South Park: The Passion of the Jew
South Park is an animated sitcom created for the Comedy Central television network, aimed for mature audiences. Created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, this show is known for its dark, crude humor and satirical imitation of a wide variety of subjects, namely topical events in popular culture. South Park first aired in 1997 and is still going strong, on its twentieth season. The show follows the adventures of four fourth grade protagonists in the small town of South Park, Colorado; Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, Kenny McCormick and Stan Marsh.
Parker and Stone like to use South Park as an outlet to criticize and parody extreme political and religious views. Because of their “antipathy toward political extremes, [they] mock celebrities who use their fame and power to preach a hard-line sociopolitical worldview, whether from the left or the right.” (Weinstock, 152). Parker and Stone both have openly expressed their dislike of religion, often referring to it as “silly” or “stupid” (Feltmate).
Through the most basic of animations, South Park, manages to use extreme situations to demonstrate the absurdity of radical believers of religion. Targets of South Park’s mockery have included Judaism, Mormonism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Islam, Scientology and even Atheism, (Arp, 131). Although Parker and Stone find the idea of organized religion ludicrous, there is a common trend in the conclusion of their episodes on religion. That is, positive morals can be found in all religions and sometimes worshipers become fixated on the wrong messages based on stories from their religions.
Parker and Stone are big advocates of free speech, which they practice a great deal via South Park. Their episodes on religion convey an important message to their viewers; people can believe whatever they want, but when religion is destructive, hurts others and is unethical, followers need to re-evaluate their morals.
It is clear that religion can serve an important purpose and South Park shows that. The show “never attacks faith itself–it attacks hypocrisy, gullibility, and the ways organized religions use fear, power, and money to manipulate people” (Boyett). With episodes such as Trapped in the Closet, which pokes fun at celebrity Scientologists and portrays the religion as a scam, and Red Hot Catholic Love, where the controversial topic of priests molesting children is explored, Parker and Stone show that there is no line they will not cross to prove a point.
The South Park episode, The Passion of the Jew, was written and directed by Parker and was originally aired March 31st, 2004. It is the third episode of the eighth season. In this episode, Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, and the subsequent events are critiqued. These events include society’s reactions and opinions, and Gibson’s drunken rant on his hatred for Jews. This episode also explores Chris Klassen’s first relationship between religion and popular culture, religion in popular culture (Klassen, 22). Interestingly enough, the characters themselves also study this relationship by examining The Passion of the Christ.
In The Passion of the Jew, Cartman, who constantly teases Broflovski for being Jewish, dares him to watch The Passion of the Christ as proof that everybody hates the Jews. Broflovski watches the gruesome film and is sickened by the way Jesus’ crucifixion is depicted. He feels a sense of guilt and responsibility as a Jew and even admits to Cartman that he is right — a tough pill to swallow for Broflovski. Marsh and McCormick finally watch the movie and hate it. They decide to travel to Malibu and demand their money back from Mel Gibson. Meanwhile, Cartman becomes the head of the Mel Gibson Fan Club, and holds rallies for the group where he shouts in German while wearing a Hitler-like outfit.
Once Marsh and McCormick finally meet Gibson, they steal their $18 back from him and he turns into a lunatic. With his face painted like his Braveheart character, he chases them home Mad Max style shooting at them in his truck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yFwQAelDrY
- A video from The Passion of the Jew where Mel Gibson is depicted as a lunatic.
After a Christian priest explains to Broflovski that Christianity is all about atonement, Broflovski suggests to his Rabbi and Jewish community that they apologize for Jesus’ death. The Rabbi tries to reason that nobody would take that film seriously, just as Cartman and his rally go by spewing anti-Semitic slurs in German. Then Gibson crashes his truck into a building, Cartman tries to worship him but is ignored as Gibson smears his own feces on the wall. Marsh advises everyone that, the important thing is to follow the teachings of Christ and not dwell on how he died. This relieves Broflovski of his Jewish guilt. The episode ends with Gibson flatulating on Cartman and skipping away.
This episode touches on several controversial topics in society. These topics include free speech, the relationship between Jews and Christians (especially pertaining to the life and death of Jesus), and the foolish behaviour of religious extremists. This episode was very well received by critics, in a time where the general public was in a state of outrage over The Passion of the Christ.The episode was especially liked by Jewish communities. One Jewish newspaper called it the most biting critique of “The Passion” to date (Gross).
