South Park, "Cissy"

Well, I certainly misjudged Randy’s brief appearance “disguised” as pop singer Lorde last week. Turns out it was actually the starting point for a scathing rebuke of the teenage musician. As it played out, it made for one of those episodes where the show actually made me feel a little bad for laughing, probably even more so than any other time where that was the case.

It was just part of the episode’s larger theme of gender identity. Specifically, how the subject pertains to going to the bathroom, as Cartman claims to be transgender just so he can use the girls’ bathroom at school. Of course, the right he claims to use whichever toilet he wants only pertains to him and becomes a problem when other students call him on his BS.

Cartman makes it easy to laugh at because, like always, his position is untenable to the extreme and purely self-serving. The satire on gender issues cuts so deep, however, that it could almost be taken as not satirical at all. I mean, I’m pretty sure Matt Stone and Trey Parker are targeting people who are opposed to transgender rights by reversing roles and making characters who are cisgender (a term I and I’m sure many others haven’t heard until tonight) the victims of discrimination. But at surface value, the storyline could be seen as vindication of a scenario transphobes might really fear. Just because I understood what they were trying to say doesn’t mean other people will.

The Lorde subplot (she’s really Randy in disguise, and he invented her so he could use the women’s restroom at work) was less ambiguous. Sure, they were making fun of a ridiculous real hoax, and there were a few backhanded compliments for the singer. And the episode ends on a very pro-trans note. But the vibe of the whole Lorde spoof felt to me like they were basically calling her transsexual in the way an immature high-schooler uses gay slurs as insults. It’s one thing to poke fun at someone’s work (I loved the joke that enough Auto-Tune makes Randy’s lame everyday singing to himself sound exactly like “Royals”), but this was just mean.

I guess it’s okay that I laughed—cracked up, really, at both plots—because I got the satire, and because I’ve laughed at other things on the show that were as bad or worse. At least that’s what I’ll tell myself.