Fascinatioo southpark

With the development of computers and animation techniques, cartoons have become more and more popular on television. While most of the cartoons display science fiction and therefore are purely for entertainment purposes, there are also cartoons, which try to convey messages to the viewers. By including social, political, philosophical and religious aspects, cartoons like South Park can be very beneficial and educating for the viewers. As a result

South Park is very successful in entertaining, while at the same time educating the audience.

South Park has a vision of the world: what it should look like, how people should behave and treat one another, and how we can all function together harmoniously. Each episode starts of by creating a controversy and ends with the message conveyed by one of the four protagonist:

Eric Cartman, Kyle Broslofski, Kenny Mccormick and Stan Marsh. The four young boys must then cope with this controversy, solve the problem and summarize what they have learned at the end of the day. Having aspects of a comedy show, as well as serious aspects, the show is meant for an adult audience. It speaks about being a moral and good person and about treating others with respect. Aaron Fortune, one of the authors of the book “South Park and

Philosophy, Bigger, Longer, and More Penetrating” says:

South Park differs from its contemporaries in that by having characters inside the show get the point of the show, it can have a moral or social message, whereas the others are limited by their form to what I would call social commentary.

A social message tells us what to do or be, whereas a social commentary just tells us what not to do or be.

For example, in the fifth seas...

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...everything they a confronted with, when dealing with a problem. Whether it is confronting god, the government or celebrities, at the end of each episode, normally one of the boys summarize what they have learned today.

In conclusion, South Park is a sitcom capable of entertaining people, but at the same time conveying the writer’s messages. The idea of using four eight year old boys, rather than a family, allows the show to question and criticize social, political and religious aspects. Unlike filming the show with real actors, animating the show opens much more opportunities to the writers. They can display certain situation and problems to their extremes, without being bound by reality. All in all, South park is a show, that makes the audience laugh and offers the viewers different point of views on certain societal and political aspects of the real life.