FROM WHERE I SIT

I'm not saying don't see this film. I just won't join you.

When deciding on whether or not to see Team America, the new puppet film by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, I was reminded of the indignant conservative America when Farenheit 911 came out. Many people, including one friend who I believed to be an open-minded soul, railed heavily against Michael Moores documentary, calling it un-American and deceitful left-wing propaganda hell-bent on besmirching the pious and 'holy' Bush Administration. These were thoughts that certainly evoked the want for discussion on my part but my need for discourse about politics and cinema were suddenly taken away when I learned that no one who was so vocally offended by the film had actually seen it.

Oh, my friend and his wife saw five minutes of it and then walked out, they said. So naturally, they concluded, the whole package was a pack of lies. The only question that we found ourselves arguing about was whether one has a right to decide about a film if they refuse to see it in its entirety. Both my friend and his wife simply countered my reasoning with right wing rhetoric usually babbled by hate-radio hosts like Hannity and Limbaugh who, themselves, would not watch the Moore film but knew aaaaaalllllllll about the lies.

So, here I am watching an interview and a trailer for a new film created by those South Park geeks Matt Stone and Trey Parker called Team America. A movie with puppets that, according to the trailers, talk like tough American Frat Boys blowing away terrorists and ridiculing the anti war message. (Now that's how theyre selling it. If it aint so, then the commercials are bait-and-switching.) So I consider: Do I want to see this movie?

Ah ha! Whats good for the goose . . . my inner debating opponent tells me. So, will I see it? Nah! I forfeit the debate. I dont wanna see this movie.

Why?

I guess it comes from the fact that Im not overly impressed with the comedy styling of the South Park team. Over privileged, very lucky frat boys themselves, Stone and Parker made a funny out of the ordinary cartoon a few years back where small kids said the 'f 'word a lot and talked like smug barmitzvah kids to Christ and Santa; a young ex frat-boy producer saw the short film, heard it was the rage at Spike and Mike's Sickl and Twisted Animal Festivals and gave them a deal to produce a whole season featuring the same characters. Lucky, lucky bastards! Now their show is a huge mega-hit because, as pundits say (and as the creators themselves believe): The South Park brand of humor says what the rest of us are thinking.

Ive always been pretty outspoken and have never been afraid to say exactly what I think. Ive never followed the crowd, either. So might I counter the brood who feel that Parker and Stones brand of humor is so damn funny with a thought that Im thinking? Stone and Parker are criminally over rated.

The films device is clever enough; a Bruckheimer action film done with puppets. It would be more enticing, though, if it were a ten- or twelve-minute short. Ugh -- an hour and a half? I also have to confess I never liked those dramatic Thunderbirds shows done with marionettes and they were only a half hour.

I have been given the impression by watching the previews for Team America that its a giddy romp in the satirical world of Stone and Parker who said they were inspired by the World War Two 'anti-Tojo-anti-Hitler' cartoons from Warner Brothers. There was something empowering about those cartoons, said Parker in a recent NPR interview. It gives a people a chance to feel superior over our enemies.

Is America this needy for self-esteem that they need an empowerment boost from sophomoric students of fart and retard humor?

I am not one of the many Americans with a psychological need to feel superior in this time of war. I am however pissed beyond words at a puppet president and his supporters who believe a cowboy-diplomacy is the way to solve the worlds problems.

Yeah, TA is just a movie that, at this writing, is about to premiere tomorrow (Friday). By Monday, which is your history, it will be number one at the box office which will thereby place yet another victory for the fight against political correctness. I am not telling others not to see it. Im not a censor. I also know that there will be no escaping seeing parts of this film in the future when I go to a video store and the slack-jawed pimple face behind the counter will be running it on the monitors, laughing at all the fart humor and anti-Muslim crap. So there is a definite victory in Trey and Matts war against political correctness. Slack-jaws united!

People who hate political correctness are suspect to me. First of all, to them anything that smacks of regard and considerable thought is worthy of contempt. Secondly, I always think they use their arguments against sensitivity because in their heart they really want to feel superior to people different than themselves. How sad it is that political correctness has been spun into this multi-syllabic euphemism for disregarding respect--demanding that respect is now deemed by people like Stone and Parker as a political crime.

Yeah, the old Warner Brothers cartoons where Bugs Bunny foiled Hitler, Goering and Tojo were created at a time when all of America was also laughing at Little Black Sambo and Snow Black and Seven Dwarves. In those days the humor came from a threatened feeling of being destroyed by those people this country deemed dangerous. However, the backlash of this fear also justified a reluctance to understand and accept all other people who posed no threat and were merely different than us. This reluctance hit its peak through the civil rights era and still permeates today whenever people like Stone and Parker make films to exploit Americas need to feel superior to our enemies.

Whoops! Im talking history. History makes no never-mind to people like Stone and Parker.

Whether it is the minority who gets no respect in South Park or the mean ole terrorists on Team America, both are equally as 'evil' in the world of Stone and Parker. This film is just an excuse to broaden their neurotic fears against validated foreign enemies of America.

So am I not seeing this movie for political reasons in suit with the 'narrow-minded' critics of Farenheit 911?

No. (laughs) Its Stone and Parkers comedy. They have no heightened sense of one. The point-and-laugh kind of humor is the style of babies and idiots and those who care not to think and read.

