South Park, a satirical and poorly animated cartoon on Comedy Central that has just entered its 23rd season, was officially scrubbed from all Chinese networks, and social media following an episode in which the show mocks the censorship Chinese people face everyday.
The Hollywood Reporter first published the findings stating, “after the ‘Band in China’ episode mocked Hollywood for shaping its content to please the Chinese government, Beijing has responded by deleting all clips, episodes and discussions of the Comedy Central show.”
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone spent the last two decades punching conservatives, liberals, social justice warriors, whole foods, Prius drivers, Sarah Jessica Parker, countless celebrities, and every major (or minor) world event since 1997. This time, in the eyes of Chinese Dictator Xi Jinping, the comedy duo have gone too far.
The episode repeatedly mocks Hollywood for bending its content to appease Chinese investors, and to get approved for screening within mainland China, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which is a common open secret in film industry.
South Park runs a story where “Randy getting caught attempting to sell weed in China and getting sent to a work camp similar to those Beijing has been using in Xinjiang Provence to hold as many as a million Chinese Muslims for political indoctrination.” Others include “Stan, Jimmy, Kenny and Butters forming a metal band, which becomes popular and attracts the attention of a manager who wants to make a film about them. But then the script keeps changing so that the film can safely be distributed in China.”
Xinjiang’s likeness is also compared to Whinny the Pooh, something that can get you in big trouble if commented on within China’s borders.
A search of the Twitter-like social media service Weibo turns up not a single mention of South Park among the billions of past posts. On streaming service Youku, owned by internet giant Alibaba, all links to clips, episodes and even full seasons of the show are now dead.
And on Baidu’s Tieba, China’s largest online discussion platform, the threads and subthreads related to South Park are nonfunctional. If users manually type in the URL for what was formerly the South Park thread, a message appears saying that, “According to the relevant law and regulation, this section is temporarily not open.”
The Hollywood Reporter
But Parker and Stone struck back on Twitter with a faux apology.
Referencing the NBA’s disavowal of a coaches endorsement of Hong Kong protesters, they wrote, “like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts.” Adding, “we too love money more than freedom and democracy.”
Just to add insult to injury, “Xi doesn’t look just like Winnie the Pooh at all,” ending with a call for people to watch South Park’s 300th episode. If this doesn’t make you a South Park fan, I don’t know what will.
Canon Report 