South Park: 9 Best Episodes About Censorship, Ranked | ScreenRant
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have taken aim at a ton of satirical subjects throughout 23 seasons of South Park. One of their favorite topics of discussion is free speech, and a huge roadblock in the way of free speech is censorship. Kyle sums up Parker and Stone’s views on censorship pretty well: “Either it’s all okay or none of it is.”
In a couple of ironic instances, South Park episodes about censorship have been censored by Comedy Central. In fact, some of them have been practically scrubbed from existence, as they can’t be found on any streaming services or home media releases.
9 Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poo
Season 1’s “Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo” was a milestone episode for South Park, because it was the show’s first full-on satire. In addition to lampooning the commercialism of the Christmas season, despite its roots in religion, the episode mocks political correctness surrounding the holiday.
Instead of acting in a “Nativity,” which directly references the Christian Bible, the boys appear in “The Happy, Non-Offensive, Non-Denominational Christmas Play.”
8 The F Word
Parker and Stone examined the flexible, ever-evolving nature of the English language in season 13’s “The F Word,” in which a homophobic slur is re-appropriated to refer to obnoxiously loud bikers.
Even by South Park’s standards, “The F Word” was controversial. GLAAD refused to endorse the episode, despite acknowledging its good intentions, because they worried that a lot of South Park’s fan base would miss the point and they’d feel okay using the slur.
7 Safe Space
Feeding into season 19’s ongoing satire of political correctness, “Safe Space” discusses the idea of online safe spaces. As PC Principal recruits Butters to delete mean tweets and comments and only leave the nice ones, a nefarious mustache-twirling villain named “Reality” crashes the party.
Reality sums up the episode’s thesis neatly in his final speech: “What’s the matter with you people!? You’re sa-a-a-ad that people are me-e-e-ean? Well, I’m sorry, the world isn’t one big liberal arts college campus! We eat too much, we take our spoiled lives for granted – feel a little bad about it sometimes! No, you wanna put up all your sh*t on the internet and have every single person say, ‘Hooray for you!’ F*ck you!” Despite making a lot of sense, Reality is promptly hanged.
6 Cartoon Wars Part I
In response to people across the world telling fans of South Park that they’d like Family Guy and vice versa, Parker and Stone made a two-part episode criticizing Family Guy called “Cartoon Wars.” The story evolves into a commentary on censorship as Family Guy announces an episode that will depict the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
During production of “Cartoon Wars,” Parker and Stone butted heads with Comedy Central. They wanted to open season 10 with these episodes, but had to push it back due to conflicts with the network over depicting Muhammad.
5 Cartoon Wars Part II
In the second part of “Cartoon Wars,” South Park continued to tease a depiction of the prophet Muhammad through the context of a depiction of the prophet Muhammad in the in-universe version of Family Guy.
After building up to this moment, the show cuts to a black screen with a title card saying, “Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Muhammad on their network.”
4 Band In China
Stan and the boys lament the fact that Hollywood studios edit their movies to appease Chinese censors in order to score lucrative Chinese box office returns, because it means that most of the art that American kids get to enjoy has been sanitized to fit Chinese restrictions.
The episode’s criticism of the Chinese government got the show banned in China, which its title suggests the show’s creators were expecting.
3 It Hits The Fan
Trey Parker and Matt Stone were surprised that Comedy Central allowed “It Hits the Fan” to air without censorship, because it contains a record-breaking amount of profanity. But the network felt that in the context of the episode, the swearing was justified.
Cursing becomes normalized after the word “sh*t” airs uncensored on a network crime drama, which awakens ancient spirits who are protected by the use of swear words being limited.
2 200
Last year, South Park’s 23rd season delivered the show’s landmark 300th episode, “Shots!!!,” and its aimless storytelling and focus on the Tegridy Farms storyline long after it was stretched thin felt like a huge disappointment, especially considering how astounding the show’s 200th episode was.
Season 14’s “200” saw all the celebrities that have been mocked on the show arriving to sue the town. The storyline that got the episode promptly banned calls back to Comedy Central’s refusal to broadcast an image of Muhammad in “Cartoon Wars.”
1 201
Following on from “200,” “201” escalates the conflict. For their milestone 200th episode two-parter spectacular, Parker and Stone pulled out all the stops in boldly declaring what they’ve always strived to do with the show and how it fits into modern society while also celebrating South Park’s history.
The episode ends with Kyle giving a speech about the dangers of bowing down to threats of violence, but the whole speech was ironically censored with one long audio bleep by Comedy Central in response to threats of violence.