South Park, "Safe Space"

Here, Trey Parker and Matt Stone are in straight-up “Screw everybody!” mode. When they get into that mood, they’re kind of hit-or-miss; sometimes, it just comes off like an angry tantrum. But tonight, they managed to have a point. Several, rather.

As the title suggests, the episode sees characters retreating to safe spaces, which for those unfamiliar with the term means a position where they don’t receive mean comments and are not shamed. In the case of Cartman and several celebrity caricatures, it’s fat-shaming they're running from, with the job of filtering out the astronomical amount of mean comments on their social media going to poor Butters. As for Randy, the shaming he’s trying to avoid is not being singled out for declining charity donations at the Whole Foods checkout.

On the surface, it seems the show is going further than bashing political correctness to defending vile online trolls, and blaming the recipients of abuse for the comments the receive. Then again, the depiction of said victims cutting themselves off from such criticism also cutting them off from the real world kind of resonates. It’s admittedly a bitter pill, but apt. So are the recurring mocking PSAs depicting starving third-world kids that contrast sharply with narration about safe spaces, which are practically screaming that proponents of such don’t have any real problems.

I’m sure many will take this as a defense of the indefensible (especially the obnoxious, prejudiced anti-P.C. crowd). But, the episode can’t quite be called a defense of trolls and bullying, for the simple reason that the sheer volume and cruelty of what Butters has to sift through does to him (it wisely doesn’t let the audience hear much, as the insults might be taken as comedic, diluting their harmfulness). It’s kind of like how Stone and Parker’s Team America was called a right-wing wet dream for casting liberal celebrities as villains, ignoring the fact that the film’s comedic hyper-jingoism and collateral destruction was hardly a positive depiction of neocon foreign policy.

In other words, the overall position of the episode, like the movie, is “Screw everybody!”

I guess it’s up to the viewer to navigate the conflicting but solid points, just like in real life. But should one choose not to do that and just watch it as a piece of cartoon comedy, the scenes of Randy in the Whole Foods checkout are hilarious like a sketch that keeps one-upping itself, and the celebrity skewering is simplistic but amusing. And of course, it’s always painfully gratifying to laugh at Butters’ sorry circumstances.