely what Americans believe. Is that because Americans are too illiterate to process satire, or is it because America is so devoid of morality that participating in a self-deprecational circlejerk of “satire” provides American libs and chuds with the moral license to keep supporting atrocities?
I think the same underlying phenomenon applies to the way a huge majority of Americans distrust their government, but they still functionally put their trust in government in every conceivable ways. A tax strike in the US is unthinkable. Voter turnouts are low, but the majority of elegible voters still vote, despite saying they don’t trust their government. Electoral candidates with negative approval win elections. Nobody believes in anything, it’s a walking zombie of a country.
The problem is everything Trey Parker and Matt Stone ever did is satire about believing in literally anything except nihilistic libertarianism. It ends you up at this “satire of the americans that’s also just what the americans think”
Dude, it’s therapy. When you have to do something, out of necessity or because it’s what’s right it can be an intense burden! just doing basic stuff sometimes! But, especially if it’s wrong and kinda fucking evil - the human psyche - being fallible and often damaged - needs to process stuff. Team America was group therapy. This kind of genre of thing is about putting the anxieties, pains, morality, of the conscientous part of the American psyche forward - and to absolve itself without changing direction. It is confessional, it is ritual hail maries, it is baptism - and where the repentant might change their behavior, the guilty, the bloody handed, the passive and the cowardly just cleanse themselves in the purifying waters before carrying on with the soiling work of turning the crank on the meat grinder.
What a hypnotist might do 1 on 1; slop does for the collective.
“The weight of what i do is heavy on my shoulders, but in the end we’re good people trying to heal and do good, right?” the nation asks itself, all at once, processing itself in the shattered visage of the humanity that belies its callous mask - a finger snaps, the body relaxes, and the mind forgives itself under instruction
love your posts on here just wanna say
i always feel insane making them so i’m glad to hear it tbh
Very well put
A tax strike in the US is unthinkable
Like 90% of US taxes are collected automatically, I don’t think it would work even if people were into the idea. A little over half of Americans get money back on their taxes when they file them, because the government automatically took more than it should have from their paychecks.
But yeah it is a huge contradiction that Americans seemingly don’t trust their government, but love their military and police. Personally I think the rhetoric around not trusting government is just a cultural shibboleth that right wingers hijack to justify reducing social spending and not a real thing that people believe.
I don’t think it’s “right wing” (it is bourgeois, but not right wing in the cultural sense). I think it’s just as prevalent in all sectors of hegemonic culture: Americans are superior people because they are free thinkers who know better than to trust their government. From the moment the nation came to be that’s more or less been a constant. But it’s wholly contradictory to the absolute subservience to empire that the American state demands (Actually Existing Liberalism).
A tax strike in the US is unthinkable
I’ve wondered about whether something like this was even possible; the moment you suggest going on a tax strike, wouldn’t you get arrested on the spot along with everyone who agrees? Getting people to agree to a tax strike would be difficult enough, but sticking around long enough to drum up support would be the real issue.
Nobody believes in anything
Gonna be honest, people are blase about everything until it affects them, and even then they can be convinced to be okay with it because it has yet to break their backs (like criminally low wages and rising living costs). Modern day America is still not 1900’s China, and corporations are very cleverly easing us into it rather than just a straight drop; as long as they don’t make any drastic mistakes, they may actually successfully advance modern day America into early 20th century China. Ever wanted to roleplay as a peasant from 1920’s China but with infinitely less of the rich culture? Well maybe it’s still to early for you, but your grandkids will love it (surely).
That meme is too true; born too late to be a 1920’s Tibetan serf, born too early to be a comparable 1920’s Tibetan serf.
I’ve wondered about whether something like this was even possible; the moment you suggest going on a tax strike, wouldn’t you get arrested on the spot along with everyone who agrees? Getting people to agree to a tax strike would be difficult enough, but sticking around long enough to drum up support would be the real issue.
Yes, that’s exactly correct, but the fact that this would be seen as the best outcome by the vast majority of the same people who say they distrust the government is why I say the situation is so bleak. Same thing with all the people who “agree” with climate protesters’ intentions, but disavow their methods. The working classes of the imperial core are lulled into inaction by the subtle trick of being convinced their fruitless beliefs matter in a world where their masters have already preempted those beliefs from crystallizing into change.
I put a lot of blame on South Park for the current crop of middle aged chuds we have today.
You have opinions on how things could be better? That sounds like caring about things, which is 
.Lolbertarian boomer brained Gen Xers are the fucking worst
Lolbertarian boomer brained Gen Xers are the fucking worst
The ennui of being materially comfortable but “bored” in their youth then “getting theirs” as they got old was an express lane to chuddery. Pretty much the entire cast of 90s MTV are working for the GOP or a chud propaganda network now.
Same.