The final scene of The Passion of the Jew is particularly effective in driving Parker and Stone’s message home. Two angry mobs stand outside the movie theater arguing. One mob, a Christian group led by the Hitler costume impersonator, Cartman, defends The Passion of the Christ, saying the movie reaffirmed their faith for Jesus and they expect an apology from the Jews for the death of Jesus. The other mob, a group of Jews including the weary Broflovski, who is scared of further tainting the image of his religion. They argue that Gibson’s move is anti-Semitic and should be banned from theaters.
Then, Gibson shows up in his Mad Max truck, wearing his Braveheart makeup, and wearing only underwear. His Christian worshipers gaze at him in glory but after they realize he is a madman, acting like a Looney Tunes character, they forget why they are so worked up over a movie he made. Following Marsh’s profound speech on the important aspects of religion, they decide to quit and go home. They realized they were worshiping Gibson and his film rather than the teachings and morals of their own religion. This scene cements the episodes message, Gibson’s film is no way to teach Christianity, and in general, nobody should base the teachings of their religion of off popular culture and the extreme outlets of media.
Outside the world of South Park, the release of Gibson’s movie created major controversy. With the general public, the horror and violence in The Passion of the Christ evoked immediate uproar. Many people in society, especially Jews believed the movie promoted anti-Semitic values (Ohad-Karny, 190). The movie was critiqued by non-Jews as well, who found it was an insult to Jesus’ “sacrality and transcendent image” and believed the film makers broke a moral code by even showing Jesus on screen as such (Ohad-Karny, 191). On the other side, Gibson, who was backed by many Ecumenical churches, offered no apologies for his movie, reacting to his film’s sizable criticism by defending it and arguing that he “intended to let the audience, not history, be the judge” (Ohad-Karny, 191). The backlash caused by this film divided viewers and critics into two sides- mainly Christians versus Jews.
After the release of his film, Gibson, well known for being a Right-wing Christian, exclaimed his disdain for the Jews on a drunken rant whilst being arrested for a DUI. He even went as far as to say that the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. In The Passion of the Jew, Gibson’s extreme behaviour is noticeably embellished, but Parker and Stone are trying to prove that, something as trivial as a film should not divide people apart by religion. This point is especially true when the creator of the film shows a clear bias against one side and clearly tried to portray them poorly.
It is clear that “Parker and Stone’s two-dimensional cutouts are poised to be effective at tackling difficult sociopolitical issues” (Weinstock, 27).The Passion of the Jew is just one example of South Park trying to demonstrate an important lesson. To Parker and Stone, the moral values embedded within religion are what followers should abide by, not the history and hatred of other religions.
The show’s crude, toilet humour allows Parker and Stone to exaggerate the ridiculousness of popular culture icons being advocates for their religion, such as Mel Gibson and shows them in a wacky, cartoon-like fashion. In this episode they showed that organized religion, along with Klassen’s idea of religion in popular culture, can give religious people the wrong ideas or persons to worship. Stone is quoted saying, “at the end of the day, if the mass delusion of a religion makes you happy, makes your family work better, is that bad or good?” (Boyett). Although they are against organized religion themselves, they see the ethical teachings that it can provide, if followed properly.
Bibliography
Arp, Robert, ed. South Park and philosophy: you know, I learned something today. John Wiley & Sons, 2009.
Boyett, Jason. “Trey Parker and Matt Stone on Mormons, Atheism, and Religion.” O Me of Little Faith. Accessed November 12, 2016. http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/omeoflittlefaith/2011/02/trey-parker-and-matt-stone-on-mormons-atheism-and-religion.html.
Feltmate, David. “New Religious Movements in Animated Adult Sitcoms — A Spectrum of Portrayals.” Religion Compass 5, no. 7 (2011): 343–354.
Gross, Max. “The Passion of the Christ’ Fuels Antisemitism — on ‘South Park’ Accessed November 12, 2016. http://forward.com/news/israel/5445/e2-80-98the-passion-of-the-christ-e2-80-99-fuels-antisemitism/
Klassen, Chris A. Religion & Popular Culture: A Cultural Studies Approach. 2014.
Ohad-Karny, Yael. ““Anticipating” Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: The controversy over Cecil B. De Mille’s The King of Kings.” Jewish History 19, no. 2 (2005): 189–210.
Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew, ed. Taking South Park Seriously. Suny Press, 2008.