Maybe I see more into their comedy than Stone and Parker admit to, their supporters confess to, and the studios wish to ignore.
[BB]
They just aint funny, man!

Okay, maybe they can be funny--if youre stoned, lived in the suburbs all your life, or even if youve never had any societal difficulties thrown at you. Yeah, theyre hilarious because those certasin people share Stone and Parkers negative image of the people different than themselves.

I never laughed at crippled kids--Stone and Parker have. I dont feel threatened by minorities and foreigners--Stone and Parker are. They display their fears with antagonism in every episode of South Park. In Team America, they pander to a willing audience of the fearful narrow-minded myopic who want their own bigotry validated.

When it comes to the limited animated vehicles as presented by Stone and Parker, Ive always been attuned to hearing comedy more than seeing it. With crudely animated characters like the South Park gang, the best of what you get is a radio show with slide-show animation. (Hey, it worked for Jay Wards Rocky and Bullwinkle which was also a very topical, politically satirical show for its time and enjoyed by college students.) The South Park humor, however, doesnt work for me here. Its aimless, its vicious, its snobbish; in all, it echoes the snotty jokes the really cool kids aimed at everyone whom they thought were beneath them. The 'Politically Right' always fears the intellectual left for its ability to focus on different angles to a problem. As an American that used to like television, I fear more the arrogantly flippant attitude that sees one side to a problem by ridiculing and dismissing it without making a valid point. It shows a lack of understanding, and a lack of understanding shows a lack of intellectual spirit, especially when the aimless message perpetuates ignorant myths and stereotypes that are already imbedded in the unread, uncaring, and unaware.

To these South Park geeks, handicapped people and a talking feces appearing at Christmas are funny. They believe that politically active actors are annoying and prejudice is to be tolerated.

Okay, wise guys, why are these things funny?

In the interview for their new film, a matter was brought up about their use of celebrities like Sean Penn ranting about the war. (Parker and Stone have called them sissy peace-niks My God, guys younger than me are sounding like my grandfather. Scary for America!)

Yes, their new film seems to hate people like Sean Penn for having a conscience and speaking out against the war. In their new film, anti-war celebrities are ridiculed because, as the creators said when interviewed on 60 Minutes, the actors always seem to take themselves too seriously. It is as if celebrities who speak out about going to war without reason should just act and shut-up.

A bit ironic if you agree with that nonsense when it comes from two millionaire show-biz guys who themselves are politically speaking out against the left in this film.

It reminds me of those hate-radio guys like Hannity, OReilly, and Limbaugh who rant and rave about people like Martin Sheen, Michael Moore, etc., claiming those people have no right to speak out because theyre actors. Well, what the hell are Hannity, OReilly, and Limbaugh but blustering windbag radio celebrities without serious journalistic or political credentials who sit on their asses in front of a microphone for three hours pontificating views fed to them by right-wing media services? Why are their political views more valid than those of politically active actors?

Who are these South Park guys but two overgrown teenagers who exploit bad animation and fart jokes? How are their opinions in their new film superior to Sean Penns and Michael Moores political activism? There are ways Parker and Stone could have told us if they were smarter and more clever -- but like bratty children, they throw rocks and run away to hit the next house.

To the Associated Press, Parker and Stone defended their humor by copping a plea of being 'innocently dumb.' They mean to hit everyone with their humor, they said. The article quotes Stone: ``That's much more interesting than, 'Here's what we think! We don't know anything about foreign policy or anything. We don't know anything about anything,'' to which Parker adds with mock feebleness: ``We make cartoons.

Stone and Parker have a right to portray themselves as the new 'aw-shucks-country bumpkins' of comedy showing what they think is the truth in us all. True to their nature, though, theyre full of crap. They know that cartoons like this are used to perpetuate thoughts. They also know that the more you repeat a lie or a myth or a stereotype, the more it becomes a 'fact' in the American mindset. Come on, guys!

Team America has a right to be shown and make money and be seen. Its okay to caricature celebrities if you think theyre pompous but fill us in on why youre angry. Be smarter men, not more-clever boys.

So why wont I see the new movie created by the South Park duo? Its not because I hate their politics (I think theyre too shallow to believe in anything.). Its because their humor skates on the easy laugh and the national myths and prejudices without adding comment as to why theyre devoting their time to these issues. Maybe I expect it to be South Park with puppets. Ugh! Pass!

Will Rogers and Mark Twain, outdated today because their humor had an understanding of human nature, should always be the watermark of wittiness. Even Lenny Bruce , Richard Pryor and George Carlin, at their most profane and trivial, had a (and people hate hearing this word) Message to their rants. It came from a motivation to better understand certain life situations familiar to us all. Even their anger was funny because, through them, we saw our own frustrations and could recognize it at its most base value.

The South Park guys see an object of ridicule and fan the flames. Five-year-olds can do that. Ten-year-olds do it with wider variations. When 'adults' like you do this, they pander to the lack of self-esteem in their audience. The pity is that they come out smelling of money. The ignorant will always measure quality by the money it creates.

Stupidity pandered to the like-minded can never make a man poor, especially if one is sure that the audiences self-esteem is lower than his or her own. Thus is the philosophy of the South Park kind of humor.

That's why Im staying away

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