Before the “entertainment has no effect on its consumers, material conditions material conditions” might get chanted, I counter in advance that consumption of entertainment is a part of material conditions, and decades of consuming entertainment that has apathy-is-cool and caring-about-things-is-bad propaganda messaging and has built in memes such as “manbearpig” to further solidify the propaganda into climate denialism, a hateful body horror caricature episode to inspire fear and hatred of trans people, and a long-standing awareness from Matt Stone and Trey Parker that their Cartman character is the resident nazi and that they know the fans are aware and that resident nazi continues to be presented as a diabolical evil genius in ways where “don’t do this” feel glib and insincere as subtext instead of loud and clear like Springtime For Hitler…
I even remember when they ran an episode about
and concluded “this is cool and good actually stop complaining about the screaming nazi that indoctrinates children, let people enjoy things.” To summarize, fuck South Park and fuck South Park fans.
At least to me personally, Manbearpig is the worst thing they’ve ever done. It was practically impossible to even mention climate change online in the 2000s without someone going
lol Manbearpig! 
At least to me personally, Manbearpig is the worst thing they’ve ever done. It was practically impossible to even mention climate change online in the 2000s without someone going lol Manbearpig!
Propaganda works and no one is immune to it, especially not irony-poisoned South Park consumers.
Superstructure, meet base. This is not even getting into Debord or Adorno territory.
Team America makes more sense when you understand that it was just supposed to be a parody of Jerry Bruckheimer movies. The reason the political satire has this very muddled view of “Bush era American military interventions are bad but also good but maybe kinda bad unless not” is because that’s not the main thing it’s making fun of.
Edit: That wasn’t a defense of the movie to be clear, and I think Team America fails because it can’t commit to making a point. It invites you to laugh at how crass and stupid the whole post-9/11 Bush era American ethos was, but it mostly seems to agree with the underlying premises that birthed that ethos, except sometimes when it doesn’t. If the South Park guys wanted it to be just a movie parody then it shouldn’t have any political satire at all, but it does, so it winds up as a satire that doesn’t say anything. A movie like Airplane is much more successful as a movie parody because there’s virtually no political content in it.
Hot Shots 1 and 2 did the parodies of American action movies better a decade before this.
definitely. I had forgotten about those. Gonna have to rewatch them. Also literally everyone on this site needs to watch the movie Top Secret, we should do a watch party for that as a pallet cleanser after we are done watching horror for halloween.
One of the best movies for one off sight gags
The underwater saloon brawl scene was legendary. It was actually filmed underwater with painstaking care.
You nailed it. I was there and watched it because the “south park guys” were part of it
Taken on its own, the first scene of this movie - where Team America blows up France for basically no reason - could be read as a critique of American interventionism. “This is what we do to other countries, imagine if we did it to white people!”
Also, if you were to take the final monologue, and put the text “THIS IS WHAT AMERICANS ACTUALLY BELIEVE” under it, it would actually become really funny.
As it stands, unfortunately, most burgerbrains see the “dicks also fuck assholes” speech as actual profound edgy-flavored messaging to justify colonialism.
I’ve heard it myself offline and it’s terrible when it comes from middle-aged men.
What if China is the “dicks” and the US the “assholes” 
Also, if you were to take the final monologue, and put the text “THIS IS WHAT AMERICANS ACTUALLY BELIEVE” under it, it would actually become really funny.
Imagine if those two credulous dipshits were self-aware enough to link Scientology and Mormonism to America, the place that birthed those cults.
That would have been a hell of a film.
I took it as a more scathing critique than their usual shit for brains takes. But then again it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen it. I felt like the over the top tropes were supposed to point out the absurdity of racism and military jingoism. Idk though, my media literacy from back then was non-existent.
It’s been a long time for me too. I remember that at the end of the film, it took some very lib positions on the DPRK and also said that US violence was justified much of the time (the “dicks fuck assholes” comment that an other poster brought up).
Yeah, I felt like the lib takes had a bit of a tone of mockery though, but in true Matt and Trey fashion, they don’t offer any alternative.
The mockery was lost on too many fans that direct quoted it to explain why they supported colonialism by other names.
Before movies became political
You’re 100% correct, but I still like to say that America Fuck Ya is the Amerikan national anthem.
white male libertarians make great propaganda
It was enlightened centrism with edgelord characteristics even when it came out and “America Fuck Yeah” became a
thing for blue curtain enjoyers to chant and then the 
spread into newly conceived subgenres like “Humanity Fuck Yeah” for the same blue curtain enjoyers to indulge in because hogs really, really like self-indulgent slop.blue curtain enjoyers? what does that mean?
It comes from the Reddit-popularized concept of “the curtains are fucking blue,” which is a thought-terminating cliche that declares that subtext, author-intended or not, doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter in literature.
It’s gotten so long in the tooth that even some parts of Reddit started pushing back.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/9rglby/the_curtains_were_fucking_blue_a_defense_of/
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I fucking hate what this country does so god damn much. it makes me want to scream and tear my hair out. a nation of murderous hogs who will do anything to keep their treats.
DEATH TO AMERICA!
what is sow phpark?
That link…
