Was ‘South Park’ Funnier When It Was Censored?
In some ways, South Park hasn’t changed all that much over the past three decades. After all, it’s still largely about the same core group of child characters, it still uses the same cut-out construction paper animation style and it still loves making jokes about an egomaniacal dictator hooking up with the literal Devil. But one clear difference between South Park’s early years and the show as it exists today is that the characters are free to curse like sailors/Cuban cocaine kingpins.
Whenever the characters swore in the first four seasons, the offending words were always bleeped out, which still made South Park subversive and highly controversial at the time.
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While the kids swore up a storm in the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, it wasn’t until the show’s Season Five premiere “It Hits the Fan” that they first said “shit” on Comedy Central, bleep-free. The episode, seemingly inspired by real-world controversies involving network dramas like NYPD Blue and Chicago Hope, was all about the use of “shit” on TV. They even included a special onscreen counter to keep track of every single use of the word, which ultimately totaled 162. ''If you analyze the word, what does it mean?'' Comedy Central executive vice president Bill Hilary told The New York Times at the time. ''It's like, what's the big deal; it makes you think, 'Why is it such a strong word?'”
“It Hits the Fan” ended with Stan and Kyle arguing against the indiscriminate use of swearing on television, since “too much use of a dirty word takes away from its impact.”As the years progressed, the show occasionally aired uncensored F-bombs in later timeslots, but it wasn’t until 2016’s “Oh, Jeez” that South Park made history by including an un-bleeped “Fuck” in its “early airing” – which, as we’ve mentioned before, didn’t actually violate FCC guidelines.
But is it possible that the bleeps were actually funnier than the words they were censoring?
In the very first episode, “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe,” Trey Parker and Matt Stone used the content restrictions to their advantage. The prolonged beep that accompanied Kyle’s rant about the alien visitors was arguably more effective than genuine profanity. And Stan’s follow-up line to Wendy (“What’s a (bleep)?”) allowed audiences to fill in the gap themselves using any number of inappropriate possibilities. Some have questioned whether or not the censored versions are more funny than the potty-mouthed episodes. “I love bleeps. I don't know why but they're just so fucking funny to me,” one South Park fan on Reddit suggested. Another agreed, pointing out that most of us are desensitized to swearing anyways, whereas “bleeps call attention to it. It puts a different emphasis and spin on things.”
This doesn’t just apply to South Park; shows like Parks and Recreation utilized techniques to make bleeps funny in ways that run-of-the-mill swear words could never be.As Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz once told NPR, bleeping “becomes kind of a puzzle for people. And I think it's about, you know, letting your imagination do the work.”
As RealClearScience once argued, censoring swear words can “make comedy funnier,” pointing out that censorship can actually “accentuate vulgarity instead of marginalizing it.” A bleep implies that something is shocking, even when it’s obfuscating something that most of us wouldn’t actually find all that alarming. Especially now that they’re putting F-bombs in Marvel movies.
